One unexpected application I found that had a lot of uses is Instagram. At first, I could not understand the benefits of posting graphics and videos instead of text and why we should use hashtags. Since it began in 2010, it has doubled its growth. Like Tiktok, it attracts young users. There are many influencers on Instagram, and the message feature makes it easy for companies to approach you and ask if you will post and blog about their products. The hashtags are a great way to categorize content and attract your target market. You can click the hashtag of the subject matter that interests you and see all the posts under this tag—making it easy to connect with like-minded individuals.
Instagram is a sales booster; the feed makes it easy to see sponsored posts related to your interests, and by visiting the Shop tab, you can purchase on Instagram. Instagram for business now enables on its platform e-commerce sales there is no need to visit a website to buy products. Visually seeing the item as a graphic or on video helps to motivate people to shop. Instagram also makes it easy to communicate with the seller. The seller and customer can communicate and build relationships without using email.
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Another application that has had an impact is Hootsuite. When I first started using Hootsuite, it was a free tool to schedule your posts all in one place to more than one social media platform at once. It has since expanded, making it an ideal platform for monitoring and listening. I can compare my followers on social media platforms and learn more about their interests. I can monitor the engagement and determine which social media platforms receiving the same post are more active and receptive to my posts and business.
You can look for posts related to specific keywords and hashtags. Hootsuite helps to provide you with post ideas and monitor your competition. Best of all, their blog has the latest online marketing and social media information delivered daily to your inbox. Plus, they have informational and training videos. Hootsuite helps you listen, monitor, learn and create posts that can be scheduled among ten social media platforms all in one place.
What has surprised me is how in-depth the analytics of Hootsuite has become to the point that it exceeds Google Analytics. At the same time, Instagram has made it easier for companies who have products to sell without investing in a website and eCommerce software.
My parent’s strategy for developing my professional network online within the next 12 months is to continue building my LinkedIn profile. On LinkedIn, my profile indicates I am available to work. I plan to take some job seeker courses, earn some skill badges with LinkedIn, apply for some jobs and connect with individuals working in my desired profession. I also plan to research on LinkedIn, the companies I would like to work for their mission statement, objectives and employee relations.
I am in the process of building a portfolio from past work. I am also working on growing my blog and managing its social media platform, “Women Connect Online.” In the hopes of adding the website to my portfolio. I plan to look for future work that I can add to my portfolio and have my portfolio critiqued. I plan to connect with the College’s career services and further develop my resume and cover letter since this first impression will determine if the potential employer will interview me.
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I have not yet looked for employment; for now, I am interested in completing my courses. At the College, I am enrolled in several certificate programs. I could not move up to a better position in my last job because I was missing the educational classes I am taking now. The in-person networking that I plan to do is attend some events or job fairs related to my career path and network at these events. I am in the hopes that I can land some part-time social media work while I am in school and still pursuing my studies.
Two organizations that have an impressive social media strategy are McDonald’s and Starbucks.
McDonald’s
McDonald‘s is an American-based fast-food chain founded in 1940 and has grown to have franchises worldwide. On social media, McDonald’s large audience has almost 70 million followersacross all countries, regions, and platforms.
Mcdonald’s target market is children and their families. Part of their marketing strategy to attract young children on social media is to use brightly coloured signage in the advertising. They have bright yellow golden arches in their signage. Food packaging and advertising have primary colours such as red, yellow, green, and blue. The face of McDonald’s is Ronald Mcdonald dressed as a clown in bright colours. Their packaging for children has bright red colouring. They provide small toys in their Happy meals.
Posted on Twitter and Instagram
McDonald’s is active on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. They are very active on Facebook and Instagram. They listen and follow the latest trends that attract children and youth on these platforms. They ask trivia questions to encourage engagement. Movie stars are used to promote their brand and lure youth into downloading their app. Graphic images of gaming, team sports, advertising holidays, and birthday parties held at Mcdonald’s all used to be involved, and create conversation and engagement with their following. When posting on Twitter, they talk about company policies and the latest company news.
They are honest and transparent and address their weaknesses. An example of this is their audience has expressed concerns about the healthiness of their food. They responded by being transparent and explaining where their food comes from to consumers and media and what is in it. They have indicated they are always looking for new ways to source food products. They have staff who quickly engage and respond to positive and negative questions on social media.
