Week 2B: Business Research

CopperTide

1.  www,coppertide.net

2.  CopperTide is Annie Grimes Williams of Winston-Salem, NC.  Annie is a metalsmith and enamelist who designs and sells jewelry from her website, at the regional craft shows that she travels to, and in jewelry stores and galleries around the country.  She even sells through Art-O-Mat machines, repurposed cigarette machines used to distribute the work of over 300 artists all over the U.S. and worldwide.  She also teaches metalsmithing and enameling.

3.  The artist’s web page has links to Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, but they are inconspicuously located at the very bottom of the web page in a faint pale color. There is a Facebook page and shop which duplicates the merchandise on her web page. This artist knows how to use Facebook to her advantage.  She posts almost every day and most posts include her artwork; her last post was three days ago.  She populates the events, photos, and video sections with interesting material.  She has over 1000 likes and 1000 followers. 

The Coppertide Instagram page is utilized even more than Facebook.  There are over 4000 followers and over 3000 posts, The images from what she’s posted on Facebook are also posted on Instagram on the same day.  She even has a link to linktree. 

The Pinterest page is under the artist’s name and not the business.  It is more a personal domain.  There are only 582 followers.  It seems very well organized; there are sixty-six boards. There are almost 9000 pins, the last being made 16 hours ago.

4.  This artist expertly uses the Internet to market her business.  Many businesses and even artists just have a web site and an online store and sometimes utilize social media as an advertising tool.  Annie has integrated every aspect of her presence on the Internet.  Everything works together to gently drive business her way.  It is most interesting in this case because the most modern of tools are being so well wielded to promote ancient methods of artistic expression.  Metalsmithing and enameling both predate the Christian era. 

Nicole Barr

1.  www.nicolebarr.com

2.  Nicole Barr is the name of an international wholesale enameled jewelry manufacturer and distributor that’s been around almost forty years, yet I had never heard of them.  In addition to the lines they carry, they have thirty years’ experience as an Original Designs Manufacturer (ODM).  They have around 28 employees with revenue of $5 million. 

Enamel has been our passion since we  began as a small jewelry

company in 1982.                                                                                      -from web site

Their jewelry is all silver and gold, and is only available through fine jewelry stores.  They specialize in plique-á-jour enameling which looks like itty bitty stained glass pieces. 

3.  Nicole Barr is engaged with six social media platforms with links at the bottom of every web page.  They also have links to Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest shown prominently on every product page.  They usually post at least every three or four days on Facebook, sometimes more frequently.  The posts are beautifully photographed.  Some of them are videos. The last post was right before Labor Day weekend.  There are 509 likes and they have 630 followers.  The page was created in 2013.  There are links on in the Facebook About section to the other five social media platforms that they work with.

Nicole Barr has a Twitter account but they don’t use it as much as Facebook.  There hasn’t been a Tweet since August 10^th.  They have 365 total Tweets and 54 followers.  This account was also opened in 2013, a few months before the Facebook account.  The Tweets also appear as Facebook posts.

There is a Nicole Barr Pinterest account and an associated one called Enamel Jewelry.    The main account has 91 followers and 7300 monthly views.  The Created section has a large number of individual images of enameled jewelry  The Saved section had 381 pins over nine boards with the last one pinned four weeks ago.  The second Pinterest account has 86 followers and consists of only Created pins, not Saved, and there are many pins.  The images are the same ones used in Facebook posts and Tweets.

Nicole Barr Jewelry has an Instagram account with 465 followers and 219 posts.  They are the images used in the posts on other platforms.  The last post was the same as the last Facebook post, done right before Labor Day.  However, the posting here is pretty sporadic like with Twitter.

Their YouTube account has 482 subscribers with 35 videos.  The last few were posted about five months ago.  They are some of the same videos that are on the web site.

The jewelry company has a LinkedIn presence and one employee on LinkedIn.  There are 240 followers, four videos, and the last post was five months ago.  

4.  Nicole Barr Jewelry doesn’t really use social media outside of Facebook and Instagram too frequently.  However, their customers are mostly retail jewelry establishments and designers having custom production runs.  As a B2B entity, there may not be such a need to engage with the public. 

