It has been quite a long road. I am excited to be ending my under grad and looking forward to the future. This course has instilled some great lessons when moving into developing a social media marketing strategy. It has also been a great reminder of processes that I am certainly out of practice with. Looking at the class and social media, it is almost incomprehensible on how quickly social media metrics and algorithms change from what seems like month to month. All of these help a marketer develop a better strategy to targeting their demographic.
What I took from this class is how important it is to come up with measurable goals that can determine the return on investment. It just isn’t enough to start a campaign and have no idea what you are looking for from the results. It is important to know what you want to accomplish whether it is brand recognition, developing a following, or developing knowledge for a product, it all has to be measurable. The other thing I learned is the need for a solid plan and understanding objectives. Instead of going in blind, always have a plan.
The weekly blogs were a great tool to use for the class. It helps us to develop writing skills and envelope these skills into being able to develop a style that will be industry related for the career path. A company will not allow someone without any skills in writing for industry knowledge to develop blog posts, but this gives someone who might be interested in this content the ability to build a portfolio. It also helps that there was input from fellow students.
I enjoyed the class very much and I am glad this is the last class I took to go out on a high note. The one thing I disliked and might have disliked throughout the entire process, is that the final papers do not parallel how you will pitch an idea in the real world. I know if I were to hand in a 13 page paper to my marketing director, they wouldn’t look at it. Ideas have to be short, concise and to the point utilizing tools such as SWOTS and sales analytics. This has been something i have seen throughout a lot of my classes. Instead of setting them up like a formal paper they would be best to set up as a true business pitch.