This semester we have spent a lot of time talking about food security and food justice. Both issues are important to talk about and are not the same thing.
Food security is having access to not just food, but healthy nutritious food that can fuel the body and mind. Food security is about eating a meal and not having to worry about when the next meal will be.
Food justice is having the right to grow, sell, and eat healthy foods that are affordable and grown locally, with care for the well-being of workers, the land, and animals.
Both issues effect many people today, and both issues need to be addressed.
Things such as school lunch programs, Feed My Starving Children, and food pantries work to provide food security to people. Food security is not just about patching a whole and moving on. It is about teaching people how to grow food, and how to change their lives to make this food obtainable.
Food justice addresses making sure that healthy food is locally grown, in a sustainable, and humane way. We want to make sure that our farm workers are treated well, which is not always the case.
Food justice and food security are both very important to help the world run smoothly. Today, these topics are not addressed as much as they should be. I urge you to work to make a change in your community, and communities around you to grow healthy, sustainable food, that is accessible to everyone.
This week I was fortunate enough to volunteer my time at Feed My Starving Children. For those of you who don't know, Feed My Starving Children is a Christian run organization, who is working to provide nutritious meals to third world countries.
They focus on giving healthy and filling meals to malnourished children. There is a packing facility, right down the road, in Aurora.
The day I attended we were focusing on packing boxes for El Salvador, Mexico, and Haiti. These are all areas that are extremely malnourished, and need a little extra help to make sure their kids are getting the resources they need to not only survive, but to thrive. Without food, these kids brains and bodies are not able to grow at a normal rate. They become extremely frail and underdeveloped. Feed My Starving Children want to provide food for these children, not so they just aren't hungry, but so they can live a full lifestyle and grow at a healthy pace.
At each station there is a bucket of rice, soy, freeze dried veggies, and a vitamin mix. Two people scoop ingredients into a bag, just like the ones pictured above. The next person holds the bag and then gives it to the weigh-er. The weigh-er is in charge of making sure the bag has 180 to 200 grams. They are in charge of putting in more rice or taking it out when it is needed. The next person is in charge of sealing the bag, and the last is in charge of boxing it. I was the scoooper of the vitamins and rice.
Volunteering at Feed My Starving Children is always so rewarding because you know exactly where the food is headed to, and you see the kids of kids who are receiving the food. They are a great organization and I highly recommend volunteering there!
AI intelligence has taken massive strides in the past year. It is now possible for face and object recognition, understand different voices, and many more complex variables.
One thing that AI can't seem to master, is humor. Since different people find things funny, it is impossible for AI to predict humor. Some psychologist think that all good jokes share the same qualities, so AI may be possible.
In this article, Radev took 300,000 captions written for 50 New Yorker cartoons since 2005. He linked different captions and gave them rating based on the topic used. He then tried to figure out what topics linked to most liked captions.
He found out that the funniest captions were based on negative sentiment, human-centerdness, and lexical centrality.
Radev tried to imagine an AI system that could select the funniest captions based on these findings. He concluded that it would be virtually impossible to create an effective machine to pick out humor.
In today's day humor is not something AI can distinguish, but in five years, it might be a different story.
AI intelligence can be used for many things, even for April fools day pranks! Janelle Shane collected a list of April fools pranks found online, and put them into an online list. She then asked used AI to make a whole new list.
Below is what the processor came up with:
Place a pair of pants and shoes in your ice dispenser.
Put marbles in the hand soap dispenser.
Putting google eyes on someone's computer mouse so that it won't work.
Place a pair of pants and shoes in Easter egg foils.
Hide all of the entrance to your office building if it only had one entrance.
Put food coloring in the mailbox.
Glue all the eggs in the hubcaps of someone's computer.
A meat and mashed potato sundae makes or quite the hand soap dispenser.
Put a glow stick in a toilet paper into the toe of your kid's shoes.
Take the door know off your kid's shoes.
Rearrange someobody while pretending to pee.
If you rip up a toilet paper roll, then leave them a ransom note.
Hide an alarm clock in someone's keyboard who isn't a very good typist.
As you can see, AI still has a ways to go because some of these pranks make no sense at all. Next I think that this article should post a video of a robot performing all of these tasks!
searchenginenews.com is a great website for you to get certified on. It looks great on a resume, LinkedIn, and employers really value it. The certification has four training course videos, that are very helpful on the exam. It is only 28 questions, and you can take as long as you want when taking the exam. The test is graded by hand, and they let you know what questions you get wrong once it is graded. You only need an 80% to pass, which is definitely doable! I took the test earlier today, and passed so I now have another certification to add to my LinkedIn. I highly suggest taking the exam!
