For this semester in Social Media Marketing, we used many different types of social media that could be used to help businesses. Some of them I thought were more useful than others, but all of the media used would be significant to any business.
The first form of media we used was blogging. We created a blog about our business and would create new posts once a week with information about our business. Any information you want your customers to know about your business or fun articles that pertain to you business, blogging is a great way to get information out about a business or keep your customers entertained. I thought the blogging experience was great, sometimes I thought it was hard to think of things to write about that people would care about, but once you would get on a path, it was fun to write stories and information about my business. This platform could be used for almost any type of business. Say for example, a coffee shop, the coffee shop could blog about coffee recipes or talk about new flavors of coffee coming for the holiday season. Blogging is a great form of communication to have to reach your customers and new potential customers.
We also used Twitter as a part of our company media. With Twitter, we started out sending three tweets a day, which is the recommended amount of tweets a company should send out. The tweets were articles that related to our businesses or projects or other information. I thought this form of media was great! Twitter is such a popular social media site, so it would be great of a business to get involved with Twitter. I thought it was difficult to think of tweets to send out three times a day. I thought I got really repetitive sending out DIY projects my followers could do, but it is a great way to connect with your audience and get them involved in your business. A business would benefit greatly from using this media. Say you were the owner of a clothing store, you could send out tweets telling your followers about the latest styles you just got in, tweet pictures of the merchandise or ask your followers what they would like to see in the store.
Facebook is a great form of social media that is easy to use and easy to get connected with your consumers. With Facebook, we would make 3-5 posts a week about promotions a business is having or posts that can get the customers and the business interacting. The posts could be about anything that would be of interest to the people that “like” your business. I enjoyed the Facebook experience. It is easy to use and a great way to interact with you customers. I think any media that allows a business to interact with their customers is so important to a business. For me, Facebook was my favorite platform that we used. I found it the easiest to use and I enjoy the interacting aspect of it. It’s easy to find things to post on the page and allows for some fun reads that will entertain the businesses customers. A real-life scenario would be a business like a pet shop. The pet shop could post facts about pets, pictures of new arrivals in the pet shop, they could post something along the lines of, “Anyone have any questions about their pet we could try and answer?” It’s just a great way to create a community with people from all over. When posting in Facebook I had 9 engaging posts, 15 entertaining, and 7 informing posts.
Another form of media we used was HootSuite. Hootsuite is a way to manage all of your social media accounts and schedule posts or tweets that will post right to your social media website. With Hootsuite, we scheduled our Facebook posts and our Twitter tweets so they will go out during the scheduled time of day. It was an easy way to manage your accounts and make sure you are sending out the recommend amount of tweets and posts. I enjoyed using Hootsuite as a part of this class. It just made posting and tweeting things so much easier and made my accounts easy to manage. Any business could benefit from using this platform. It makes it easy to manage your accounts and see what posts you have going out on what days. The pet shop could schedule their Facebook posts for the week and not have to worry about making sure they could 3-5 times every week.
Pinterest was another form of media we used. With this media we would make 3-4 pins every week and pin them to boards I created with different categories. The experience with using Pinterest was good; I love Pinterest and could sit on it for hours every day. I think it’s an okay form of marketing, I could see how it would benefit like clothing companies or a business that sell fashion items. A real-life scenario would be a business that sells clothing. They could make boards on their Pinterest account and pin items in their store and have the pictures linked with their business website. It would allow the customer to see the item on Pinterest then direct them to the place where they can purchase the item.
Another platform we used was niche sites. These niche sites were communities that brought people with common interests together. The experience was pretty cool, I didn’t find this form that interesting or helpful for a business like I did other marketing medias, but it’s good to know about these sites. When we used this platform, we had to find 2-3 niche sites that were relatable to our business that we created. I found it hard to find DIY sites, but it the ones I did find were pretty useful and relevant to my business. A business could use these niche sites to bring together the people interested in their business. It will allow for people with the same interests network together.
