The Krohnicles of Ryan Krohn

"Fail Forward."

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These candles #nuts !! Help @sacksoflove and @clarocandles by checking out these candles that support testicular cancer! If the funds aren't there, lets get these spreading through social media! #sacksoflove #burnone #claro #nonprofit #cancerfighter #iloveboobies #bellingham #puyallup #Portland #Seattle #local #toomanyhashtags

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Come out and continue that healthy lifestyle you are living and carry it over into the winter season by registering for Sacks of Love's 5k Walk/run on October 19th, in Puyallup, WA!

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Sacks of Love has teamed up with Claro Candles in a positive effort to sell candles for testicular cancer! This is the logo that will be on top of the candle case! Support something that is directly related to you in one way or the other :) Visit Claro Candles to buy your next candle!

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After a quarter of studying for this test, I am proud to say that I am now Google Analytic certified! 

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Mobile Payments

With mobile payment transactions predicting to reach $1.3 trillion per year by 2017, it is pertinent that someone take hold of this market and make an imprint in our futures. Currently there are many mobile payment devices which has it's pros and cons. It allows for one superior carrier to take hold of the market by being strides ahead of other competitors but this allows for consumers having to pick and choose which one will be most relevant to their day-to-day lives. Many of these payment options allow for consumers to pay for dinner in multiple ways and I will delve into these ways to pay for your meals!

1) Order Meals with Digital Delivery and Takeout Services

There are food delivery apps and websites that have truly made ordering take out a simplistic process. Services like Seamless, GrubHub, and Bitehunter allow you to browse restaurants menus, see prices and pay for meals. The market leader, GrubHub is now 8 years old and serves nearly 300k users monthly in over 400 cities. According to company spokeswomen Abby Hunt "We're serving a need in the market and having fun in the process," and I believe this is a great way of going about this industry by taking a fun and easy approach. 

2) By Using your QR Code

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the QR codes but company's seem to be putting them all over marketing and products, is it something that will stick around? The app LevelUp is an app that lets you pay for meals by using a personalized QR code on your phone. Basically the niche they are using is by allowing the user to have their card on their phone with a scan of the QR code, but not many businesses (as far as I know) are using such a technology but this may be due to them being only in 3,000 businesses. 

3) Transferring Money to Friends at Group Dinners

We have all been there, the check comes out and some people have cash and most everyone has a card on them. With this new money transferring process, services such as Paypal, Venmo, and Dwolla have created something that allows friends share money right then and there and someone can just cover the whole tab. 

4) Swipe your Virtual Wallet when you're out

Google has created a wireless technology that allows for you to put your card on your phone  by tapping your phone on merchants enabled terminals. It is a budding technology but places like Jack in the Box, Subway, McDonald's, and Dairy Queen are now using these services. The wallet is available on 6 phones in the Spring and Virgin mobile firms. You are able to sync your credit, debit, gift and loyalty cards. 

5) Other Growing apps in Restaurants

Square mobile recently partnered with Starbucks to process all of the company's credit/debit transactions from consumers. As a consumer, when you walk into a store you can open a tab and the face will appear on the merchants checkout screen and they will charge you for your meal. 

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Where to draw the line?

This blog post will give you a brief overview of a few dating apps that have recently been released and my personal thoughts on them! One huge factor for many users that are girls is the creepy factor of having men contacting you via a app that you most likely have never met. Also, there is a creepy factor in what the app developers are actually doing with the information that is released in the apps. One way to get around having users be skeptical in releasing private information is by being transparent. Telling what the information will actually be used for is the first step in the right direction. A strong next step is to obtain consent. Without obtaining consent there can be no transparency without users knowing what they are consenting too. Many users that are attached to multiple social networks enjoy having privacy which means being able to hide their tagged photos, where they are being tagged at and also by hiding their nights on the town, wherever this may take place. By allowing the users to categorize what can be seen by who will surely give the a sense of relief to the respective user. The app Highlight is a great example of what not to do because it shares your physical location with friends of friends and while a friend of a friend may be no issue but this friend could also be a creeper that you may not want to be affiliated with. Lastly, if users are going to delete the app, LET THEM GO IN PEACE. People often wonder, if i delete my account what makes it so that they don't just keep the information that I had given them in the past. Once you leave the site, you would hope that the data doesn't go around the app and elsewhere where you may not want this to be. 