Starbucks‘ target market is middle to high-income earners. They are more than just a coffee house. Early on in 2002, when they began, they provided sitting areas so that customers in the tech industry could work on their computers and drink their coffee. They became known as the “cool” place, attracting people who loved to play with their gadgets when it was not yet widespread. They provided free wifi to keep them in the store longer. They set up couches at some locations so customers could socialize. Their app makes it easy for busy professionals to preorder. Starbucks also targets healthy professionals by providing wellness teas, almond milk and other food products.
The brand continues to build hype around seasonal events and related drinks with unique ingredients, such as pumpkin spice latte and Frappucino for Halloween. For Christmas, Chestnut Praline Latte and Santa Claus Frappuccino. They have created their unique signature hashtags, such as #PumpkinSpiceLatte, #ChestnutPralineLatte.
Domino’s is one organization that would benefit from implementing a better social media strategy. In 2020 they received backlash for offering free pizzas to “Karens.” The pizza chain asked anyone with the name Karen to tell Dominos in 250 words why they’re “nice.” In return, they would get a free pizza.
Source: SMPerth.com
This social media campaign was criticized online for rewarding more privilege to a very privileged group in society. According to the BBC, many feel the term Karen is mostly “privileged white women,” according to the BBC. Karens are known for complaining about service to managers about low-wage workers. Domino apologized, but their reputation took a hit. They need a social media strategy and rebuild their brand. Their posts are always the same; they talk about pizzas and free giveaways. They need to address more current trends, holidays etc. and tie these trends in with their products. On Instagram, they are not engaging their audience.
There are a lot of complaints posted on Instagram and Twitter about the customer service and their products. Domino’s does not seem to be listening and monitoring and does not address many of these complaints. They have devoted more time and have more posts around events on Facebook, e.g. Gay pride month, Dominos posts pictures of their food with the gay pride signature colours. On Facebook, there are fewer complaints and more engagement from their followers, likes, and shares. They need to respond to more complaints, get more information and address the issues in posts.
Listening and monitoring provide us with the data we need to make decisions about future social media posts. Which posts are popular and help us achieve our social media objectives. Help us increase followers, understand how we are perceived and build trust in our brand. Understand who are audience is and write posts to target a specific audience we are trying to reach.
Building your own individualized social media dashboard using a spreadsheet in Excel would be a great start if you are on a budget. I have created a social media dashboard for my blog for women.
My two favorite social media trend listening/monitoring tools are:
Google Analytics
Hootsuite
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Google Analytics helps me understand my audience and reach my desired target audience. By providing me with my visitor’s region, country, and demographics.
Google Analytics also tells me the traffic acquisition of my audience and how people are finding my website. They visited me from a social media site, website, email blast, or Google search engine. Google Analytics tells me the amount of traffic I am receiving, what pages they visit, and how much time they stay on a specific page. I can determine if my traffic is growing. Google Analytics provides information on what devices my audience is using. This information helps in the layout and development of my website.
Most of all, am I meeting my social media objective? Which is to have my followers leave social media and visit my website. Google Analytics tells me if I am meeting my conversion rate. Is my marketing message receiving the desired reaction? The Google Analytics dashboard allows me to create custom reports and choose a predefined date range of previous activity. These metrics help in the development of my social media strategy.
Hootsuite dashboard allows me to have all my social media accounts in one place where I can preschedule posts and monitor the results of my previous posts and messages. Hootsuite saves time by scheduling your posts among ten social media platforms. I can compare my followers among different social media platforms and learn more about my feed’s audience. I can monitor the engagement and determine which social media platforms receiving the same post are more active and receptive to my posts and business. Like an RSS feed, you can create a feed that delivers posts. For example, you might be looking for posts related to specific keywords and hashtags. The benefit is that these posts can give you business content ideas and monitor your competition. You can also view posts with lots of engagement, get keyword suggestions for your business and learn from your competition.
The analytics help me measure my business’s social media campaign performance among different social media platforms. Best of all, I can monitor and listen all in one place.
The two best sources of news and updates are:
Twitter feed
LinkedIn Marketing Blog
LinkedIn is a career business platform that attracts businesses and people looking for employment. Job seekers can apply directly to job positions on the LinkedIn website. By following these organizations on Linkedin, you receive the latest information and updates directly from the company you choose to follow. As well, the LinkedIn Marketing Blog sends news straight to your email. LinkedIn groups have groups that you can join where you can receive through the groups feed the latest information about a specific topic that interests your company.
There are 61 million “senior-level influencers” on LinkedIn. These individuals are top decision-makers within organizations, making them experts in their chosen field.
