Whichever number you chose, is correct. In fact, all 3 are equally important. Let’s take a look at why that is.
#1. Catchy headlines & the use of multimedia. If you can’t hook your readers attention, they will most likely keep scrolling. Scrolling content online is just as simple as turning a page in a book.
#2. You want to start with the most important information, then gradually get less important but more detailed; which is known as the inverted pyramid method.
#3. You can create a faster, more concise narrative by using an active voice, rather than passive. This ensures your writing is cleaner and more engaging.
Basically, you want to capture your reader as if they’re a child reading a book. They’re engaged, excited and they start to question everything.. in a good way of course. A child’s imagination is like no other. No overthinking, just enjoying in the moment.
I hope to achieve that level of engagement with my storytelling. My digital content will be true events in my life and what I enjoy doing, which is the opposite of children’s books. Sorry, I won’t be kissing any frogs in my future.
Guided by memories and my thoughts, eager to tell you what happened right away like a giddy child. I guess you could say it’s a digital diary.
My family, love for beauty, true crime, my mental health journey and late night thoughts will be the backbone of my future storytelling.
P.s. Pyramids & hooks are equally important in storytelling, however, if you want to know if Egyptians outshine Pirates? That’s a story for another day.
I am a fragile-minded 26-year-old in a quarter-life crisis, or so it seems to me. I have struggled with mental health, which has heightened due to the pandemic. The anxiety I face on a daily basis is next level. Thankfully, my dog Teddy is right around the corner to make me feel better, medication also helps quite a bit. Sorry, were you expecting to hear about my interests? I can get to that later. In the words of Demi Lovato “This is real, this is me”.
I want to ask you a question. Let’s say you meet someone. One day you’re talking about what you like to do, then the next night the conversation turns deep. Childhood, dreams, how you’re really feeling in that moment are topics that are talked about. Which conversation is going to stick with you?
I thought I knew what I wanted with my career, that’s changed. Relationships? That’s another story. I’m pretty much in a grey area in most parts of my life. Of course, there are many great parts that have/are happening, however, the grey tones seem to occupy my mind more than the colourful ones.
Speaking of colourful, if you enjoy makeup, sunsets, reading, playing games or true crime, then we have the same interests. Besides those interests amongst others, I’m trying to figure everything out as I’m sure you are too. We can figure it out together.
What’s my personal brand? What sets me apart from others? Hmm… I wouldn’t think bragging about myself would be this hard, yet I’m finding it difficult to say what’s so great about myself.
I have a few in mind, but first, I want to hear how my family describes me. I asked my mom and sister to describe me in 3 words which they both agreed on. These words are funny, outgoing and caring. I won’t disagree with them. Although I am an introvert, when I’m around people I’m comfortable with, I can definitely be OUT there.
Now that I know what my family thinks of me, what do I think about myself? Firstly, I am passionate. If it’s of interest to me, I put all my time and effort into it, even when I think it’s good enough, it can be better. This will help me when creating future content because my heart and soul will be poured into it.
Secondly, I am emotional and sympathetic. Honestly, I feel like this is pretty rare to come across from people. Nowadays, a lot of people will be there for you just to gain something for themselves. I can feel someone’s energy, good or bad which makes it easy for me to sympathize with you, be there and help you.
Aside from these traits, I can say I am most proud of my learning from my past. I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. People come into your life for a reason, things happen for a reason. Whether it’s a good or bad outcome, it’s a learning lesson. Of course, at the moment it seems like the end of the world but looking back, I’m glad things turned out the way they have.
Similar to life, personal branding is the same. You learn and grow from your struggles and mistakes. It’s all a learning lesson to better yourself.
“Before we even make anything, we make it because we learned from our customers what they are missing, both from a brand and a product perspective, that will make their lives better,” said Henry Davis for Forbes.
Glossier is a popular beauty brand known for its natural products and social presence. With over 2.5 million followers on Instagram alone, their consumers keep growing. Besides their products, their social media accounts are doing something right. Let’s take a look at what makes their social media success.