In general the app developers are primarily male, but why is this? Shouldn't there be at least one that is made by females so they are able to accurately produce an app that tailors to the female mind set rather than the males perspective? A successful application that was made by a gay man has found success in the US and overseas but women still are unsatisfied, even though a gay man may have a better idea of what the girl may want, it still is not the same as having a female developed app. Apps that have been developed by women all seem to have the same motives; authenticity, privacy, a more controlled environment  and a quick path to a safe, easy offline meeting. One example is Coffee Meets Bagel, which is both an app and a web site that was founded by 3 female sisters that sends you a match and then sets a deadline by which you have to either "like" or "pass." If you get a mutual like you are instantly connected to your match via text message without the other person seeing your real phone number. The key is that you can choose to be shown only friends of friends through this app by connecting the service to your FB account, or you can go the route of a private and anonymous route. 

Overall, there definitely is a need for a non creepy way of going about using these apps and it is a fine line that is constantly being crossed. Help the ladies out, developers! Until next time. Adios and cheers. 

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Wow, it has been quite the quarter of blogging for this digital marketing class! Here I have posted a comparison of one of my first snapshots of my Google analytics and the second picture is a final snapshot of the quarter that includes the entire span! 

Coming into this class I knew the basics when it came to blogging and tracking the visitors to a page but I was unaware how in depth it could be. From seeing where the visitors are coming from to how long they will actually stay on you site, it has been a great learning experience that will surely be a practical experience to learn and grow from. 

As the quarter comes to an end, I have compiled just below 1,000 visitors on my blog (965 exactly) that led to 3,650 total page views. Honestly, I never would have expected all of these views...Not entirely sure how I was able to gather them all, maybe it was the tagged words I used but hopefully it had a large part in the content and keywords I used throughout the blogging. It is definitely apparent that when I would blog the daily views would sky rocket but would then go back down to hardly any in the days where the blogging was non existent. Another stat that stands out to me is that even if I wasn't blogging I managed to have at least 1 visitor a day and had a max of 115! 

Looking back, I did miss a few blogs but am going to complete them shortly so this may have allowed me to crest the 1,000 visitor milestone but the quarter isn't quite over yet! :) On the negative side, I did manage  to increase my bounce rate by over 10% and it ended at just over 50% which is a bit disappointing but allows me something to work on and experiment with other keywords down the road to alleviate this higher than average bounce rate. The average time on the blog may have been a bit inflated due to people in the class actually reading what I had to say but it remained consistent over the course of the quarter at 1:49 seconds.

Once again, it has been an extremely enjoyable experience and I hope to continue blogging after this class and give insightful information and knowledge from the workforce! Thanks to everyone who actually took the time to read my blogging, hope you enjoyed as much as I did!

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To all of you Googlers...