Ricky Frank

1.  www.rickyfrank.com

2.  Ricky Frank is a master enamellist with over 40 years of experience who specializes in cloisonné.  He not only sells enameled jewelry but he teaches.  He’s developed hundreds of short videos grouped into modules that are offered as part of the two online courses he offers or as part of a monthly subscription service.  There are forums on his web site to post and discuss enameling tied into the classes and subscription service.  He also sells his wife’s fabric and multi-media art and a few enameling supplies on his web site.

3.  Ricky uses Facebook and Instagram, although it isn’t clear at first because he doesn’t use the usual symbols to direct you there.  At the bottom of his web pages, there are a few links under the heading Find me on Social Media. He has three Facebook pages, Ricky Frank Enamels, Ricky Frank Workshops, and his personal page.  The first one is his artist page and he has 1700 likes and over 1900 followers.  He has what seems like a never-ending supply of stunning photos of his work but hasn’t posted many of his videos.  He was posting pretty regularly, almost every day, through last Spring.  Unfortunately, he had quadruple bypass surgery apparently just in time, and has slowed down all his business activities some.

His second Facebook page is his education page.  There are over 1100 likes and over 1200 followers.  He has all the same photos that are on the other page but only one video.  Like the other page, he was posting almost every day until this Spring.  His personal page is more like a friends and family page, the way most people use Facebook.  He has 1875 friends and the photo section is short compared to the other pages with only a few pictures of people.  His posts are a mix of business and personal and were done pretty regularly until last Spring.

Ricky’s Instagram page is a little odd as it seems to be published in Portuguese; fortunately, my browser translates.  This page Is not as well utilized as his Facebook pages.  There are only 72 posts although he does have around 1250 followers.  The posts aren’t all of his work either; some are nature scenes, mostly water.  His posting here died off last Spring like on his other social media pages.

4.  Ricky’s web site is comprehensive, with his three different stores and all the training materials and forums, but he also uses social media some.  I don’t get the feeling that it ties into his business all that much, though. One of the best things about the social media sites is that you can see his earlier work, done before what he is now selling.  But his web site is his best promotion vehicle.

Sandra McEwen

1.  www.sandramcewn.com

2.  Sandra McEwen is an enamel artist who specializes in cloisonné and champlevé.  She makes some really complex beautiful creations as well as some whimsical ones.  All her work is on fine silver.  She also teaches enameling techniques in person and on Vimeo videos.  She is influenced by gorgeous jewelry of the past while giving it a modern twist.  She also sells kits on Etsy for students to teach themselves. 

3.  Sandra has the icons for Twitter, Pinterest, and Vimeo on her web page.  From what I read about her and after seeing her photos, she strikes me as a real sweet down-to-earth person who wouldn’t bother with Twitter.  My visit to her page supports that . . . she’s only done 16 Tweets and only has 27 followers.  Her Tweets are about her work and actually started way back in 2008, but her last one was sent in May of 2019. 

It wouldn’t surprise me if her Pinterest is bereft of boards, but to my pleasant surprise, it’s not.  She’s organized her Created section differently so that I just see a big display or album of nicely photographed pieces of enameled jewelry, my kind of eye candy.  She has 1700 followers and 91,600 views per month!  If I switch to her Saved section, there are 198 pins saved on six boards.  And it turns out that that account is only one of Sandra’s Pinterest Accounts, Sandra McEwen Enamel Jewelry.  She also has one titled Sandra McEwen Cloisonne Jewelry with 1550 followers and around 100 Created pins. 

Ms. McEwan has a Vimeo channel for her enameling tutorial videos to which one can subscribe for $8.95 monthly.  They have been posted to Facebook 380 times and there are 1127 comments.  There are 2 days and 22 hours of videos spread over 100 episodes.  The channel has 364 followers.

Examining the videos shows that she uses Dropbox to store free templates and she has an Etsy store where she sells kits and supplies.  It is not referred to on her web page so you kind have to find her on Etsy on your own.  The Etsy store has 602 sales and has a 5-star rating with 106 reviews.  She sells her work and enamel supply kits that pair with some of her videos. 

Sandra’s on Facebook too but I had to search for her as there were no indications anywhere that she had a Facebook presence.  Since it is mostly personal, that makes sense.  But satisfied students and customers do post appreciation.    She has 1361 friends, 358 followers, and hasn’t posted since July.