Microblogs such as Twitter have a large following of media outletsand celebrities.By following them, the news can be viewed all in one place in your feed on your mobile device, no matter where you are. You do not have to search for this news on a search engine or be available at a specific time to watch it on TV.
Forbes has reported that the latest news is posted on Twitter before reaching traditional media outlets such as newspapers or TV news reports.
The tools above give you access to news internationally 24 hours a day. What is your favorite way to receive the latest news?
Storytelling is important because it creates a face to a story. It allows the audience to discover the companies they are following human side, enabling business people to show their personal brand. This communication creates bonding and understanding for the reader. The audience sees a face behind words they read.
My content will be guided by my business goals and presented in story format when creating communication for Women Connect Online. I would make my written content on my website using the inverted pyramid communication style. This style begins your story with the main idea of ensuring they receive the essential information.
Creating a story in my social media posts helps me get the message to readers quickly within the first few lines of text. People tend to immerse themselves in a story because they experience the information. Hopefully, this will motivate my readers to read beyond my social media posts and take action by reading my blog posts. The use of storytelling has helped me create similar written content with different communication styles, tones, and language that reaches a diverse target audience that Women Connect Online wants to attract. The kind of stories I want to tell is social media posts that empower women, reach diverse audiences, match the topics currently discussed on my blog.
This digital communication course has helped me create blog content and social media posts that stand out from the competition and allow me effectively communicate my goals. Because of this course, I understand communication styles, my target audience, and how to write in a story format. Having a digital footprint is essential now, and knowing how to communicate effectively. Everyone is involved in social media currently and participates on multiple platforms. We learn to become better storytellers by listening, participating, monitoring, and sharing.
My name is Yvonne; From a young age, I have participated in the “arts.”
As a young child, I spent all my time drawing, taking art classes, and going to art camp. As a teen, I spent my time writing and taking acting classes. I even worked as an extra in the film industry in Toronto. I enrolled in a modelling school and did some fashion modelling.
@pixabay/weinstock
I love being around creative souls, so I worked as an assistant for authors and speakers as an adult. I assisted with formatting, proofreading, and publishing many self-published books. I learned lots about life by reading my client’s stories. I never got tired of helping them write their stories.
In my free time, I love going to concerts, visiting the theatre, and always visiting art shops located in Niagara. I have worked mainly in the marketing field. Many of the jobs I have done have been different and varied. My only regret is that I did not take more art courses as an adult.
I love learning new things. My college experiences and travel helped me grow and find my true path. What keeps me waking up in the morning is travel. I never get tired of learning about new cultures and trying different types of food. Who am I? I am an adapter who loves to learn new things, a communicator, and an artist.
Being social opens doors. I have also believed you must be flexible, social, and open to change.
My personal qualities are that I always love learning new things and have a creative nature. I love writing and had art-related hobbies as a young adult. I am always up for the challenge! My openness to learning new things has given me the courage and the opportunity to do various types of work.
Another personal quality that does overlap in the workplace is that I am very social and like to organize social activities. Taking the initiative to be social and friendly to co-workers has paid off through the years; many co-workers reached out to me years later to offer me a job in places they currently work. Sometimes these people have lent me a hand when navigating office politics in the workplace. They have been references for future employment.
What I have done lately to stand out at my current work is I took the initiative and organized a goodbye party for a long-time employee and raised funds within the department.
I had a passion for this task since I love being a people connector and seeing people happy.
I am proud that for 11 years, I ran a business that centered around writing and creativity. I implemented my brand into my business life and succeeded. This entrepreneurship made me understand the workings of various departments in a small business.
It helps when you love what you do!Tell me what you love to do?
One organization that I feel is doing it right is Tesla. Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.
Tesla was founded in 2003 by a group of engineers who wanted to prove that people didn’t need to compromise to drive electric – that electric vehicles can be better, quicker, and more fun to drive than gasoline cars.
Elon Musk used his capital to buy charging stations so that Tesla owners would be guaranteed a place to charge their vehicles in North America. Charging Tesla cars would be free for Tesla owners. There is a shortage of charging stations for other electric cars; free charging stations increased Tesla’s popularity significantly. As well, Tesla’s price point for his lower-end model is affordable.