Birth of the Search Engine At the birth of the search engine age, 1999, there were many platforms available. Other than the likes of Google and others, there was a platform by the name of Gurunet. Gurunet was an instant information utility device. At the time, it was the best implementation of the information at your fingers promise. It would allow someone that is using the internet to click on any word in any screen document whether it be a web page, word processor, email, pdf, etc and would then instantly call up a variety of relevant information relative to the word. But how would it do this by a click of a word? It would scan half a dozen words to either side of the word to gather relevant information for clues to the context, and more than not it would hit the mark of the word. In 1999 it was still a work in progress and I have not heard anything from it since then! How does Google bring in revenue? In regards to Google, the platform that truly took off, many wonder how they actually make their money. Before doing a bit of research, I was also kept in the dark about how Google managed to be such a successful company by merely being a search engine to begin with. I found that 96% of their revenue is generated primarily by delivering relevant and cost-effective online advertising. Many of you may have heard of Adwords but this is only one prong in their advertising revenue stream. For those who are unaware of Adwords, it is a primarily auction based advertising platform. With the auction based style Google enjoys a high markup most of the time. If a customer overpays for a phrase Google will reap the benefits due to the auction style that involves bidding. Where underbidding occurs, the customer may risk losing the auction to a more motivated seller that is selling similar products.  How did Google make the iPhone the king of the cellular industry? With the iOS mapping system being subpar and having many complaints from users they turned to Google, or rather Google presented themselves as a viable option. Google allowed the iOS software to use the Google Maps as well as Gmail, which are superior products in the application industry. Yes, Google does have their own phones after the purchase of the Android system so why would they allow the iPhone use these services? Well, from Google's perspective they don't particularly care what operating system is used, but rather that the user just uses the Google services. Google primarily pumps money into the Android system to ensure companies like Apple and Microsoft are unable to push its properties off of the smartphones. Google is offering the map services ad free to the iOS system right now, while the Android system has ads. This is not the first time that a competitor has used the other as a operating platform. At one point in the 90's Microsoft was making more money on a Mac system rather than it's own computers because of the software of Microsoft that Mac was using at the time.  Google's Moon Shots Larry Page, CEO of Google, has created a separate division in Google that the primary focus is to build products that are completely revolutionary to the marketplace. The division goes by the name of Google X and they create ideas that are coined as "moonshots." The moonshots that take place in the Google X department are like the new and improved Google Glass and the self-driving car that Google has been working on. Google recently released that the product Google Glass now are prescription ready. If you are unaware about the revolutionary product of Google Glass, they are glasses that are essentially hands free cellular devices. Seems a bit weird in my opinion but Google believes it will allow for the public to stray away from the cell phone craze that we are currently involved in. I guess we will see where it takes us! 

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Kickstarter gone bad.

If you are unaware of the crowd-sourcing website, Kickstarter, I'm here to give you a bit of information regarding that and how they nearly killed the underwear start-up Flint and Tinder. Kickstarter is a crowd-sourcing website works in a way that people put their idea and people that want to pledge and support the idea they vote in dollars. This pledged amount is given to the project if the said project hits the certain goal they receive the money. The 'pledgers' then are given the rewards-often an unreleased product- from the kickstarter company. 

In the case of the start-up underwear company, Flint and Tinder, they had far too much support and raised nearly 8 times as much as they originally had planned on! Which one may think this is a good thing, right? They collected nearly $300,000 dollars while they only projected about $30,000 or so. And before this massive crowdsource, the most effective campaign had only amassed a measly $64,000, comparatively of course. This pre-projection equaled out to about 3,000 garments in a two-week turnaround time, but with the strong support they received they were now on the hook for making 23,000 orders, which turned out to be three months late! After all said and done with the original pledgers, they found themselves in the hole for $30k! With them being a start-up they had to produce 1 extra pair for every 6 made due to all of the first-time mistakes that many companies go through. 

This brought the creator of Flint and Tinder, Bronstein, to a cross road; to give up on the business, or to continue his niche that he had found and begin on his next venture. Bronstein recalls that "I used to cry on my way into work. It's hard to walk into a room and be a leader when you don't have all the answers." He went on to continue his dream and actually raised $850,000 from Zappos founder Tony Hsieh and other Zappos team members. But what does this near death experience really tell the future user of Kickstarter? It truly illustrates the problems with Kickstarter's fundraising model for both backers and creators. 

Some problems that other Kickstarter project campaigns face are as followed:

1) It's not clear who's supposed to vet Kickstarter projects.

The Kickstarter website merely accepts or denies the submission with little research of validity. It's backer beware and they now attempt to make it clear that backing campaigns could be risky.

2) Backers don't always know what they're purchasing.

To newcomers, Kickstarter may be confusing to the backers. Is it a preorder site like Amazon or a place simply for donations? They have now created new criteria for Kickstarter campaigns. They are now limited to pictures of current, working prototypes, not hypothetical, cool sounding but impossible products to execute, like before.

3) There's no way to cap a total fundraising goal.

 If the creator of the campaign stops offering rewards, it may bode well for the company do to the possibility of a mass overhaul like the underwear company faced. If you were to cap the reward portion of the campaign, people can still donate but from past experience they have found that the pledger is there for the reward!

4) Kickstarter inadvertently exposes key financials about companies. 

With the Kickstarter being public knowledge, it is open to the public to scrutinize and badger the company. It gives suppliers a ton of leverage when they are able to see your prices you sold them for, number of items you sold, and the timeline in which you sold them for. 

