Week 9

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Week 8: Part 2

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Week 8: Part 1

I believe that visual networks would well with the SwimLabs company. It gives us a chance to engage with potential customers by showing pictures and videos of what we do as a training facility. We show pictures of kids earning their 100 stroke club, videos of triathletes having their strokes analyzed, and pictures of events held for kids of all ages. This allows us to showcase the wild verity of services were offer as a swim training facility. 

Out of the top 8 visual networks, the four that would make the most sense for SwimLabs would be Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, and Pinterest. I choose these platforms based on our target clients. For our marketing we focus heavily on Moms of youth swimmers. They are the most activity costumers we have on social media, therefore we focus on reaching their feeds. Instagram and Pinterest are common sites used by moms to connect with friends, local business, community events, etc. SwimLabs links themselves to local groups such as Stroller Strides and Fit4Moms to increase viewers and reach more potential costumers. Youtube is the site that SwimLabs uses to reach our current costumers by posting videos of stroke analysis and training tips. We also connect our youtube site Facebook site constantly sending followers to view new Youtube videos that were posted. 

I created an Instagram account to link to my SwimLabs Facebook page. Here is the link: https://www.instagram.com/swimlabsenci/ 

Week 7: Part 2

This screenshot shows current activity on the page. I choose a profile pictures and I also created a job posting for hiring a new swim instructor. 

This screenshot shows the three upcoming posts I created for this week. The first post is a new product release flyer with a link to book the new youth video stroke analysis lessons. The second post is a website link to SwimLabs Tv. This website posts pictures, videos, and new articles related to Swimlabs and the Dartfish computer program our swim school uses. The third post is a picture of one of our local swimmers who completed a 100 backstrokes and is now in the 100 stroke club. These posts very in content and what customer base they might reach, however; all posts give insight to what SwimLabs is about and the products we offer. 

Week 7: Part 1

1. Rancho San Dieguito Swim Team: I choose to like this swim teams page because they contribute to a large part of our high school aged costumers who pay more for private lessons and video stroke analysis lessons. 

2. Swim West Swim Store: I choose Swim West as a local business to like because we send our costumers to them for swim gear and they spread the word about your business in return. We have a good relationship with this business and they are located right down the street as well. 

3. Triathlon Club of San Diego: I choose Tri Club because about 40% of your companies target market is triathletes. We make the most money working with experienced triathletes to improve stroke technique and train competitors for races. 


4. Fit4Mom San Diego Stroller Strides: I choose to connect with this company because we hold events for stroller strides moms and friends to come in with their kids and do lessons for discounted rates. We gain a large amount of new customers from events like these and it is important for us to stay connected with groups like this. 

5. Encinitas Union School District: I choose this local school district's page to like because we donate promotional gift baskets to all local elementary school fundraiser as another way to get our name our their. We receive lots of business from our gift basket coupons. 


6. Magdalena Ecke Family YMCA: I liked this page because they are local neighboring business who also feeds us costumers. They have a youth swim team that they will send over to us for workshops or just for private lessons to improve their strokes. 


7. Agua Norte Park: This is a community center when rent out to hold large events such as our starts and turns clinics. We host multiple events and parties through the year here. 

Week 6

Reach is the measurement of how many people have seen your post or viewed your Facebook page. Reach will show you how well you are making your product known and how successfully you are getting your posts into people's newsfeed. Engagement measures how many views, clicks, likes ad shares your posts are getting.

It is important to know the difference between reach and engagement because they do not always go hand in hand. A business can have high reach with little engagement which means that the company is doing a good job circulating their posts, however; people are not compelled my the material on the post to respond or engage. 

Facebook Insights are a great business tool that allows a business to monitor and analysis how well they are advertising the business. It gives them direct feedback that can be used to further improve the company from a marketing standpoint. 

Week 5: Part 2

SwimLabs is the business I have chosen to use. This swim school is unique in that we have two specific target markets; parents of young children and adult triathletes. Swimlabs offers youth group swim lessons from ages starting as young as 6months to 15 years old. We also offer elite triathlete video stroke analysis that draws triathletes from all over California and surrounding states. We advertise to this market at triathlete events and organizations that have started to spread the word about our business. For the parents of young children market we have reached out at local community events sponsoring elementary school fundraiser, connecting with stroller strides mom groups, and holding events open to all swimmers in the community. Our Facebook page is connected with many other local businesses and groups in order to increase our customer base. 

Week 5: Part 1

The two companies I choose to look into were Chili's and Teri Cafe. These two business are both restaurants located locally in San Diego.

Chili's is a nation wide and world wide restaurant chain with many locations around the U.S. and world, which gives them a much larger audience to tailor too. They offer fairly inexpensive meals with a huge variety of food styles. Restaurants like Chili's mainly focus on catering to the average family. They offer lots of choices,  a fun environment, and are affordable for most. The website emphases their strong family values, as well as their happy/healthy team of employees. 

