Thomas' CSIT 155 - Fall 2020 Class Blog

 This has been quit a journey for me, delving behind the scenes of Social Media. Finding out how much a Social Media company knows about me and what I search for and how long I stay on a page or a post, and how important that can be to a business to know. Not just my information of course, but any potential client or customer. This has been an eye opening adventure to say the least. Personally my use of Social Media has become radically more self aware. In the beginning I would’t even question why I was seeing certain adds show up in my feeds. I would just “guess” that it was because I looked for certain things on the internet or that I had clicked on a similar add before sometime in the past. Even as I started The Painting Dummy, I wasn’t quit sure as to the extent the changes of how I view Social Media would change. Now as I have planned out next month’s Social Media Marketing Strategy, I find myself looking at Social Media as more of a Tool than anything else. Learning how that ...

 A very rough draft of where I want this to go in the next month. Time constraints willing, I should be spending about six to seven hours a week on just developing and executing the content for each of these posts. The posts themselves should only take some minutes to upload and post. I believe if I can stick to this (or a very similar) schedule, The Painting Dummy should be well on its way to gaining some organic traction in the social media sphere and take off. June     Week1:             FaceBook: Tutorial on Priming             Instagram: Priming Steps             FaceBook: How to apply Washes and Inks             Instagram: Unboxing new models     Week2:             Facebook: Painting Blue (base, mid-tone, highlight)  ...

 Planning a social media marketing strategy for The Painting Dummy hasn’t been easy.  “Learning as I do”, was always meant lightheartedly, until I have found myself actually “doing” it. This journey has been eye opening and encouraging. With The Painting Dummy barely a forming concept right now, I think the best way to grow will be repeated little steps building on the last. The best platform I see spending the most time on right now will be FaceBook. This platform integrates many of the features for marketing and promoting The Painting Dummy at an affordable cost.  The analytics that FaceBook offers to investigate new strategies of posting and promoting the business though not as in-depth or far reaching as Google Analytics, is tailored to the platform. This offers deeper insight to my followers if not a wider one. Along with the FaceBook Platform, I will still be using Instagram and cross posting to FaceBook between scheduled FaceBook posts. The visual media of both pla...

 The information provided by the FaceBook data, though not as detailed as the Google Analytics, is still very useful. I can see which type of posts get the most interactions and can infer from this information why they are getting the most interactions. Visual story telling along with concise copy and informative details seem to be the best path to interactions along with the time of the posts. This is definitely information I can use to design future posts to interact with my followers and gain new followers.    

 I think for my followers the most important features for me to check on regularly would be engagement, page views, and what time of day my followers are on the most. This would make it easier for me to know what posts people are interacting with the most, what times of day would be best to publish, and what information viewers are interacting with.

Right now my objective for these adds would be to grow page or Brand awareness. Introducing people to what I am doing and how my unique take on the hobby would be entertaining and informative enough to keep an audience checking back for new updates and tutorials.     

 I have to say, that most of the “sponsored” posts I see on Facebook almost all fade into the background of my scrolling. I can almost subconsciously ignore them as I scroll. They are all designed almost exactly alike, to the point they just fade into the background. Most use standard “photo stock” looking images with a tagline or a few sentences of copy to “grab” your interest. It may be based on what I have been looking for recently? Maybe the search algorithms stored for my sign on that keep showing me the simplistic boring “adds” over and over again? In any case almost all of the “sponsored” posts I click on lead me to a “Sales Funnel”, where the call to action is sign up for an e-mail list or download a free sample of information with the opportunity to buy a book or cheep chotskies from China (with a month or so shipping time). I can say for me, most of these adds are annoying, so looking for them as examples was a bit of a chore. At the least, it gives me ideas on what not t...

 I believe one of the triggers that started me on this journey was watching live streaming interactive painting tutorials on Twitch. I know most people think of Twitch as a video game streaming site, but there are many many more channels available that cross many hobbies. I’ve personally used Twitch as a viewer for a few years now, trying to think of actually streaming is exciting and a little scary at the same time (trepidatious). If I go forward broadcasting on a streaming service like Twitch, I could get instant feed back from an audience I could ask and answer questions to in real time. This kind of instant feed back could change the direction of projects and techniques that the audience would want to see demonstrated.

 I chose to go with Twitter as I am more familiar with it from my own personal account. I set up a fresh account for The Painting Dummy. With only a couple of posts for now, it is still like planting a flag for my venture. I like Twitters ability to use hyperlinks to share information as well as images, short text communications (tweets), and even sharing videos or animated gifs. This does up the complexity compared to Instagram, but I think the freedom to communicate with more variety of media in one place makes up for a slight learning curve. I have never used Twitter for marketing, so this will be a first and look forward to seeing the results. Right now I will be looking to expand my brand awareness , as most of what I am planning on creating will be more tutorial like content for my blog, Instagram, Facebook, and even Youtube channels. Using a Twitter account to drive brand awareness and communicate with news and previewing upcoming content, like a shorter e-newsletter that “a...

     I was able to leave comments on these fellow blog posts: Terry_Andrew  Narvaez_Nicole Jioras_Kyle Caprow_Marla Burke_Gregory

 With such a visual business like The Painting Dummy, I would expect to send an e-mail newsletter about once a month. The long interval of time between the sending is allowing for time to create content for the website and social media outlets. A shorter interval would create quit a time crunch for the work involved in modeling and painting steps. A newsletter for this business would be as informative as possible and could include: painting techniques - showing how certain techniques are done construction - wether a hard build or showcasing a special ‘Kit-bash” basing - material ideas and techniques for basing your models kinds of paints - new paints on the market, comparing and contrasting paint manufacturers tools - new tools, new tool techniques, glue - best types of glue for the materials we are working with I think anyone that would sign up to follow this e-mail newsletter would like the information I could provide as another opinion or new way of doing a technique they haven’...