As a student who lives on campus, I have experience what it is like to live on campus with a car, and without a car. Living on campus and not having a car leaves you with limited options in terms of food. Most of the options served at school are unhealthy, not vegetarian friendly, and served continuously.
My freshman and sophomore year I did not have a car on campus. The only food options that were available were Krasa, Coal Ben, and Starbucks. Krasa is run by Sodexo and since this is such a small campus, there were not many food options. They had a small salad bar every day, and that's as far as they went for healthy options. They also had a small sandwich station, pizza, a grill, pasta, and desserts everyday. Just tasting the food, you can tell that it is not healthy. The next option that we have is "Coal Ben." It is run with a sports bar vibe, and most of the meals are served with fries. The most popular items are burgers, wings, and quesadillas. Below is the picture of the menu. As you can see, they have a Halal portion of the menu, but barely any options for vegetarians.
Another option on campus is Starbucks. There are not many food options at Starbucks, but the food they have is viewed as "healthier," even if it is not. The drinks served are packed with sugar, dairy, and many empty calories. While there are healthier options at Starbucks, most people do not purchase those drinks.
When I finally got a car, I'm sure you can imagine how excited I was for new food options. Within five miles of campus are three grocery stores. There's a Butera, Jewel, and Mariano's. These grocery stores range in prices, foods sold, and overall experiences. There are also many restaurant options. To just list a few; Chipotle, Nando's, Panera, Portillo's, Taco Bell, KFC, Mongolian Grill, Front Street, and Rose Bud are all within a ten minuted drive. Having all these options gave me many more vegetarian options, and made choosing healthy options much easier!
Lesson 12, the last inbound video is focused on the pillars of delight. Delight is so important for any type of a business because customers will become promoters. Once you have established trust, they become promoters and share your company with families and friends. This turns them into free advertisement. It costs much more money to attract a new customer than it is to sustain current customers. Great customer service can help create delight with your customers. Every area of your business should be focused on providing a great customer experience.
The three pillars of delights are innovation, communication, and education. Change is always happening so your products, services, and the experience you are providing to your customer should always be innovating and changing. Personal communication helps you build trust with your customers. They will trust you as a person over a robot any day. You also should be educating your customers on your product or service. Everyone can do this as well, it doesn't just have to be the sales team, a manager can help do this. Companies should be focused on solving customers problems, providing them with recommendations, and providing customers with a great experience by being genuine. In order to provide great customer experience, all team members should be trained in how to provide this experience. Below are the seven customer delight guidelines, to help create happy customers.
The Seven Customer Delight Guidelines:
Delighting team members
Educating team members
Empowering team members
Listening
Asking
Serving Follow up
These seven customer delight guidelines focus on hiring the right people, to help grow your company. Inbound marketing is all about creating great customer service, that all starts with the staff.
Inbound sales occurs in the close section of methodology. Sales and marketing go together because they work together in the smarketing process to increase revenue. Today, buyers have much more information on companies available, so they have a higher expectation for relevant, personal experiences when making a purchase.
Traditionally a sales team performed cold calling, were information gatekeepers, had static pitches, and were seller-centric. In inbound marketing they attract with content, are an open book, leverage the buyer's content, and are buyer-centric.
There are four best practices for effectively transforming the way you sell. They are, transform the way you target accounts, the way you prospect accounts, the way you connect with accounts, and the way your prospects perceive you as a sales person.
In order to do all of those steps you need to make sure you research your lead thoroughly. You should look up company information, read about their industry, check social media, and have overall lead intelligence. Today being a sales rep is all about understanding the customer before you call. You need to perform research, and have a game plan before you even think about picking up your phone and calling them. Inbound sales is all about providing a customized experience for everyone you call.
Lesson 10 talks about how the marketing and sales team can come together to help increase revenue. This is known as smarketing, and it takes place in the close stage. 87% of the terms sales and marketing use to describe each other are negative. Lesson 10 focuses on combining the two teams to help grow a company.
In order for smarketing to be most effective, both teams must have the same organizational goals. This will help them focus their energy together. The marketing pipeline should be tied to sales quota, and there should be visibility into each other's goals. There should also be compensation based on shared marketing and sales goals. Last, there should be continual communication and education around personas. Smarketing is possible in any size company, it is all about working together as a team instead of as separate groups.
Smarketing can be integrated into your organization by making sure both organizations in smarketing speak the same language. Using the same terms helps them work together much easier. They also need to have a Service Level Agreement, an agreement that defines what each team commits to accomplishing in order to support the other in reaching the shared revenue goals. Closed-loop reporting also should be set up, it completes the feedback loop between marketing and sales. The sales and marketing team should also rely on data, while maintaining open communication. If
marketing and sales can find the balance to work together, companies will experience positive growth.
