SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of Internet marketing that uses social networking websites as a marketing tool. The goal of SMM is to produce content that users will share with their social network to help a company increase brand exposure and broaden customer reach.
SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS
In Mimic Social, there are 6 different social media platforms for us to explore by deciding the days, time, content and amount we want to spend on promoting content for each social media platforms.
Throughout the 12 rounds, I have been exploring the different social media platforms to see which social media would drive the best results to bring revenue to Buhi Bags.
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To measure the effectiveness of each social media platform, I used 3 different metrics - Awareness, Engagement and Sales.
AWARENESS
Followers, Impressions & Mentions
ENGAGEMENT
Comments, Reactions, Shares & Clicks
SALES
Conversions, Purchase & Revenue
AWARENESS
These are the social media platforms that drive awareness for Buhi Bags. The top social media platforms that drive awareness are Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. By creating awareness, it means that the followers, impressions and mentions would increase once people know about Buhi Bags. Creating awareness is the most crucial part at the start of the campaign.
At first, I made a mistake in not focusing on creating awareness of Buhi Bags as I only focused on earning revenue during Round 1, thus during round 3, I decided to include the top 3 platforms to increase awareness of Buhi Bags hoping to drive my impressions. Overall, the platform that brought me the highest impression for all 12 rounds was Instagram at 514,995 during Round 3.
TIPS TO INCREASE AWARENESS
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Focus on visual content
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Understand your target market and target their needs
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Getting influencers to promote the brand
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Using hashtags# in the posts
ENGAGEMENT
These are the social media platforms that drive engagements for Buhi Bags. The top social media platforms that drive engagements are Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Driving engagements means more comments, reactions, shares and clicks. Driving engagements to play a big role in social media marketing as it shows how many people are paying attention to and interacting with Buhi Bags on a daily basis, by driving engagement, ROI and brand awareness would increase, making it easier to attract new customers.
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In Round 1, I didn't post every day, I then realised in order to increase the engagement I had to post every day so that people would be interacting with Buhi Bags on a daily basis. Overall, the platform that brought me the highest engagement for all 12 rounds was Instagram at 25,516 during Round 3.
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TIPS TO INCREASE ENGAGEMENT
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Asking opinion from the audience
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Posting videos
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Posting when your audience are online
sales
These are the social media platforms that generate sales to Buhi Bags. The top social media platforms that generate sales are Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Generating sales mean increasing conversions, purchase and revenue. Ultimately, every company's goal is to earn revenue, hence it is important to know which social media platform is the best in generating sales for the company.
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To maximise my sales, I tried selling the Buhi travel bags which was the most expensive product at $100 average. This helped me to increase my revenue and improve my class ranking throughout the rounds and I managed to earn $18,737 from an Instagram post during round 5.
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TIPS TO INCREASE SALES
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Run a social media contest
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Selling the products based on customers' needs
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Turn loyal customers into brand advocates
BEST TIMINGS TO POST
4 - 6 PM
3 - 6 PM
3 - 5 PM
6 & 9 PM
9 - 11 AM
1 - 3 PM
The timings to promote the posts play a huge role in contributing to the revenue as those are where the audience is most active on each platform. By posting at those timings, the company would get to engage with the customers better and therefore maximise the results further. The timings are based on my evaluation of my Mimic Social simulation and also from the given infographic (Post Frequency Info-graphic) by Stukent.
CONTENt type
Based on my analysis of the content, I feel that the following content are the most effective in boosting awareness and sales:
1. People outdoor with product
2. Promotional Videos
3. Advertisement
Overall reflection
At the start of my Mimic Social rounds, I was very lost on which social media platform to post, what timings are the best and what kind of content I should post about. I also didn't know who should I target, but I chose to target the largest market segment which is Daypacket Tom at 29%, hence the majority of my posts are related to backpacking. In Round 1, I only posted one content each for 3 different social media platforms, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter on 3 different days and only managed to earn $12,830. I then realised by posting every day, I would increase my engagements and other metrics. Hence, from Round 3 onwards, I began posting every day.
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I managed to improve my class ranking during the rounds as my revenue at the start was really low. During the rounds, I went to Google and research on tips on improving my results and also asked my friends for suggestions to improve my results further. I found out that by adding hashtags to the posts, having free shipping and having a weekly sale would improve my results, hence I did whatever it took for me to improve my results.
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All in all, I think I did quite decent but I feel that I could do way better in improving my results. As seen from the ranking in my class, my revenue is $195,918 at the end of the simulation. However, the other metrics are really low, I only had 6,939,506 impressions. Compared to another classmate who earned $180,435.00 but had12,932,328 impressions, which is almost double of mine. Thus, I feel that there is still room for improvement.
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If I had the chance to restart Mimic Social again, I would focus on creating awareness of the company instead of focusing on gaining revenue at the start. Then, trying to increase the engagement and then focus on increasing sales in the later rounds.
