Week 17:

Advertising is a major part of any business and can only be seen where a lot of eyes are. Since the old days, businesses have put up posters on walls of buildings many people walk by and even on billboards on the freeway. Now in 2018, many people's eyes are on their phones and laptops looking at social media. This, of course, is one of the most perfect places to advertise a business.

This class has taught me a lot of things about social media. I know communication between customers and the company is important for the company to Improve. Social media can not only be used as a way to advertise and let consumers know what's going on but also use it as feedback to improve the businesses that protect them and the consumers.

Through this class, I have also learned that beig efficient and consitent with your advertsing is also important. Posting a steady amount of times per week keeps viewers engaged and good numbers afloat. Businesses need attention and interest to stay alive because attention and interest equals money. Even the design of the posts are critical. A post has to be well-written to appear professional, positive, and pro-consumer as well as having an engaging image that will draw attention to the viewer. For example, if I were to advertise a new fast food burger, I would have to use a high quality image of the burger I'm selling as well as describe the delicious ingredients of the sandwich.

Twitter and Facebook being the most popular social media websites are the best places for every business. It's easy to post videos, photos, polls, etc., and both sites have data analytics that are easy enough to understand. These graphs tell how often viewers are engaging with the page and how well-received each post is. Businesses can reflect on this data and figure out what areas they can improve on and figure out what the consumer wants.

Overall, I did enjoy this class and I got a better understanding on how online marketing works. If my business were real, I would definitely use all the tools I have learned how to use in this class, whether it be Twitter, Facebook, or even Mailchimp. I can't just post an update every once in a while like I normally do on social media, I have to actually try and engage the consumers to keep business running. Without all I have learned, I think my business would be much more likely to become more irrelevant. Thank you Ms. Faulk for being an awesome teacher!

Week 16

My personal favorite tools for my business social media were Twitter and the Facebook insights. Twitter is one of the most popular place to connect for gamers, so it makes sense for my business to post updates regularly there. Facebook is useful on that front too, though not as well-populated by gamers. Its analytics, however, seem to be very useful and accurate especially if my business gets a lot of traffic. 

The platforms I would want to use are Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube. Twitter and Facebook are what I would use to advertise my Twitch page and upcoming tournaments for people to compete in. While Facebook is not as popular with gamers, there still are plenty of gamers who use Facebook. Twitch is the most popular place for broadcasting tournaments whether they be online or offline. It's the most efficient and simple platform to stream to and epic moments can be clipped and viewed at later times. YouTube can be good for streaming too, though you cannot clip parts of streams and financial featurs like donations and subscriptions aren't as well acessible there. YouTube is better for uploading sections of one long stream each containing a set between two players in the stream's bracket. Sometimes one set in a tournament can be really exciting, especially grand finals. 

If I had weekly tournaments going on, I would naturally stream them on Twitch every week. As soon as each set is done, I would upload them straight to YouTube so viewers can watch it again without having to find it on the whole recorded stream. When it comes to Twitter and Facebook, I will want to spend every now and then every week posting about upcoming tournaments. The more I post about it, the more attention it will recieve and the more likely people will show up. 

Say for the next month, I would plan to advertise a new Smash Bros. tournament. I would have to make an exciting trailer for the tournament, create a page on the rules and details on smash.gg, create images for the tourney's theme with basic details for it like dates and location, and advertise every two days per week. I would post on the weekends and Wednesdays simplay because it's even and consistent. Once the tournament has come, I would stream it live on Twitch for everyone to watch and upload each recorded set on YouTube. Once the tournament comes to grand finals, I would advertise my Twitch page on Facebook and twitter once again before it starts since grand finals sets tend to be the most exciting part of tournaments. I would do the same thing for every tournament, especially major ones.

This amoun of work could grow my business because it could teach the consumer that my business is consitent and trustworthy for tournament details. This will help people join the tournaments, follow the business, and watch more of X-Tension Gaming's content on both Twitch and YouTube. People like consistency and clarity, and my business should follow that path to stay afloat and grow. 

