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  Week 17: Wrapping It Up This class has been eye opening and has changed my original perspective when it comes to using social media for a business. Originally I thought that it would be less time consuming and more fun to use social media but throughout the semester my views have been changed. What I originally thought would be fun has now turned into a second job trying to keep fresh and engaging content for my followers. One of the main points for me starting my own business was to be able to have a job that I love but when social media is added that love slowly turns to resentment.  For the businesses that are able to keep up with multiple social media applications I have a newfound respect for them. My understanding on how to use social media to develop a business still needs some work which could possibly be because I chose an area of business that is still new and there isn't a huge market for it. But I do understand now the importance of keeping up with engaging content an
  Week 16: Social Media Management Tools After reading through all of the awesome tools in the article we were given I still do not think that using these types of tools for my business is for me. Breeding and caring for the amount of animals that we have and also for potential future babies is something that I need to take into account financially. Until we have successfully hatched babies and seen the profit that we are able to get for them I am uncomfortable bringing in additional costs that we may be unable to afford. But if I was to use one of the tools it would have to be SocialPilot as it has everything that I could possibly need for my social media accounts and I like the fact that you are able to have up to 3 users. While my husband will not be doing any posting on our social media accounts it's nice that he would at least have the option with this service. We also do not need all of the bells and whistles from a more expensive service so it's nice that there is someth
  Week 15 Part B: Building Out Your Strategy Over the next month, I plan to join various different reptile groups so that I am able to interact more closely to my target market. In these groups I will be able to also interact with other sellers and discuss even more opportunities to become more of a wholesaler. My weekly goal is to spend at least 5-10 hours interacting in the reptile groups so that I can have a better understanding of what people are looking for. When I am not interacting with the reptile groups, I will be posting at least every 2 weeks new photos of my animals to help draw attention towards my page on Facebook. At the end of the month, I will be posting about what animals will be coming soon and offer coupons for pre-ordering. Aside from this content, I will be focusing on breeding my reptiles so that I will have babies for sale for future buyers. Throughout this semester I have been unable to focus on my reptiles and breeding them in between my classes and spending t
  Week 15 Part A: Developing Your Marketing Strategy The social media tools that align with my business the best is Facebook groups aside from these groups I have no interest in diving deeper into more tools. Realistically, my business is going to be extremely small so I don't want to spend a bunch of time dabbling in to several different social media apps or using different tools. Considering that my business is going to be moving into more of a wholesaler type of business I think that maybe a few times a month would be the most that I would need to utilize social media as I already have businesses that I am talking with about selling my animals to. Honestly. after seeing all of the different elements that go into a business social media account I have lost some interest in using social media at all. Instead of creating and running a business that I love and enjoy which would be a full time job, I then would have to work part time to just keep up with the social media accounts whi
  Week 14 Part A: What we Learn from Google Analytics  After looking over the lecture and assignment, I have a new found appreciation for how valuable Google really is. The features it advertises would be most beneficial to possibly larger businesses, my business is only going to be run by my husband and I. The things that I found to be the most important was conversations and engagement as this will be a critical part for me gaining trust on Facebook for my business. Besides that, I have never been the one that focused solely on likes or page views to gauge how well my page is doing so that is not something that I find to be critical. It's sometimes about the quality and not the quantity there are pages out there with a lot of page likes or engagement but that doesn't necessarily mean that business is for everyone. One thing that I learned from the articles is while I may not be all that crazy about checking my business popularity I at least need to until my business is establ
  Week 13 Part B: Developing Online Advertising For this assignment, ads will not be something that I will be utilizing for my business so I did not make any fake ads. My ideal target market will be inside of reptile groups where they don't allow businesses to advertise so ads are not something that I will have to ever use with my business. The most important part to me for this business is making sure that our animals are going into a good home and that my customers will have some knowledge in regards to keeping and care for them. This is the most important to me as several stores provide inaccurate information to keep these animals and this leads to complications in health. But also my business will not even be selling the animals to customers but instead to other businesses so my business will be more of a wholesaler to well known keepers. The reptile community is still fairly new as far as online stores so it is essential that I am able to partner with these other businesses an
  Week 13 Part A: Online Advertising - Analysis of the Marketplace The only social media that I personally use on a regular basis is Facebook so I will be using the advertising from there for this assignment. The one thing that I love about the advertising and sponsored posts on Facebook is the fact that they are tailor made for me and always seem to know what I would be interested in seeing. There is a few times that the ads are not useful or relatable to me but that is a less common issue, what draws my attention is the fact that some of these advertisements are on products that I am interested in. The ads that I find to be most effective are the ones that use visual imagery and they are extremely effective as they make you want to stop and look. Now the ads that I find to be the most annoying are the ones that play while I am trying to watch a video on Facebook this is something that I wish they would have the option to remove because there are some videos that have multiple ads in