The content posted between their various social media accounts showcases their products, customer reviews and memes. Regardless of the content, there is one thing that remains consistent throughout their platforms. I’m talking about everyone’s favourite word, engagement. It’s a different setting, nonetheless, it’s still important and exciting when it happens.
Engaging with your audience online is important for many reasons, however not every brand can successfully interact with their audience to increase metrics. This is where Glossier gets it right.
With many platforms including Instagram, Twitter, TikTok etc. Glossier’s main focus is on Instagram. This is where they are consistent with their content, posting on a daily basis and interacting with their audience. Although they don’t have a specific platform for Q&As, they have done an excellent job commenting on posts helping their customers out with any problems. The most common interaction is Glossier telling their customer to look in their DM’s. This has made others aware that they do listen and act on their customer’s problems in order to fix them. I always enjoy seeing these interactions because acknowledgement with B2C goes a long way. I’ve had my fair share of these interactions with a company and I appreciate being heard the most.
As I previously mentioned, a company’s social media engagement is important because of the metrics you can increase by doing so. This includes:
Conversion rate
Brand awareness
Audience growth
Reach
CTR
Although Glossier has been successful with its online presence, I did notice three areas of improvement.
With the abundance of questions, they get on a daily basis, having a separate Twitter or Instagram account would be beneficial. They could use these different accounts to answer any questions, post detailed tips & tricks about their products that their customers could find helpful. I believe having a separate account for this would free up their main accounts to focus on increasing their sales, as well as creating a welcome and engaging community for their customers to interact with.
Scrolling through Glossier’s replies and likes, I’ve noticed that they have engaged with tweets that have their username in them. They have the potential to reach out to even more customers by listening to their brand name, products, industry and their competition. Not every tweet will contain Glossier’s Twitter handle. They could be missing out on upset customers or a potential new customer. Without knowing what their audience is saying (without being mentioned), they are unable to gain that loyalty and increase sales.
On Instagram, I’ve noticed a lack of call to action. They utilize Instagram’s shop feature quite a bit on their posts, however, in their captions, there’s a noticeable difference that could easily be fixed. By simply using persuasive words, their audience will be more likely to increase the overall engagement rate. This could also help with future product and social development.
Overall, I applaud Glossier for their successful engagement throughout their social media presence. They have managed to keep the same voice throughout each platform, which ensures their brand values and mission is continuing to grow. Glossier is always in direct communication with their audience. This communication has ensured any of the needs or concerns of their audience are met. I’m not surprised their audience’s tone is always positive. Kudos Glossier.
You can count me in if you say the magic words, true crime. There’s no denying the significant increase of people watching, listening and reading about true crime within the past few years. With many factors as to why we enjoy this genre, there are also many characteristics of who makes up the audience. Since there’s a bigger community, companies need to effectively target their audience.
Demographic
Being a 26-year-old living in a small town, true crime is good at keeping me company. Many others around my age also turn to this genre for the same reason or another.
These are the characteristics of true crime junkies:
As I previously mentioned above, companies need to effectively target their audience for successful marketing. Knowing what platforms your audience occupies is important. These platforms include:
Podcasts
Youtube
Twitter
Blogs
Facebook
Instagram
Now that you know what platforms your audience is on, you need to listen to and monitor them. This will ensure you’re up to date with what your audience is saying about you and what they want to see/hear from you as well. Since true crime has a large audience, using tools such as Hootsuite, Social Sprout or Google Alerts makes it easier to monitor your audience on a larger scale.
True crime stories can be emotional and triggering. Companies can use these unfortunate feelings as a way to get to know you better, to their advantage of course. Emotional buying is an effective strategy often used. This can be in the form of buying merch, donating to a GoFundMe or signing petitions. With this genre, you can guarantee your audience will make purchases based on their emotions.
Spending a lot of time monitoring your audience and spending money on advertising won’t be effective if you don’t communicate with your audience. With multiple platforms to communicate on, many true crime stories to talk about and having a general conversation with your audience will take your company further than you think.
