Final Post

As an avid user of social media for my personal use, I really thought that using social media for business was going to be a breeze...was I ever wrong.  To be honest to be successful one really needs to be organized, creative and consistent. 

I learned right away that everything done on social media needs to have the same look and feel across all platforms.  The look should really resemble the business.  As was pointed out in class a webpage and or Facebook page is the business card of today. 

Social Media is also an avenue for customer to communicate with the business.  With action buttons on webpages and Facebook pages people are able to sign up for emails, newsletters and contact someone at the business.  I set up a Facebook page for my father's private investigation company.  I used my mom's Facebook page to create the business page.  To my surprise, the first day I activated the page and invited my parents friends to like it, we had over 90 likes.  We even had a few people ask to work for the company.

I did struggle to create meaningful post.  The original idea was to have my dad write some meaningful information that could be posted regarding private investigations.  That did not work out for me as he was always to busy.  Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the business yet to make the post myself.  I did however learn the importance of following competitors and  possibly share a post or get information and keep on top of what the other investigators are doing.

For The RCL Group, Twitter and Facebook and Google+ and Constant Contact are the main platforms moving forward.  I love Instagram personally but we just can not send photos of surveillance targets. 

I learned that my original target market of attorneys and insurance firms was too narrow.  Trying the Constant sending emails out I found that retired law enforcement personnel were good too for potential investigators. 

The most interesting part of the class was learning about the analytics in Facebook.  If I can work on the page at least once a week and follow other businesses and start getting more targeted followers the company can start being more purposeful in post and emailing.

Week 15

Seeing the actions on our business Facebook page is actually very remarkable.  I had 2 actions on the page representing 100% increase from the week before.  I learned that the page had 27 views up 170% and 2 page previews.  I can see that claudiafaulkdesign.com viewed the page.  I was unable to see the statistics by age and gender, by country, or by city.  I was able to see that the page was viewed on computers and not mobile devices.  We had 5 likes but did not reach anyone, however we did have 72 post engagements and 4 new followers.

Seeing this information on a week by week basis can really let me learn the effectiveness of venturing into social media for the business.  In business everything is measured for efficiency and effectiveness.  These are great tools to show my dad that social media can get the business seen.

Week 14

Advertising on Facebook is actually very easy.  I was surprised to see that I was able to come up with something to advertise.  For weeks I have really been struggling to figure this social media advertising out.  I have taken a print screen of an ad I came up with since I am not ready to pay for advertising.  The $35.00/week is not bad to get the message out about judgment enforcement.  A conversation with my parents will need to take place before I actually place the ad.

I am curious, I am thinking that if I use the advertising tool in Facebook to develop ads, I should be able to duplicate it in twitter and Facebook to use in my feed.  I will have to experiment with this.
I am starting to feel a bit excited about the prospects in advertising with social media.  Until this moment I was thinking advertising our services would be difficult to develop.

Researching Advertising week 13

Advertisement in general annoys me personally when it presents itself on my screen when I am not looking to purchase anything.  Having said this, I am having a real hard time getting my head around the thought of what an advertisement would say or look like to not be annoying.

With traditional advertising, whether in a newspaper or magazine, I can pick it up when I want and scan through the ads.  I actually like to do this on Sunday mornings while I am drinking my coffee.  The ads are there all day on the table until I throw them away.  With social media advertising and having an ad pop up on the right side of Facebook or Instagram or twitter if you are not constantly watching you may miss an interesting ad.

I have researched 5 companies similar to The RCL Group.  Of the 5 companies only 3 used social media.  EMJ Digital uses Twitter, LinkedIn and Pintrest although there were no recent post.  Silent Warriors Investigations uses LinkedIn and Twitter and they have no recent post.  The third company, Direct Focus Investigations uses Facebook, Twitter and Google + but there has been no activity since 2013.

I definitely believe that a colorful simple banner ad would be useful for The RCL Group.  I also believe that some traditional advertising such as postcard of brochure would be good to send out to local law firms.

Week 12 B

The research into additional social media tools has been a disappointing exercise for me.  Our company uses a mailbox address to keep the business address confidential.  By doing this, we learned will not be able to be listed in Google Plus and Google Maps.  By personally joining Google Plus I was able to see the possibilities of the communities.  I am not sure if in our particular circumstance if I should set my father up in Google Plus.  I did join a few communities and the information is actually very interesting.  We will be contacting the mail center to see if they can add us as additional company at the address for the purposes of utilizing Google as a business.

LinkedIn  is our best bet for additional social media connections.  I used my mom's account to research groups that the business will be able to join.  There are groups for attorneys and groups for private investigators and groups for insurance carriers.  I will be working on setting up a LinkedIn account for The RCL Group.

Week 12 A

I am excited to learn about the additional internet tools available to business owners.  The Linkedin tool will be very good for networking with people that my father has not been in touch with in awhile.  Some retired law enforcement officers would be great contracted investigators.  The google plus is extremely interesting.  The circles and communities can open up a whole new world of information and contacts.  I idea of asking questions and having a captivated group is so worth looking into.  I foresee  these tools the missing link in gathering the intelligence needed to blog and tweet and postings on Facebook.    I do not have the knowledge myself yet, but I can gather some and send to the expert (Dad) for approval.

Week 10 Part B

Thinking of Blogging and how to organize them, I believe we will need to break them up into 4 categories:
Private investigations
Judgment Recoveries
Security issues
Technical Devices used.

Private Investigations can be a category that speaks about the types of investigations the firm handles and perhaps touch on regulatory issues that private Investigators are to adhere to.

Judgment Recoveries can touch on recent cases as the cases are all public records.

Security issues are just that, the blog can address current security measures in computers, companies and Homeland Security

Technical Devices used in private investigations would be an interesting blog especially after attending a trade show geared to gadgets in the industry.


I liked  Izek Gazette, Poetry Loggins, Abdul Sultani, Micheaella Ellis and Michell Bryson

I commented on Savanah Burkes, Kay Derival and Maria Ortega