COM0015: Applying Social Media in new and unusual ways

By: Bryan Thiel

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This may sound silly, but before this course, I had no idea what a webinar was.

I had been to seminars, summits, learning lunches, and plenty of other things that the names of escape me, and I was a pretty proficient Google’r. But putting them together?

While the combination of the two didn’t surprise me, it was something that I hadn’t considered before.

The pairing is ingenious really. Beginning with Youtube, video sharing services are easy to come by on the web and it’s really no surprise that they took off years ago. If you can watch a video of a cat playing ping pong on the internet, why not use it for something practical and educational?

And as technology evolved and companies were able to embed video on their own website without the use of outside carriers, it only makes sense that something like this has taken off and is making people money.

The other thing that has surprised me throughout our work across five credits is the monetization of social media.

At its core, social media is popular for a very big reason: It’s free.

As I’ve found out, free is key when it comes to non-profits: they don’t have a lot of money to spend, and they need to find affordable tools that have an impact and can reach a wide audience. Social Media does both of those things.

But while that helps get the message out and raise awareness for events and anything else a non-profit might need, the fact that viral phenomenons like the ice bucket challenge and the no-makeup selfie have taken off and, ultimately, made money, continues to surprise me.

A lot of this is based on humanization and playing to peoples’ emotions and encouraging them to donate, but other companies have followed suit, integrating across other marketing campaigns and coming away happy financially.

Ultimately when I began this course, I thought I’d be expanding my vocabulary and toolbox when it came to marketing. Instead, I came away with a few money-making possibilities that could help speed up my transition from one department to another.