Week 6 Task: Design a marketing strategy for your personal website

I have had my own website set up since November 2011 under the domain name http://nimahedayati.com. The site has evolved from being a simple portal to share my music to a full online portfolio showcasing all my multimedia work. The website was most recently updated earlier this month in preparation for the hand in of my Context 2 portfolio assignment.

My website currently serves the purpose of sharing my artwork and selling myself as a multimedia practitioner; this is to prepare me for placements and eventually full time employment after completing my degree.

Since the website launched I have thought of ways to promote it; this includes linking it from other existing social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Reverbnation. I have also made sure that my page titles include my name and had a simple domain name which helps bring my site to the top of the list when searching my name in Google. Today I have set up an account with Google Analytics and copied a bit of javascript onto each of my website pages to allow Google to track the number of visits I get and the demographic of my visitors. Here is the overview page on my analytics account:

At the moment the stats all say zero visits as I have just set up the tracker. I will visit this again every few weeks and hopefully see detailed reports of visits made to my website.

As well as promoting my website I am thinking of ways of making my name well known online as this will generate more Google searches and ultimately more visits to my website. One way I am doing this is through a new volunteer journalism job I have just started. I have started writing album reviews for a website called Metal Shock Finland which primarily reviews albums for worldwide metal bands. My first review has been published and can found at this location:

http://metalshockfinland.com/2012/11/21/review-hologram-earth-ep-2012/

The good thing about this job is that it gives me an opportunity to network and build friendships with musicians and Metal Shock staff worldwide which in the long term will help me build a reputation in media and hopefully find clients for web design work.

At this moment I believe my unique selling point is my dedication to promotion of music through blogs and effective web design. My target audience is anyone who shares my interest in music and wants to promote their work online; in the future I hope to expand my audience to all business sectors.

I expect my website and overall marketing strategy to evolve and improve as my skills improve in web design and journalism.