Teri Cafe has a much different target market. This cafe has two locations in San Diego that offers an Asian inspired cuisine. The menu, while still fairly inexpensive, is much more acquired taste with items such as sushi, fish, and traditional asian dishes. This cafe may not be as appealing to young children, large groups or families. The cafe may also attract those of a higher income or education level then Chili's because it is more exotic. Teri Cafe also seems to have a much calmer environment making it more ideal for a nice quite dinner. 

Looking at the websites of each restaurant really gave me a good feel for what type of food, service, and environment I could expect. It also made it clear who the audience was they were trying to attract. With these two very different restaurants is would be rare to have a large amount of crossover in the customers they serve. However, I myself would eat at both restaurants depending on what I'm in the mood for! 

Week 4: Part 2

Two websites I find myself visiting almost daily are amazon.com and netflix.com. These sites both are selling products in a sense; Amazon sells goods and Netflix you pay monthly for tv and movie entertainment.  

Amazon is very easy to use website that is affective in quickly allowing the user to search from a huge variety of items for sale. The site has a clear design plan while still advertising many products all tailored to your interests. Its a very user friendly site and has amazing deals of all sorts of goods. I have an amazon prime account and have free shipping with my purchases so I use this site to buy everything. It so nice to have things just shipped to my door within a few days and returns are very simple as well which is a big deal for me. I continue to return to this site because of how simple it makes purchasing things online. One thing I think this site could improve on is the clutter affect that happens when too many advertisements are surrounding the page and it becomes overwhelming to the user. 



Netflix is a unique website that you have to pay monthly to use. It is a entertainment service that offers tv and movies online and many different devices. This site has a very clean layout making it very easy to find movies or shows, search different categories, and see movies and shows suggested for you. What makes me return to Netflix is the personalizing affect it has by tailoring the movie and tv suggestions to my interests using movies and shows iv already watched. The concept of online tv is a new generation idea that continues to improve and evolve. I think Netflix is an extremely well designed website so simple that young children are able to use it themselves. The site also continues to change and improve so I do not have any negative critiques for it. 

Week 4: Comments

Brent Reyes

Irene Vasquez 

Shawn Kaufman 

Week 4: Part 1

This weeks assignment is about aesthetics, design and branding for websites. The websites I have chosen to critique for this weeks assignment are: http://www.pennyjuice.com/, http://www.exmouth-view.co.uk, http://www.toyota.com, and http://apple.com.

The first two websites I choose had many similar flaws in their design and layouts of their websites. Penny juice.com is a website to download flashplayer. The website name has nothing to do with the product being advertised and the layout of the page is very amateur. It has basic visuals centered in the home page and it has two choices for you to download, html and flash. It also has a flashplayer logo that it a link to the adobe flash player websites. The other two links lead to the same page which gives a picture and a message which questions. This website is a very basic setup that has no real purpose. As for exmouth-view, this site is a hotel in Torquay. This site is also slightly amateur looking with no visual effects or advanced layouts. This site has a long tool bar that, on my computer, you had to scroll to the left side to even see. On this tool bar there are underlined links to other pages on the site. Many of these other pages have poor alignment and are not aesthetically pleasing to the eye. The contrast of the background and the text and each page is also very harsh and unappealing. Both of these sites were not very user friendly or up to date with sites these days.

The second two sites I critiqued had many positive aspects of their sites in common. Toyota and Apple both have very eye catching designs that are also simple and user friendly with today's technology. They have repetition throughout their entire sites and they have well thought out lay outs that are easy to navigate. Toyota's home page has a large moving visual of their newest cars for sale that right off the bat shows you exactly what they are selling and what this site is about. Apple has a similar rotating visual of all their newest products for sale. They have a simple tool bar that is easy to navigate through the site and when you scroll down on each page you have all the information and options for whichever product you are viewing. The site is very clean and modern which I find very aesthetically appealing.

For a website to make an impression on me, it needs to show me everything I need to know about the site and the products right away. I click through hundreds of sites a week and remember very few of what I have even viewed. The ones that stand out are sites that have smart, eye catching design layouts with all information easily accessible.

Week 3: Part 2

Business Name: Puma
URL: http://us.puma.com
Social Media Used: Facebook, Twitter, 

Instagram, Pinterist, Youtube  

Date of Last Post on Site: February 10th, 2017  

Analysis: Puma seems to do a good job of promoting 
their newest products. They also use ambassadors to increase 
their customer base. They seem very active and up to date on all their sites, 
although I would say Instagram has multiple posts a day and tags from 
celebrities representing the brand.

