Scrolling through Instagram, Twitter, or any social media platform, one rarely stops to admire the effort put into making each post that provides us with mere seconds of entertainment. Over the past seven weeks, I took a course on social media strategy, which opened my eyes to the complexities of creating social media posts. Each post requires so many resources, from strategy to creative development, then posting, reviewing, comments, and finally analyzing. Entertaining people for a few seconds is a lot of work!

Applying my learnings

During my course, I developed a unique strategy for a new business called Coded Minds. First, I researched the brand and its competitors, then I set goals and fleshed out ways Coded Minds can begin to build an online community. One key thing I learned during my process was establishing SMART goals. I have always found establishing a goal extremely challenging because there are no basic rules for setting a goal. However, with the help of the SMART process, I created a goal and broke it down into attainable and measurable pieces. With my goals established, I designed the Coded Minds social media strategy for their everyday posts and paid advertising. You can watch my complete presentation here. 

Social Media in my Career

So far, this social media strategy course has helped me professionally in two ways. The first was to convince my peers to rearrange our marketing budget and put more dollars into our social media budget. The textbooks and lessons gave me the ammunition I needed to convince my team that making this change was the best use of our company’s marketing budget. 

The second way the course helped me professionally is in understanding the inner working of developing social media advertising campaign. I work with agencies that do most of the behind-the-scenes work for our social media advertising. This course helped me understand how the campaigns are analyzed, what tools are used, and how specific audiences are targeted.

Wrapping Up

Although people may only notice a social media post for a brief time, the benefits to a brand are great. Investing in a team to develop a content strategy and manage the online community will help build a loyal brand following.