Week 17 Wrapping It Up

First let me tell you how much I enjoyed this class. I have learned a lot about the different social media sites and the various advantages they offer. I also loved reading the textbook. Dave Kerpen not only writes about great ideas on how to use social media for business, but his writing style is also fantastic. It is a straightforward and enjoyable book to read. It is full of wonderful examples to help understand each chapter better. Every time I read a chapter I got excited and shared all my new knowledge with friends who already have running businesses. I am sure I will read this book over and over again while I create and run my own business.

Week 16 - Planning Your Future Strategy

During this semester I have learned about some new social media sites as well as gained a deeper understanding of some which I have used earlier. I have been using Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn for some time. But Instagram and Twitter were new platforms for me. I also have never written or read blogs before. I found it very useful to learn all the different ways to post on Facebook. One thing I learned in this class that I find very handy is creating polls on Facebook. I also find it quite helpful that I can create a post on Facebook and with one click I can also make that post available on Instagram and Twitter. I love Instagram for its simplicity. It is easy to create posts there, with just couple of clicks I can upload photos from my phone.

Week 15B - Optimizing Yourself and the Company

For this assignment I decided to use my sister’s business Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/solymosibori/.  She is a clothing designer in Hungary. She doesn’t have an online store or a permanent brick-and-mortar store. She sells her clothes in a monthly pop-up store event. She uses Facebook for advertising her events.

Week 15A - Optimizing Yourself and the Company

Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, and many other analytics services are a great help to grow my business. All the inside information that these services collect can help me understand my target market better; who they are, where they live, and what is their demographic composition. Out of the many pieces of useful information, I think the most important piece for me would be the demographic review. This would not only show the age and gender composition of my site visitors, but it would also tell me what they like doing, what they are interested in. That information would be very valuable in building a better connection with my future customers. Another tool I would use frequently is the location data. Although I am planning to have an online business, knowing where my visitors/customers live can help me create customized ads for certain locations, or can help me choose certain offline events to participate in.

Week 14 Developing Online Advertising

For my first advertisement I chose to boost one of my earlier posts. This post shows how the real miniature flower jewelry is made. I chose this post because I think it contains valuable information. It is more than just a pretty picture, because it gives interesting information about these products. As a possible future blog post, I am also planning to write about this process and the artists making the jewelry, so boosting this post can be part of the promotion of that blog post as well.

Week 13B - Online Advertising - Analysis of the Marketplace

I think “Boost your post“ ads would be a good starting point for me on Facebook. This type of ad can help increase awareness of my page by showing my post to more people and keeping it on top of the newsfeed. This can help me increase my engagement with current and future customers. And if I create informative, interesting, and engaging posts, this form of advertising can be a great help to grow the number of my followers. Another strategy I would use is to advertise new products or on-sale items, which would bring more visitors to my website.

Week 13A Online Advertising - Analysis of the Marketplace

Online Advertising is a big step up compare to traditional advertising. And advertising on your social media site is even better. As Kerpen points out in “Likeable Social Media”, when you put an ad in an online magazine instead of a paper magazine, you can get lots of useful information, such as how many people actually clicked on your ad and how many of those clicks ended in a sale. When you advertise on your own social media site, you can collect even more data about your customers because they are usually your followers, so you already have data on them even before the sale, and the data from the sale adds to this information. All this data can help you create better-targeted, more successful ads. Also, when they like and follow your social media site, they passively introduce you to their friends and followers – potential new customers! I think creating well-designed advertising for your social media followers is the most effective way to promote your business. If you know what your followers need and like, you can convert them to customers by showing them how your product or service meets their needs and likings. But if you want to reach a vary large number of possible future customers, a traditional campaign may be the way to go. However, you still need to make sure that your target audience is reading the magazine or listening to the radio station that you are planning to use for your ad.