Social Media Marketing
Social Media are the means of communication, conveyance, collaboration, and cultivation among interconnected and interdependent networks of people, communities, and organizations enhanced by technological capabilities and mobility. Social Media Marketing is the utilization of social media technologies to communicate and deliver offerings that have value for the organization's stakeholders
Social Media Marketing Plan
The purpose of the project was to create a social media marketing plan to update the client's social media channels.
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One of the parts of the project was the competitor analysis and external analysis. The competitor showed JMU's social media content was low in creativity compared to the creativity at other colleges. Creativity is important because it drives engagement on social media. I recommended JMU's social media content be updated and adopt ideas like what Virginia Tech did- used Beyonce's clothing campaign as inspiration for their own clothing campaign for school apparel.
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In the external analysis, the evolving trend is the phasing out of cookies because of public backlash about being tracked. Instead of using cookies, I recommended JMU survey their audience directly via email and social media channels for feedback about their content.
The Client
The client of the project was James Madison University (JMU). JMU is a nationally accredited state university in the commonwealth of Virginia. Their social media channels included Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Project Team
My Contributions
One of the project components that I contributed the most effort to was the competitor and external analysis. The competitor analysis was an in-depth review of 6 direct competitors who compete with JMU based on proximity to the school, on athletic conference alignment, or on social media presence. I evaluated each competitor on their content, branding, coverage over multiple social media platforms, and any other part of a competitor's social media that posed a concern to JMU. Then, I put together a SWOT Analysis for each competitor.
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The strengths and weaknesses of each competing college's social media were important to point out because it gave the client a benchmark for areas of their social media can be improve or used as a competitive advantage.
Analysis of Virginia Tech (VT)
Strengths
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Social Commerce
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Targeting content to relevant platforms
Social Commerce was a strength for VT because their creativity in producing organic content for their branded apparel encouraged followers to purchase VT apparel, without it feeling like intrusive advertising. Next, VT was able to target of publishing of categories of content to relevant social media platforms. This gave them a strength because it improved the user-experience for the different target audiences on each social media platform.
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Weaknesses
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Lack of collaborations
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Lack of user-generated content
Collaborations on social media are when two different social media accounts share the publishing of one social media post. The advantage of collaborations is each publisher receives exposure from a new/different audience. VT had very collaborations on social media with other social media accounts. Lastly, reposting user-generated content is a useful method for driving engagement among an audience.
The external analysis was a review of important trends occurring in the social media field. The important trend that concerned JMU was the phasing-out of cookies because it posed a threat over how well JMU could target their content. As a result, I recommended that JMU use other methods for collecting data on their target audiences, like polls on Instagram and LinkedIn.