MIMIC social ROUNDS
ROUND 1
When I started Round 1, I was clueless about what to do. Hence, this time, I conducted some research to understand what Mimic Social is so that I know what to do. Based on the research I have done, I learnt that I should target the highest market share, which is Daypacker Tom at 29%. I also learnt that I should not post two posts at the same time and I should post at some specific timings and day for the different social media platform.
I chose to post on FaceBook, Twitter and Twitter which were the more popular social media platforms. I chose promotional video for Facebook, advertisement on Instagram and Twitter. I used sales to try and the picture of a backpack to attract my target market. With the use of this method, I earned the highest revenue on 28 December, however, the metrics like impressions and click and shares were very low. Hence, I told myself I needed to do something about this to increase the metrics such as impressions as awareness is the most important metrics so that people would be aware of Buhi.
ROUND 3
The social media manager gave a chart which showed the various social media platforms that would help to improve my results.
In this round, I waited for my peers to do so I can see my rank, compared to my friends, I wasn’t doing well. Hence, I went to research on the different social media timings to post and I followed this. This round I wanted to test out on social media platforms to see which social media would bring the most revenue. It was disappointing to see that YouTube was a bad platform to promote my post. Instagram was doing the best and Facebook ranked second. I was ranked 15th in class and I was really disappointed as I only managed to earn 11k.
ROUND 5
This round I realised that I only sold backpacks in the last round, to maximise my profits, I decided to sell travel bags as it cost the highest hence would bring the most revenue. I decided to just post on 3 different platforms and target 3 different markets instead of 2 target market. I targeted Up-and-Corner Raj, Back To School Mindy and Daypacker Tom.
In this round, I decided to post at least one post a day. I decided to post the product image of a travel bag on Instagram, Mon, 6pm, targeted at Daypacker Tom, which helped me gain $17,656 which was the highest revenue among the other rounds. This round, I also added organic reach. Instagram performed the best in terms of helping me gain impressions and earn revenue. I managed to improve my results from 11k to about 72k in this round.
ROUND 7
This round was on influencers. I was quite lost of what to do hence, I looked at the keywords and the social media platform the influencers would help me promote on. I made sure that there was Instagram as Instagram would bring more revenue compared to the other social media platforms. I then decided on what strategy I wanted, I thought that affiliate marketing would help me improve Buhi's awareness and people would purchase their bags. Initially, I wanted to choose Mega-influencers, however, I did not want to spend too much and thus, I got rejected by the mega-influencers. I decided to give micro-influencers a try and worked with World Travelers, Foodies, Englightenment Seekers and Jokers. I found out that the gifts didn't work as there were no impressions, like and engagements at all and I spent $600 on it.
ROUND 9
In Round 9, I managed to get 5 stars for customer satisfaction. I made sure I replied to the customer like how I expect a good reply from a company. This round was also on influencers. This round, I tried a new strategy, social media takeover. I still wanted to try the gift strategy to see if it will work this time. Sadly, it didn't. Overall, affiliate marketing strategy still worked the best for me in bringing impressions and also revenue.
ROUND 11
In Round 11, I managed to get 5 stars for customer satisfaction again. I allocated a budget of $1,450 for influencer marketing and the remaining for social media marketing. This time, I spent all $1,450 on affiliate marketing as I feel that it works the best. For social media marketing, it was nearing Thanksgiving so I had a Thanksgiving sale in hoping to attract people. Also, I tried to keep the caption short and did what I feel would improve my results based on the other rounds. I posted more posts that I didn't promote to get organic reach.
QUESTIONS REFLECTION
After every round of posting and scheduling of influencers, the next round allows you to answer questions to reflect on your results and the decisions you have made on the previous round. By answering the questions, we would understand our objectives and the direction we are headed to accomplish our goal. We will also identify what we need to adjust through trial and error, allowing us to be more decisive and clear of the changes we have to make to achieve better results.
After completing the questions, we would understand the objectives and direction we are heading to. We will also identify what we need to adjust through trial and error, allowing us to be more decisive and clear of the changes we have to make to achieve better results.
FINAL REFLECTION
When Mimic Social started, it was during my school holidays, I made sure that I kept up with the recommended time to complete my rounds. From Mimic Pro, I learnt that I should do some research before starting on Mimic Social. I did that and that gave me a head start to Mimic Social. However, compared to my classmates, my round 1 results weren't very good. I asked my friends for suggestions on how to improve my results. After that, I learnt that I need to post everyday.
When school started, there were a lot of assignments so it was a bit difficult to manage my time but I still tried my very best to. Throughout these 12 rounds, I feel that the influencer round is very interesting and very necessary as it is very relevant now. However, I still feel that my influencer marketing isn't very good and I can do better than that.
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Overall, the whole Mimic Social journey wasn't a pleasant one because I feel that I did not do as well as Mimic Pro even though I did research first and put in my best for every round. I was ranked 11th in my class. I enjoyed the simulation as I was always interested in social media marketing. With this simulation, I learned how to create good captions, how to target the right audience and also post the right content on the right social media at the right time. However, for Mimic Social, I feel that there can be some improvements to the simulations such as updating their posts and also allowing the students to view their previous rounds analytics instead of just allowing them to download as an excel sheet to view their results.
