The Journey Comes to an End

I can't believe this is my last blog post of the semester! It seems like just yesterday I was struggling to write my first post and navigate the Blogger website. This semester has flown by and to be honest, I'm going to miss my Social Media Marketing course!

Social Media Marketing is such a unique subject and it has been refreshing to have a course with material that is so relevant to my everyday life. Social media is a huge part of my life and it has been interesting to learn about how important it is becoming in the business world. It is essential in this day and age for a business to be up-to-date on the social media world.

I am happy to say that I will be leaving this course with much more knowledge about social media than I started with. We had twelve weeks of lecture, and I would like to pass along what I think is an important topic from each PowerPoint. Here it goes:

1. Personal Social Media- Social media is used by many, and it's not just your friends that are looking at your pages. Consider that everything you post is public and represents your personal brand!
2. Successful Social Media Page Equation:  Targeted Connections + Meaningful Content + Authentic Helpfulness = Business Benefits
3. When posting video content, you should always follow the AEIOU Rule: Authentic, Entertaining, Intimate, Offbeat, and Unusual
4. White Label Social Networks- Online service privately run by a corporation or nonprofit organization. It has many of the same characteristics as a public social network, but the key difference is that they are privately run by a corporation or nonprofit organization. 
5. Different Social Media Platforms- Prior to this course, I only associated social media with platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. There are many more platforms including webinars, discussion boards, forums, virtual worlds, social games, social news sites, and review sites.
6. There are standards of behavior that should be followed when a business uses social media. Virtual communities need norms/rules that dictate behavior so they can operate effectively. Many of these rules are unspoken (Never forget the Susan Boyle Album Party).
7. Engaging with your audience is critical on social media. There are five stages of listening and observing. Listen to: conversations about brand/company, what people say about competitors, what people say about the industry, the tone of the community, and different social media channels.
8. Social media marketing is different than the traditional marketing approach because it emphasizes audience contribution, two-way communication, and trust building. 
9. It takes time for companies to develop strong social media accounts. Social media marketing is not as immediately affective as traditional paid advertising, but it is often cheaper. It is best to do both of these at the same time.
10. It is critical to set goals when marketing on social media. Two goals for ALL social media are to humanize the brand and fill the top of the funnel, meaning that you should obtain quality leads and turn them into sales.
11. Measurement is necessary when using social media because it helps marketers assess their progress and see how well they are achieving their marketing goals and make necessary adjustments to improve.
12. The 10:4:1 Rule should always be followed when using social media. For every 15 posts on social media, 10 should be helpful content taken from other sources, 4 should be links to your blog posts, and 1 should be a link to one of your landing pages.

 Those twelve facts are just a small portion of what I learned this semester. All of the information was taken from my professor's PowerPoint slides. I would also like to thank my professor, Beth Lavallee for all of her hard work and dedication teaching our class this semester. Thanks for making our class interesting and educational for my peers and I :)

Well readers, that's it! Thank you to those of you who kept up with my blog this past semester. I will definitely take the blogging skills I learned with me, and I'm sure they will be extremely helpful if I ever need to blog in my future career!

     

Picture Source 

Social Media Spreads Heartbreaking Story

This week I wanted to talk about a young girl named Nina Poeta, a cheerleader from Connecticut whose heartbreaking story is all over social media. In November of 2013, Nina was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor that could not be surgically removed. By this summer, she was unable to walk or speak, and eventually lost her battle on November 1st, 2014 when she passed away. What makes Nina's story so unique is how public it became all thanks to social media.

Although I never met Nina, I know her older sister through mutual friends I go to school with. I became aware of her illness last March, when her sister began posting about it on her social media accounts. They began raising money through a Facebook page called "Poeta Strong" that was created to help support the Poeta family. The "Keep Calm and Nina Strong" slogan is all over social media.

On their Facebook page, there was a link posted for a "Go Fund Me" account in the Poeta's name, that had an original goal of raising $100,000 towards Nina's medical treatments. Through the sharing of this link all over social media, they were able to exceed their goal and raise a total of $100,430 over the past year. This is unbelievable and so amazing that through social media, they were able to raise an unbelievable amount of money for Nina and her family.



                      Nina's Fundraising Page                                       Poeta Strong Facebook Page



In addition to the Facebook page(s) that were dedicated towards Nina's cause, her story is all over Twitter and Instagram as well. I have been following her sister Cara since last winter when I met her, and she has become what I'd like to call "Instagram famous". She now has 4,565 followers and is receiving about 700 likes on her posts. Nina's Instagram account has 36,000 followers, and her boyfriend's account has 104,000 followers. These are outrageous numbers that show truly how much this story has spread on social media.

I can only imagine that this story will continue to spread nationwide, as millions have already become aware. Nina's story is heartbreaking and tragic, but the support her and her family have received because of social media is absolutely amazing to me. So, I had to share it here.

Please keep the Poeta family in your prayers! 

Who Said There Was an Age Limit on Social Media?

While looking for a news article for one of my other courses, I stumbled upon an article that I knew I HAD to share on my blog this week. The article is from the Wall Street Journal, and it is called New York Native is a Social Media Darling at Age 105. 

This is a photo of Sophie in her home.

The article discusses a woman named Sophie Ferrara, who celebrated her 105th birthday this past October. She is well known throughout New York City for cheering on sports teams. In addition to her passion for sporting teams such as the Giants, Rangers, and Knicks, Sophie loves social media. Known as "Nana Sophie" to her thousands of followers, she joined Facebook and Twitter when she turned 100. She has about 3,000 people that follow her on Facebook and just over 1,000 followers on Twitter. Sophie is such a sensation because she is one of the oldest people using social media.

Whenever Sophie wants to post a video or picture on social media, she has one of her family members do it for her. Sophie has touched her thousands of followers with her kind-heart and upbeat personality. Her granddaughter said, "her thing is just be kind, do good and you'll never have to worry about anything."

The article also mentioned that Sophie's only birthday wish is to be able to continue meeting new friends through social media.  She wants to meet friends from all over the world, and "have a friend in every city and every country," according to her granddaughter.

I thought this article was worth sharing because it's not only related to social media, it's something many people can appreciate. I think it is adorable that this elderly woman is learning how to use social media and is so enthusiastic about it. Maybe Sophie's participation on social media sites will start a trend and cause more elderly people to create accounts and want to learn more about it.

As Sophie Ferrara proves to be true, there's definitely no age limit on social media!

To view the original article click here.

Sophie Ferrara