Analysis of Social Media Management
A look at the integration of social media
platforms
Background
·
In my
graduate social media course with Marist College we were instructed to create
accounts on Blogger, Twitter, and Pinterest.
·
Each
week we were given a topic to discuss amongst our class and these discussions
were executed through the blogs we created for the course (My blog: http://dc4sm.blogspot.com).
·
Using
the social media platforms we created accounts with (Pinterest, Twitter, and a
class Facebook page) we posted links to attract attention and generate traffic
to our blogs.
·
Here, I analyze
my social media management experience and the results of integrating blog posts
with social media platforms.
Introduction
·
As a prior public relations professional,
I have seen the growing importance of social media and how businesses are developing
plans to utilize these platforms to reach their consumers.
·
As an entrepreneur and business
woman, I am deciding which social media platforms work best for communicating
and reaching my own customers and I have seen the impact that social media has
firsthand.
·
My online websites have seen the
most traffic and the most amount of purchases when my blog and social media
platforms (especially Instagram) has a steady flow of content being produced.
·
Going into this course, I was eager
to learn more about these platforms and to see what I could take away that
would better help me manage my business' social media accounts and reach more
customers.
Plans & Policies
·
With knowing firsthand how the use
of social media can directly affect traffic to a website; I set out to increase
traffic to not only my class blog but to my business’ blog and websites as
well.
·
I wanted to gain a better
understanding of the social media platforms that I already use (Facebook and
Twitter) as well as new ones (Pinterest).
·
I most importantly sought to drive
traffic to my class blog through these platforms.
·
On my business’ blog and websites I
do not have any privacy policies posted, however after taking this course and
especially learning about policies and security online, I will be implementing
privacy policies on all of my websites.
·
This site offers a generic privacy
policy template and allows users to select the options that best suit their
needs.
·
To view the privacy policy for my
class blog, click here.
Activities
·
For each week’s blog post I “pinned”
a pin along with a link to our class’ Pinterest board, I shared a tweet with a
direct link to the post, and I shared a link on our class’ Facebook group wall.
·
Halfway through the week I typically
posted again to remind people to visit my blog and join in in the discussion
that was underway (this included a link to the blog as well).
·
Lastly, I posted on the final day of
the week with a similar reminder.
Analysis
·
Week four’s blog post entitled, “Social
Media and your Target Audience” has been my class blog’s “most successful” blog
post thus far (the above screenshots are from week 4 as well).
·
During week four I published my blog
post earlier than usual (Tuesday instead of Wednesday) which afforded myself
and my visitors an extra day of interaction and dialogue.
·
Below are my blog’s stats which for week four showcase a 45% increase in pageviews versus week three:
·
When it comes to my blog’s audience,
the only information provided by Blogger is the country and operating system
used (97% of visitors live in the U.S. and 30% use Google Chrome).
·
I’d love if Blogger developed the
ability to provide more specific audience information such as age, income
levels and professions.
Conclusion
·
Although, it might be difficult to
clearly state that my blog’s traffic increased specifically because of my
social media interactions; there does seem to be a strong enough correlation
between the two to continue these practices.
·
The strategy of posting at least
three times throughout week on these social networks seemed to offer the
perfect balance between posting “just enough” and posting “too much”.
·
Moving forward I will definitely be
taking what I’ve learned in this course and directly applying it to the
marketing strategies I use for my two websites (The-Style-Closet.net & London-Rock.com).
·
The key to success is a constant
flow of content production; which often times is relatively difficult for me to
keep up with.
·
As a one-man-show it becomes
difficult to post on several different social media outlets as well as a blog;
however I know how important it is for not only meeting new customers but
maintaining the relationships I have with my current customers as well.
