Cara's CSIT 155 - Fall 2020 Class Blog

The Palomar College Athletics Facebook page is about a year old now. I didn't have any followers for about a month and the numbers are slowly increasing. This is one platform I typically neglect. Whenever I post to Instagram, the post is also on Facebook, so that is where the content is coming from. I really want to stop doing this and turn this platform into its own unique thing so I can increase the number of likes and followers.  Grossmont College Athletics uses their Facebook as their main platform. They post short interviews with their athletes, they post old content as a Throwback Thursday, and general information from the college about scholarship information, registration dates, etc. I do think they were doing this effectively since they were posting about once a week, but they haven't posted anything since August 19. I think their cover photo is nice, it is of their athletic facility, but it could be better. I only know that is what the building is because I've bee...

Post reach is the number of people who saw your post, whereas post engagement is the number of people who like, comment, and/or share your post. Knowing the difference is really important because the engagement numbers are what really matter. Knowing how your customers or followers are engaging with your posts allows you to see what content is good and what is not. Post reach is more of a vanity insight and doesn't really tell you anything other than who is looking at your content. Facebook Insights are a great way to see who your audience is. On that page, you can see how each individual post performed. You can watch other pages to see how your page compares to theirs. Looking at the insights provides you with loads of information and can help you tailor your content to your exact target audience. Pages commented on: The Farm   Jumping Kelly Bean The Rook's Nest The ArtJive

In the Athletics Department at Palomar College, our main focus is on the student-athletes. We want them to be successful on and off the field so they can obtain their Associate's Degree and move on to a four-year college or university. That being said, our target audience is student-athletes. We want to make sure high school athletes are seeing what are teams are doing, how they are doing, and what makes being a Comet so great, so they can attend Palomar and play for one of our teams. From our minimal social media analytics, we know people aged 17-30 look at our posts and/or follow us. We also know more men engage with our posts than women, but we want that number to be equal. Our audience should be those looking to play sports competitvely and want to be successful. 

 I chose to look at the differences between Subway and Hungry Bear, probably because I'm starving and want some lunch. Right away you can tell that Hungry Bear is a local sandwich shop compared to Subway. While their website is put together nicely, it has a homey feel to it and makes the viewer feel welcome. Subway's website has a corporate company feel of reaching as many people as possible. Subway's target audience is anyone who wants a sandwich and they showcase that throughout their website by telling the viewer they can get a Subway sandwich pretty much anywhere. Hungry Bear definitely has the local approach. They don't have a lot on their website, with a concise "About Us" section. People who eat at Hungry Bear eat there because they know someone who introduced them to the shop, not because they looked it up online and decided to go there for lunch. Hungry Bear also offers more unique sandwiches with the ability to make your own sandwich. Subway, known f...

 My business is Palomar College Athletics. While a lot of information was provided to me by the school and department, I had to develop quite a few things when I stepped into the role a year ago. Even though the school already had a well established social media presence, my department did not. I immediately began researching what went into establishing a cohesive brand. We needed to have a personality and voice. We needed to maintain a color palette and pick a logo. I knew I needed to pay attention to fonts for graphics.  I sat down and wrote out a branding guide to help myself, and allow the department to see the goal, maintain our brand identity. While writing the guide I looked at other schools to see what they were doing, how they were doing, and what they did that was successful, and what wasn't. Because our department didn't have any social platforms, the first time around needed to be right. Our style guide contains style guide purpose, active accounts, social media vo...

Blogs I read this week: Engir Diaz Aguillon :  https://csit155-fa20engird.blogspot.com/2020/09/week-2-part-b-brewery-business-research.html?showComment=1599877044378#c3477067901383375265 Julia Palomo : https://csit155-fa20-palomoj.blogspot.com/2020/09/week2-partb-entry4.html?showComment=1599877423924#c6493376771673544795 Marla Caprow : https://csit155-fa20-marlac.blogspot.com/2020/09/week-2-part-b-business-research.html?showComment=1599877846577#c7062997585970352515 Bertha Alvarez : https://csit155-fa20-berthaa.blogspot.com/2020/09/week-2-part-b-education-based.html?showComment=1599878179197#c2979114586708647924

I chose my four websites in no particular order. The first website I looked at was Gates N Fences . My word, let's talk about the amount of text on the homepage. When the page first loaded my jaw literally dropped at how wordy it is. The menu to the left of the page also has a lot going on. The viewer has to know what type of fence they want to navigate to the correct page from the menu. If the viewer doesn't know what they want then they'll have to click through the different pages to find what they are looking for. Another issue with this website is the images on the individual pages. When the viewer hovers over the image text appears, but it is hard to read on top of the images. The images also look as if they were taken on a cell phone and not a professional camera. That being said, this website does not come across as professionally done. To fix these issues, the developer could lessen the text and make it bigger. A simple design can go a long way. Better quality image...

Business Research Bakersfield College (http://www.gogades.com/landing/index) Bakersfield College is a community college in Bakersfield, CA. I am specifically looking at their athletics website because that is the field I am in. The school has 20 sports, so they are a large school which employs a lot of people to keep the department going. They use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube and they use the platforms regularly. Bakersfield has a section on their main page showcasing their social media and they have links directly on their website. Instagram Last Post: 9/8/2020 Followers: 2,129 Twitter Last Post: 9/8/2020 Followers: 2,844 Facebook Last Post: 9/8/2020 Followers: 3,291 YouTube Last Post: Two Months Ago Subscribers: 124 They do a good job of posting quality content that people want to see. They post a mix of photos and videos to keep users engaged. It seems they use all of their social media platforms regularly, but they post the same content to each of the platforms. That i...

Social media makes communicating a lot easier. When we are happy with a service or upset with a service, we typically go on social media and tell all of our friends about our experience. When we share these experiences we directly telling the company, especially if they are tagged in our post, what we liked or what we didn't like. By tagging them, we are telling them we want them to see the post. Typically when we have a negative experience, we want the company to acknowledge us and attempt the fix the problem or alleviate the situation. Tagging the company in a post or using hashtags are great ways for them to notice. If a company wants to be successful on social media, they have to be listening to the chatter. If someone is actually doing that, our posts about the good things and bad things should be seen. In the past, people would have to call the customer service number and sit there and push a bunch of buttons and wait in the queue just to talk to someone. Some people would ev...