Above is a picture of Stonehenge, if you are interested in history I'm sure this image would have grabbed your attention. It is one of the wonders of the world and it is an interesting topic for historians to talk about. If you are not interested in history, this image would probably have no effect on you and you would scroll right by it. Today, we will be talking about the power of images. A lot of people say "content is king," but a lot of the times, it is the image you post that draws the reader in.
For some the image of Stonehenge was enough to get them to start reading my blog. For others, they probably scrolled right by it. When writing an email, blog post, or any type of promotional ad it is important to really understand the audience of the advertisement. Being able to pin point who will be viewing your advertisements will make it easier for you to narrow down the focus of your ad.
Two great image websites are www.clipart.com and www.pixabay.com. You can find pictures that can be used to help enhance any email, website, advertisement, or promotion.
Lesson 9 is all about sending the right email to the right person. Email marketing can be an effective way to reach your target market if you learn how to do it right.
Many consumers believe:
Email marketing is spam
Email marketing is old school
Reasons email marketing still works:
4.3 billion email accounts that send 196 billion emails every day
91% of consumers check their email daily
Email is a chnanel that you own
77% of consumers prefer email for marketing commumnications
Email lets you be highly personal
Email has a marketing ROI of 4,300%
How to send the right email to the right person:
Determine your audience
Segment your contacts database
Send the right email at the right time
Nurture your lead into a customer
An effective email should include:
Personalization
Actionable language
Image as CTA
Personalized signature with CTA
Reason for sending email
Benefit to Reader
Direct link of communication
If you send an effective email it will help you turn your leads into customers. If you do not, it will turn away possible customers. Email is not old school, it is being adopted and used as a communication by more people every year!
We'll take a break from Hubspot right now and talk about SurveyMonkey. SurveyMonkey is a free online survey tool used to collect information and opinions of people who's opinions are relevant to a topic you are trying to learn more on. They are #1 free survey collector and one of their competitors is Qualtrics.
Professor Kelsey used SurveyMonkey to help collect data on MKTG 348 and learn our thoughts and opinions on the online course. It is much better than asking for an email on our thoughts, because it is anonymous so people can write what they want without him knowing who wrote it. It gives a sense of privacy so you can say what you want.
SurveyMonkey is a great tool to use, and we have utilized this website in many of my courses.
When on a job search there is a lot of preparing that comes with getting ready for an interview. You must make sure you are prepared for any question that they are going to ask you. While they will ask you many questions, here are five that you need to pay attention to:
1. "Why are you here?" The company wants to know why you are looking to work for them and not a different company. They want to see that you have a reason for being here besides just needing a job.
2. "What can you do for us?" This is a company trying to figure out how you can help them grow as a business. They want someone who can help them face challenges and become a better company. They want to know what your special skills are that will set you apart from the competitors.
3. "What kind of person are you?" They want to know if you have the personality that will fit in with the atmosphere they are trying to create. Companies want to hire individuals who are easy to work with and who share common values with their fellow employees.
4. "What exactly distinguishes you from the nineteen or nine hundred other people who are applying for this job?" They want to know if you have a strong work ethic, good work habits, work fast, maintain high standards, and anything else that will set you apart from other employees.
5. "Can I afford you?" They want to know if you are willing to take the salary they have available for you.
These are the things that employers really want to know. These questions can either help you stand out or set you back from your competitors. Being able to answer these questions with ease and confidence will give you an edge over other applicants.
(page 60-61)
Even if you come prepared to a job interview, there are still things that can go wrong. Some of these things might seem very small, but interviewers tend to pick up on them. In order to iron out these issues, you must be aware of what they are. Here are 5 things that employers do notice about a potential employer:
1. Your appearance and personal habits. If you are fresh bathed, have freshly laundered clothes, and a fresh haircut you will give off a much better impression than someone who is not. Employers who want people who can represent their business well, so displaying these characteristics helps give interviewers confidence in you.
2. Nervous mannerisms. Some of these include avoiding eye contact, a limp handshake, and slouching in your chair. Employers want people who are confident and can handle high-pressure situations.
3. Lack of self-confidence. These include speaking softly, giving answers in a hesitant fashion, interrupting the employer, giving one-word answers, or downplaying your achievements. These characteristics show that you are not confident in yourself. If someone can not be confident in themselves how can they be confident about your company?