If you’re a true crime junkie, do you fit in with the demographic?
Eminem hit the nail on the head. You get one chance in the beginning when you’re telling a story. You can ensure your reader will be hooked to your writing by simply starting with the important information first. That seems easy enough, right? I can think of numerous times where I’ve skimmed the beginning of a story to decide if I wanted to continue reading.
I’ve learned helpful tips this week that will help bump your writing skills up a notch. Starting off with the inverted pyramid style. You want to capture your readers’ attention by starting with the most important information first. Whatever point you’re trying to get across, include that first. Your readers will continue to read less important information as they go along.
Using an active voice rather than a passive voice is another great tip. This ensures the readers’ engagement throughout the story since it’s easier to read this writing style. The reader will have a clearer understanding of the point that you’re trying to get across.
You also want to keep in mind to double-check your work. You want your writing to be free of any mistakes. Don’t be afraid to get someone else to look over your work as well. This simple tip can be overlooked, despite being common knowledge.
Lastly, jotting down notes/ideas throughout the day will make it easier for you. Ideas can pop up one second, then be gone the next. Utilize apps on your phone for quick access to get those ideas out.
Storytelling has been around since the beginning of time. We’ve seen Caveman use paintings, Egyptians use hieroglyphics and Native Americans use pictographs to depict different stories. Your story can be perceived differently with the different styles. Storytelling is and has always been important, even though we’ve changed a lot throughout the decades. One thing will remain throughout time.
Although a work trip / mini vacation didn’t turn out the way I imagined it to, I’ll always remember it.
Flashback to early 2019, the year started off as a wreck for me. No really, I got into a car accident on my way to get an X-ray because I had sprained my ankle a week prior.
Fortunately, my luck was turning around (or so I thought) when I was told I would be going to Las Vegas with my coworker that shared the same position as me, for a conference at Caesars Palace. I couldn’t help but cry on the webinar when I was told the news because of how unfortunate my year had started out.
My coworker and I quickly started to plan a mini-vacation out of this trip since we would have a day to ourselves before the conference started. We wanted to extend our stay, however, our flight back would not be covered by our work. We both agreed to have one day to ourselves because we weren’t able to save up as much money as we would’ve liked since the trip was in a few months.
At 6 a.m. on May 18, 2019, I left my house to meet my coworker at her house. There we were, standing in her kitchen talking about how excited we were for the trip when all of a sudden we hear *ping*. We got an email notification that our 10:15 a.m. flight had been CANCELLED.
I don’t know who was more confused and frustrated at this time, us or our poor manager that got woken up by our phone calls and messages. Still confused as to what was going to happen, we headed out the door to make our way to the airport to sort out this problem.
After a few hours of phone calls, we were booked on another flight later that night. I almost got booked on a different flight from my coworker. I would’ve gone to Edmonton then Las Vegas while her flight would make a stop in Detroit then Las Vegas. This turned out to be an issue because this was my first time on an airplane as well as leaving Canada. Yeah, just my luck.
Fortunately, we both made it on the same flight. The day we were supposed to have to relax by the pool, walking along the strip and seeing a show, was out the window. So much for the vacation we planned.
We got to our hotel around midnight. Angry, upset and tired, we went to bed for an early morning for the conference. Do you think my luck turns around for the remainder of the trip?
It’s no surprise that some things happened for the remainder of our stay.
During our lunch break, jet lag hit me and I had the worst migraine of my life causing me to miss the afternoon sessions of the conference. I went back to my hotel room to rest. I overslept but I did manage to make it to the closing ceremony for the conference. This is when my coworker and I headed back to the room to get ready to enjoy the little time we had left in Vegas.
Our night consisted of a delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant in Caesars Palace, followed by non-stop walking along the strip. We also went into a few shops and other hotels, of course, to get a few souvenirs. My excitement took a hit when street performers approached us. Clueless me said hello to more bad luck and bye-bye to $40 I had in my wallet.
