Week 8A

Today as I checked my personal Instagram I thought: "How would I use this for my pretend-business?"  I chose to create a pretend social media consulting business for my project in this class but that doesn't seem to provide me with a lot of engaging visual content... How, though, am I to be successful on social media without visual elements?  As someone now running a social media consulting business page this is obviously concerning.  I better figure it out quick.

After reading the articles provided and comparing the top 8 visual networks I came to a decision on an instagram.  But here is my breakdown:

Snapchat: After the last update roll-out snap chat is basically dead.  So I didn't really both researching it much.  Snapchat has been dying a slow painful death over all (stocks though.  yiiiikes... and then the kylie jenner thing...read more about that here) so as far as a business owner starting a new visual content marketing network I think no Snapchat for me. 

Pinterest:  The link provided to the article on "why you should use pinterest" didn't seem to work.  But I'd pretty much already decided that I wouldn't be using pinterest... this is mostly due to the fact that I know Instagram really well and had decided to use instagram (I may start an pinterest to give it a shot).  I'll need to do more research on pinterest.

Youtube: I do NOT have the time or know-how to provide consistent content for a youtube channel right now.

Twitter:  Twitter was the only other network that I was really considering besides Instagram.  Its got a lot of users, it allows for short, to the point posts and photos, etc. 

Tumblr:  I don't think the audience on Tumblr is right.  Just from my personal experience.

SO this winner here, obviously, is Instagram.

Instagram is easy and user friendly.  I used to describe it like flipping through a magazine except you've created the content yourself by choosing who you follow and what companies you follow.  Therefore the ads (for the most part) are all tailored to your likes.  I feel like I "get" instagram.  To a degree anyway.  Though I've never used it for a business.  I'm excited to give it a go!

And here she is.  My shiny new instagram business page:

https://www.instagram.com/linkup_consulting/

Week 7B

CONTENT!  Scheduled content that is.

So, these posts have already been posted to my page by this point but they were extremely easy to create and then just let be!  What a great tool!  I could have created as many as I wanted and just scheduled them out as I wished.  That is so convenient and a really great way to keep content consistently on your page.  As a business owner life can get busy.  So have a day dedicated to creating and scheduling content seems smart to me and facebook makes it fairly easy to do.

I chose to post a couple of articles relating to marketing yourself on social media.  One of the articles I posted was about Youtube marketing and I chose that article because of a post I had made earlier in the week that said that videos are a highly successful marketing tool.  I included a funny meme to catch viewer attention.  The next post I posted was about creating content.  I think my viewers will respond well to these posts because they relate directly to why someone would be following my page in the first place.  They are looking for ways to boost their business online and on social media so these little tips and tricks should be interesting to them, but they aren't enough to completely eliminate the need for my services.

Week 7A

This week I liked some buisnesses with my new fancy shmancy facebook business page to follow some pages that I think would have useful content that I can not only share with my followers but also learn from.  As someone who wants to go into PR, Social media and event planning I decided to stick to liking pages that focus on those aspects of marketing.  These are the pages I liked:

https://www.facebook.com/marismith/
https://www.facebook.com/JPublicRelations/
https://www.facebook.com/RubensteinPublicRelations/
https://www.facebook.com/BoltPR/
https://www.facebook.com/PRSANational/
https://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaConsult/
https://www.facebook.com/charityfashionshowsd/

I tried to choose pages that were posting current content and posting frequently.  I also tried to choose pages that were relevant to what I'm trying to do with my career so that I can learn from the way the pages are being utilized.  I'm also hoping to be able to share some content from the pages I follow.

Week 6A

This week I started a Facebook business page for a business I completely made up called LinkUp Social Media Consulting.  It has exactly 0 likes currently but I have high hopes for its pretend success.

Ok jokes aside, this experiment has already been a huge learning experience.  Despite having never owned a business before I have run "Pages" on facebook before and had no idea how to use the pages features.

Something to think about and that I'll be covering today in my post is reach vs engagement.  As part of my research on this topic I read this article linked below:

https://ymarketingmatters.com/interpreting-facebook-insights-reach-vs-engagement/

So we'll go piece by piece starting with reach.

Reach is how well your content is "getting out there".  Your pages reach shows how many people see your content and how well its getting out into people's newsfeeds.

Engagement goes beyond reach and is almost self explanatory.  Engagement shows how often your audience engagement with your content through likes, clicks, comments, etc.

NOTE: It is pointed out in the above article, and I think important to remember, that a wider reach may lower your engagement stats.

Facebook Insights allows you to keep track of your reach to see how well your posts are doing (and this will help you to keep track of how well your social media investments are doing as well).  Insights then allows you to track which types of posts illicit the most engagement from your audience.  Getting a good look at what type of content attracts your viewers is important.  So, for example, if polls don't get much engagement then don't bother!  But if videos are getting a ton of engagement focus your efforts there and on creating better quality videos for the future!

For the curious, this is my current social media project: https://www.facebook.com/LinkUp-Social-Media-Consulting-197192360866405/

Please give it a Like!