5) There's no good way to refund all the backers after the first month or two of a campaign.

6)Kickstarter only solves a small problem for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Very little guidance is available after the campaign has run it's course and the companies are on their own. This can be a huge risk for inventors and the backers that are affiliated with the project.

  So, is Kickstarter worth the headache?

According to Bronstein, he'd do it all over again even with the pain of losing money upfront and dealing with a mass amount of orders in a small time frame. Getting this exposure is essential for a company and once the kinks are worked out, it can run smoothly and continue as successful companies do!

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How are you utilizing your inbound marketing?

Let me begin by giving you a few intriguing statistics that SEOmoz gives us from the article of "Top Three Inbound Marketing Strategies." For one, there are currently over 750,000 apps in the App store alone and these apps have over 40 billion downloads! Wow! All of these apps are being utilized on the one billion smartphones that are currently up and running in the world, and this number is growing! 

When pursuing inbound marketing, this information is VITAL when customers are looking for information and this information that they are turning too goes hand in hand with inbound marketing. In this blog I will discuss the three most essential and effective tips that app marketers can use to being pushing their way into the ever growing mobile market. These three tips have delivered incredible results after being put into use by the marketers.

For one, BE SOCIAL GUYS! Utilize all of your social media platforms possible; Twitter, Facebook, etc. The reason that optimizing your social platforms was made clear after an experiment that was performed by Nike for the consumers to share what their personal athletic activities consisted of and they did this by posting it to the Twittersphere (could be a made up word, but I like it). Nike found that their app had over 3 clicks per outbound tweet, positive ratings doubled and the reviews did the same, and this became downloaded just as much as their largest paid channel! This experiment worked wonders and if utilized correctly, it may bode well for you as well.

Secondly, TELL YOUR OWN STORY. Getting discovered and possibly going viral from a large group of people can be as simple as selecting the right name, investing in a compelling and memorable icon, experimenting with categories and keywords, and testing your strategies! By using your own personal story and own website, it allows for the consumer to think that your app is more human almost.

Lastly, COURT YOUR AUDIENCE OF FANS FROM DAY ONE. We all know that word of mouth is one of, if not, the most powerful marketing tool around. That is why creating your own compelling store will bode well down the road, you want people to spread the knowledge that you have given! Recommendations from people that they have a personal connection is by far the most vital and trustworthy resource for a marketer to be aware of. You may be asking yourself, but how do I get people to talk about me, in a good way, to their friends? The reviews and ratings section simplifies this process to an extent. Staying connected and continually connected means a lot to the consumer and by proactively doing so, a returning audience may be the result. 

To close, the three effective tips to use when utilizing inbound marketing is to BE SOCIAL, TELL YOUR OWN STORY, and COURT YOUR AUDIENCE OF FANS FROM DAY ONE.

See, wasn't that helpful?

:)

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Who needs 'small data' anyway?

In the wake of the 2012 presidential election, President Obama beat his opponent Mitt Romney by utilizing skills that were at the time unknown to the election world. Obama and his campaign used tactics that touched upon the likings of Sarah Jessica Parker and George Clooney. He did this by offering a chance to win a date with one of these two celebrities if they were to donate to the campaign, that eventually reached over $1 billion. George Clooney nearly had a gravitational pull on the women between the ages of 40 and 49 on the west coast where they handed over cash to dine with Mr. Clooney, and Obama of course. On the other side of the map, east coast males were donating to date Ms. Parker at Parker's West Village Brownstone. There was however a catch to the emails though depending on the 'big data' that had been compiled on in particular voters and how they react differently to different messages. These were only a few examples of the acts that the data campaign had in store for Obama's mission to win a presidential bid. Data mining experiments were given secret names like "Norwhal and Dreamcatcher" where public details were in short supply as they worked in windowless office spaces to conceal what they had held as a secret. This data was coined as the biggest institutional advantage over Romney. Data campaign manager, Jim Messina, made it his personal goal to measure every single aspect of the campaign and to build an analytics department that was 5 times the size of the 2008 effort. Even though the success in 2008 by Obama, there were large weaknesses masked over by the campaign directors that revealed there were too many databases. In 2012, they compiled all databases to make a "megafile." This megafile didn't just compile all of the databases and how to find voters and how to get their attention, but also allowed the number crunchers to run tests predicting which type of persons would be persuaded by which kind of appeals. 75% of the factors were compiled as age, sex, neighborhood, and voting record. This single file was also known to be able to collect info from pollsters, fundraisers, field workers, and constitutional databases. Obama's website was also even found to be more assiduous than online retailers like Best Buy by dropping cookies that would follow visitors all over the web. The Obama campaign does deserve credit for the kinds of tactics they put into play in the 2012 election and they are almost certain to get stronger as the data mining industry continues to grow.