Before we ended our night, we relaxed in the whirlpool tub in our room. At least we got to wear our bathing suits even if it wasn’t at the pool like we hoped we could enjoy. We were off to bed once again for an early morning. This time it was for check out then on to the bus to take us to the airport.
We made it back home, disappointed by our eventful trip. I guess I did get what I wanted out of it, for it to be memorable. You know what they say, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas… including our bathing suits. We left them in Las Vegas along with my bad luck.
Two good things came out of this trip; memories and a new friendship.
Social Media Monitoring Tools Are Your Bestfriend.
Whenever I am on social media now, I look at a business differently. I study their platform to see how engaging they are, the type of content they post and if it’s appropriate for their niche audience. I am able to identify if their social media strategy is strong or weak.
Social media listening and monitoring are key for a company’s success online. Doing research for assignments helped me learn the importance of monitoring different platforms in order to improve metrics that will help a brand grow. With the use of tools, you can track these metrics while also keeping an eye on your competition.
When doing my assignments, I found Social Searcher to be useful. I was able to see any mentions from the web, as well as social media platforms. I was also able to look at the sentiment of these mentions and popular keywords that have been used.
Having this information and applying it to assignments helped me understand the importance of keeping up to date on what’s being said about a brand.
Having that feedback from an audience whether it’s positive or negative, gives the brand the opportunity to engage with them. They can learn from these mentions and further grow their brand by how they respond and act on.
I believe the best thing a brand can do for its audience is to acknowledge and listen to them. Personally speaking, having a company acknowledge my interest or feedback, improved my fondness towards them.
Building a relationship with an audience is improved by engagement. This relationship with new or existing consumers helps to increase brand awareness, SEO and conversion rate.
“The opinions people express on social media give real insights into how they feel about an organization and its products. It’s usually the first clue to problems that need to be fixed. To gain those insights, it’s crucial to actually read the consumer opinions, not just aggregate them into data.”
To make monitoring more effective, using a dashboard and RSS feeder to collect data will help keep the information organized. Once a company has gone over the information they have collected, they are able to leverage their marketing tactics and sales.
The social media world is constantly evolving so it’s crucial for a company to stay up to date on their audience, competition and industry trends.
Taking this course has taught me a lot about the business side of social media. With the on going pandemic, many businesses have shifted online. On one hand, you can quickly connect with others all over the world but on the other hand, it has made in-person networking a bit difficult.
My initial reasoning for taking this program was to get into a career in this field. I am hoping this happens sooner than later. With that being said, it’s essential for me to develop a networking strategy both in-person and online.
Online Networking
In order to have a successful strategy, I can’t just dive into different platforms. I need to have goals. What exactly do I want to gain from this? Quite frankly, I’m not 100% yet. This would be the first step for me, creating goals.
From there, I will be more active on different platforms and form my personal brand. I believe having a personal branding strategy will be key to my networking strategy. I will admit that when I first meet someone or find a new company, I go to social media to look them up. Do they have a completely different persona online? I want to see how they portray themselves and how they engage with others. I know this will be something that any future employer or connection will look for.
In addition to my personal branding, I will be connecting with others. I can’t expect to complete my goals without introducing myself and forming connections.
In-Person Networking
Carrying on with the connections, this will play a major role in my in-person networking. Personally, I am more introverted so the thought of putting myself out there and attending certain events isn’t my first option. Regardless, I understand the impact of having that face-to-face connection can provide.
Networking in person will give me the opportunity to show my personality. To give life to the person behind the screen. Ultimately, this can be a true test one my end because I will be able to find out who I want to associate myself with.
Keeping these connections is just as important as starting them. Staying in touch with others and keeping that friendship alive is going to help in the long run. Whether this means meeting others via that initial connection or gaining opportunities, it will pay off to put myself out there.
For the foreseeable future, online webinars and classes will be my go-to in order to gain more skills. Depending on where my future job gets me, I will be attaining skills that will aid in my occupational development.
Before learning any of these skills, I will be updating my LinkedIn profile and putting my networking to good use.