4.  Sandra McEwan has a lot on her web page, Pinterest, and Vimeo.  Her participation in other social media is spotty, anemic at best.  Her web presence is set up to sell products and educational experiences.  She really doesn’t seem to do any marketing and there are definitely no tie-ins with marketing activity.  She has nothing like the integrated setup or system that Annie from Coppertide utilizes so well.  It seems like she periodically engages in social media and then goes a while not using it at all.

Debbie Sheezel

1.  www.debbiesheezel.com.au

2.  Debbie Sheezel has been an Australian enamellist for forty-five years. She was awarded the Saul Bell Design Award in 2019 along with the Australian Jewellery Designer Award and has won multiple other international awards and prizes.   She makes sophisticated unusual one-off pieces in the form of jewelry, boxes, bowls, and plates as well as a lot of commission work.  Debbie created a mural for the Brisbane International Airport entrance to the arrivals hall that is 54 feet long and nine feet tall; it took two years to create.

3.  The are icons on Debbie Sheezel’s web site for Facebook and Instagram.  She joined Facebook in 2010 but it doesn’t appear to be used for business.  The account has a lot of privacy options applied so some things can’t even be seen.  She doesn’t post much and her last posts are year old ones thanking people for sending birthday wishes. 

Her Instagram account is active and open for business.  She’s only made 183 posts yet she has almost 2300 followers.  That may be due to the beauty of the images posted, most of which are of her work.  She doesn’t post very often, the last two having been made at the beginning of August.

4.  Debbie Sheezel’s web site doesn’t have much to it; there’s a small gallery, an about section, and some blog entries in a poorly formatted blog.  There doesn’t appear to be any marketing or even a store.  Her Instagram account is like a larger gallery but isn’t oriented toward marketing either.  The woman must be so good and so famous that she doesn’t need to market.

Reflections

The companies that I researched ranged from a metal and enamel artist and teacher with a completely integrated presentation and marketing setup using social media to its best advantage to an international high-end enamel jewelry wholesaler and distributor who seem to use social media mostly to display their beautiful work.  There doesn’t seem to be a marketing campaign going on but since they retail to other businesses, B2B, they may use other advertising methods such as trade publications that I am unfamiliar with.  The other three enamellists’ businesses have the advantage that the artists who front them have varying degrees of fame in enamel circles. That gives them an edge when it comes to publicizing and marketing their work.  

However, enameling, the art of fusing glass to metal, is relatively invisible in the art world.  The only exhibit of enameling I’ve ever seen was at the Getty.  It seems to get lumped in with metalsmithing.  This means that the people who are interested in enameling and enamel jewelry will be specifically searching for it; it is unlikely people will stumble across enameling on social media by chance.

Week 2A: Communication Between Business  & Consumer

Background

    The advent and proliferation of social media has changed the nature of communication between businesses and consumers.  Social media has elevated public accountability to the point where it has changed everything. 

    In the beginning, people learned about businesses via word of mouth, typically from neighbors, friends, and relatives.  Then, as now, unhappy people had louder voices than happy ones.  But the average person probably didn’t even know 100 people to whom they could complain to. They used to say it took fifty positive reviews to erase one negative one.  These are insignificant numbers in today’s world. 

    For the most part, disgruntled consumers had no where to go but directly to representatives of the business . . . if they could find any.  The business may or may not have had a customer service department, but like Amazon currently, having such a department means nothing.  It’s what gets done for the consumer that counts.  It was usually nothing.  Sometimes a manufacturer would send you something free or you’d receive an insincere letter of apology.  It was the rare company that made you whole, so-to-speak. 

    As print media became more widespread and specialized, as trade groups and publications were set up, and as government watchdog agencies were created for various industries, clients and customers had far more recourse available to them.  But for the most part, it was still easy for the customer to get lost in the wash and for the general public to be unaware of any problems or issues with a particular company or business.

But bring in social media and it’s a whole different world. It has become absurdly easy to find out a whole lot of information about anything including specific businesses and individual people.  And each person has an impressively amplified voice, their own megaphone so-to-speak.  The average human now routinely communicates with 500 to 1000 people daily on social media.  Social media is a mecca for unhappy people; they finally have a voice . . . and boy, do they use it!  

