Skip to main content

Almost there...


This is (almost) it! The last post for SMM class for this quarter. It has been a very interesting course for me - very challenging and interesting at the same time.

My social media naiveté was no secret. Coming in to this course, I have always acknowledged that my knowledge and exposure to social media and social media marketing has been mostly just Facebook. Let me rephrase that. My exposure to social media before this class was ONLY Facebook. There. It is out in the open.

This is the reason why the class has been quite challenging for me. Not only did I have to create accounts with Twitter, Blogger and LinkedIn, I had to learn how to navigate these different platforms. It is only by the awesome patience of Dr. Guignard, professor extraordinaire, that I have been able to learn many things, not least of which is to post something properly on each platform. Dr. G's virtual lectures and presentations have been very helpful to a neophyte like me. I have not been magically turned into a Social Media Marketing guru, not by a long shot, but I at least have some knowledge and understanding of how SMM works.

The biggest and most important lesson I have learned in this class is that SMM takes a lot of thought and hard work. The SMM Planning Cycle is proof that a social media marketer's work is never done. There is always something to monitor, something to tweak and adjust, to define or redefine. 

Which brings me to my second point. Social media and SMM are constantly evolving. Even established platforms such as Facebook are constantly introducing updates and features that are more attractive to users. New platforms are born, die, or redesigned every day. The market shapes the media as much as the media shaping the market. It is a symbiotic relationship that is very dynamic. A skilled SM marketer needs to be on top of all these changes and know how and when to leverage platforms and tools to the advantage of his or her campaign.

Finally, I realized that SMM is here to stay. It appears that SMM growth will continue to be in an upward trajectory in the near future. 

While I do not expect to be in the business of social media marketing anytime soon, I am glad I took this class. It has brought me from under the rock I have been living in all this time. Now have a profile on LinkedIn. Better late than never, right?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Summarizing my SMM class data

The term is coming to a close. For whatever it is worth, I can say that I definitely know more about social media and social media marketing than when I started this class in January. Back then my only social media exposure was Facebook. Now I am blogging, Tweeting and am finally on LinkedIn. Learning about these platforms is already a big stride for me. Then there is the matter of Social Media Marketing. This is a totally new world insofar as I am concerned. Blogging is an avenue that I could learn to be comfortable with. Since the class started, I have had 7 posts, this being the eighth. My page has been viewed a total of 209 times since I started it, with 98 views last month, mostly from the United States. It is interesting to note that I got over 60 views from different parts of the world, most of them countries where I don't even know anybody. This tells me how small the virtual world has become and how much more I could reach with a little more effort. Below is a summary ...
2 comments
Read more

Online Communities - are they for me?

It is interesting to explore online communities or groups. I have always been wary about joining such groups, afraid of the unknown. Beyond my own little circle of friends, I have not participated in any online discussions. This week I had to look for a group that I could genuinely stand to gain from and to which I could contribute. At first I tried the groups on LinkedIn (another first for me this week) and I did put in requests to join two groups, one of which is a group for alumni of the university I graduated from. As of this time, I have not heard back from the administrators of the groups. So I tried to go around the instruction to join public groups versus closed ones - did not get me very far...yet. Maybe they will when they do respond to me. For purposes of compliance with SMM class requirement, I just jumped in and joined two very different groups: the first was Spark People, an online community that I have actually been following for a while, but mostly as a spectator ...
2 comments
Read more

Learning from others

Learning about Social Media Marketing is a daunting task for somebody whose only exposure thus far has been Facebook. It is overwhelming enough to learn how to navigate different platforms, it is even more challenging to learn how to market myself. I was raised in a culture where talking about one's self can be viewed as distasteful if not downright tacky. I realize now that this is definitely from another era and if I hope to catch up, I will have to get out from under the rock I have been living in and embrace the 21st century means of communication, aka Social Media. I have decided to follow my classmates, professor, a physician who is very well known in her field, Starbucks and UC Riverside on Twitter. While the selection seems random and totally unconnected, I believe I have something to learn from each one of them. My classmates are definitely a good resource because I think they are more social media savvy and know what to say and how to say it. From them I hope to learn t...
Post a Comment
Read more