4. The consideration you show to other people.Some major turnoffs to an employer are if you show a lack of courtesy, you display extreme criticalness toward previous employers, you drink alcohol during the interview process, and forget to thank the interviewer when leaving. Employers want people who are courteous and know how to treat others well. If they cannot treat a future employer well, who knows how they will treat customers.
5. Your values. If you show a sign of arrogance, laziness, constant complaining, irresponsibility, or lack of enthusiasm employers will not want to hire you. They want to make sure you have good morals and you will fit in with the values that their company is trying to instill in their employees.
While all of these things may seem small, they are things that employers notice. The good thing is that all of these things are changeable. Once you are aware that you are doing them, you can work towards changing them. If you fix these 5 mistakes, it will help elevate your job search.
When searching for a job there are many ways to find them. There is more than just making a resume and hoping someone stumbles upon it. Here are some pointers on other ways to get your name out there when looking for a job.
1. Look for employers' job postings on the Internet. While this is an option, it may not be the best one for you. Only 4% of people find a job this way so only use this technique if you are running out of options.
2. Posting or mailing out your resume to employers. Like the first option, this one is not as successful as the other techniques. While it works 7% of the time you should try other options before you rely on this one.
3. Answering local newspaper ads. If you're looking for a high salary you may want to skip this option. It works for only about 5% of people when you are trying to pull in lots of money. If your salary is of less importance it can work for up to 24% of people.
4. Going to private employment agencies or search firms for help. This method works anywhere between 5% and 28%. Agencies are four times more effective than just depending on your resume.
5. Answering ads in professional or trade journals, appropriate to your field. It only works 7% of the time, though.
6. "Job Clubs." These are job hunting groups that have a success rate of around 84%. These groups are highly suggested because not only do they help you find a job, but they offer you support on your job hunt.
7. Going to the state or federal employment office. It works 14% of the time and is worth a shot when trying to find a job.
8. Going to places where employers pick up workers. If you're a union worker you are able to go to a union hiring all. This method works up to 22% of the time.
9. Asking for job leads. With this method, you ask friends, family, and people you know in the community if they know of any place that would be a good job for you. Asking for job leads works about 33% of the time.
10. Knocking on the door of any employer, office, or manufacturing plant. It works best with small employers with it working 47% of the time.
11. Using the Yellow Pages. It involves going through Yellow Pages of your local phone book to identify subjects or fields that interest you. This is a great option and it works 65% of the time.
With these tips, your chances of finding a job are greatly increased
I. Go after a small organization with 25 or fewer employees. If you cannot find a job like this try and look for organizations with 50 or fewer employees. The smaller the organization the better.
II. Hunt for places to interview using eighty friends and acquaintances. Make sure you know what your looking for so you can tell them exactly what your looking for
III. Once you have found a place you are interested in, you need to find out who has the power to hire you. Then you need to find people who know you and know the person hiring so you can get an introduction.
IV. Do lots of research on an organization before you go there.
V. Prepare for the interview with your own agenda. Have your own questions and curiosities about whether the job fits you.
VI. If you initiate the appointment, ask for nineteen minutes of their time; and keep to your word strictly.
VII. Only talk for 20 seconds to 2 minutes when answering their questions.
IX. At the end of the interview, ask for the job.
X. Always write a thank-you, not the same evening as the interview.
In the book The American Way of Eating, written by Tracie McMillan it talks about her journey through the food industry. She grew up in the Midwest eating cheap meals, never buying organic or fresh foods. She wanted to explore the food industry and gain a better industry of the food justice in the American food industry (McMillan 2012).
She
decided to go undercover for a local magazine to see why these foods are so
expensive, and how they are harvested and treated in supermarkets and fast food
restaurants. She was going to use the wages she earned in each job to live and
eat off. She payed rent and bought groceries as if this job was her real life.
She started off as a laborer in California, harvesting grapes, sorting peaches,
and cutting garlic. Through her journey she
found many disturbing issues with the food system in the United States, including many shocking issues during the farmers harvesting (McMillan 2012).
In all three of her jobs, she found out that the pay was very low, the work was dangerous, and the workers had no rights. Instead of being paid hourly, they were paid by how much they picked. This equated to much less than minimum wage. On top of that the conditions were poor, it was dangerously hot and very dusty. Even if these workers wanted to fight for their rights, they could not. A lot of them came over without legal documentation, so if they tried to fight for rights they would just be deported (McMillan 2012).
McMillian
had a firsthand view of the way that workers are treated in the United States.
They work long hard days, treated poorly, and paid poorly. With the prices that
we pay in grocery stores, these workers should be getting paid more to do what
they are doing. She worked in the fields for a short time, but it felt much
longer because of how tough the work is (McMillan 2012).