Pre pandemic, I would attend IMATS which is a makeup trade show. Not only did I meet others, but I also gained tips and knowledge about the industry. I would love to attend an event like that again or another show to connect with others.
Which type of networking do you prefer?
P.S. my favourite pre-pandemic activity to meet others was going to concerts (minus leaving the venue).
When it comes to a well-planned social media strategy, I think of companies that are active on multiple platforms. They are diverse, enjoy educating, as well as engaging with their clients. This blog will focus on two companies that have a fantastic social media strategy and one company that needs some improvement.
Rihanna is a queen, it’s no surprise that Fenty Beauty has done exceptionally well since it first came out. If Ri-Ri isn’t enough to keep this beauty company at the top, then what is?
Fenty’s social media game is *chefs kiss* on point. Their diversity and inclusivity have reeled in many people throughout the years because they cater to people of different race and gender. This alone makes you feel welcomed like you belong. This can be a big deal in the beauty industry as I’ve seen firsthand when working with clients who often feel left out from certain companies.
A big chunk of Fenty’s marketing strategy comes from influencers (as if Rihanna herself isn’t enough to boost sales). Well-known influencers can be seen sharing reviews, attending launch parties and giving their support and praise for the brand. They essentially allow these influencers and any customer to do the talking for them. When they do talk, (Twitter) they’re relatable and have humour to their voice. All I can say is, Fenty is doing it right.
“The Cosmetics Industry generates 55% of its buzz through influencers.”
Staying along the lines of feeling appreciated, this next company treats you like your BFF. This best friend will be there to get you back out on the dating scene when your ex breaks up with you. Whether you swipe right or swipe left, Tinder has done more than just providing you with eye candy.
Tinder’s social media strategy gets a big thumbs up from me. Much like Fenty, they use different platforms for different strategies. Sticking mainly to Instagram for the bulk of their content while the use of Twitter will be about engagement with their customers.
Although Tinder is mainly for dating, I enjoy that they’ve teamed up with other companies like Domino’s. On Valentine’s Day, they gave you the chance with every swipe to win free pizza or discounts. Talk about a perfect match.
On top of teaming up with others, they like to educate on social issues, including the ongoing pandemic around the world and forced marriages. “For example, Amnesty International Australia used the network to raise awareness about forced marriages with a campaign launched on International Women’s Day. The nonprofit replaced profile pictures with downloadable images illustrating that oppressed women around the world still aren’t able to make important choices about their lives––the kinds of choices that many of us take for granted.” Ohannessian, B. (2020, April 15, para. 22) for Sprinklr.
Monitoring your brand is important, Tinder has successfully listened to the ongoing safety concern that is present in dating apps with new features. Without the use of monitoring throughout the years, they wouldn’t have been able to see the analytics regarding the different safety features of their competitors.
This next company has a few red flags with their strategy. Although they’re on top of Instagram, any other platforms they have need some work.
Workout’s By Katya has been a favourite company of mine for workout plans, tips and attire. When observing this company online is easy to spot some areas that need an upgrade.
The first red flag for me is the inactivity on Twitter. Their last tweet was back in 2018. This threw me off because Twitter has been a platform where companies engage with their clients and express who the brand truly is with their voice.
On top of the lack of posts, I noticed the absence of a few platforms that would increase brand awareness as well as sales. Pinterest and TikTok. On one hand, you have this platform used for inspiration and the other is perfect for companies to give tips & tricks and behind the scenes.
For Workouts By Katya, I would use Sprout Social to increase engagement across multiple platforms. By using this tool, it makes it easier to post on different social media platforms, engaging with clients and monitoring the industry in general which would be used to leverage the brand’s profits.
I’d like to see Twitter being used for conversations and monitoring, Pinterest to promote plans, clothing and even nutritional information and TikTok for behind the scenes, workout guides seen from the plans sold and q&a’s.
These few tweaks to their strategy can result in higher SEO, an increase in customer satisfaction and brand awareness.
I’m curious to know if you’ve ever been intrigued by a brand simply for how their brand’s voice is?
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 