A company that treats consumers poorly does so at their own peril.  Not only will it be communicated to the multitudes but it will happen instantaneously.  There’s no time to sweep it under the rug OR make amends.  The complaint is out there.  The immediacy of social media is powerful and people like to wield power.  Social media is the ideal marketing tool in so many ways.

          Savvy businesses have social media presence on multiple platforms and they keep close track of their interactions with customers, current and prospective.  They would also do well to keep up with complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and regulatory agencies relating to their field of endeavor.  Trade associations and organizations may also track complaints or even expose malodorous companies.

 A Review of Reviews

          In the last year, I’ve had to use the services of a mechanic several times.  For some things like replacing a battery, Costco or Walmart both have low cost batteries with free installation.  Smog testing facilities provide coupons all the time so it is a matter of who has the best deal at the time, all other things equal. In other cases, it might be a matter of who can get you in and out quickly, all other things being equal. Discount Tires is my vendor of choice for tires. But for problems requiring diagnoses and possibly expensive repairs, people often turn to Yelp or Google or other reviews to determine where to take their vehicle. 

          I looked at the reviews for two places that I considered for smogging my vehicle and two other mechanics that I used within the past year.  The potential smogging shops are both family-run garages on Tyler Street in Carlsbad and in fact reside side-by-side.  They’ve both been around for over 35 years.  

          The neighboring shops both have overall ratings on Yelp of 4.5 although strangely enough, Carlsbad Auto Service has over four times as many reviews.  They also responded to every single review, positive or negative, with unfailingly polite remarks.  A-1 Auto Service replied to some negative reviews offering free service.  Perhaps people are more likely to review a company when they see that the reviews garner replies.  On the other hand, until the consumer goes to a review site to leave a review, they won’t be aware of this unless they checked ratings before getting work done.

          Google started having reviews much later than Yelp but they both have more Google reviews than Yelp ones.  The Carlsbad shop rating was 4.7 while A-1 was rated 4.9 with only one negative review.  Once again, although both shops have been around the same length of time in the same area, Carlsbad Auto Service has almost three times as many reviews.  Like with Yelp, they very politely replied to every review.

          Golden Wrench Automotive in Vista has worked on my car a few times in the last couple of years.  Their Yelp rating is 4.5 for 137 reviews while their Google rating is 5.0 for 159 reviews.  There were responses to some of the Yelp reviews, more recent ones, although they were not always unfailingly polite like with Carlsbad Automotive Service.  However, there were no bad reviews on Google and every review garnered a thank you reply.  Some of the Yelp reviews were ten and fourteen years old so it may be that the management at Golden Wrench became savvier with how to utilize social media to their benefit over time.  My experience with rating systems is that no one ever gets a 5.0 unless there are only a few ratings, so I think this speaks well of Golden Wrench.

          Firestone Complete Auto Care in Carlsbad did not fare so well with reviews.  They only got a 2.5 Yelp rating with 157 reviews and a 3.3 Google rating with 150 reviews.  It was hit or miss as to whether they replied or not.  Someone going strictly by ratings would not go to this shop.

My Experience

I had my car smogged at Carlsbad Automotive Service because they had a good coupon and could see me right away.  Unfortunately, my car failed the smog test because of an idiosyncrasy related to the Engine Control Unit (ECU).  I had just gotten a new battery and when you do that, or even just disconnect your battery, the ECU clears the emission monitor data and with nothing there, the test fails.  I was forced to drive to San Clemente and back slowly in order to build up enough data to pass the test.  Then I had to pay for another test with no coupon being applied to the fee, adding insult to indignity. 

My review of this shop was only four stars because I blamed them for the initial test failure.  I got the impression from the mechanics in the shop that the battery disconnection issue was a commonly known problem with smog tests, so I thought that they should ask anyone about to get a smog test if they had disconnected their battery for any reason recently.  They discussed nothing with me before the test.  At other shops in the past, I was asked if I had driven the car at least twenty minutes before bringing it in for testing.

 Perhaps this was actually something that most drivers know about and I am just the last person on the planet to learn about this.  Either way, I thought that they should have demonstrated good customer service by at least applying my coupon to both smog tests.  Not doing so reeked of nickel and diming me at a time when I could ill afford paying twice.

The shop responded to my review defending themselves.  I was not mollified because my opinion stands that it was their fault this happened and their choice not to apply the coupon to my second test.   However,  I was impressed that they were paying attention, although not enough so that I would use their services again.  Part of the reason is because in the meantime, I was reacquainted with a really great garage in Vista, Golden Wrench Automotive.