The link below takes you to the Agricultural Justice Project. Their goal is to help transform the current agricultural system by empowerment, justice, and fairness for all who labor from farm to retail. They provide farms and food businesses with equipment and tools to improve work and trade practices to help the farmworkers. They work to raise awareness of the injustice occurring in the food system and want to teach people how they can help fix the problem (Agricultural Justice Project).
Steven Rosenbaum, the CEO of Magnify.net, discusses curation and why it is important in today's age. He talks about how the web is a huge place with tons of different information channels. The internet is slowly changing though, instead of algorithms taking over, human content is taking over. People no longer are searching out information made by robots, they want real-life stories, testimonials, and content. Human content, in the form of curation, helps others learn more about life experiences (Innovate -- curation! 2011).
In the food justice industry, people are searching for real-life testimonials of people who are passionate about food justice. So what is food justice? According to What is Food Justice, "Food Justice is communities exercising their right to grow, sell, and eat healthy food. Healthy food is fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally-appropriate, and grown locally with care for the well-being of the land, workers, and animals. People practicing food justice leads to a strong local food system, self-reliant communities, and a healthy environment" (WHAT IS FOOD JUSTICE 2018).
The website above is a non-profit organization located in New York City. They started in 1995, and their goal is to use sustainable agriculture by having an emphasis on community-driven food. Not only do they want to have sustainable food, but they engage individuals in the community to help feed, educate, and advocate for each other no matter their social, racial, economic, and environmental background (WHAT IS FOOD JUSTICE 2018).
They offer a community-run farmers' market network that offers both urban growers and regional farmers. They focus on serving low-income communities and rely heavily on volunteers. They also offer community food education with educational workshops. These workshops include nutritionists, professional chefs, food activists, parents, food lovers and more (WHAT IS FOOD JUSTICE 2018).
References
WHAT IS FOOD JUSTICE? (n.d.). Retrieved March 12, 2018, from
http://justfood.org/advocacy/what-is-food-justice
Innovate -- curation! (2011, June 06). Innovate -- curation! | Steve Rosenbaum | TEDxGrandRapids. Retrieved March 12, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=iASluLoKQbo
In the last two lessons we talked about calls-to-action, landing pages, and the last step is the thank you page. Lesson 8 will give you a closer look of the importance of a landing page, as well as how to create a successful one.
A thank you page helps you to convert the next step to a newly converted lead. Once the lead goes to the thank you page, it will thank the new lead for providing their information, as well as providing a little bit more information on what they just signed up for. It is used to end the conversion process, and move on to the next stage of the buyers journey. Thank you pages are much better than inline thank you messages, because pages allow you to provide even more information.
On a thank you page it is important to deliver promised content offer or set expectiaons, display the sites navigation menu, provide additional content, move new leads further into the buyer's journey, and include social options.
Thank you pages are an opportunity to further draw in your leads and convert them into customers, further into the buyer's journey. it is a very important step, that helps you further grow your relationship with leads!
Lesson 7 discusses landing pages and the importance of them. Landing pages are website pages used to convert visitors into leads. Landing pages are essentially digital sales representatives, using a form to gather information. They help you build a relationship with your leads and better understand their needs. They start with a call-to-action, that will lead to a landing page, and then lead you to a thank you page.
A landing page should always have a description of your offer in the headline. These landing pages should be clear with an action-oriented header, they should explain the offer clearly and place visual emphasis on the value, they should remove the navigation menu and links, the form length mirrors the value of the offer, include a relevant image, and add social sharing icons.
Numbers, bullets, and bolding can be used to create visual emphasis. The primary step of a landing page is to attract people to your page so you want it to be easy to read.
Landing pages are a major step in the convert stage! They help you attract customers and further increase your business.
If you're still looking for a little bit more practice before you get certified, I suggest using Google Analytics Academy. They will help you learn how to navigate Google Analytics interface and reports, and set up dashboards and shortcuts. It will also help you analyze basic Audience, Acquisition, and Behavior reports, and set up goals and campaign tracking.
Below are the four units they offer, as well as all of the lessons that are broken up in each unit.
Unit 1: Introducing Google Analytics
Lesson 1: Why digital analytics?
