Out of the Box

Throughout the course lessons and reading everyone’s blog post I have discovered so many different tools and applications to help with online marketing and social media.

So much of social media marketing is reliant on networking, especially for new companies. The new applications/tools I have found that I am now going to utilize more are websites like meetup, that allow you to better network online.

While I have worked for a small start-up marketing company I am still very new to the industry. It’s a great feeling knowing that there are so many different tools at my disposal when trying to build my network. Social media is always a great place to connect with others and see what someone has to offer but I also like the idea of place specific to networking.

I have learned so much over the last few weeks and can’t wait to put everything in to action in the new year.

 

Networking Events

Since I started working in social media and marketing one of my favourite events to attend are the Hootsuite Webinars. They host them all year around (about one every month) on various social media topics, from currents trends to how to get the most out of each platform to even how to get the most out of Hootsuite itself. The events are open to anyone who is currently registered for their products, the day of the even you get an email with a personalized link for you to use to attend the event. I like the fact that you must have the personal link and it’s not just something anyone can attend because

1. You know everyone there is doing what are doing and gives you an opportunity to not only learn from the presenters but from peers around the world
2. It cuts down on the ability for “trolls” to clog up the chats.

I like these sorts of events because you are connecting with people all over the world and while everyone is doing some from of social media marketing it is all happening in different ways. There were marketing agencies in attendance but also people who are photographers, real estate agents, just about anyone you can think of that owns their own business. We are all at different points in our careers, but we all got to learn so much. This particular webinar focused on the up coming trends for social media in 2020. It gave us all a great chance to plan for our up coming year.

Leaving this event, I got to walk away with a great plan on how I am going to conquer this next year. Being able to talk a peak at what is to come with Hootsuite in 2020 I am excited to see everything this new year has to offer and move forward within my career.

I have currently signed up for some up coming Hootsuite webinars, I always learn so much. I am not just limiting myself to the webinars though, I have been looking into what other types of networking and social media events are happening around me.

Professional Networking

This last year I admit I put things like networking on the back burner and let myself get consumed by other things in my life. I made the choice this fall that it was time to start taking my future and the kind of career life I want more seriously, thus resulting in signing up for my final course to finish the program. Over the next 6-12 months, networking and career advancement at the for front of my priorities. I have registered for every upcoming webinar Hootsuite has posted so far and have tried to be more active on LinkedIn. Reaching out to potential mentors, even being more active in my current job, meeting employees in other departments and building relationships with them. All of this is helping me build my personal brand both online and offline.

Building those relationships with the people I work with is really important, being able to learn what each department does and their importance. It allows me learn more and show others what I can bring to the table. This way when I am ready to branch out and go for a promotion every one will be able to put a face to the name and hopefully give me a bit of an advantage having been able to talk with potential future managers.

I have begun attending the Hootsuite webinars again. I attended a lot of them last year when I first started to use the program. They are not only jam packed with incredibly useful information but a great way to connect with people all over the world doing what you are doing.

With this year coming to an end (does anyone else feel like they just blinked and this year was over?), I made a promise to myself that my career development would start to come first and it’s a promise I don’t intend to break.

Strong and Weak Organizations

Building a social media marketing strategy can be tough. Things change so fast that keeping up with trends and and platforms is a job in itself. Some companies are very successful at using marketing to their advantage and some it can be a total disaster.

Two companies I really like the marketing for it Function of Beauty and Sephora. Function of Beauty does all of the marketing through social media with an equal mix of self promotion and influencer ads. The videos are short and to the point and most importantly, hit a pain point that I feel a lot of people struggle with, shampoo that deal with all of your hair needs ( yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds). The influencers that I saw were chosen well, they varied between Zoella, Safiya Nygaard for a younger demographic and even some of the Real House Wives to hit a bit of an older demographic. They have videos that are self promoted that show case all the different ways you can customize your shampoo and everything they have to offer. I’m a sucker for a Facebook or Instagram ad, not all companies deliver what they promise but it was definitely a pleasant surprise to see how well their products actually worked for me.