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The nonprofit that I'm currently working for has released new products; wristbands and our "Crown Jewel" t-shirt! Help out a great cause that is supporting testicular cancer! Check out our website at www.sacksoflove.org :)

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Do you find Ad's on mobile phones annoying?

By the end of the year, the mobile ad industry will reach up to 4 billion dollars! And these ads don't stop now, the trend looks to exponentially be increasing in the next 5 years. With Facebook and Twitter leading the mobile Ad marketing monster they will continually be putting advertised ads that will be specified to each individual user. Facebook alone will be said to use $339 million in the year of 2012 which is also currently using $3 million a day which was once using zero money nearly a year ago has taken a 14% piece of the market share in the mobile ad industry. Yes, FB and Twitter have a considerable chunk of the pie but Google still holds nearly 57% of the market share. But with all of these ad platforms continually increasing, the mobile ad industry only holds for a tad bit more than 2%, but is said to increase to 11% by 2016 which will in turn overtake radio, but not print in the leaderboards. With the ad industry seeing a huge potential emerging market, another APP is taking the mobile industry by storm. I have spoken of Vine before, but now nearly half of my friends are saying "let's make a Vine!" rather than what it used to be which was Instagram. For one, there are very low entry margins for users compared to YouTube. By using your mobile phone for a 6-second clip you will have much less production costs and time that will be spent by making a YouTube video. Marketers will be able to have much more control as to who is viewing these videos as well and the ease of reach is much easier with the Vine app being right at your fingertips! For the marketers, it seems to be to whomever acts first and strikes it hard, will have a more successful marketing campaign via Vine or other incoming social media's in the future. This video app should be taken lightely though, marketers should only be utilizing this app as another resource that will help only help the other campaigns on social media!

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If you haven't heard of A/B testing get with the times, man!

What is A/B testing you ask? While using A/B testing you are essentially testing two different designs, or different style on your website and seeing which design performs better based on the behavioral feedback from the customer. Hence the A & B name. You are able to have specific goals in mind for each layout which, hopefully, will lead to one of them having a better consensus from the buyer or visitor! What should you avoid? First off, these tests should be ran simultaneously. They are not meant to be separate tests and separate times. Also, allow your test to be statistically significant. By this I mean, don't run your test too short because you are possibly cutting the string too soon. Let the tests actually give you significant data! Lastly, don't let your own predisposed judgement get in the way of the conversion rate. For example, don't allow an (what you think is) ugly red button on a green homepage be removed because it may look unappealing to the eye while it is converting the customer more so than the alternative. Let it ride! What is essential for an A/B test to be effective? Knowing how long to run the test is key. You want to allow it to run its' course but by doing just that and by not over doing it! Also, stay consistent. Use the same variation for the same customer. The customer that comes back frequently may be thrown off by the change in scenery. Lastly, run many A/B tests! This allows for an abundance of results while giving you the opportunity to analyze the results and what works best. A/B testing is a relatively unknown optimization strategy that companies and individuals are able to use compared to SEO and other strategies that allow the user to make their website as good as can be. I believe A/B is definitely something that you should at the very least pursue and give it a shot for a month! Maybe it will be a break through to your genius idea.