Week 15: Part 2

Aztec Brewing's analytics seem to have a really good data. According to the reactions chart, the business has had a steady amount of reactions, shares, comments, etc. However, the shares and comments seem to have low numbers compared to the reactions and other actions. The highest peak for shares and comments seem to be up to at least 5 each, 5 comments between Nov. 8th and 10th and 5 shares between Nov. 14 and 16th. Throughout the entire month, the number of reactions seem to average 10 to 15 reactions a day with higher peaks being up to 27. The highest in the entrie month was near 80 reactions on Nov. 20th. As for the other actions, it seems to have been scaling up and down throughout the month with the highest peak at almost 50 actions on Nov. 24th. On the recommendations chart, recommendations have only averaged to 1 recommendation through the month but as peaked at 6 recommendations between Nov. 24th and 26th. 

According to the page views chart, the most common demographic that views Aztec's page is men aged between 18 and over 65 years old. The highest amount of male viewers, which is a total of 16, are aged 25-34. As for the women, the common age is also between 18-65+ years old, but the highest amount of female viewers (being 10) are aged 45-54. Of course, the most people that viewed the page are from the U.S. with very little coming from the U.K., India, Phillipines, and Mexico. Most of the U.S. viewers live in San Diego compared to Vista, Oceanside, Carlsbad, and San Marcos. 


In the overview page, it says that page views have gone up 21%, likes have gone up 71%, and recommendations have gone up 133%, all statistics being of this last week alone. However, post reaches have gone down 19%, engagements have decreased by 12%, and page responsiveness has gone down by 57%. Either way, the page has pretty good numbers for the amount of likes and oage interactions from viewers. The most popular post of the last week was a post announcing a new black raspberry drink with a a total of over 900 reaches, 10 clicks, and 17 reactions. This obviously is the reason the page numbers have been very well increased.

As of the date the screenshot was taken, the amount of followers the page has is over 11,000 though that number has hardly changed throughout the entire month. The highest amount of follows happened via an "uncategorized desktop" on Nov. 26th while most of follows happened through the entire month by visiting the page itself. Searching wasn't the more common cause of the follows, but it did bring more followers than visiting the page. Not a single follow, however, came from the posts at any time during the month. There have been up to a total of 3 likes and 3 unlikes in the entire month, but the unlikes happened arguably more often than the likes. None of the likes were paid since the business is too small for paid ratings.

Post reach has totaled up to 1,000 people in early and late November and averaged throughout the month around 600 people. General reach, however, has totaled up to 2,000 people also in early and late November and has averaged around 1,500 people. Most of these people have been reached on their phones while only half of them were reached on their computers.


All of these are very good numbers for a small business like Aztec, and even better thanks to the one post last week. I would like to congratulate Ms. Faulk on these statistics and i hope her business continues to be this successful, if not, more.

Week 15: Part 1

There may not be too many tools in Google Analytics to help out my type of business, but there are a few I can think that could be useful for it. 

The first feature I feel would be useful for my business would be the audience reports. These reports can tell me how active the users can interact with my posts and get a good understanding on what my viewers would want. The Google Ads reports could also be useful in showing how many people see my ads and click on them to come to my apps. Importing data from external sources seems to be quite useful since my advertising can go beyond Google Ads, such as Twitter or Facebook ads. I could use the diagnostics tool to keep an eye for any any potentails flaws in my advertising such as poorly configured code on my pages. Google AdSense is also very useful in bringing in ad revenue on third-party websites or any popular website that allows it. 

Businesses like mine don't really use these tools probably because they are not very big corporations that can afford the advertising, but if they were, I'm very sure they would use the tools I mentioned at the very least. My business is simply to advertise tournaments and VoDs of tournaments, but said tournaments aren't going to be very big especially since my business is practically very small. Still, when my business does have good ads, these tools will be very useful in creating more ads and keep giving it more attention. 