          I had occasion to go to Golden Wrench this past May, although the situation that precipitated this visit actually began in August of 2020. I was about to start a new job and the training was in L.A.  I was driving up Monday morning and I realized Sunday afternoon that  I had two bad tires and it would not be good to drive far and fast on them.  Unfortunately, Discount Tire is not open on Sundays, so I went to Firestone because they were very close to my house. I can attest to that being a horrible reason to pick a place to work on your car.

It was a big mistake for two reasons.  One is that they were far more expensive.  The second reason did not become apparent until about eight months later.  My car started rattling loudly in the neighborhood of the front passenger side wheel.  Since Firestone had put the tires on the front of the car and since they are very close to my house, I figured I would go there and they could fix the problem.

That was a big fat NOT.  They wouldn’t even look at the car until I paid them $20 and this would have been the case had I come back with the problem two days after the tire installation.  They apparently do not consider themselves responsible for work done on your vehicle once you drive it off their lot.

I paid the $20 and left the car.  When I came back for the car later, they had this big quote for over $550 written up.  They said that I needed wheel bearings and all sorts of related labor.  I could not afford that so I left muttering something about seeing if I could borrow the money.  Strangely enough, the rattle was mostly diminished and disappeared some of the time on the way home.  This was most odd!

I didn’t know what to do and then a friend reminded me about Golden Wrench Automotive in Vista.  I couldn’t believe that I had forgotten about them. Golden Wrench is great.  They are completely honest, generous, and explain what they are going to do before they do it.  They describe the repairs thoroughly in plain English and in a non-condescending manner.  So many mechanics talk down to women or just try to oversell them.  Mike, the owner, also supports local kids’ sports.  They have a shuttle service too. 

I took the car in to them the next morning.  They looked over the front end and came across one little piece of metal that wasn’t properly attached.  They think that Firestone took the car apart to diagnose the problem and when they put it back together, they mostly tightened the metal piece which is why there was less noise.  Golden Wrench tightened it the rest of the way and gave me my car back without charging me a thing.  A far cry from what I experienced with Firestone.

A side note on Firestone . . . I should have reported them to the Bureau of Automotive Repair (BAR) immediately.  These are the people that regulate automobile repair establishments and they frown on mechanics making up unnecessary repairs and duping unwitting motorists.  They have the ability to fine and/or close repair shops that break the law.  I’m in the process of looking for my receipts from both places, one showing what Firestone said was wrong with my vehicle and one from Golden Wrench showing that there was nothing wrong with the parts Firestone singled out and that the problem was something completely different.  I just hope there isn’t a statue of limitations.  I was so mad back then that I didn’t write any reviews about Firestone because I would not have been civil.  I did write a good review for Golden Wrench, though.

My Reviewing Habits

          I am not as consistent as I should be about leaving reviews.  If there is some sort of reward involved, I’ll always leave a review.  If I’ve taken pictures of the food at a restaurant, I’ll leave a Google review.  I’ve written enough reviews with photos that I am a Local Guide, level 7.  I’ve done 142 Google reviews, 88 ratings, and posted 84 photos with almost 600,000 views of those photos. 

          I post positive and negative reviews.  Sometimes, like with Firestone, I put off posting a negative review until I am no longer furious.  But every once in a while, I don’t wait.  I can really let loose some scathing, derisive, sardonic remarks but I try not to unless it is really warranted.  These are often written directly to customer service departments or representatives or expressed verbally over the phone.  I could not find an example in my Google reviews.  All of them, even the one- and two-star ratings were polite.  For example, the text accompanying my one-star review of Little Caesar’s pizza said “Pizza tastes like cardboard with cheese on it.”  Direct, yet polite.

          Some of my reviews can be pretty long.  When I leave a one- or two-star review, I often go into great detail about whatever my issues were with the company or business.  Over the years, I have had very few replies made to any of my Google reviews.  Since I’m always logged into my Google account, it is easier to leave Google reviews than Yelp reviews so I haven’t done much on Yelp recently.  From what I can tell, I’ve been leaving Google reviews for six years.

