1. “How would you define social media?” (2)
To me, social media is the way or ways in which people can communicate with an audience via communities on the internet. Being a frequent user of social media for a long while, that’s not quite what I learned from this class. I learned about companies use social media to reach their potential consumers via various platforms and methods.
2. “Often, companies make the mistake of thinking that creating a Twitter account or Facebook page is “doing social media” (25)
Initially, I thought the whole marketing via social media thing would be fast and easy. I soon learned just how time-consuming it is. There’s a lot of work that goes into creating and managing content on different channels.
3. “You want to identify the platforms where people talk about your industry, about topics that align with your brand’s values, about situations where your brand might have some relevance” (236)
I learned about brands following the crowd, so to speak. On Disney’s Tumblr blog, disney.tumblr.com, there are a lot of posts like these. Disney has a huge fan following on Tumblr, so the decision to appeal to those people via the one-two punch combo of gifs and Disney was wise. They knew of their relevance on the blogging platform, and adapted to what the community likes to see.
4. “Setting goals for social media success is vital” (242)
This turned out to be a good strategy for expanding my brand. By deciding “I’ll post this to this blog, then that to Twitter, and wait a bit before my next post”, I always knew what it was that I had to do. It’s easier to remember to put out more information relevant to your product (if you have one), if you can set goals in a sort of schedule-like fashion.
5. “What it all points to is the fact that you need to have a multi-channel strategy and then underlining all of that an in-depth, global strategy.” (116)
I had not thought of the need for a multi-channel strategy before, but I am glad to have implemented it. On my Twitter, for example, I have the urls of the other platforms I use for my Boarding the Bandwagon project listed in one place in the description. I also tweeted a link to my Youtube video talking about my idea. By expanding your horizons by spreading your brand to other websites, you can garner more interest and attention.
6. “Personal branding plays a critical role in self-promotion” (17)
On my own blog, I chose to stick with a friendly, casual way of speaking and presenting my information. I felt like that would resonate better with people, since the purpose of my social media 4 social change project was to ease people into social media. I think my typing style would help to promote what I’m doing, because it comes across as approachable and therefore the information on my various social media platforms are more accessible and marketable.
7. “In short, when building a blog, strategy, moderation, promotion, and measurement are key considerations that all marketers should think about.” (118)
Before this class, I’ve only ever blogged casually. There’s no real need to have a strategy or to promote blog posts that are just about your personal life, unless your personal life is essentially what you’re selling. I learned that if you’re blogging as a way of reaching people for a specific purpose, though, you need to have an idea of what you’re doing and you need to promote it. I did just that by posting links to my Blogger posts on Twitter and Facebook, and sometimes Instagram.
8. “In terms of specific tools, I think listening and measurement tools are fairly essential” (84)
I did not realize that Blogger allowed you to view your stats. Knowing your pageview count and where your traffic is coming from can really help you. If one post has significantly more pageviews than another, it may be a good idea to do another post similar to that one.
9. “Widgets can be used for entertainment or for a specific function, adding features such as maps, weather charts, calculators, content sharing, polls—if you have a specific need, chances are there’s a widget for it.” (134-135)
Honestly, I did not know that widgets still existed. Nor did I know the extent to which they can do. A social media campaign could definitely make use of one widget or another.
10. “Now, people have always shared information—that activity wasn’t invented with social media. But what social media does is allow us to understand the ins and outs of that sharing.” (226)
Prior to this class, I had not realized just how important sharing information between platforms was. It helps to spread your message and reinforce it. It can also show you, with use of things like pageview statistics, which platforms are getting the most traffic, and where they’re getting it from (for example: my Blogger site, the corresponding Twitter account in which I share links to my posts whenever I update).
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