Is that the light at the end of the tunnel I see?

Maybe there is a faint glimmer. There are 4 weeks left. One of those is the glorious holiday in the United States that we call Thanksgiving. Online school gives no quarter for Thanksgiving. What they don’t know is I’m the one that cooks it for my family. It’s a long and exhaustive process. Am I supposed to tell them I have sprint planning and proofs to do and that’s why they have no rolls this year? No pie? No cheese potatoes?

I don’t know how it is going to work out this week but as with every weekend, I’m amazed I’m still here, that I am still passing, that I have survived another week of online college.

As this semester comes to a blessed end I have to share the most important thing that I’ve learned. It’s not about analytics or strategy or Google and Facebook Ads.

It’s about people.

It’s about these four groups that have been thrust upon me in my four classes. I have noticed a pattern in my frustration. Whenever I begin to get really frustrated with someone that hasn’t been responding to my frantic texts, emails, threads, and I am ready to call them lazy to my family and curse the ground they walk on, they respond.

And then I learn something about them. And then I feel like a complete jerk for not practicing compassion and patience. I am so anxious to get these assignments done I want everyone to plunge ahead with me.

But sometimes there’s people like Margaret, from Nigeria. Her time zone is 7 hours ahead of mine. She doesn’t own her own phone and can only communicate on her husband’s. She only has time to work on her assignments from 11pm to 3am in her nighttime because she has kids and they need her. Margaret is trying to better her circumstance and I sit over here with my laptop and phone and supportive family and get all judgey when I don’t know Margaret.

Knowing someone, even the littlest bits, helps develop compassion and empathy. It helps me. I have a picture of Margaret in my head now and I’m rooting for her and all the Margarets out there. If my patience and understanding will aid her just a little bit, it warms my judgey heart.

I think that’s my favorite take-away from this semester and I’m hoping to carry it with me as my college experience continues.

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Group Work…am I right?

I currently have four classes and four sets of groups right now. In one class I have been working with the same group for 7 weeks now. We started off a little rocky, one student ended up dropping the class after a bit of a row. It was quite dramatic. We’ve found our rhythm though and have had as much fun as we can doing assignments that are completely new to us.

Two of the groups are very new, as in starting this week we have first assignments. One of the two groups has come together quickly. The other one I have real concerns.

And then my fourth group has changed 3 times, and each time it consists of me and another girl that shares my name, and then other people that filter in and out. Erin and I have gotten the job done every time so we’re alright.

I guess what I’ve learned about groups, especially in an online setting such as this is that I don’t know them. I have very little time to get to know them, and sometimes they don’t want to share, which is their right. Getting to know them has advantages, it helps me empathize with them. I might gain a little insight to what their life looks like on the other side of the computer. I might understand why they’re not communicating quickly.

Even if I don’t really get to know them I try to give them a persona, a life, a family, a job, problems. It helps me speak to them as real people, with kindness and patience. If all we see are typed words it gets very easy to be short and snippy. Texting is an art form. How does one communicate the feeling of their message without the inflection of the spoken word? And with brevity? It can be very tricky.

I don’t like group work any more now than I did before classes began, my worry is personified by thoughts of letting the group down instead of just myself on an individual assignment. I also dislike being on someone else’s timeline. I do like being able to distribute the workload.

I’m just hoping I can keep these last five weeks and four groups straight.

Midterms and midterms…

somehow this year my midterms coincided with midterm elections. It’s been a week.

This week I had to create an infographic on the how-tos of Google Ads. Friends, it still makes no sense to me. On paper it looks great, one merely creates a campaign and then two ad-sets in that campaign and then keywords, and one must only use 7-10 keywords and only 2-3 ad-sets but when you pull up Google Ads I see nowhere to input these things, and quite frankly I’m too scared to go back and examine it.

I will share my infographic here with you because I happen to love making infographics, and if my job for the rest of eternity was to create them I would live a blissful life.

Today I’m putting together a PowerPoint for my Digital Marketing Strategy class and it could take all day. It covers all parts of strategy, a world once again I am not sure I belong in, but I will give it the “college try.”

As for Mid Terms in the United States of America, they were multi-layered. I am grateful for a country with regular elections but they don’t bring out the best of us. Politics are really a strategy of their own though, and we have studied marketing techniques used by different campaigns, now that is pretty fascinating.

It starts with such hope and the Golden Circle…

every Monday does.

Let me paint a picture for you.

On Monday I read through each of my four classes lists of assignments to get a mental picture of what my week will look like. Some classes have assignments due throughout the week, some classes have all assignments due by Saturday at midnight.

I try to be completely finished with all of my assignments by Friday but sometimes they bleed into Saturday. I am grateful for that sixth day. Some weeks are so reading intensive. Because I have four classes on different aspects of digital marketing the information often bleeds into each class.

