4/25

1) SEO

2) SMM 

3) PPC Ads or Facebook Ads

4/20

They claimed that with social media marketing it's a useful method of digital marketing that quite an amount of individuals, and businesses use. They claimed that it's “completely different from what people would think”. Most people would think "oh it's just like how I run my own social media account", though in reality social media marketing is all about creating strategies; strategies that has a main purpose of attracting social media users to their profile and hopefully gain followers/engagement so they'll be future customers for the individuals and businesses. A method that would help gain organic traffic as well generating sales.

They claimed many types of strategies that social media marketers use for their work that’s effective. One of the strategies would be using/running ads on different social platforms like Facebook ads. That it’s a good way to reach to a large audience with the paid traffic. Another would be posting in certain times. Research is shown that different social media platforms have high engagement in certain times of the day. Like the times, “research also shows that in certain days there’s more engagement than others”. In addition, using certain hashtags like the ones, trending helps expose you social media profile to more of the platforms users.

In addition, they claimed about posting new posts with different types of media content increases in engagement. Things like graphics, catches the social media users’ eyes, and making them to want to check the post out. Which helps with adding more likes, comments, etc… to the social media profiles. Also videos have been a trending type of media to engage with the users as well.

I agree with it being a good method to drive traffic to a website, or help getting sales. These days, millions of people on Earth uses social media, and it’s important to try to get some of those people to actively follow the businesses’ accounts in their respective niches. Generating leads which get some conversions, and those leads would most likely become customers. Also I could also think that strategy does play in social media marketing since most people that use social media just “hangs out” in a way. To try to get customers from social media must be difficult since most social media users don’t use it for the main purpose of buying products.

I also agree with some of their strategies being effective if this field. Such as timing, some people would be working during the day, be in school, or in other parts of the world, sleep. So certain timing of posts would get a good amount of engagement. Furthermore, I agree with using different types of media like graphics. To attract/appeal to the social media users to make them wanting to check the businesses’ social media account.

4/17

So I bought an online course about digital marketing for $97, and watched some of the videos that was provided in the course. Then I reached to the creator of the course, Seth Hymes which he has about 5 years of experience in the field. Currently, I only asked him a single question that was about what path I should take to earn money in digital marketing as a 16 year old. Freelancing, interning, or an entry-level job.

He responded to me with those following things like I would suspect/thought of. Since I'm 16, it would make more sense for a 16 year old to do some freelancing to gain experience before taking a job; since most companies that I would imagine would think the age of 16 to be "too young/inexperienced". As well thinking, "shouldn't think person be in school?" 

I'm thinking to watch the rest of the videos that's included in the course. As well start doing some digital marketing for myself  before starting to freelance in a website like in  "Upwork". After watching some videos already, I'm thinking to focus on SEO and SMM, possibly some analytics as well but mainly those categories of digital marketing. 

Week 5 3/24

I'm planning on modifying on my project a bit. I'm thinking to change the topic of "digital marketing" to "SEO". Since digital marketing is too broad of a topic, and I could just focus on one aspect of digital marketing instead of several.

I guess my hook would be showcasing some of the work I've been doing. So the audience would feel like I've been taking my project, seriously.

For the preparation of the video, I would just need to figure out a location to film it. As well getting possibly 2 cameras to do different shots at different angles of different things like myself, and my work so far.

Week 4 3/3

They claimed in their piece that digital marketing has become big. When meaning big, they meant useful in the real world. Furthermore, they mentioned affiliate marketing – the process of making money by promoting other people's products, and earning commissions, as something that people could do as their career. Because of the potential of making six-digits, or even seven-digits.
He mentioned information regarding affiliate marketing as well as to persuade the audience to consider trying affiliate marketing. One of the reasons that they stated for the audience to become an affiliate was "start up costs are super low". He claimed normally to start a business there would be quite an amount of money being spent just to retail space and stock inventory, while doing affiliate marketing all you need is a computer with an internet connection. In addition, he mentioned "you don't need any expert knowledge" since affiliate marketing can be learned without a PhD, and they claimed with an "eager-to-learn mindset" pretty much you could learn affiliate marketing easily.
He mentioned different techniques to do affiliate marketing. One of it being SEO, or search engine optimization. Being able to use keywords on websites in such that have low competition, so the websites could rank high in certain searches on a search engine depending on the actual keywords. He also mentioned an another technique that can be incorporated to marketing, which would be SSM, or social media marketing. Basically building up social media accounts to have a large amount of followers, and market products to the large fan base.
I, too, agree on their point of digital marketing becoming big in a way. In several different articles on the Internet like the one written by US News & World Report, it seems that in the modern day, digital marketing has become one of the jobs that are in demand. Also affiliate marketing is pretty much related to digital marketing because of affiliate marketing relies on the digital marketing skills, itself. As well in many freelancing websites such as freelancer.com and upwork.com, there are many jobs that are being posted daily, that want some assistance in digital marketing.
I would also agree with the methods of digital marketing that the author of the article seemed to use. For instance, SEO is quite important to get your website, or whatever to get exposed to new people by having high ranks in certain searches. That way, there would be more traffic being gained through this method, and most likely there would me more amounts of people that would buy the products that the affiliates are promoting. SMM can also help with getting traffic from the amount of followers from the social media accounts to the person’s, personal website.

Week 3 2/24

This week so far I've been setting up different social media accounts including Instagram, Reddit, and Pinterest. As well trying to build up a following with a help of a video from "Lazy Ass Stoner" on Youtube.

 

             In which, I would first focus on a niche, and try to find someone with a large following that                posts related content to my niche. Then I would follow a bunch of their followers, and some                of them would follow my account too, since those followers and I appear to have the same                  interests. 

Once I build up a good amount of followers, I would then post content valuable to the followers and earn their "trust" in a way. So I could be able to market some products to them. 

Week 2 2/10

I have decided to switch my 20-time project from photography into affiliate marketing.

Questions
1) What kind of resources/skills do I need for affiliate marketing?
2) What are ways to drive traffic to an affiliate link?
3) Which websites, books, or videos can I learn information about affiliate marketing?
4) How much money would I have to invest in doing affiliate marketing?

Week 1 2/2

My first proposal for the 20-time project was mainly about an online business, or just making money online. Like how I would start a web design/development business, or do some kind of marketing. I should've written a bit more, because one of the feedback I've gotten was "do you even know how to create websites?", and I do know how to create websites, well simple, with HTML, CSS, and some Javascript. I could've gotten better feedback than that question, if I would've added more info.

Overall, I didn't really have good feedback. So far I had a compliment, a question if I'm going to do this as a career, a question if I'm doing this solo or not (pretty much all of the things I talked about can be done solo), and a couple of questions about where I'm going to get funds (the things I listed, doesn't really need funds, and even if I need money I'll just use money from work). Again, I should've explained a bit more while writing the proposal.

After some researching, I'm planning to focus my 20-time project on photography, learning to improve my photography skills. I plan to take quite an amount of pictures, and posting it on an Instagram account. As some of my work, needs some improvement.

Ex. 

 

A picture of a tree in my front yard. 

A picture inside of a coffee shop during my time in Vietnam. 

I think while doing this project, I would also learn about social media marketing just to learn more about marketing. Which I think would be a useful skill to learn in my future.