Author: Alexandra Lu

Note: These two tweets (fictionally created for a communication writing class) aim to promote the #BeBoldbebald campaign. The first tweet targets on college students and the second tweet mainly pitches to sport fans (especially NFL Patriots fan) to generate buzz and user engagement.

Note: This is a beginner guide I wrote for PR students to get familar with the Google Analytics software, a free web analytics service that is heavily applied by many brands in the digital economy.

• Google Analytics is a free web analytics service which can measure and track the return on investment and performance of your advertisements, websites, videos, social networking sites, and applications. Google Analytics provides public relation practitioners information on website performance, and if the performance leads to user satisfaction and desired business actions.
• Google Analytics helps you better understand your audiences through the audience report. The user analysis section on the audience report enables you to see their digital profiles based on demographics, interests, geography, and technological devices they use, etc. It provides insight on how to reach the “right audience” and guide your marketing, community and content strategy.
• Through acquisition report, Google Analytics helps you find out which traffic sources are essential to your site, and learn about which sites refer traffic so that you can develop a better SEO strategy, build possible partnerships and allocate advertising costs accordingly.
• By clicking “behavior flow” on Google Analytics, you will be able to track audience’ path and interaction on specific pages, including what visitors are interested in your site, and where do they enter and exit the site (exit page report.)
• Traffic is important, but conversion is more important. Google Analytics measures your success through different goals of conversion to see if your website is creating value for your business. You can decide what your goals are depending on the nature of your business. You can also choose a goal from the goal template or even create your own custom goal. For example, you can select a goal of destination (a specific location goal) or duration (how long they have stayed.)
• You can link your “Google Ads” account with your Google Analytics account to evaluate your Google Ads performance. Google Analytics can support your “Google Ads” conversion tracking.
• Google Webmaster, which you can find on the Google Analytics site, is an excellent tool for you to track your site’s search performance, get insight on related keywords, and learn to create high-quality and search-optimized sites.
• Google is not just about desktops, you can now seek for mobile performance report to see if your site is optimized for mobile devices and if there are rooms for improvement to attract mobile users.
• For most of the Google Analytics tabs, the metrics, dimensions, and configuration sides are all customizable. You can create custom dashboards, a customizable set of data in your account, or even custom segments for advanced segmentation and interpretation of data. Just play with it!
• Real-time is the key to success in public relations because you have access to what’s going on in the world and take advantage of the contextual geniuses as fast as possible. The Real-Time report on Google Analytics allows you to see displays of six different reports including Overview, Locations, Traffic Sources, Content (or Screens, for Mobile App properties), Events, and Conversions. You can click any sections of these reports to apply a real-time segment. By doing this, you can see the number of active users on your website and hits refreshed every 60 seconds!

Note: This is a beginner guide I wrote for PR students for them to get familar with the Google Ads software, which now becomes essential to integrated marketing and communication strategies.

Google Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords, is an online advertising platform launched and developed by Google. It offers business of all kinds of search ads by generating paid content for companies to reach specific audiences on a flexible budget. While the variety of features might seem complicated, it is actually easy-to-use and powerful! Here are 10 critical things PR students must know about Google Ads:

1. Google Ads is an online advertising platform that appears on the top or bottom of the Google search results page with an ad label rather than an organic result.
2. Google Ads doesn’t require a fixed budget, but typically it recommends advertisers have an average budget of $5 to $50 per day so that ads have more opportunities to show to potential customers.
3. Google Ads depend on cost-per-click (CPC) bidding, you’re charged only when someone is interested enough to click your ad and go to your website. You tell Google Ads the most you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad (called the maximum cost-per-click bid). Of course, you could be charged less.
4. Create a campaign is easy: you need a Google Ads account with an active campaign.

• Step 1: go to the tab and click search network as your campaign type.
• Step 2: give your search ad campaign a goal, such as “website traffic.”
• Step 3: give your campaign a name since you might have multiple campaigns.
• Step 4: you can show your ads to people interested in your products and services as they browse sites on the search or display network.
• Step 5: you can select locations to target, and even narrow in regions.
• Step 6: you can pick a language.
• Step 7: you can select your bid strategy from maximizing clicks to enhancing CPC. When you set your bid, you’re telling Google Ads the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad.
• Step 8: you can enter an average daily budget.
• Step 9: save your campaign!

5. A campaign is a collection of ad groups, which are a set of keywords and ads, and you need to pick the right keywords that match searches relevant to your business.
6. It’s best to write more than 3 ads per ad group. Different ads work with different target audiences. The more ad groups you write (by the premise of high quality, the more likely you can reach to the right audience.
7. When writing headlines and description, it’s best to show value to someone by thinking about their needs and benefits. What catches their eyes? What makes them want to click your website or buy your product? However, don’t overwhelm your audiences and try to convey one simple message at one time!
8. Track your goals through conversion tracking, which helps you find your valuable clicks to make the most out of your ad budget.
   • Step 1: create a conversion action in Google Ads.
   • Step 2: add the global site gad and event snippet on your Ads, which tell Google Ads when someone lands on your page (such as a thank-you page when confirming with a purchase.)
9. Review your performance while adjusting different metrics according to your needs, such as clicks. You can also see your metrics in a chart to track the change visually.
10. Stay engaged. Invest not just money but time on your campaign(s). Check your campaign(s) at least once a week and adjust your campaign(s) based on performance and recommendations.