          I decided to check out my stats on Yelp and signed in.  Apparently, I’ve posted seven reviews and four pictures.  So I wonder why it says that eight of my reviews were voted useful.  Only six were voted cool.  It says I have 59 new friend requests.  I will not be looking at them!  It looks like I’ve been yelping (their term, not mine) since January of 2015. Only one of my reviews is not positive.

          If I had a business which could be listed to receive reviews, I would follow the example set by Carlsbad Automotive Service.  I would thank everyone who was kind enough to leave me a good review.  I would try to get more info on negative reviews and see if there was a way to make the customer or client happy. 

          I suppose I am now inspired to leave some reviews for some businesses which I like but that I have neglected.  Believe it or not, when I started this blog, I was going to cover just a couple of garages and then a few restaurants since I’m a big foodie.  But the repair shops just sort of took over. 

I’ve been to a few restaurants lately as things have opened up some.  I think I will leave a good review for Texas de Brazil in the Carlsbad mall.  If you are in the mood for meat, they are probably the best place in town to go.  Brazilian-style wait staff wander around the dining room with skewers of all different sorts of meat and you can choose which ones you want and which you don’t.  They also have a small gourmet buffet from where you obtain your sides.  They are all delicious.  They have a rating of 4 on Yelp and 4.5 on Google, so I will leave my 5-star review on Yelp.  I’m guessing the lower ratings are partially due to the fact that it’s the most expensive restaurant in town after Paon in the Village.  Well, there could be other ones but no one has offered to take me so I wouldn’t know.

          I’ve also been to the Village Pie Shoppe and Bobby’s Hideaway Café at their new location.  They are both wildly popular but I wasn’t impressed by either.  But it’s hard to review a restaurant and complain that the food isn’t good enough when you’re only paying diner prices.  Maybe I won’t review them.  

So I thought I would review the condo place we moved into last fall and maybe some restaurants that I like better than the two I mentioned above.  But I already reviewed every single one.  Maybe I am more consistent than I thought.  I know what I’ll review . . .  one of my Meetup groups met at a new-to-me place yesterday.  It was fun so maybe I will give them a review.

 

Week 1B: Social Media Use Today

Social Media in General

          I see social media usage falling into three main categories: personal, business, and political.  Most people who use social media at least use it for personal reasons like keeping up with friends and family and staying connected to the world in general and possibly their neighborhood specifically.  Folks can belong to groups and pages that reflect their interests and hobbies.

          Almost every business on the planet has some social media presence, whether it be a Facebook page or group or just occasional random tweets.  Some have full web sites yet still participate in social media.  It is a good way to promote a brand, a product line, or individual products.  It can also be used to show what extracurricular activities a company is associated with like a local charity or nationwide cause. 

          One subset of personal and business use of social media is politics.  Politics is everywhere these days and everyone thinks they know how to run the world.  With the COVID-19 lockdowns, this usage expanded greatly.  It also appears that the number of trolls and cyberbullies increased exponentially.  It has become hard to express a political opinion without someone jumping down your throat.  I would say this is one of the most negative aspects of a medium made for communicating, that some people are out there to shut you down if you don’t agree with them.  It is really too bad because it has silenced many people with good opinions and ideas because they don’t care to suffer attacks, usually from ignorant people who don’t know what they are talking about.  But you can’t fix stupid. 

Social Media Platforms Geared Towards?

Social media platforms can be geared toward personal use, for business, or towards both.  Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, music streaming sites, gamer-oriented communities, and dating sites were all originally targeted at personal use.  But clever marketing types are always looking for new avenues of expression and promotion so many of these platforms have been bifurcated to handle both the personal and business.  Facebook and Instagram in particular are used by many businesses.  And there is advertising by businesses on all the personal sites.

LinkedIn and the multitude of job sites like Indeed, Glassdoor, etc. are used by those expanding their careers, looking for work or connections, and wanting to know the hiring trends of the next few years.  There are business-to-business (B2B) sites that do not have personal uses.  Messaging sites are used for both business and personal.  Even SMS texting on your phone which was once used solely to communicate among friends and family has now been coopted by businesses trying to shove things down your throat.

How I Use Social Media Now

I'm a Lead on Nextdoor, a Group Admin of a political Facebook group, and a negligent editor of two Facebook pages.  I have a Twitter account that I rarely read but I have Facebook set up to send every post I make to Twitter. I have an Instagram account to keep up with my nieces and nephews and a Pinterest account to collect art and interior design pieces I find.  