Business Name:  Airbnb
URL: https://www.airbnb.com
Social Media Used:  Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
Date of Last Post on Site: February 5th - last Tweet
February 12th- last Insta
Analysis: This site is used to connect people all around the world for travel. They stay very active on their pages, mostly with photos. 
Their Instagram and Facebook are flooded with photos of beautiful
 places from all over posted by them, travelers, and homeowners. 
These pages  do a great job of making these dream trips come
 to life and making you feel connected. 

Business Name: People Magazine
URL: http://people.com
Social Media Used: Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, 
Instagram, Pinterist, Google+
Date of Last Post on Site: February 8th- Facebook
February 12th- Tweet
Updated Daily- Snapchat
Analysis: People Magazine has been around since the 1970's. 
This is a company that has grown and evolved to keep up with the times. 
They are now almost solo online based using social media and 
their literature platform.  They post regularly on all sites and stay 
linked with social lights, as well as viewers. 

Business Name: CrossFit
URL: https://www.crossfit.com
Social Media Used: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram
Date of Last Post on Site: February 12th- Facebook
February 12th- Youtube
Analysis: CrossFit is an international workout program 
that uses their social media as a way to send out new videos of work outs, posts of healthy meals, and promoting a healthy lifestyle. 
They stay very active on their youtube page posting videos. 
Their other sites seem regularly updated as well.

Business Name: Brita
URL: https://www.brita.com
Social Media Used: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterist
Date of Last Post on Site: February 3rd- Tweet
February 7th- Insta
Analysis: Brita company is a water filtration 
system that filter water bottles, pitchers, and faucets. 
They are used international, however, they are a smaller 
scale brand compared to others talked about in this blog. 
Their social media sites have all posted within the last week or two. 
 Most larger brand these days post daily staying very active. 

I would say the two most regularly updated social media sites are Instagram and Twitter. While Facebook and Pinterist may post on their own pages, they have the least amount of interaction between businesses and consumers. Larger companies are very invested in their social media advertising and reaching the largest costumer base. Social media can be used as a tool for many different aspects of a business, which is why it can be so versatile for all types of companies and brands.

Social media sites such as Google+, give businesses a chance to manage their company while connecting and reaching out to a different viewer pool. They are less commonly used to large brand that use other tools for direct contact. 

Overall, social media is a tool every business or company large or small should use. As technology advances, brands must adapt in order to stay relevant to the buyer. 

Week 3: Part 1 Comments

Shawn Kaufman

Alexis Holley

Brent Reyes

Week 3: Part 1

A few months ago my boyfriend had purchased a SlimJim that had pieces of bone in it. He took pictures of the SlimJim and send them in with a letter to the company. After getting no response in the following weeks he called the costumer service to complain and was told he would receive coupons and money back for his innocence. Another two weeks pasted and he finally received a letter that contained a single one dollar off coupon inside. He was very upset about not being taken seriously so he posted a picture of the letter and one coupon on his Facebook and Instagram tagging the brand SlimJim in the posts. Within two days he received a call insuring that he would get proper compensation and asked him to delete the posts.

Social media has made it much easier to get the attention of larger companies or corporations that used to ignore costumer complaints. Exposing companies flaws only hurts their business, which is why it is in the companies best interest to engage and problem solve with their costumers on social media. Social media can also positively connect you with companies if your posts promote their products.

I personally am not extremely active on social media sites; therefor, I have not ever positively communicated with a business. I do know family and friends that have received free products or amazing promotional deals for giving a shot out and support a company or brand.

If I had my own business on social media sites, I would want to reward my loyal followers, ignore the haters, and address those who have legitimate concerns. I think making sure the clients issues are resolved is most important to sustaining a positive reputation. No business is perfect, however, showing an individual you care and are invested in their needs can leave you with an equally satisfied costumer.

Week 2: Comments

Michael Fanghella

Shawn Kaufman

Irene Vasques

Week 2

In my opinion, most social media platforms were created for personal use and have overtime evolved to incorporate businesses and marketing tools. The main social media site geared towards personal use would be Snapchat. It was created to send private photos and messages that would be delete seconds after the receiver opens them. However, they have continued to upgrade the application and it now includes mini snapchat webpages for websites, newspapers, magazines, and tv stations.

Other sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow for both personal use and business use. They allow individuals to have personal private accounts, while also allowing companies and businesses to have special marketing features of their own helping promote the products.

There are also social media platform used primarily for business. These include some sites like LinkedIn, Google+, and Ryze. These sites were created to connect professionals in the business world. These sites do allow for one on one messaging and personal communication, but are centered around business.

Week 1

Hi everyone,

This is my very first blog post ever! I am very into web design and photography; and am excited to incorporate that in my blog. I choose a template that allowed me to pick my own image for my background, which I love. I'm born and raised and San Diego and find this picture to fit my personality and lifestyle perfectly.  The main reason I choose this template over the alternatives was the ability to change my background  /schemes over the semester and continuing to improve the look! I am very excited to have created my first blog and can't wait to see where it takes me!

Enjoy:)