Tesla has created a movement. It has attracted a large following and has quality high-end cars. For example, the app store now has supercharger maps, Tesla lifestyle apps, and a forum for Tesla owners to connect. Instagram has a dedicated page for tesla owners of Ontario and Tesla Owners Online. The owner Elon Musk’ speaks for Tesla when using social media. There is no marketing person; Elon is the voice and face for Tesla. He has over 13 million followers on Twitter and is very active, posting every few days. His posts talk about his expansion globally with new charging stations and new places selling Teslas. One of his most effective marketing strategies is his posts from Teslas owners on Twitter endorsing the cars. One post above had comments up to 2.9K. The car sells itself; orders are done online without an in-person salesman.
Elon Musks’ personal mission is to solve Tesla’s and the world’s problems.
With his space station, he is giving back and saving humanity. He is active on social media and media communities appear on podcasts and YouTube. His posts are engaging, and he listens and answers questions.
My interest is my magazine-style membership blog called Women Connect Online. My website’s target audience demographics are females; their marital status and education level vary. The audience’s geographic location is international but needs to read English. My website content and social media posts target both female youth and adults.
The Psychographics of my target audience is I look for leaders. Our women write informative content for women on our website. I look for women who own businesses or have hobbies that they excel at and want to share this knowledge with other women. Women who help solve problems other women face. They are experts in spirituality, health, raising children, and more.
Finding effective communication methods started with listening and engaging. I found keywords on Google keywords and Google Analytics. By knowing my target audience. I used these keywords to write website content, add hashtags on social media posts, increase SEO, and research social media groups and social media followers.
I joined communities on Facebook with a large member base who talked about website members’ topics. By listening and reading the posts of targeted group members and the group leader, I can look for common interests and create social media and website content that engages them into visiting my website. I found it easier to listen and engage with my target audience on Twitter because I could follow them without permission.
With Instagram, I put hashtags in the search field to find my target audience. I researched women and brands whose interests, hobbies, and locations align with my brand. I could identify and engage influencers by looking for the hashtags containing “#ad” or looking for accounts with many followers.
One competitor who has excellent conversations and blog content is SheKnows.com.
They talk about the latest hot topics in the news and celebrities—their Alexa score of 9,345. One million or lower is a great Alexa rank. Their methods are working; they have 56K Twitter followers, 789K followers on Pinterest, and 72Kfollowers on Instagram. The Instagram campaign that was very newsworthy and successful was when they said goodbye to Betty White. On Dec 31, 2021. It received 79 comments on Instagram. The post was not only a tribute but related to their target female audience by saying, “Thank you for being a friend Betty White.” The blog post talked about movie stars who died in 2021, featuring Betty White.
The art of excellent detective work is profiling the potential murderer and the victim first! You cannot tell the story or solve a problemwithout a profile. Criminal profilers perform written personality assessments and geographic profiling, among other things.
The art of understanding your target audience starts with research. Listening will help you determine who your audience is. Once you know your audience, you will create your communication style and write an online story that targets their interests. If the topic does not interest the reader, they will not click the title or even buy the book no matter what the story is about!
Having a profile of your target market before youwrite your story helps you write in a language and tone they will understand. Before starting storytelling, you should create a social media plan or strategy like a criminal profiler. Knowing the demographics and psychographics of your online target audience will help you draft blog content and social media postson topics that will interest them. You can increase SEO by finding keywords/hashtags that reach your target market. Understanding their age, gender, ethnic background, and stage in the life cycle helps you write in a tone and style they can relate to and understand.
Storytelling is an essential communication style that grabs the reader’s attention, creates human connection, and helps the listener remember and understand. It is part of our daily lives in our music, podcasts, plays, the news, books, the internet, and television.
Upon reflection, written communication is about presenting my writing so that my reader could quickly skim over and understand—highlighting the main message points of my story and creating sections so that it is easy to read. The Inverted pyramid writing style helped me tell the main message of my written account right at the beginning to grab the reader’s attention. Following this style enabled me to brainstorm what I was trying to tell my audience right from the start. Then provide content to support my main message. Attention to grammar, spelling, and writing consistently in an active voice gives my writing credibility. My goal is to build credibility and create authentic stories that my audience can identify with, which will create brand loyalty among my audience.
After all, a good detective recreates the crime scene by immersing themselves in the story, which helps them understand the criminal’s behaviour. Communicating your story right can win over skeptics and can lead to not only solving crimes but becoming a great profiler.
Sherlock Holmes was known as an original profiler with his observation skills and ability to gather evidence. Criminal Minds lasted 15 seasons due to the popularity of the profilers. Who is your favourite profiler, detective, or favorite show?
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 