I use LinkedIn for career-related things and I used to check in on Foursquare all the time.  I’m in a bunch of Meetup groups. Sometimes I look at YouTube videos, but mostly for school.  I stream music on Amazon Music, Pandora, XM/Sirius, YouTube Music, and Spotify . . . aren't student rates great! 

I'm on Steam, Twitch, Slack, Discord, reddit, Behance, and some that I do not recall at the moment but I don't use them much.  You can see that if I fully participated on all those platforms, I would have time for nothing else! 

Blogs I Commented On

         I’m in Group 3, the green group.  I made comments on the first blog posts of all the members of my group except one where I couldn't figure out how.  I’m trying to make up for being late by being thorough 😊

Group 3

• Jessica Brown

• Yoshinori Enomoto

• Sophia Hecker
• Sarah Marcotte (who wrote the best blog I have ever read)
• Kate Strong
• Ivan Vincent (couldn't figure out how to comment, so I will do it here)

My first thought on encountering your blog was that you have a murder mystery theme going and there’s a body at the bottom of that black lake.  Your photography is stunning.  Normally B/W doesn’t do much for me but I really like your work (the link doesn’t work but cutting and pasting it did). 

Week 1A: My Blog Theme 

         Ah, the genesis of a new blog . . . just what the world needs, another blog, right? So I need to start and populate a blog for my new Social Media for Business class. As I sit here pondering what it should be about other than my mental meanderings, my housemate’s guide dog is sitting on my feet keeping them warm.  He doesn’t realize we are about to embark on a new adventure . . . he’d just as soon sleep..

           I am trying to get two independent businesses going, an Interior Design business and the business of selling my artwork.  I also write and do other side gigs on occasion so I am putting everything I do under the umbrella of Jan’s Jems.  After all, just about anything special can be considered a jem!

           Before selecting a theme, I had to get rid of those pesky notifications . . .  they would not go away at first.  None of the blog themes available really spoke to me so I realized I would have to pick one and customize it.  I went back and forth looking at them all for a while before deciding to just tweak the Settings and Layout and see where that took me.

           The Layout section looked pretty intimidating since I don’t know what exactly I want in my blog.  So I decided to take a look at the Theme Designer mentioned at the top of the page.  But first, coffee and a chocolate snack.  The fuel of life!

           The Theme Designer starts out with the default theme that is assigned if you don’t pick one.  So I’m going to back out of it and look at Settings before picking a default theme to start with.  What I found is that I am not sure what the most intriguing named settings do, so I may be trying to rush ahead of the game.  I’m going to go back and pick a theme to tweak.

           The only color scheme I like is the Contempo Aqua theme, but I gather colors can be changed.  It is hard to objectively evaluate themes though while ignoring color.  The Tasty Treats theme might be good as there are a bunch of visible boxes which could be boxes with things to sell.  But that theme doesn’t have the sidebar with the author info.  I suppose that could be tweaked in too but I don’t know for sure . . . yet.. 

           The Dynamic Views Snapshot theme sounds exciting and looks like multiple items are listed that can be selected.  The background of the Awesome Inc. Artsy blog is really attractive and reminds me of the circular rug under my dining table which is a watercolor motif.

I wonder if I can change the general colors in the background.  Even more likely and easier to do is to find a watercolor-type image that I like and use that for background.  I even have some already selected that I used in sample web pages last semester when I took the Web Design class. 

I’m going to start out with the Dynamic Views Snapshot theme and go from there.  My favorite colors are aqua and purple, as one can see in the rug.  I selected a shade of aqua for the theme color.  And I am going to use a background image with both colors, a peaceful fade of colors.

Except that I cannot figure out how to get this to appear as anything other than a teeny tiny little box image

 or a repeated totally stretched and distorted image.  

I don’t want to revert to using CSS this early in the process but I don’t know how to get this to look the way I want.  Time to contact the instructor and say “What gives?”

          Unfortunately, it looks like I can’t do what I want without resorting to using CSS.  Since I am not all that good with CSS and shoehorning it into this blog application might be a complicated mess,  I am going to go back to the Awesome theme with the Artsy background.  I will try once to use my background but if it doesn’t work right away, I will just stick with the theme and tweak it if I can do it without ruining it.

