Week 17: Wrapping it up

Overall: Week 17

I would have to say after taking this course, I thought before I was well versed in the subject matter of social media but I really did have a lot to learn! I am glad I took this course to really dive deep in understanding the matter of social media. My viewpoint has changed about social media, before I felt there was only a few platforms that were important as a business (eCommerce) owner but that is not the case.

To really engage your customer on all platforms, you need to be posting on ALL platforms daily and be active. Exploring other platforms, for example Twitter, I never have used this platform in my personal life and we had to create an account, create and post ads on Twitter. Which, I am glad that I was pushed to use a different platform to understand the differences in platforms. This is something that I need to keep up with because the younger generation (teens-18's year old) is always using the newest platforms, so having that knowledge is key for newness. But also still posting on the "older" platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. 

Overall, I feel that after taking this class has definitely taught me the building blocks of starting and continuing to have a successful eCommerce business. By developing a well known standing business on the eCommerce level you need to have a stance on every platform. Not just that alone but by posting good content, that may not have to do with what your selling either just to reach to your targeted customer. Once that is grasped, you will have a great follower base and that is something for my start up that I want to get going. This class has helped me with the start up of my own company, Katharyn's Kollections by getting a follower base on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This will help me because I already have followers and those followers will create more by liking, commenting and sharing my content that I post. 

Social media for businesses, services and products are amazing tools to pick and choose what you want to use for the particular business that you are promoting. Facebook alone has this great feature of Facebook Ad manager, this allows you to create content on the platform as well as share it on Facebook and Instagram. This is an awesome tool because you can actually boost your ad that you shared a few weeks ago or months ago and bring that back to your timeline for you and your customers so you don't actually have to recreate content if you are doing the same type of offer. In the future, I am for sure going to use this tool to create and share content on Facebook and Instagram. This tool also helps have a guild line of what your content should entail, which is very helpful when creating a lot of content. 

All in all, this class has taught me the actual building blocks of having a successful business. I also very much enjoyed being pushing into something new to learn and grasp what is being shown to us, that is so important online because technology is always changing. And keeping up with the newness is very important as well. I am so glad I took this course, it really opened my eyes to social media businesses and running a successful one! 

Week 16: Planning Your Future Strategy

Overall

Overall, this class really pushed me in the right direction, from when to post, on different platforms, how to post, ect. All of the assignments were very helpful and useful for existing businesses or upcoming businesses. I really liked almost everything covered in this class because it really helped / showed me the correct way to go about being an eCommerce business. 

I think the best social media platforms that integrate the best for my company would be Instagram and Facebook. I feel that these two platforms are very powerful and hit my targeted customer. I am glad that we explored Twitter, but I don't think this is a good platform for my particular company. I definitely will use Facebook Ad manager as well as posting ads on Instagram. I got way more users and views on Facebook and Instagram rather than Twitter. I really like Facebook Ad manager because it allows you to create exactly what you were going for and also allows you to link your Instagram page as well. This I feel is a great tool to have, to save time and money. Facebook Ad manager does charge you, but if planned out correctly it will work for us and make our money back with sales. I think that my company should spend at least 2 - 3 hours on social media posts per day and coming up with a budget as well. 

Week of 12/8 - 12/14 

Planned post - Monday and Thursday (Extended Black Friday Deals) **Post on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter using Facebook ad manager (Instagram and Facebook) 

Actual Post : Extended Black Friday Deals.... WHAT?!.... This is unheard of!! 40% off all purchases until December 15th. 

Week of 12/15 - 21 

Planned post - Wednesday and Friday (Last minute shopping - WE HAVE DEALS!) **Post on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter using Facebook ad manager (Instagram and Facebook)

Actual Post: Last minute shopping... we still have some great deals with 40% off all purchases, including gift wrapping. Don't sweat it! Katharyn's Kollection's is here! 

Week of 12/22 - 12/28 

Planned Post: Tuesday and Wednesday (Happy Holiday's - Express shipping if in need of gifts!) **Post on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter using Facebook ad manager (Instagram and Facebook)

Actual Post: Happy Holiday's ! Don't sweat it, we've got express shipping if in need of last minute shopping! 

Week of 12/29 - 1/4 

Planned Post: Everyday all week this week (After Christmas sale!) **Post on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter using Facebook ad manager (Instagram and Facebook)

Actual Post:Happy After Christmas sale! We are offering 50% off all purchases! 

Week 15: Optimizing Yourself and the Company

Google Analytics 

I feel that all parts of Google Analytics are very beneficial and useful. The main google analytics home is very beneficial because it shares the amount of users (which is great to know if you are building more customers or not), bounce rate (this is very helpful because this tells you how many people visit and stay vs. visit and leave, the sessions and the duration of the sessions of users (sharing how long a customer is on your site). 

Another part of Google Analytics that is very beneficial is "how are your active users trending over time?" This is a great feature to allow you to see if your traffic is expanding or decreasing. With this information you can see what you need to change if traffic isn't expanding. "When do your users visit" is another great tracker to see when the best time is to post an event, offer or anything else so the most amount of people see your post/ad. The other two analytics I found important were, "where are your users and what are your top devices?" These two are important because you can see where your customers are located so you can post effectively. Additionally, knowing the type of devices is very helpful to, to know what kind of ads to create for and what your customers are using. 

All of these analytics are super important and will apply all of these to my company to gauge and understand where my customers are expanding, ect. 

Week 14: Developing Online Advertisement

#1 Promoting the business locally

This was my first ad for this assignment, and I thought this was important to use location to boost my customers to come and visit my shop! Also, I personally find this very helpful as a customer when a location is shared to help me find where I want to go. Sometimes if there is not a location listed I will not track down the store, I will just shop somewhere else. That is why I feel this is so effective and a good ad, to show our location (allowing more shoppers to come shop) and boost our traffic especially with the holidays right around the corner! The objective for this post is for customers to find our shop the easiest way possible and to create more traffic through out the Holiday season. 

#2 Promoting Website and Extended Deals 

This ad was to promoting our websites and different social media platforms, to share the good deals of our Black Friday Deals being extended. This will be effective because sharing the extended deals on all the social medial platforms will boost our sales (because of our great deal - 40% off all purchases) and get the word out. Additionally, everyone loves a great sale, by doing a great sale will continue traffic and bring new customers. The objective of this ad is to bring in new and old customers to purchase with our great deals we are offering. 

#3 Boost Posts and Getting Business Out There 

Finally, for the last ad, boosting a post. Taking an old post and tweeking it a bit! The objective is to show our beautiful bracelets and the great deals we are offering with them! This makes sense for our company because of the great sale along with the Holiday season... and who doesn't need to grab a gift real quick!