Week 17: Wrapping It Up

     Since starting this class, my viewpoint of social media has definitely changed. My viewpoint hasn't changed very drastically, but this class has shown me how I can improve my social media use to greatly benefit a business that I make in the future. Before this class, whenever I used any social media platform, I just focused on gaining the most followers I could by using any small trick I might have heard of online; now I realize that this was not really the best way to do it. Doing that usually killed my engagement but brought a large amount of followers. I see now that this was not the best way to increase my follower count in social media and now I know there are better ways to do things. I now know that I shouldn't force things to happen and just let the algorithms of these social media platforms help me out and let them work how they are supposed to.

    I have learned the many benefits of using social media as a tool to connect and helped my customers rather than as just a way to get more money. I never really saw it, but my viewpoint here has really changed. I see that communicating with people will increase my reputation with others and will attract more people to my profile/page which will drastically increase the amount of people that see my social media page and therefore the amount of people buying from my business will increase. Instead of just showcasing things, telling people to buy something, or hyping something up I should try to communicate with my audience. I also found out that it is very beneficial to connect with people and post quality content because more people will eventually come around and those people will end up buying more in the future. In the end, using the methods I learned for social media would be beneficial, and even though it takes longer to grow a social media page this way, it is more worth it in the end.

    I have learned so much in this class and I am confident to say that I have a better understanding in how to successfully use social media to help develop a business. I have learned many things I can do to attract more people to my business using social media. As stated earlier, I have learned that I should communicate with people through my social media because it will help attract people to my business. I have also learned that I should encourage customers to share my page. Another thing I have learned is how to use newsletters and blogs to help my business. But most importantly, I learned about the many different social media platforms, how I can use them, and all the tools I can use to enhance my social media use. All of these things that I have learned have helped me understand how to successfully develop a social business presence for my business. Overall, my social media skills have greatly improved.

    While researching many businesses for this class, I found some successes and many failures. Most businesses that were successful responded to their comments and interacted with their followers. I also noticed that businesses that made posts that didn't look boring were more successful. A huge thing I noticed was that businesses that didn't have much success in social media made repetitive uninteresting posts and oftentimes didn't even have a caption or hashtags. Some of the business that I found while researching for this class are Handel's Ice Cream and GQ Magazine. Handel's Ice Cream had a large amount of engagement relative to their page's size because they did everything I saw successful businesses doing. GQ had high engagement on their Instagram, while they had the opposite on their Facebook page. Upon investigating, I realized that their Facebook posts were just them sharing their magazine articles while their Instagram posts were more unique and interesting. I believe that these businesses really help visualize the differences between successful and unsuccessful social media use for businesses.

    During this class, I didn't find many new businesses that I would buy from, but I did find Handel's Ice Cream from this class. I had gone there before, but I didn't realize it was Handel's Ice Cream. After I found their social media, it made me want to go back and eat some ice cream from there again. I certainly think that their social media was a large part of why I want to go back. Their posts make their ice cream look really good and I know that a lot of people found them through their social media page. I also rediscovered "Stussy" which is a clothing brand I used to like and after looking at their social media page, I found that I still like their clothing and I might buy some clothing from them at some point in the future.

Anyways, before I took this class I thought I had a good understanding of how to use social media to help a business grow, but this class widened my perspective has allowed me to see ways to improve a business's social media usage. I also got to see and try out new things like newsletters and blogs. Overall, I found this class really interesting and I am glad I took it. Thank You.