Surviving School

Throughout the semester, we had the opportunity to work on a simulation called Mimic Social. The simulation put us in a marketing internship for a company called BUHI. This company sold a variety of bags and backpacks for many purposes, and are responsibility was to market them on social media. When I started the first round, it seemed so overwhelming and confusing that I decided to wait until the last minute to work on it. That wasn’t the best move, but it is what happened. I remember when I finally got around to finishing the first round, I was even more confused and thought I would for sure fail this exercise. That is, until a couple classmates poked fun at my lack of effort and doubted I would finish the assignment, let alone get a good grade. What they didn't realize, I excel when people tell me I can’t do something. So, I powered through all the simulations, on weekends after games and Sundays to catch up and ended up finishing 4th in the entire class. I must admit, it was an...

After finally finishing the textbook, I can say that I have learned a lot about all the different social media platforms, including how to use them effectively for promoting a brand and a business. Each chapter focused on a different platform, and went into detail about the age, gender and how many people use each, including how the reaction during Covid. It also gave us a thorough understanding of how to create a profile, get acclimated on proper use and navigation and showed us how businesses could use these various platforms to promote themselves. It taught me the differences and techniques of how to grow an audience, as well as how to publish ads and post promotions to reach a larger audience. This background also aided me in completing my mimic social assignment. That assignment required finding the right audience, posting promotions and non-promotions for certain products in the BUHI line, negotiating and contracting with influencers, and competing against my whole class to see w...

As the school year is winding down and we have started to reach the last chapters of Social Media, I find the chapter we are learning about now are podcasts. When it comes to what podcasts are, the best way to describe them is a way to build a deeper connection to an audience. They can also be used to discuss current news or even a podcaster’s opinion on things like video games, books, movies, etc. Basically, anything an audience would find interesting can be a podcast. When it comes to how many people are a part of a podcast, it is usually two or more people that lead it or host it. However, there is a podcaster named Joe Rogan who has risen to be the most listened podcaster today. What he does is have very famous people to go on and talk about themselves while he picks their brain about what they think about current events or gets them to reveal things they may have done in the past. Now if you had asked a bunch of people a couple of years ago if they ever listened to a podcast, I wo...

In this chapter we learn how to market with TikTok. In just the past couple of years, TikTok has become one of the most used social media platforms ever. As of January 2022, there are at least 1 billion active monthly users. This has put TikTok’s user base over some of the other social media platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat. At 69%, the primary age group of users for TikTok are between the ages of 13 and 24. Our chapter also tells us that 60% of the users are women. This does not surprise me because I am on TikTok throughout the day. That might be a problem by itself, but I can say that every time I open the app, the first 20 TikTok’s are of girls dancing. Male users make up only 40%, which is a lot higher than I initially thought but after paying more attention, it makes sense as I have started to see a lot more male TikTok users, especially ones that are trying to market their company or product. When it comes to promoting a business on TikTok, there are many ways to d...

Chapter 10 of our textbook talks about marketing on YouTube. Currently, YouTube has close to two billion viewers every month. They also have one of the highest success rates when it comes to promoting ads on a streaming service. Surprisingly, it is primarily used by the male population. That statistic was shocking to me because there seems to be a lot more women YouTubers now then there ever has been, with millions of followers. I would think those followers are other women and girls. When it comes to what age groups watch YouTube, it ranges from 13 to 49 years old. When someone starts using YouTube, its algorithm will prioritize videos by relevance, quality, watch time and likes for the viewer. If you can use YouTubes algorithm correctly, marketing a product will be easy. The marketer can do this by using keywords, having captivating titles and descriptions, using tags, and creating crazy thumbnails. The content of the video also plays a huge roll in the video getting viewed and impor...