Well, none of the changes that I make stick.  I guess it is time to watch the instructor’s video again.  I haven’t a clue what I am doing. 

Upon a second listen, I realized that the instructor isn’t aware that you have to use a gmail account to set up a blog in that space.  I didn’t want to use my gmail account for that . . . it already has a dedicated important purpose . . . all my restaurant and birthday and reward programs use that account.  But it wouldn’t let me even get into their system without a gmail account, no Yahoo allowed here.  So I made yet another email account . . . this is why people run around with eight email accounts . . . inflexibility and bad software (probably purposefully bad, too). 

I also have a feeling that when the instructor asked if I’d watched the video, the one I just rewatched was not the one she was referring to.  So I’m returning to Canvas to see if I can find the correct video.  Maybe that is where I went wrong.  Maybe I have been flailing around like a lost octopus because I didn’t go far enough into Canvas and just dived right in blind.  Oh well, they say it is good to experiment.

Eureka moment!!!  The save button!  The HIDDEN save button!  Never in a million years would I have found something that small and faint and yes, hidden, on my own!  Hell, even the instructor had to search around for almost seven minutes to find it.  How dare they!?!  This software is not ready for prime time by any means.  And I thought it was all me.  Shame on Google for perpetrating yet another complex procedure that does not have to be so.  Are you taking lessons from Microsoft or what?

Now that I have a better understanding of how the themes translate into a blog and know how to save changes that I make, I am going to start off with the Ethereal theme with the Humming Birds (misspelled . . . come on Google, you can do better) Two Tone option.  Maybe I will just pick my two favorite colors here and switch to the Blossom option and that will give me a background that I like. 

So I really would prefer the Blossoms option but I wanted two tones so I selected the one I did. Now, I do not see a way to change the background to Blossoms.  I will play around with this a little more but I do not see a way to change the two color tones either.  I am less than unimpressed with this piece of . . . . software! 

I am now in the Advanced part where there is no explanation for what exactly each possible setting is for.  I suppose they want us in there working with this gawdawful piece of . . . . software for hours on ending making tweaks and seeing what happens.  That is no way to set up anything efficiently.  I guess Google has become such a big behemoth that they no longer can care about being efficient or fostering inefficiency among the masses. What the hell are tabs in the context of a blog???  Egads, what do I have to do to get rid of this horrible orange?  All I can say good about this process is that even though I don’t like how it looks at all, the changes I made stuck this time because I knew about the hidden save button.

So let’s try that theme with the Blossoms option.  I never did figure out how to set up the two tones in the background of that other option . . . I friggin’ give up because I have spent far too much time on this as it is.  I am officially annoyed!

And I STILL can’t get the thing to use my background image in anything approaching an attractive appearance.  I’ll tell ya, this software is crap, plain and simple.  No matter what the little window in the upper left displays, my background image is not properly applied.  They must be lying about the appropriate resolution image to use.

If you look in that little window and then take a look at what actually gets displayed, you can see there is a major disconnect.  Not ready for prime time!  Not even close.  I am just gonna have to use one of their stinkin’ images.

          There!  Take That!  I’ve picked a theme I don’t really like but at least it is using my favorite colors, teal and violet and shades thereof.  Now wasn’t that just a special little adventure .. . . NOT!

          OMG!  I hit the little save icon but IT DIDN’T STICK!  I am ready to kill someone now.  If a Google representative materialized in front of me right now . . . . ugh! &%*#&$%&@%#*@#$*&%@#$&*#*%#$  I have had it with this.  I am done.  We will just use whatever ugly friggin’ theme it has and get on with it.  I think it might be time to contact my friend who has a very popular blog and see what software she uses.  I cannot continue to interact with this piece of garbage.

          Well, I’ll be DAMNED!!! My image is up and looking good.  THEIR PREVIEW DOESN’T WORK!!!!!  I have been manipulating right and left up and down for hours only to learn that the results I thought I was tweaking had no relation whatsoever to what showed up on the blog itself!!!  That means . . . . well, this is a family space so I won’t say what it really means.  Edited for decency, all I will say is that Google has no right to put this piece of trash accessible to the public.  Efficiency? HA!  Working with blogger has been the opposite of efficiency . . . and I bet millions of people have toiled hours not getting where they wanted to go.