Mimic Social

 For the final week of the semester, we have to write about the social media sim we had to complete, Mimic Social. This was a social media sim that came with the textbook, and while it originally seemed like it was non important, as the weeks went on it became more apparent about why we were using Mimic Social. Mimic Social has us in place of a social media specialist for the Bohi brand, a seller of different types of bags. Our goal in Mimic Social was to create social media posts for multiple different platforms of social media, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn. When creating a post, you're able to add a caption to the post, images and schedule the post for a specific time during that week.

When I went through Mimic Social, I found the most success from creating posts on Instagram and Pinterest, since those targeted my demographic group the most. The group I determined was 18-24 year old women, and snapchat and instagram was generating the best reach. I still tried to create posts on the other channels of media, but I made sure to put my weekly budget into those applications. 

Near the end, influencers became a big help, I was able to choose an influencer who aligns with my demographic and brand identity. I ended up choosing a female singer whose main channel of media was through instagram. This was a huge success, and my brand benefitted largely from it. 

At the end of every week in Mimic Social, we had questions we had to answer, these questions were mostly about the analytics we generated that week. Some examples are "What social media did the best in terms of impressions?" or "What channel of media had the most conversion sales?" This allowed us to reflect on the week of the sim and figure out what is working for us, and what we could do better. Overall the experience was good, I think its important for other Social Media classes to take this same program, as I believe it put the job of a social media specialist in perspective.

Essentials of Social Media Marketing

 The semester is coming to an end. Since there are no more chapters to write about, I'll be going over the book we had to read this last semester, Essentials of Social Media Marketing by Michelle Charello was published in May of 2021. The book features 13 chapters, every individual chapter goes over the most prevalent social media in our society currently, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok are a few of the examples of what the book covers. Outside of social media, the book also goes over how to develop your personal brand, how to create an IMC plan (Intergraded marketing communication), and about to develop other forms of media like blogs, vlogs, and podcasts.

The book does a good job explaining anything you'd want to know about social media, how their ad plan works, they're average demographic for specific social media, how to create posts, and how different features work on that channel of media. Overall the book is a great tool if someone is new to social media marketing, or new to social media completely. 

Interview with Brandon Burdge

 This last week we had a podcast assignment where we had to interview or discuss a topic for 5 minutes. Since I decided to do this project with my teammate, Keith Houser, we actually had to record for 10 minutes instead of 5, but still, this project seemed interesting to me and I was ready to test podcasting,

Keith and I decided to interview our strength coach, Brandon Burdge. Coach Burdge was a recent addition to Ohio Northern, having joined in this past fall. Though only 24, Coach Burdge has tons of experience, with interning at the Buffalo Bulls, a NCAA Division 1 football team, and also helping out at his alma matter, where he also was an All-Conference Defensive Tackle. 

While we originally started out with some technical issues of finding how to send audio files, soon we got to asking him the important questions:

• What was the main reason you decided to go into strength training?
• Who is your favorite player? Josh or Keith? 
• How do you combat social media inaccuracies with lifting?

You wouldn't think Coach Burdge is a good public speaker, but he came prepared, gave extremely well thought out answers. Coach showed that he has a thorough knowledge of strength training and why he was selected to help out Ohio Northerns Sports teams.

Social Media Marketing Campaigns

 In Chapter 13, we learned about IMC or Intergraded Media Communications, or a way to use the promotional tools and marketing mixes to develop the best plan possible to sell products, or whatever your goal may be. IMC plans can be effective by using different channels of media to reach as many people in your specific demographic, for instance, for women older than 34, one channel of media you may want to target will be Pinterest, due to the high percentage of female users. 

More recently, social media campaigns have been more popular, as the popularity of social media has also been trending up every single year. For instance, over 52% of users on social media follow some sort of brand, some very common ones are Wendy's, Slim-Jim, or maybe even some local shops in your hometown. Many people tend to buy products straight from social media, for example, Facebook, Instagram, and a few others have shopping sites built into their apps.

Blogs, Vlogs, Podcasts and Videos

 This week we're learning about a few other channels than our original social media, and were focusing on blogs, vlogs, and podcasts! When I first think about blogs, I think of a mid-2000s soccer mom who has a large following and talks about her home life, to me, blogging seems so outdated when we have apps like Twitter, Facebook, and some others.  

Vlogs are also a thing of the past for modern media, there was a strange period in the early 2010s when it felt like everyone on the YouTube platform was creating vlogs of their daily life, but as far as I'm aware, there aren't many creators who actually go along with vlogs anymore.

Podcasts, however, have actually increased in popularity in the past few years, there's been a few that have grown more than others, like The Joe Rogan PodCast, The Pat McPhee Show, and quite a few True Crime Podcasts. I'm actually someone who listens to podcasts pretty often, especially on longer drives back and from university and home. 

I think it's kind of weird how podcasts have exploded in the past few years, but at the same time it makes total sense why vlogs and blogs have almost vanished from the public eye, most people, if you asked them wouldn't know what the site Blogger is. I did not before the semester, this shows the public awareness of blogs especially.

Easter Week

 With it being this late in the semester, I think it's safe to say everyone needs a break. Thankfully, that much-needed "break" is coming this week. I say "break" because it's only an extra day going into the weekend, but I'll still gladly take it. What's unusual about this year's Easter Break is that we have classes on Monday, even though Easter is on Sunday, from what I hear from my coaches and professors,  we haven't had classes on the Monday after Easter for many years. This truly makes me wonder why this decision was made this year? I don't know if we usually have the Friday off beforehand like we do this year. I'll probably ask a professor tomorrow to see if they know anything! It's going to be so nice to get this Friday off and to be able to go back home, I feel like I haven't been home in such a long time.

Besides break coming up, not much has happened this past week, except I'm starting to experience some extreme burnout, which sucks because I have so many papers to write these next few weeks. I'm hoping after this weekend I get back into the swing of things and can finish strong! 

Marketing with TikTok

 It's time for one of my most anticipated social media chapters, it's time to learn about marketing with TikTok. TikTok has quickly grown to be one of the most used social media channels within the past few years, TikTok actually used to be Music.ly, before it got rebranded to what we know today.

One of the most intersting parts of these chapters is looking at the media by the numbers, to no surprise, 62% of the users on TikTok are between the ages of 13 and 29. However, I believe within the next few years we might see an increase in older users, as TikTok becomes popular for that demographic.

Part of TikTok's success is from its broad range of entertainment. There are so many different users and different communities, there's something on TikTok for everyone.

For the different communities, they call them -toks, like if you like cooking? its #cooktok, or #cookingtok. just by entering those hashtags, you can find videos about almost anything