Embedded Files
Create a website with multiple pages around an identified purpose
Include text, images, videos, slideshow, map, and form in a website
Design an eye appealing and useful website
Sign up for Google Analytics
Embed Google Analytics tracking code into a Weebly site
Websites are important to any business because it provides a convenient way for customers to access a business at anytime of the day or night, generate online and in-person sales, allows for a larger customer market, and adds to credibility. Not all websites are created equal and by just having a website does not lead to business success. Websites take a large amount of time to create and update regularly to engage customers and make the their online experience pleasant and seamless.
Social media serves as a way to get customers to your website and ultimately lead to a purchase. We will discuss using social media to get potential customers to your website later in the semester. Getting your customers to your website is only half of it. A business' website must be well designed to engage customers, provide relevant information, and make purchasing easy. This week, we will introduce you to how to create a website.
What is the difference between a website and a webpage? A website contains many webpages. For example, the Leeward Community College site is www.leeward.hawaii.edu, which is the Leeward CC website. When I click on "How to Apply" on the home page, the website takes me to www.leeward.hawaii.edu/enroll, which is another webpage within the Leeward CC website.
There are many different ways to go about creating a website for a business. You can use popular software like Adobe's Dreamweaver to create a website and host it on a server. Software like Dreamweaver can be very expensive and has a high learning curve, but allows for a lot more customization and animation.
There are many free online software that allows you to easily create a website. Here is a list of popular sites.
With each of these websites, you will need to purchase your domain name if you don't want the website name in your website address. For example, thebusinesspitch.weebly.com will have the "weebly" included in the web address. To eliminate the Weebly from the web address, you will need to purchase your own domain name. We will not be purchasing a domain name for our assignments, but businesses should purchase an unique domain name for their website.
The free accounts on these websites come with many limitations. In order to access more tools and widgets for your website you will have to upgrade to a paid plan.
In this week's activities, we will be learning how to use Weebly to create a website and add a Google Analytics Tracking Code. Other sites like Wix and WordPress will have a similar interface to Weebly.
Read and review all the links in this section.
Setup Blogger Account
Blogger is Google's blog software. In order to use blogger, you will need to have a Google account. You may use your school account or create a new gmail account. See video on how to create a Google account for Blogger.
It is up to you if you want to use your existing Google account, create a new one, or use your UH Google account. Whichever you choose, be sure to stick with it for the entire semester. You blogs should all exist on one account
How to Write an Effective Blog
You may also search the Internet for resources on how to write an effective blog.
Create a Blog and Write a Blog Post
Create a Blog using Blogger on "Social Media and Collaboration Tools" (You may edit the name to your liking).
You will be creating a number of blogs to review, summarize and recommend social media sites and collaboration tools.
This first blog post
You will write additional blog posts throughout this course. Keep in mind, you will have one blog in this course with multiple blog posts.
Do NOT create separate blogs for each post.
Activity - Blog
Requirements:
Using Blogger, write a blog post for your "Social Media and Collaboration Tools" blog (your blog name may be slightly different) that summarizes information on "how to write and create an effective blog."
The objective is to pull ideas and information from a variety of sources and create an easy to follow guide for people new to blogging.
Your blog will be graded using the blog rubric at the bottom of this page.
Your blog should be a between 200 - 500 words.
Include links (2-3), pictures (2-3), and videos (2-3) that add credibility to your blog (see rubric). Adding videos to the end only can be detrimental to your blog
At the end of your blog post, link an example of a well written blog and explain why it is well written.
See POWr below
Tips:
Do not steal other ideas, but instead build on what they have said and give them credit by linking to the website where you found the information.
Do not just add videos or links to blogs. Be sure to tell people why they should visit the site to add credibility to your site, not to visit their site for information. You may lose your followers or people may not come back to your blog.
When using POWr, be sure to remove other social media links that you do not have or do not plan to connect.
Activity Cont. - Adding POWr
POWr Widget - Sign up and include links to your social media accounts using the POWr Widget.
This is required to appear/be visible on each blog post you write for the course.
For our blog, you will link to your social media accounts.
If this was for a business, these links would link to the business' social media sites. Setup the links for email and Facebook. We will add in other links as we cover various social media sites later in the semester. Keep in mind, these links are different from the share links at the bottom of the page. The share links allow people to share your blog on their own social media. The POWr links provides users links to the company's (or author's) social media page/profile.
See a step by step tutorial below. Click the top right icon to enlarge and/or download the tutorial.
Creating POWr.pdfFB Group Sharing
Share your blog post on our Facebook Group Review how to post a link to a Facebook group.
Include a short message that entices readers to click on your link (5 points).
On Facebook, comment on two other students' postings and provide meaningful feedback on their blog.
Use #blogin your FB post.
Blog Rubric - Click the top right icon to enlarge and/or download the rubric
Blog Rubric.pdfPage updated
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