Another thing we covered this semester was Podcasts. With podcasts we had to make a 3 minute cast that had an introduction, a message, closing remarks and a tagline. We had to educate our listeners about the business we created and inform them about something. My podcast contained music and a demonstration on a DIY body scrub. My experience with the podcast was positive, I thought this was a fun way to educate listeners on my business and get them to experiment with their own DIY projects. Podcasts for a real-life scenario would be great to inform and let people know what the business is about. Let them hear you and connect with you on a different level. A business such a DIY business could use podcasts to demonstrate different projects and inform people about new ways to organize their lives with cheap and easy DIY projects. Podcasts, I think are a different way to market that engages the customer in something other than always reading about a business.
Vines and Videos was another platform we used. For this platform we announced a contest that our business was holding for our customers. We made three vine videos that were six seconds long. The first one announced the contest and how to enter. The second video was a reminder about the contest and the third video announced the winner. The experience with Vine and the other videos was good. I like this media because again it is a different way to engage the customers with something else besides reading. It allows for the customer to see someone and put a face to all the other medias; it allows them to see who is writing the blogs, the posts and the tweets. This platform could be used for a real-life scenario just like we used it. A business could announce a contest they are holding and get people to sign up for it. These videos will grab the attention of people because of how they are used. People are more likely to stop and listen to a video versus reading about it online, in my opinion. Announcing contests through videos and vine is a fun interactive way to get peoples’ attention and get them to sign up for your contest. Plus when you announce the winner over video it will be fun for the winner to hear their name.
Rating and review sites are platforms we used in class as well. In class we had to make up a scenario where we had a mad customer and they posted a situation where they were unhappy with our business. They made a post to our business’s Facebook page and we as business owners had to handle the situation. This allowed us to see how negative attention can affect our business if the situation is not handled properly. This experience was a good one to have. It allowed us to see just how reviews can be seen by everyone and hurt the business if not handled in a professional manner. It was fun to respond back to the review and try to sound professional and understanding of their situation. This platform can benefit any real-life scenario. This platform lets a business know how their business is doing in the eyes’ of the customers. It allows business to see what they are doing well and what they need to work on. Say a business had a negative review about a product they are selling, they can look at these rating and review sites and see what the consumers think and that might help the business decide what to do.
The last platform we covered in class was virtual worlds. With this, we had to try and save people in this virtual world from fires, floods and other disasters. We had money so we could purchase houses, hospitals and other items that might help and save people from the natural disasters. My experience with this was not very good. Once I figured out how to play it was fun, but it wouldn’t be something I would try again. I would not use this platform in a real-life scenario. I don’t see how it would benefit any aspect of social media marketing.
After using all the different platforms and getting experiment with 10 different forms, there are some I prefer over others. The platforms I would use would blogging, Twitter, Facebook, HootSuite and Vines and videos. The reason I would use blogging is it’s a fun way to let people know about your business and it allows the business owner to reach a great deal of people and connect them with the business through the blog. There are so many different things you can blog about and if done properly, it can have a great effect on customers and other potential clients. I would also use Twitter because of how popular it is and how many people use this social media. Twitter is a great way to engage with customers and perhaps reach new potential. It’s a community that allows people to interact with others and for the most part it is easy to maintain and easy to use. Facebook is the platform I would use the most. It is easy to maintain being as you only have to do 3-5 posts a week and its reaches a wide variety of people. Facebook is in the palm of almost everybody and it seems like everyone has a Facebook account. Facebook would allow for business to interact with their consumers and allow them to engage with the business. I would also use HootSuite because it is a great tool to help maintain your social media accounts. It’s easy to use and allows you to connect all of account into one easy location. You can schedule all out your posts and tweets at the beginning of the week and have the scheduled to go out throughout the week. I would also use Vines and videos because it’s a different type of media than reading. It grabs the attention of the consumer and allows them to listen rather than read everything about the business. It stimulates other parts of the brain and gets them engaged and in tuned on what’s going on in the business. Overall I enjoyed using most of the platforms and would use most of them in a real-life situation.