 For this blog, I think I can break this genre down into a few categories to stay better organized. “Building a Miniature” - How I put certain miniatures together. If some miniatures are easier to build than others. What tricks I may have for building some different miniatures. “Prepping for Paint” - How (after finishing a build) I prep the miniatures for paint. Why I use certain primers. Do I fill gaps. “How I Paint “ - first category would be showing and explaining how I am painting a certain model. The techniques and paints I am using. What brushes I use. The techniques I’m using to lay the paint down. “Paints I Use” - showing what paints I use for different techniques. "Finishing a Miniature" - what steps I use to seal and finish the miniatures I'm working on. Each of these categories I could easily split into sub categories for even more organization and to make the blog easier to search. Whatever makes searching and reading a blog or blog post easier to search and...

 Reaching for the human element in a business blog post makes the business (what ever it may be) more personable, more relatable, more welcoming. This may spark more interest in your audience and even allow more people or customers feel better about sharing your content and so reach an even larger audience.  Not every post needs to be a human interest piece, but neither does every post need to be cold and just pushing a sale or for a conversion. To me I think adding a piece of me into a post that can make it more relatable to my audience is almost natural, like meeting a group of new people and finding a common interest with a few of them. I would make some of my diy posts more about how I solved the problems I was facing in the painting or assembly of the models that I am showcasing. The niche genera I’ve chosen lends itself to more of a personable approach as it is more of a personal hobby to many more people than a business.

 For my instagram posts I used the Hashtags that I thought best suited the images and type of posts. #warhammer40k #warhammer #gwpaint #paintcollection #bloodforthebloodgod #proacryl #proacrylpaints #warhammer40k #berzerker #khorneberzerkers etc These Hashtags I found by looking at other hobbyists on Instagram and how they tag their posts. These are specific to the hobby and to the images that are being posted. This I think narrows searches for potential followers / fellow hobbyists. I tried to post in the mornings, which seemed to get to most traffic by noon. I think it’s that first coffee break perusal of instagram people do in the mornings. I think going forward I will be posting or setting up auto posts to hit that part of the morning (between 9 and 10 am pacific time). I learned quit a bit from this exercise. I learned traffic can ebb and flow like tides, so finding the right time of day for posting in your niche or genre will organically raise your views and audience awarenes...

 Lucky for me, The Painting Dummy is very visual. Painting miniature war-games models is a very visual medium. It’s almost difficult to explain through  descriptions without the visual media to accompany it. I found four other similar Instagram pages to look at a little closer. The comparison of followers to likes on the individual posts kind of threw me off. It confused me a little. The largest company I looked at is Warhammer Official with 265 thousand followers but only has a 3% follower to like ratio. The one with the least followers I looked at is Jarek Westermark with 3,653 followers, but their like ratio is way way higher at 33%. I averaged these out to get the percentages, so approximately. I’m not sure where this leaves my analysis, except the smaller pages look like they have more engagement with their audience. All of these pages post at least every other day. This is a goal I will be setting for my own page. I’ll be needing to get a head start on my painting projec...

I think these next scheduled posts will start by showing some of my beginning process for miniature painting prep and color choices, while i am still finding my feet.

Spikey Bits - One of the more seasoned bloggers in miniatures and miniature gaming. I followed Spikey Bits for information I can share with my followers and for information on the industry in general. The Long War - Another old hand in the industry. The Long War started out as a painting service and has morphed into an teaching / educating painting stream on Twitch. Warhammer 40,000 - The official page of one of the largest miniature games in the industry. The page has upcoming releases and news information to share on the game. Greebo Games - Greebo Games is a newer game developer that is producing some of the most stunning models in the industry right now. Not only good to repost some of their information but I would love to paint some of their models. Strange Aeons Game - Strange Aeons Game is a small game publisher from Canada that I got into playing when they first Kickstarted their first edition game. I’ll be posting some of their figures and posting some of their games in t...

 On Facebook, post reach is different from post engagement.  Post reach is how many people have actually seen what a business has posted on their Facebook page. Post engagement is the number of actual interactions or responses that the post has gotten back from those people that have seen it. The raw numbers can get a little confusing, especially when really high reach numbers can lower the engagement number while not actually making the engagement any less. It is like averaging out how many people have “seen” the post as to how manny have actually “engaged” with the post.  Knowing the difference between these two numbers can help a business create better, more engaging posts that don’t just simply get “seen” but actually engage their customer base and lead to real interactions. A post that just gets a high reach but no engagement can be looked at as not hitting the mark, and more time and energy can be put into developing better, more engaging posts. Facebook Insights is...

 The target market for The Painting Dummy would be miniature hobbyists interested in watching someone bumble through cleaning, prepping, and painting table top miniatures. Those who want to see different techniques used and different color schemes on models before they commit to painting their own. These could be of any age as the hobby spans generations now. Any gender, the inclusion is not only growing but actively being promoted, The only real demographic to drill down into will be nuances between the hobbyists.

  Armstrong Garden Centers   vs.  Rancho Vista Nursery   These two businesses couldn’t be more different from one another unless they were in completely different areas of business. It definitely shows in their websites. Rancho Vista Nursery specializes in succulents. A niche within a niche market. The website screams local and they even have a “Farmstand” that you can go to to pick out your specific succulent you want for your collection. Their target market looks like succulent plant collectors that are more into locally raised succulent plants with a friendly “homey” or even “artisanal” feel to it. Armstrong Garden Centers, on the other hand, can design entire gardens of annuals and perennials while still offering a selection of “trendy” succulents, but definitely don’t specialize in them. Their website shouts “big box store” to me with the flattened graphics and the color scheme. They have an area to find their closest store and offer “personal shopper” services....