The pro of this is I get to learn and understand in a little more detail different aspects like key performance indicators and customer personas. The con is that sometimes information repeats, but I really do need to comb through each article to make sure I’m not missing anything.

It’s a strange thing to attend school in my mid-forties with a family depending on me, when last I went I was 21 and fancy free. I had no “why” back then.

I learned about the Golden Circle this semester, a concept created by Simon Sinek. He decided that the reason certain companies do so well is they are driven by a why, and not a what.

We can certainly apply this to ourselves. When I was in my twenties I had a fantastic corporate job that I landed because I spot a little French. Side note: French Canadian is very different than France’s French. Pardon Moi. S’il vous plait.

My “why” for going to school was just to complete it because it sounded like a good idea. I actually really love to learn. My job was full time, my fun was certainly full time. School was part time and I failed pretty miserably except for my English classes thank you very much. So it wasn’t really a “why,” but more of a “what,” I wanted a degree just because.

Life has taught me grit.

I also have my family’s eyes upon me.

I have been waiting throughout my children’s young lives to be able to contribute monetarily to our family needs. We have sacrificed much being a one income family but we have also thrived.

I have determination right now that really has to see me through when times get tough. I realize this is a long game.

So every Monday I open my assignments for each class, I read material, I drive the kids to their various activities, I bribe one to make dinner, and I delve into the unknown again and again. It’s a bit like Groundhog’s Day, the 1993 film starring Bill Murray in which he relives the same day over and over again.

My goal every week is to remain positive, to avoid the fetal position crying jags, to have perspective about these blips in my whole school experience. Some assignments are going to be a lot of fun, some will be mundane, and some will be downright pits of hell but I will try equally in all of them.

You can be sure I will keep posting about what each day holds.

All the Tears I’ve Cried…

Friends, this isn’t a world I want to live in. I am not now, nor have I ever been a numbers gal. I also don’t enjoy games of strategy.

What I’m saying is digital analysis, and digital strategy are Right Out.

Where can I fit into this world and is there a place for me?

I think there is, and I think it has more to do with content.

Let me back up…I hit a low point today in the middle of my “keyword search.” Do you understand how many keyword search engines there are out there? I used six today. I have six new passwords and six new usernames, only to discover each one would only give me a small amount of data to complete my assignment. My assignment seemed very simple, my friends…research keywords to use for our client and give them a rating based on search volume, SEO difficulty, CPC, and potential. I didn’t think it would take me long at all. But each program would give me one or two of items off that list, and Google wouldn’t even rank some of the words that other sites did. It was so exhausting. I only have a few cells of my Excel sheet filled in after hours of research.

I pulled up my boot straps and moved on to the next assignment to see if I could at least get that one done. It was building a Google ad based on keywords.

I won’t cover in this post why I am now terrified of Google Ads but I will say it’s based on my experience in this same class on Facebook Ads. I will also say that I have found myself, no exaggeration, curled up on the floor in fetal position during my Facebook Ads weeks, (of which we spent three) because I could not get the pixel to work.

If you have been reading with me since day one you will recall I mentioned online school has no teachers to raise our hands to, no one to come help when we’re stuck. We have only other students in the class, who so far seem as clueless as me, this is 100 level after all, YouTube, which is really hard to comb through for specific questions, believe me I have TRIED, and email to talk to our professors, but by the time they get back to us, the assignment is due.

They all have real jobs. And they refer to their other jobs as Real Jobs because being an online professor is not a lot of work. I picture them sitting at their desk in their free time grading away willy-nilly but they do not have to create the content of the class. They do not have to lecture. They simply say here is what you will be doing this week.

Oi, I digress. Basically ad engines also terrify me and there is no one to help when I hit a bump.

You know what doesn’t terrify me?

Blogging, mockups, A/V Scripts, Writing. I love to write. Hence this blog and your exposure to my daily mental strain.

I had one moment today when I started to put together a “quick data cycle” for my analysis class in which I had to review Pivot Tables and found a nice bloke to explain them to me via YouTube in a three part series and did I want to add the add-on he created called Pivot Pal? Again, a “quick data cycle” with insights, summaries and recommendations took me five hours.

I realize five hours is more than a moment but what I was trying to say is that after keyword searches and Google Ads and data cycles I wondered, “what the hell am I doing? This isn’t me, I’m the one with her head buried in books and join NaNoWriMo every year only to fail but I have a million stories I want to write and I think I can mess around with Strategy and Analysis of any type of numbers?

No.

And I found myself crying yet again today. Not to the extreme of the Facebook Ads incident of 2022, but enough for my dog to lick those salty rivulets off of my face.

So what do I do?

I had a moment where I considered quitting. It was such a short moment. Fleeting, really. I can’t quit when it gets hard. I am middle-aged you see, and we have perspective. We also have kids. Most of them grownish enough to know that Mom has started school for the first time in 20 years and she quit when it got hard.