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Successfully E-mail Marketing

One of the most interesting parts of this class to me is how relevant many of these articles are to my everyday actions with my professional career. Blogging is a way to get these ideas down on paper and utilizing these skills that are given to me in the articles! This one imparticular pertains to emailing corporations and individuals, which directly allows me to successfully e-mail entities for Sacks of Love to spread the word about the non-profit and the apparel and events we are currently planning! Anyways, enough rambling. I present to you 10 tips that will surely allow you to have a successful email marketing campaign! Tip 1: You should use the campaign as a dialogue that not only initiates the conversation but the email should contain information that will extend the conversation by listening, adding relevant value, and engaging the prospect with meaningful verbage. Yes, you are asking for participation so it is key to engage the potential customer or partner. Always include social share buttons to encourage the audience to continue and/or extend the conversation on their respective social channels! Tip 2: Evolving past-click through rates is key. By using past data from previous campaigns you are able to hone into the market by using stuff that was successful and by dropping irrelevant information that was not successful. Using measurement tactics can be extremely helpful so implement some form of device that tracks data, Google Analytics is a great one and I use it myself! Tip 3: Segmentation. I'm going to use Google Analytics for this tip because it is the one I'm familiar with but by using this analytical data you are able to figure out who really is interested in your service that is being offered and you are able to hone into this target audience. For example, you should have something set up that allows you to see who viewed, downloaded, how long they were on, what way they downloaded, etc. All of these stats will be extremely helpful in your marketing campaign. Tip 4: Focus on the message. After segmenting your market, you now know who likes what and who doesn't. By sending different emails to different segments of the market, this will lift your customer base to allow you to grasp each individual customer individually and relating to them. While segmenting, you also should add content that is valuable to each email. Maybe feedback or update them? Just a few ideas! Tip 5: Automate when needed. By automating the feedback responses for your email campaigns it allows you to allocate your time more effectively rather then wasting valuable time on miniscule items! This automation can be targeted to behavioral simulation and other things alike while continually building stronger relationships with prospects. Tip 6: Creat a mix of style and methods. By testing different platforms and twisting each individual campaign it allows you to test the waters in various styles to give you valuable information for future campaigns. Keeping your readers engaged is key and by testing different styles you are able to gain knowledge as to what is effective and what is not. Tip 7: Deliverability. A huge no-no is to avoid common spam verbage like "free", "opportunity", "click here", etc. It is key to firstly allow the prospect to even see the message and by proofing your message beforehand it will allow the prospect to view the message with open arms rather than placing it in the spam section of their respective email. Tip 8: Testing. Testing is a requirement if you want to achieve optimal results, and who doesn't want optimal results? By testing your message to small groups of people it allows you to make subtle changes if needed! Tip 9: Analyze your results. Realizing your return on investment (ROI) potential is key with the data you collect using whichever platform you decide to use for tracking your campaign. Large number crunching in Excel is in the past, while using a platform like Google Analytics is all the rage in data crunching due to the easily viewable data for analyzing purposes! Tip 10: Always use social shares. By utilizing social shares, it allows you to continue the conversation to their peers easily by a click of a mouse. By allowing your message to evangalize though social media it not only gives you positive feedback (if successful) but allows you to spread your message from a reliable source! Well, here are the ten tips for successful marketing campaigns that I hope you all will soon be employing in your respective website! Enjoy, and good luck campaigning!

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The Nitty and Gritty Coding Work.

Hey guys, I recently was re-introduced to coding! As a senior in high-school I took two courses of web-design and I took a computer science class early in my college career. Even with those two beginner courses under my belt, it almost felt like I was starting with a clean slate. But once I got going, it kept coming back to me, slowly but surely (hopefully)! You may be wondering why I didn't complete the HTML Basics II. Well, for the sake of my sanity I skipped one due to being unable to figure out what in the world was incorrect!!! Oh well, I will re-address this at a later time when I continue my coding exercises.

Who knew coding would be such a luxurious profession?

After reading two articles, I now realize how much coding is beneficial to the everyday job that I will be doing in the near future. In Silicon Valley in fact, the best coders are being pampered with the highest salaries, shuttle service, and free gourmet food. Who doesn't like that on a day-to-day basis? I sure don't! With coding so readily available nowadays, not learning code is no excuse to a future employer. Coding can be beneficial whether or not you are going into your own business or helping another business be the best they can. In the first article, they stress the importance of learning code in the marketing industry. They say it is a priority for incoming students that are pursuing careers in the industry and it will only help give them momentum when they enter the industry. 

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A Sacks of Love PSA to YOU! Take a peek and check out our website www.sacksoflove.org ! Please and thank you!