Week 17 Final Post

Social Media has transformed the way that I see business. I never really thought about launching my program and putting so much emphasis on social media, but that has surely changed. My application is very academic focus and though that social media was just not the appropriate platform but that has turned out to be completely false. My Student Success application is essentially an application that allows students to meet and engage with each other, with the goal of students being able to meet, support and create opportunities for one another. This works by connecting students that have the same major, transfer destination, or career interest as you with a simple click of a button. This, I felt, like was not going to do well on social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram but I have been shown that that it not true. Facebook and Instagram, with the right advertising can be used for pretty much any business. Preferably, Facebook was the best platform to promote my business. By far.

Throughout the duration of this class, I have discovered that social media outlets like Facebook and Instagram might be helpful in building a brand for my company but I feel like I need much more than that. I feel like social media will get our name out there but we must take other measures to truly establish ourselves in the competitive industry of education. Another thing is that I have learned in this class is that you have to build a brand. Putting meaning to a product is more important to anything else. We need to create “The Experience” with Student Success for emotionally grab people. Commercials and personal experiences are the best attaching meaning to a product and whenever meaning is attached to a product, it will sell and it will sell very well.

I definitely have a much better understand of how to market a business. For my company I think emails every other day would be the best option. We would need to remind our customers or potential clients. However, every email that we send would focus on the different things that we offer. For example one email could be titled “Find your career with Student Success” and be filled with information and career options in regards to whatever the student may be looking for. This email could provide the link to a quiz in which we could provide the student with questions that lead to the perfect university for them in terms of price, proximity, prestige, culture, job opportunities and other variables that the student decides to factor in. The last thing would be through social media. I would integrate all of these into my current stare they by making sure that I have a good website, by making sure that were working with the correct people and reach it to the right audience and financially by gathering a lot of attention in the eyes of others through social media. We can really get our name out there by sponsoring academic events and making sure that what we do reaches out to the younger kids so that as they grow they begin to use our tools and resources.

Perhaps the tool that would give me the most benefit on Facebook would be the posting ads on Facebook, more specifically, Facebook banners. Facebook banners has targeting options that are very advanced, very affordable and can still get excellent results, helps develop customer loyalty, can help track performance and ROI. Facebook banners help target the specific audience that you want to reach based on several factors such as gender, proximity and other important factors that help weed out the people that you don't needs and help you focus on the audience that truly matters. I created a couple of ads and I feel that the ones that I created will be very successful. I made three different ones. The first is geared towards the general audience and welcomes any person in the US that would be willing to learn more about our company. The second ad is geared towards high school student which includes information such as what the college life is like, what college is best for you, what career is best for you with quizzes and matches your school, major and city to best fit the high school students need. The last ad is about community college students. Here we offer more information about transferring to the school that is best for you in terms of prestige, cost, location, school size, school engagement/student life and so much more. The three ads have the same picture because we want our logo to be the main thing that the audience see, that way we are able to build a brand. Building a brand is the overall objective. Creating a brand is the most important goal in all forms of social media.

From what I saw having your business on social media or having your Facebook page can do a really great job of putting it out there. However, you have to know how to use it. There are a number of tools that are there to help your company get attention but you have to know them how to accurately use them. For me, this was the total amount of likes, comments, shares, the number of people reached, the number of people engaged, and the page and tab visits. The higher the number of like comments and shares the greater the chance that people will see and interact with your posts in the future. I think that the number of people engaged is important because it will show the number of people who interacted positively with my page over the past month, whether it was through likes, comments, sharing or any other type of way that would enhance or promote my page. I think that the number of page and tab visits is important because it is important to know the total number of times that each of my pages or tabs were viewed. All of these features is why I have loved working with Facebook for my business and definitely see it becoming an integral part of my business in the near future.

Thank you for everything, professor! I absolute loved y our class and enjoy your summer.