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Abbi Dowell
Mr. Belk
ENC 1102
23 April 2013
Final Paper- My journey through the Internet
How does one create attention? You scream and holler in public, post
controversial items on a social networking site, create rumors, and so on. Creating
attention for oneself comes second nature to humans. But, how do we create
attention for something other than ourselves? Being a teenage girl, I am one to know
how to create attention for myself; the class project for English however, really
stumped me. For this class project, we were required to make a Word Press site,
where we would post five hundred word edits of our papers, from the semester.
Along with posting the edits of our papers, the whole point of creating this Word
Press site, was to generate traffic to our class web site. There for, we should have
provided the link to our class wed site on our Word Press pages to be clearly seen to
all of our viewers. There was a dilemma though, I have a Word Press, with blogs of
my papers, and links to the class website, but how do I get people to see my blog?
That was the hardest part of this whole project for me. Trying to figure out how to
get attention for my Word Press. I tried to figure out how to link my Word Press to
my Facebook, so that when I posted on my blog, it would automatically appear on
my news feed on Facebook. I could never figure out how to do so. So what I would
do is post a link of Word Press onto my Facebook and I would ask people to look at
my blog. I had a really difficult time trying to get people to look at my blog. I know if
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that were someone else on my Facebook, trying to tell me to check out their blogs, I
would ignore them. However, I did manage to generate some traffic to my blog.
My Word Press site is definitely appeasing. My Word Press site has a very
light pink back ground with very small and slightly darker circles. It is clean and
concise, how I believe sites like blogs should be. I believe blogs and sites, where you
want people to focus on certain topics on your blogs, should be clean and clear to
read. My blog has all of my English papers, that I edited down to five hundred words,
listed one after the other. Also, with a post by its self liking you to the class website.
I made my blog to something that me, as a reader, would want to take their time and
look through the content. If I were the viewer who came across my blog, I would
stop and take a minute to look at the titles of the individual posts to see if they
intrigued me. If I in fact found a blog that intrigued me, I would then look to see how
long the blog posts were. All of my blog posts had the same titles as my paper, and
looked like English papers. I personally, love to read other students papers to
compare and contrast styles of writing. Reading others work is something I like to
do when encountering blogs. So, personally, I believe my Word Press site, is a
pleasing site to read and look at.
My Word Press sites content was mainly my papers written in English class,
as previously stated. I cut down all of my papers to about five hundred words. Also, I
had an extra posting asking people to check out the class website as well. My blog
over all, received about twenty-five views; my most views in one day, was about
sixteen. Along with those views, I had two comments on one of my blogs. The blog
that received the most attention, was my paper titled “Crazy teachers”. The
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comments I received on that post were very encouraging comments. Stating, “ this is
the most amazing and relatable post about becoming a teacher I have ever seen!”.
The paper contained content about my journey towards becoming a teacher. I
believe that post specifically got the most attention because, the title was catchy and
racy, the content was sarcastic, and it also contained humor. Those are
characteristics viewers are looking for, when they are looking for blog posts or
articles to read. The other blog posts I had on my Word Press did not receive as
much attention. I believe it is because they are geared more towards a professor to
read, rather than a young audience; and my blog was viewed by a younger
demographic.
The whole point for the assignment this semester, was to generate traffic to
the class website. When you generated traffic to the class website, your URL would
appear on the Analytics page showing that you generated traffic to the class website
through your Word Press site. Although I did generate traffic to my Word Press site,
and had the URL to our class website available on my Word Press, I did not generate
traffic to the class website. Other students to have more success than I generating
traffic to the class website. Over all the class website ended up having around four
hundred and sixty five views. My audience that came to my Word Press site, did not
go to the class page. I believe that the students who did generate a lot of traffic to the
class website spent a good amount of time advertising for it on their Word Press
site, as well as their social media web site.
Although I did receive quite a few views on my site, along with comments, I
believe I could have generated a lot more traffic. I believe as far as how my Word
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Press is set up and looks, I would not change it. Using my social networking site,
instead of just posting a status about my Word Press blog and asking people to go
view it, I could have asked individual people to look at my blog, so I could have had
guaranteed views. Also, I could have made sure to tell them to visit the link to the
class website on my blog. For my blog posts, I would put more intriguing titles on
my posts to catch my viewer’s attention; and I would have probably made the posts
shorter. I now the problems that need to be fixed. Even though you can not make
people on social networking sites go to certain links, you can most definitely find
ways to persuade them into checking out the sites you want them to check out.
Over all, this project was a learning experience, to say the least. This project I
believe is a good way to learn how to advertise. You have a site that you want to get
attention, so you find ways to get people to that site. It is a perfect learning
experience for advertising. Throughout this project I definitely learned how not to
advertise. Even though my Word Press received views, the ultimate goal of the class
website receiving views from my page was not achieved. If I could do this over, I
would take time to find creative ways to make viewers want to go to the class
website. As for the quality of work I put into my own blog, I would not change it. I
was very pleased with my papers that I wrote for the semester, and I was pleased
with my blogs set up. I now know that when you are trying to advertise for a specific
website, you need to be creative when trying to persuade viewers to pursue your
blog.
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Work Cited
“Referral Traffic: Main View,” Google Analytics Report for Class Project webpage (data
for Jan. 1, 2013-Apr. 14, 2013). Generated 14 Apr. 2013
Dowell, Abbi M. "Amd68blog." Amd68blog. Word Press, 1 Jan. 2013. Web. 26 Apr.
2013.