Week 14

This ad is a VoD for a match I recently streamed. I didn't include a call to action button because none of them really matched what would happen if the viewer clicked the link, which of course is take them to YouTube. It would actually be better the way this ad appears since it is honest and offers only a YouTube video. The thumbnail is of course showing the viewer a general idea of what they are about to see: Kid Cobra fighting Max Brass with really long arms. If the thumbnail weren't there, the viewer would much more likely be confused as to what ARMS is and probably distrust this ad and move on.

This ad is of course a link to my YouTube channel. Since I am the creator of the X-Tension Gaming business, I might as well advertise my channel. What's most effective here in this ad is the description. I am pretty well-known in the ARMS community already and have a decent following on my channel. If I use myself as a way to advertise my business, the people who recognize me will be more likely to check out my page. My call-to-action button was of course a subscribe button since it is a YouTube channel I am advertising.

This ad more so advertises an event rather than the page. However, people can trust this page as long as I keep notifying players what tournaments they can sign up for and credit my page as reliable source for advertising upcoming events. In the description, I advertise not only a chance to play ARMS offline, but also a chance to help raise money charity. There are people out there who want be helpful and kind and reaching out to that demographic could improve the numbers. To show how legitimate this event is, I also name one of the specific charities that this event is working with. To show what players can experience at the event, I use a clip from last year's Smash Out to demonstrate what it can look like. My call-to-action button is simply "learn more," because I don't detail it as much as the link I give here. It encourages the viewer to get more info on the event and makes them more likely to sign up rather than scroll down and be indifferent about this ad. 

An objective for advertising is simply a goal to help grow a business. My best objective for my business is brand awareness since my brand is small. I advertise ARMS content, events, streams, etc. I want people to be aware of my page and rely on it as a good source for what I advertse. If my business were bigger, my objective would simply be traffic to keep the business afloat. Business can't run without good traffic otherwise they shut down. Either way, the goal is to get attention and attention for businesses equal money.

Week 13: Part 1

2GGaming, Level Up Live, VG BootCamp, CEO Gaming, and Most Valuable Gaming all tend to use Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube for advertising. The only times any of these businesses use YouTube for advertising is usually to announce a new upcoming major tournament event. They usually present in an epic style with epic music playing with it announcing the games that will have tournaments there. This is definitely effective as it can create excitement and an urge to go for the consumer. 

On Twitter and Facebook, they tend to announce upcoming tournaments but through a less exciting post since it is usually just text and a picture. The pictures are usually very well-designed and appealing to draw basic attention, but what matters more is what is the picture or post about. The posts should be able to answer questions like "Where is this event held? What games will be there? Can this game be there? etc." The businesses can also create polls to see what the consumer wants to see. These polls are usually to add different games in future tournaments whether they be regular or annual. Sometimes, these business will even share clips of amazing high-level play from one of their players to showcase what the business is all about. If the business doesn't promise high-level gameplay, there's no point in being a high-level competitive gaming business. All of these ways of marketing are the best way to advertise a gaming business whether it'd be a tournament organizer or eSports team.

Week 12: Part 2

Twitch would easily be the best source for my business. Twitch is a video broadcasting platform usually used by gamers. Here, streamers can stream themselves playing any game they want and get in touch with random users in a chat box. Those users can also financially support the streamers through paid channel subscriptions, giving bits (Twitch's digital currency), or even just donating money. However, you will need a good amount of average viewers in order to gain any revenue, even advertisements. Businesses like mine use this platform as one of the many paths of revenue for them. Gamers want to see high-level gameplay and Twitch allows us to catch potential excitement live without any spoilers otherwise. While the amount of live viewers will generate enough money as it is, the extra options to support financialy through subscriptions and donations are certainly more beneficial.  YouTube's live streaming can work the exact same way, though donations are accepted through Twitch. Some streamers use both at the same time potentially doubling the revenue. Either way, Twitch is definitely the best source of revenue for eSports businesses like mine.