Sephora’s ads just always seem to know exactly what I want. They have seasonal promotion ads that always show me the exact products I am looking for. They mostly consist of still photos showing they’re products but that’s what I like about them. There is no fuss to their ads, no one telling you how great a product is or why you should buy it. It’s simply this is the product and they let it speak for itself.

One company I don’t like the marketing for it Netflix. I find the ads inconsistent, like they have no strategy at all. I can go from seeing one every day for a weeks to not seeing one for months. The ads are normally for an upcoming show but only if it is a show that has enough of a following that it is being talked about else where. I find of the amazing things about Netflix is all of their original shows and movies, they are some of the best I have seen. Without ads for them though most people don’t know they even exist. This leaves Netflix at a disadvantage because now consumers don’t get to see the amazing shows that are released weekly on the platform lowering it’s value in an industry that is rapidly becoming more and more competitive.

The marketing strategy you use can always determine how successful your company is. While it so far hasn’t changed Netflix’s success, it does provide a whole in the market for other companies to take advantage of.

Social Listening and Monitoring Tools

Social listening and monitoring are very important for companies. It allows them to monitor how well they are performing online. Being able to perform well means you are building trust with your audience; this helps build your brand and reputation.

I worked briefly with a start up marketing agency, there I used two difference monitoring tools that I liked best over anything else.

SalesForce Social Studio:

This one is like Hootsuite if you have ever used it before. I prefer this tool over Hootsuite though because I find it has more customization tools and allows for a deeper look at your statistics. You can place all your social media accounts into one dashboard for easy monitoring.

With Social Studio you can not only monitor your own statistics, but you can look at how your competition is doing as well. You can customize all your reports so if you only wanted to see KPI’s you can instead of having to sort through all the information. Something like this is important especially at the beginning stages for a company who are trying to build their brand and trust with an online audience.

BrandWatch:

BrandWatch is a tool that is specific to social listening, you don’t have a place to monitor your full account. You can build reports that monitor specific topics or trends. You can search hashtags or company names and the program will pull all its data from the everywhere on the internet from Google to Twitter to Instagram, etc. It breaks all the data down from where in the world the post was created to whether it has a positive or negative affect with its audience. This is great for companies just starting out, they can get a more in-depth look at how the world is responding to them instead of just what is happening on their own accounts, it will show is anyone has ever mentioned them but not tag them.

Updates:

I rely a lot on my social media accounts for my news updates. I am on the them every day and I know if its something important it will show up in my news feed. I am a celebrity news junky, so I do follow a few entertainment news accounts get real-time updates. I also watch YouTube videos, searching for the top trending stories to watch every night.

I have used Google Alerts in the past, I do like getting the most updates news from them. I tend to only them though when things like the Olympics are happening so I can always be informed about what is going on.

COM0014: Blog 7 – Personal Reflection

After working my way through this course, I definitely learned a lot about the importance of story telling. Being able to tell a story is more than just putting words on paper or in a blog, it’s also about creating that connection with your audience through your words.

When you are creating digital content, it is especially important to be able to tell a story because you want your audience to keep coming back and you are using your stories to continually connect with others. In the digital world your words are really all you have, sure you can show pictures, but you don’t have the ability to create that in-person connection most other careers allow for. So, you need to make sure that each one of you words holds meaning.

Through my own social media platforms, I want to be able to tell the story of my life. I think every one has their own unique story to tell and unique perspective view of the world and I want to be to show mine through my pictures and words.

All in all I truly enjoyed this course and everything it taught me. What about you?

 

COM0014: Blog #6 -Do People Know Your Story

What Choices Have You Made That You Regret?

Honestly there are not a lot of moments in my life that I can say I regret. I am of the mindset that everything is a learning experience. However, this one moment, if I could go back and change it I would.

I am going to start this off with, I lived a sheltered life. I had very strict parents so I wasn’t able  to go out and socialize like they rest of my friends. All I wanted was to be able to go out and have freedom like them.

