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

blogging extra credit

Analytics added to the website

Week 10 Blog Post

Blogging for private investigations actually seems like a great idea.  Whenever my father is talking with someone regarding his work, they get very interested in what kind of case he is working on.  Perhaps a blog about personal experiences of successful and not so successful cases would be interesting.  He could blog about upcoming surveillance equipment or anti bugging devices.  Explaining the human side of the investigator as well as the target might gain interest.  After all most of our favorite shows include crime investigations.

On the flip side, writing about cases could also jeopardize a case in court.  After talking to my dad, he informed me that any kind of blogging pertaining to a case is really not wise until long after it has gone through the courts.

Week 9 twitter

I am officially on information overload.  The thought of receiving more information via twitter is going to send my father in a tailspin.  He is so busy, I know I will have to take this task on at least once a month or every two weeks.  I first attempted to follow and add attorneys to a list.  I had to first add attorney clients.  Many of the attorneys do not have a twitter account.  The way I actually found some to follow was to google attorneys in the area and then look and see if they had a twitter account.  When I used the search in twitter, many twitter accounts came up but I had to open each one to see if they were in the geographical location we are interested in.

I was disappointed to find out that our favorite PI Magazine did not have a twitter account.  There is really good information in the magazine that would lend itself to being tweeted out.  Call me lazy, but at this point I am working full time (not with my dad) and going to school full time.  Tweeting will be great if I can have my dad feed me something exciting to tweet.

Week 11 B

I commented on:  Michelle Burkes, Lorena Silva, Izek Gazette

Week 11A Email Marketing

Email marketing, who does not love it.  I have always wondered how companies were able to keep track and constantly email me marketing material.  Sometimes it surely can be annoying, yet when I have consciously signed up for a company's email marketing plan, I can assure you I look at them before deleting them.

With Christmas quickly approaching, there are a few companies that I want to keep my eye on for sales on particular items.  I am blessed to have many friends and family and unfortunately I have not discovered a way to decrease the amount of Christmas presents to purchase.  Email marketing keeps me in touch with the sales on items I know I need.

Christmas shopping is an easy case for email marketing, everybody is looking for the best deal.  Now for this class, I am posed with the question of how to use email marketing in a positive way in a Private Investigate company.  This is actually harder than one may think.  The company is not going to under sell the competition with a weekend special on surveillance of  a subject.  A Newsletter is a great idea for email marketing.  Although I have not been able to find one investigation firm in the state of California that sends out any kind of newsletter, I am determined to find a way to make a newsletter work for The RCL Group.

My idea is to create a newsletter with focused on attorneys with content from Government Regulations (keeping investigations legal that will not jeopardize a case) and add content about how a private investigation had aided in a successful legal outcome for the prosecution or defense depending on the case.

Many legal firms use paralegals to gather certain information.  In some cases, a paralegal research is all that is needed.  Yet, in most cases, there is nothing better that two feet on the ground find the truth in person.