Week 17: Wrapping It Up

This semester has been a great learning experience. I knew that social media platforms were used to grow business, advertise, and engage customers and audiences, but this class gave me a much better understanding of how this is done. As someone who has never run a social media business account, I learned how much effort it takes to run a successful social media campaign. I didn’t realize how important it is for businesses to utilize social media and I am now more aware of ways to use social media for my own future business. My viewpoint has changed because I now see the impact that social media has on businesses to gain a bigger audience by using it.

After being on social media for years and only running personal accounts, I found posting on behalf of a business interesting. Opposed to my personal social media accounts, when posting there was an objective when writing a caption or creating content for my business versus posting just for fun. I enjoyed going through the process of creating a business page and realized it isn’t that difficult. I liked exploring the different functions that Facebook has to offer for scheduling posts. The scheduling feature makes posting on a schedule very convenient by allowing you to create several posts at one time and schedule automatic publish times.

This course has shown me that social media can be used as a tool. It's not only a place to keep up with friends, but it is also a business place as well. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and many other social media sites provide a place where people of common interests can interact. Running a business account that accurately reflects what your business stands for can help make a connection with consumers and win over the hearts of customers and potential customers. Social media allows businesses to have a personality that their target audience can relate to and hopefully trust.

With this course concluding, I feel I have a better understanding of how to use social media to successfully develop my business. Analyzing the content and profiles of other real-world businesses helped me to take a more critical look at my own pages and focus on my areas of weakness. I also gained a lot of knowledge from analyzing my competitors and pulling from their successes and mistakes. Being able to extract the information from posts that are doing well or not doing so well can help you cater your content to gain more engagement and ultimately more sales.

Overall, social media is a very valuable tool that can be used in numerous ways to grow a business, engage customers, network, identify and target specific audiences, as well as exercise creativity in branding your business. Social media is a convenient way to search and explore the page of a specific business before you have to contact them or meet in person. I have come across pages that have positive reviews on their page, which gives credibility to their site and makes me want to try their product or service even more. I enjoyed seeing many of my classmates create and grow their business ideas and I hope they continue to invest their time and energy into growing their businesses. I'm leaving this semester feeling very informed on the ins and outs of using social media for business.