Lesson 2: How Google Analytics works
Lesson 3: Google Analytics setup
Lesson 4: How to set up views with filters
Unit 2: The Google Analytics layout
Lesson 1: Navigating Google Analytics
Lesson 2: Understanding overview reports
Lesson 3: Understanding full reports
Lesson 4: How to share reports
Lesson 5: How to set up dashboards and shortcuts
Unit 3: Basic Reporting
Lesson 1: Audience reports
Lesson 2: Acquisition reports
Lesson 3: Behavior reports
Unit 4: Basic Campaign and Conversion Tracking
Lesson 1: Measuring Custom Campaigns
Lesson 2: Tracking campaigns with the URL Builder
Lesson 3: Using Goals to measure business objectives
Throughout "Introduction to Google Analytics," we have spent a lot of time talking about Google Analytics, now it is time to start earning certifications! Certifications are very beneficial, you can add them on your resume and LinkedIn profile. Two great tests you can take are Google Analytics Individual Qualification, and Google Adwords Search Advertising Certification. Google qualifications and certifications are pretty much the same thing, so they are both good options.
Using the Analytics Academy is a great option, it offers free training and study materials. Below is a link to Analytics Academy, as well as two great courses to take.
The best way to prepare for the test is to actually go on Google Analytics and set up your own account. Once you believe you have mastered Google Analytics, go ahead and take the test. Good luck, time to get certified!!!
Lesson 6 moves on from the attract phase of inbound marketing to the convert phase. In the convert phase companies are looking to convert visitors into leads using forms, call-to-action, and landing pages.
In class 6 we will be taking a look at how to use a Call-To-Action (CTA). A CTA is a button that promotes an offer and links to a landing page. CTA's can be placed on your website or blog to attract customers.
On a blog post, it is best to place your CTA at the end of the post, or in the sidebar. This is so you are not interrupting the content. CTAs in an email can be placed at the end of the email, at the end of a paragraph, or sentence. They should be noticeable but not distracting. Your CTA must stand out, so visitors will click on it. You should consider your buyer persona when designing your CTA. Highly contrasting colors helps a CTA stand out.
As a review, the primary purpose of a call-to-action is to convert visitors into leads.
Chapter 5 of Hubspot covers why social media is very important to Inbound Marketing. 9 out of 10 U.S. businesses are active on social media. It helps keep content in front of the right people and spread the word of your business. You can use your content to generate new leads.
Social media is used in the attract phase to increase your exposure. Once you've exposed a new visitor to your site, social media can help you convert these visitors into leads by promoting your content. Social monitoring is a way of computing popularity of a company by taking information from social media channels. It is a great way to gather information on your buyer personas. Not only can you monitor what they are saying about you, but you can listen to industry trends that will help you attract more visitors and grow your business.
Businesses should make sure that they have SMART inbound goals. This acronym stands for: Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant Timely
SMART inbound marketing helps increase visitors, convert more leads, close more customers, and even make customers happy.
Just like the past two chapters, chapter 7 provides another way to learn about analytics in a live setting. The last two chapters talked about Shopify and AdWords, while this chapter will talk about Gumroad. Gumroad can be easily linked to Google Analytics, and it has its own built-in analytics.
Conversion analytics is very important to learn because they help you to optimize a campaign. It helps make campaigns more effective, and more efficient. In the process, generating more revenue and using the existing budget more wisely. Knowing a conversion rate helps you measure the effectiveness of your efforts to improve things, over time.
Let's get started with Gumroad! Go to: https://gumroad.com/ click "Start Selling:" then create an account. Next, name your store and enter a description. You will want to add a username, which will appear in the link. Once your account is all set up, you want to connect with Google Analytics.
Go to: https://www.google.com/analytics/ click "Access Google Analytics," click "Property," add your Gumroad website in, and copy the Tracking ID it gives you.
Now, you'll want to go back into Gumroad, and select "Settings." In the "Advanced" section paste in the Tracking ID, you just obtained from Google Analytics. Update the account details, then add a product into Gumroad. Once you have a product added in, share it on Facebook to generate some traffic. Once you have some traffic you can go to Analytics in Gumroad and see how your conversion rate is doing.
Google Analytics will allow you to dig a little deeper into the statistics than Gumroad will. You can use both websites to track your website, and make improvements to increase your revenue even more!
Chapter 8 is the last chapter in Surfing the Tsunami and it discusses what to do next. Now that you understand AI, the causes, and the effects, it's time to discuss what to do after you implement the three A's (adapt, adopt, and adept) into your life.
As a reminder, a couple great books to read about AI include Rise of the Robots, Master Algorithm, and 2nd Machine Age.
Once you've read these three books try Machine Learning and Deep Learning to help you become more adept in AI.
Books can only take you so far though, once you have read all these books front to back, your next step is to take courses in AI to further your understanding. These courses can be done at a local community college, online/book refreshers such as Khan Academy, or Coursera. Coursera offers free courses as well as courses for payment. Through Coursera you can receive actual certificates that will look great on a resume! They also offer online Master's Degree programs in Computer Science.
