March Extra Blog

This month, my research has been focused on the tech aspect of my project! I have learned quite a lot in the realm of online marketing and just how important visuals are. I just finished one of my books, called Visual Marketing, which set forth a ton of examples of businesses that communicate with customers using visuals. This has led me to do even more research on why visuals are so important.

If you think about it, many social media sites are based on pictures, rather than words. Instagram is the prime example, of course. But even sites like Facebook and Twitter use visual elements to create a website that is pleasing to the eye. This is crucial in portraying your brand, because our brains are drawn in by visuals, especially when they are aesthetically pleasing.

Pictures can be used for so many purposes. They help to create a story for you and your brand. It's also essential to have clear visuals to represent your products, as well as you as an individual. All of these aspects come together to form a cohesive appearance that looks professional and fun at the same time. I have started collecting a few pictures and infographics on the subject for my final presentation, since that is coming up so soon! What better way to talk about visual marketing than with some actual visuals?

After all of this researching on visual marketing, I've been able to apply these concepts on my own. In creating my blog for my second independent component, I have been looking into the specifics of the whole process. I could have just chosen a blogger template and left it at that. However, the goal here is to create a site that looks like a professional and trustable business. Thus, I jumped in to the world of HTML and CSS coding. Another option would have been to buy a pre-made blog/website template from an expert, but a) who wants to spend money on that? and b) I figured it would be valuable to learn a bit about coding for myself since it is such a key element in web design.

So, I googled my heart out, and figured out how to create toolbars, search boxes, and all sorts of other little widgets. It's actually pretty fun. The standard blog templates are quite limited in options, so I enjoyed designing every little aspect of my blog, and hope to learn even more in the near future.

*Also, as a side note, another tech-related focus of my research has been on bringing traffic to a website. There are many methods to do so, but you have to have a way to keep track, right? So, I've been looking into Google Analytics, which provides you as the website owner with information on who is visiting your site and how often. This is super helpful, as it lets you see what is going on, and who exactly you are bringing to your website.