When I graduated high school I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, what I wanted to study in college. So against my parents wishes I took a year off school and worked. I fell into a not so great crowd and this is where I feel things started to fall apart. Feeling this sense of new found freedom, I started sneaking out of the house, and lying to my parents about what I was doing and who I was with. When the year was up and I had to go back to school I decided to take this freedom one step farther and move away for college. I thought there was no way they could tell me what to do if they didn’t live near me. So I picked the first college that came to mind and I chose the first business course that would take me.

When I got to college I didn’t take it seriously at all. I never went to class and barely managed to hand in assignment on time. After my third semester my grades were so low that the school kicked me out of the program. I didn’t think schools could actually do it, turns out I was very wrong.

I ended up moving back home and got a job working full time. This was seven years ago and I am finally now getting my life together. I went back to school and got a better paying job.

I regret not taking school seriously the first time around. I also regret not going to college right out of high school, sometimes I wonder how my life would be right now if I made different choices. But it’s all a learning experience right?

COM0014: Blog #5 – Personal Brand

I would classify my personal brand, in term of social media, in the lifestyle category. I enjoy posting about my every day life, and current event happening in my city.

I feel my profiles are very true to who I am in real life and that makes me standout from everyone else. I am not trying to fake it or being someone else to get people to like me. Now a days, especially in the social media world, many people try to just post what they think everyone wants to see and just try to gain as many likes and follows as possible, under the assumption that this is their personal brand and it is “lifestyle”. I post content that I like and hope everyone else will too.

I recently started using the Insta-stories and Facebook stories to help grow my following a little more. The concept of using stories has really grown over the last year and followers seem to the love the real time footage. For the most part the stories feature only lets you post content from the last 24hrs, this is one of the reasons it does so well because the follower knows its not something from say 4 months ago you are trying to fake as happening now. It’s not something you can plan out the same way you do other content.

Everyone always says I have an energetic and enthusiastic type of personality and I try to show that in my profiles.

What kind of personal brand do you have?

COM0014: Blog #4 – B2C Case Study

A brand that I think does really well with using social media to their advantage is Wendy’s, the fast food chain.

They make sure they are putting out quality content, which for a food company isn’t always easy. They make sure they are mixing their posts up between posting promos and ads for their products and general posts the relate to their brand. They also do a good amount of retweeting from their followers that are tagging them in posts.

The company is consistently responding to those messaging them. They also give more than a generic corporate response.

Wendy’s interacting with their audience

They respond with personality and a way that not only engages the person they are responding too but also anyone reading. More than once that have had conversations with the audience go viral because of their responses. They person behind the computer for them, running their social media has been able to find that perfect balance of sarcasm and professionalism that most cannot find.

Wendy’s not only engages with consumers but also other companies. Really anyone that is mentioning them, they are responding too. This is something I think is important for a company. Interacting with your audience is important regardless of who the audience involves.

I feel Wendy’s presence on social media is one if the best for a fast food company.

COM0014: Blog #3 – Target Audience

The craft beer industry has really blown up over the last couple of years.

When you think of target audiences for craft beer, you think the obvious target would be beer drinkers in general. But actually most beer drinkers don’t like craft beer that much. The majority of craft beer drinkers are millennials. The majority of drinkers also happen to be men, women are truly underrepresented in the area. However, those women that do drink craft beer tend to be avid drinkers of it. They also are in the lower-middle class.

Knowing this can change the way someone would communicate with the audience. You want to use language that the audience is going to understand. You would want to use key words or buzz words that would catch their attention. What would catch the attention of an older demographic is not likely to have the same effect with millennials. For example, Molson has a can that changes colour when its cold, its advertisements showcase it and that works well with most demographics because who doesn’t want a cold beer? But with millennials they are much most about visuals and uniqueness. This makes a brewery like Collective Arts popular. They uniquely designed cans specialty made for them.

When you know your audience, you will have a better understanding of what will work to get them to purchase or even just understand your message.