Another great option besides Coursera is Udacity. You can get their "Learn to Code" nanodegree. It starts with HTML and moves to python. They also carry an online Master's Degree in Computer Science.
All of these books and websites are great sources to help you stay up to date with AI. While Artificial Intelligence does not seem to be affecting you, it affects everyone in some way, shape, or form. It is very important to address AI and understand the effects it has on everyday life.
Lesson 4 focuses on the fundamentals of blogging. It is an essential part of being an inbound marketer, helping you to easily and effectively reach prospects on your website. Business blogging helps you attract new visitors, and convert them into leads. Blog posts can help strangers by answering their questions and turning them into visitors. People who are interested in your blog will visit it, share it, and help promote it. The more you blog, the more people will look at you as a reliable and trustworthy source.
When creating a blog it is important to follow these simple and easy steps:
1) Pick a topic and title: When choosing your blog title it is important to use long-tail keywords. The keyword should fit as a description of what the page is about.
2) Format and optimize the post: When creating a blog it is important to focus on one topic. The more focused a blog is, the better because it will make posts clearer for readers and for search engines. Having empty space on your blog (whitespace) is a good thing, it helps visitors to focus on your content, not the clutter. Use short paragraphs, indents, section headers, and bulleted lists to make it easier to read.
3) Promote offers on your blog to increase lead generation: Use your blog to strategically promote your current offers. You want to attract someone and provide relevant information and offers. Feature CTAs on a blog sidebar, you want it to catch readers at the beginner of the buyers journey. Also, make sure that you make it easy for people to prescribe to your blog.
4) Promote your blog posts: Use your blog sidebar to promote your recent or most popular posts, and add your blog to your primary website navigation. Also, link internally to your blog posts, readers who are interested can click through to your blog. Sharing your posts on social media can help promote your product or service.
5) Analyze the performance of your blog posts: You will want to look at hte number of views for each blog post. It will help you determine which content is the most popular among viewers. Filtering your most popular posts by topic, author or channel of promotion. Last, look at the number of clicks on the CTAs at the end of an individual post.
Once you have done all of these steps, your blog will be even better! Just remember it is important to write consistently and frequently. Each new blog post is a new chance to reach new customers.
Lesson 3 of hubspot focuses on creating content with a purpose. Content is what your trying to deliver to your visitors through social media, emails, and more. Not all content is created equally, remember quality is always better than quantity! In the attract phase content is the driving force to the convert stage. It fuels the inbound methodology, and helps progress visitors from step to step.
Your content should make people want to come back for more, or refer others to you. Every piece is an investment in your future goals. When coming up with content it is important to take in consideration your buyer personas (who you're trying to reach) and the buyer's journey (what content will be most interesting or helpful for them).
If your content is in the awareness phase you should be targeting a problem your buyer persona is experiencing. In the consideration stage you should be targeting a solution to a problem. In the decision stage content should be about your product or service because they have already chosen you. Content should be created for all different stage of the buyer's journey. The picture below shows the best places content should be placed in each step of the buyer's journey.
When trying to convert visitors into leads, you should utilize content in all of the stages of the buyer's journey. It is more important to focus on the content first, and the design second. Products should not be discussed until the decision stage of the buyer's journey. Delivery of content makes it relevant, so you need to make sure you can get your content out in an effective way. Make sure you are promoting and distributing your content. Lesson 3 focuses on content because it is a crucial step in inbound marketing. Without it, inbound marketing would not be successful at all.
Last week we talked about Shopify and how it provides a foundation for e-commerce. This week we will move on and talk about how AdWords provides a way to advertise a site and track conversion.
To start off lets create an acount, go to http://www.google.com/adwords. Once your account is created go to tools and then to conversions. The goal is to set up a connection between AdWords and your e-commerce site. You can then code it with Shopify and it will allow AdWords to track your site. It will allow you to track how much money you spend on ads to the revenue you will make on your your e-commerce site.
Click the conversion button and ad Shopify in the box. Add the conversion channel as Purchase/Sale, the markup language to HTML, and last click "I make changes to the code." Click done and you are set. Take the code Google gives you, log onto your Shopify, click checkout, and paste the link into the additional content and scripts area.
Congrats, you have successfully linked your Shopify and AdWords, now you will have a better understanding when you are tracking your site!
Chapter 7 of Surfing the Tsunami focuses on diving into the AI field and learning a little bit about some of the industry leaders.