Do you see?

Do you understand?

Plus I am more than halfway. I will crawl my way to this finish line. I will pass these three wretched classes and the one that I actually enjoy. I’ll pass that one too. Then I will regroup and move on to next semester and hope the cards fall in more varied areas besides the digital marketing world.

Amen.

The Keyword Conundrum

So, I am in the midst of six articles and four videos on keywords…Keyword Research: A Beginner’s Guide, Keyword Planner, How to find the Right Keywords…there are so many rules. You don’t want an over-competitive word because it is too vague (my inference, not a direct quote) but a low-volume word might bring zero people to your site. Again I was linked to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, the dude that one professor loves, but everyone seems to use, and he is NOT 100 level friendly, my friends. What is back-linking? We haven’t covered this yet. I’m sure some research will answer that but I am elbow deep in Google Ads this week and I have to say…I am terrified. My nephew the Digital Marketer insists that Google Ads is cleaner than Facebook Ads which has left a scare on my heart. I have anxiety though. Looking through the materials I see that the layout is very similar to Facebook Ads. Tonight I have to come up with a list of keywords for my client. Maybe that’s what’s triggering.

I emailed my client about how are progress is coming as she kindly lets us experiment with her marketing needs. I didn’t hear anything back from her. She is really good about reading email.

Can I read in to the silence? I try not too, but there is that little niggle in the back of my mind that she has regrets.

I also remind myself that we are newbs. I warned her we are newbs. We have only been doing this for 8 weeks so if she is displeased that is on her.

Back to keywords, “there but for the grace of God go I.”

Content Marketing…teach it to me like I’m learning the language…

Today was a really good example of nerdsplaining…if you are wondering what nerdsplaining means, it’s speaking to someone as if they are already familiar with the jargon related to your field of expertise.

My online professor posted a list of YouTube videos and digital marketing articles that were supposedly helpful to us, and then we were to answer a list of follow-up questions to determine our comprehension.

Enter a video which will not be named here from a content creator in the marketing world that my professor reveres. The title was roughly something like What is Content Marketing.

“Great,” I thought, “That’s the first question on the list. I am going to watch this video and have a clear picture of what content marketing is.”

That is not what happened. I watched the video, and never once did the creator tell me what content marketing was. I tried to infer from context clues. I knew that it involved blogging and videos. The creator mentioned he made 12 videos a month and only 4 blog posts a month. Luckily YouTube was here for me today. Another creator who will not be named, but who I now will add to my list as “extremely helpful” mentioned he had watched ALL the videos on content marketing and found none of them helpful.

“Wow,” me thought, “this guy is really dedicated. He took the time to watch ALL the videos on content marketing for me and others like me.”

His video started off with a story to help create a clear picture of what content marketing is and then shared a dictionary worthy explanation.

Interestingly enough, all of my studies yesterday were on the science of storytelling, and how it can actually relax and focus us so that we retain information better.

In conclusion my friends, I know have a perfectly clear picture of what content marketing is, so never fear.

It was time…

Time is a hot commodity for everyone. When my kids were young, very little time was my own.

Children grow. It’s a strange phenomenon. One day I’m drowning in diapers and one is on my hip whilst another is on my leg and then the next they are asking for car keys and Taylor Swift tickets. It’s quite jarring. And expensive. So in the mean time while my brain is no longer trying to plan the next day’s homeschool lesson or how to help Suzy toilet train, I signed up for classes.

Online classes.

The last time I took classes of any sort it was the year 1999 and we were all terrified of Y2K and computers were rarely used in classes.

I can’t raise my hand when I have a question. There is this thing called Canvas that is universally used for, well, Universities and the email is not intuitive.

In my classes, they have lists of blogs and YouTube videos that are teaching us. Not teachers. The teacher is mainly facilitating. By facilitating I mean putting us in these horrible things called “groups” wherein we are forced to reach out to each other using apps because we are a global school and must figure out some time within all the time zones where we can plan time do group projects. It’s absolutely terrifying.

I hope my time is being well spent. I’m 8 weeks in right now and every day brings a new experience, some are fun, most are painful.

What I learned thus far…

There is no tutor for Facebook Ads, or Google Data Studio.

YouTube for such programming assumes I know more than I do. Teach this to me like I am a 5 year old.

Every time I am introduced to a new program that should make my life better as a marketer I realize how far I have to go. Photoshop is also not intuitive.

But I’m also learning about myself.

I am learning to manage time in a different way. To delegate jobs I thought no one in the house could do but me. I am learning to teach myself when all these years I have spent teaching children of all sorts.

I’m still not sure I am exactly where I’m supposed to be because this is all so foreign to me, but it was definitely time.