Growing up in a family of businesspeople, LinkedIn is used a lot. I had a basic understanding of the app and knew that when I got to college, this would be one of the more important social network platforms I would need to use. However, while reading, I realized there was so much more to this app than I knew. LinkedIn is the largest professional networking platform available. There are about 740 million users, in more than 200 countries. The primary uses of LinkedIn are for professionals to stay connected with one another and to search and apply for jobs. LinkedIn is also great for building a personal brand and connecting with professionals that might work in a field of interest or work at a company a person is trying to get hired into. When compared to the other social media platforms we have discussed, it is most like Facebook, but more professional and networking focused. When it comes to using LinkedIn, the most important part is the profile and its contents. For example, my Linked...

When I first think of Pinterest I think of women. I don't think I have met a male that uses Pinterest regularly at all. I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I am a little familiar with the app because my girlfriend uses it to find good date ideas and things to do. Her friends will also use it for clothing and good vacation destination ideas as well. When it comes to marketing products, Pinterest uses a system called Carousel. Carousel is multiple images pinned together that can show designs or uses of the product in an easy viewing format. What this does is give people a deeper understanding of the product and how it can be applied, before they go visit the website. I like carousel and think it is a great marketing technique that businesses can use to show how their products can be used. It allows the viewer to imagine the use for themselves. It’s a lot different than all the other social media apps we have been covering, where it’s just one image at time in a feed its instead...

In Chapter 7 of "Essentials of Social Media Marketing," I learned how a business can advertise themselves on Snapchat. Snapchat is a social media platform that allows people to send pictures and videos to their friends with the addition of the choice to use filters or just little text boxes. When people think about Snapchat, they primarily think it is a way to communicate with friends and a platform to post videos to show what you are doing. Snapchat can also be helpful for promoting businesses. It is very different from the other social media platforms we have learned about, like Facebook and Instagram. First, what you are going to want to do is create a profile with the name of the business as the username. Once the profile is created, permission will have to be granted to make messages public so that everyone can see them. To do that, go into Settings and make sure that everyone is selected. That way people can see and interact with the businesses story. Once the profile s...

  Chapter 6 details the essentials of social media marketing. I learned the opportunity for businesses to use Twitter to promote Ideas and goals, build relationships with customers, connect with their audiences, and keep up with the competition. I also learned that Twitter is not like Instagram or Facebook. While they are all communication platforms, those apps are used to do a lot of promoting. Twitter on the other hand, shouldn’t be used to promote and instead should invite questions and encourage engagement. Engagement shows that the business has value. When it comes to tweeting, tweets should not be long paragraphs but rather short, to the point messages. As someone who occasionally uses Twitter, I never read anything longer than a few sentences. Anything longer than that, I skip past it and ignore. Another thing I picked up on is that when businesses are trying to promote something, they should post consistently and at times when they can reach most of their audience. Also, th...

Chapter five focuses mainly on Instagram and how to use the platform to market. Instagram has more than 1.22 billion active users. Maybe not so surprisingly, most of their users are younger people, with the number of females slightly outweighing the males. Instagram was created in 2010, but only started to be accommodating for businesses in 2016. The platform allowed businesses to market and sell and get their message out through another app. Instagram allowed them to link their website on their profile and allowed them to provide more detailed and important information in their bio. When compared to all the other social media platforms, Instagram is most like Facebook. They both allow you to post pictures and videos which others can like or share. Where Instagram is truly better is with their reels and shopping options. Reels are little videos that are pushed to a user based on whatever the algorithm thinks they will enjoy the most. As a user this can be dangerous because you can go d...

It might be my generation really doesn’t use Facebook, but I have little to no knowledge on how to use it effectively. I do know over the past year or so, a lot has come out in the news and has been investigated on how they allow misinformation and how Facebook secretly collects information on people so they can affect what we see and when. In 2018, the United States Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into how a voter-profiling company, Cambridge Analytica, accessed the data of roughly 87 million Facebook users during the 2016 Presidential Election. At the time, it was the largest leak in Facebook history. This was huge because people didn't know how long this had been going on. It caused many to wonder what else was Facebook showing people to persuade them to one side and what of our personal data they were selling to help others target messages. With all the attention, people came out saying there is a computer that could tell how much screen time a person spends on...