The first individual highlighted is Andrew Ng, he was based out of Stanford, and helped to launch the "MOOC" revolution, through co-founding Coursera. He offers courses at Stanford on machine learning that are very popular. He used to work in China at Baidu as the chief scientist,but he recently came back to the United States. Below is one of his recent videos where he discusses AI.
The second individual is Geoffrey Hinton, a British cognitive psychologist and computer scientist. He was one of the first researchers who demonstrated the use of generalized back propagation algorithm for training multi-layer neural nets. Blow is an interview Geoffrey recently had with New York Times.
Pedro Domingos was also sited as having a strong influence in the AI field. He wrote the book Master Algorithm, and teaches at University of Washington. His youtube videos for his online machine learning class, as well as several TEDx talks show just how knowledgeable on AI he is.
These are just three of the top individuals in the AI field. They are great sources to help further grasp your understanding of AI. Check out these videos, as well as other videos and books written by these influential individuals!
Growing up in a small town the food options in
my school district were very slim. There was one lunch offered a day, no
alternatives for students with allergies, intolerances, and no healthy options.
Without fail, year after year, the highlight of my day was chicken nuggets,
Bosco sticks, and pizza. Once we got to middle school, our school offered what
I thought was tons of options. The problem was the food they offered was pizza,
chicken nuggets, cheese fries, and hamburgers. I had no concept of the junk I was
putting in my body to fuel it.
In the link below, What’s
Wrong with School Lunches, Cooper states, “We're seeing sick kids get
sicker and sicker. And the reason this is happening, by and large, is because
of our food system and the way the government commodifies food, the way the
government oversees our food, the way the USDA puts food on kids' plates that's
unhealthy, and allows unhealthy food into schools. And by -- tacitly, all of us
send our kids, or grandchildren, or nieces, or nephews, to school and tell them
to learn, you know, learn what's in those schools. And when you feed these kids
bad food, that's what they're learning. So that's really what this is all
about” (Cooper, 2007). Cooper agrees that school lunches are not only
unhealthy, but they are, teaching students that eating those foods is good for
them. She says that the only way to fix this growing problem is for everyone to
step up and help stop it. Whether it’s petitioning for healthier schools in
your district or simply packing lunch for your child, anything will help.
When
thinking about the effects of eating unhealthy foods most people just think
about weight gain, but have you ever thought about the other effects these
children have? Think about the children who do not have consistent meals, the
only food they receive is food they get from school. They come to school, their
brains are foggy, and all they can think of is their next meal. These students
need nutritious, filling meals that will keep their mind and bodies fueled. In
his TED Talk, Kass talks about how he instituted a program for all schools who
had a forty percent more low-income kids. Every student in this school would
receive not only a free lunch, but also a free breakfast. These kids would come
to school and not have to sit and wait for their first meal of the day, instead
they would start off with a meal. Kass stated that, “The schools that have
implemented this program saw an increase in math and reading scores by 17.5
percent. 17.5 percent. And research shows that when kids have a consistent,
nutritious breakfast, their chances of graduating increase by 20 percent. 20
percent. When we give our kids the nourishment they need, we give them the
chance to thrive, both in the classroom and beyond” (Kass, 2015). When we think
about school lunches, we need to think about the effects that they have on
every child. Most importantly, the children who do not receive consistent meals
at home. They are the ones lacking the nutrients they need to grow and
function, they are the ones we need to make sure are receiving nutritious
meals.
I
believe that schools are starting to take the right steps towards improving
school lunches. If I were to look back at the school lunches I was fed as a
child, and now look at the one my brother receives, there have been vast
improvements. At my brother’s school there are four lunches served a day. The
normal lunch special, a vegetarian option, a gluten free option, and a salad.
They can choose their sides and can opt for healthier options. His school even
offers breakfast to students and healthy snacks for students who do not have
one, or who forgot theirs at home. With the option of these healthy meals, the
real question is, are these students picking the healthier option? Thanks to
the Obama administration, school lunches are starting to become healthier with
less options of junk food. “The amounts of fat, sugar and salt were drastically
reduced. Portion sizes shrank. Lunch trays had to hold more fruits and
vegetables. Snacks and food sold for fund-raising had to be healthier”
(Severson). If we want children to live longer, grow up healthy, and perform
well in school, we need to make sure they are receiving proper nutrition to
fuel their bodies. While I believe that school lunches are not perfect, I
believe there have been steps made towards a healthier future of school
lunches.
References
Cooper, A. (2007, December). What's wrong with
school lunches Retrieved February 12, 2018, from https://www.ted.com/talks/ann_cooper_talks_school_lunches/transcript?
Kass,
S. (2015, November). Want kids to learn well? Feed them well. Retrieved
February 12,
