Social Media Integration Through Blogging
This web story will take you through my eight week social media integration project through the use of Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook to drive traffic to my blog (socialmediameg.blogspot.com).
Background
- I have always been interested in reading my friend's blogs about their travel experience, fashion trends, professional work, wedding planning, etc., however I have never created a blog myself. My Social Media graduate class required me to set up a professional blog page, Twitter account and Pinterest account to link all activities together. The next few sections will highlight my first time blogging experience and how I integrated with Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
- Social Media Insights for COMI 610Welcome to my Social Media Insights blog for my Marist College graduate class. My experience with blogging is limited with only having posted two blogs to my company's website. This is my first owned blog so I am excited to start sharing with you.
Introduction
- My name is Meagan DiMarco and I am taking COMI 610 as part of Marist College's Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Graduate program. I currently work in New York City for a digital direct marketing company called Epsilon. My concentration is on email as a communications and marketing channel and my clients are always seeking ways to optimize engagement with their brands through email. What better way than to include social media sharing icons within emails to drive users to social media sites? Until now, my social media use has been mainly for social purposes, not for professional purposes, therefore, my goal when starting this class was to increase my knowledge of the professional uses of social media in order to bring those learnings back to my clients.
Plans & Policies
- Blog Site Policy:This blog is intended for use during my Social Media graduate class and hopefully as a tool that I will keep up with even after the class is over. As such, I expect comments and conversations on my blog to be conducted in a professional manner. I welcome all constructive feedback but retain the right to remove comments if they fall in any of the following categories:
- Rude or offensive
- Inappropriate or vulgar language
- Spam or solicitations
- Irrelevant and distracting to the topic at hand
Comments on this site do not necessarily reflect my own opinions or viewpoints. Strategic Goals
My overall strategic goals align with the underlying principle that forms the basis of Scott’s (2013) book “that understanding buyers and publishing information on the web especially for them drives action” (pg. 181). My “buyers” in this sense are my readers and the action I want them to take is to continue following my blog, interact with my blog by commenting, and to follow me on Twitter and Pinterest. In order to do that my goal is to provide compelling content with real life application from my professional career that can be used as a resource in my readers’ own careers.
ObjectivesMy goals are all about engagement and action, thus my objectives must align “with those of the organization” (Scott, 2013, pg. 163). Using Scott’s (2013) analogy of a soccer game, my objectives need to remain focused on the goal not the ball (pg. 163).
- Encourage at least 5 comments per blog by 5 unique people with at least one follow up comment each. - Attract at least 50% new visitors per week.
- Attract at least 50 page views per week.
- Encourage average visit duration to last more than four minutes.
- Increase traffic from Twitter and Pinterest by posting compelling content to drive to my blog.
- Encourage an average of two pages per visit.
- Attract at least 40 Twitter followers by the end of the course.
- Attract at least 20 Pinterest followers of ‘My Social Media Class Board – Spring 2014’.Activity
- Blog Number One: "Tell the truth. Tell it all. Tell it now." - February 3, 2014
- My first blog post was titled "Tell the truth. Tell it all. Tell it now." It focused on testimonials from top CEOs and executives as to the importance of communication as part of an organization's overall strategy. The findings were summarized by Argenti, Howell, and Beck in their 2005 paper, The Strategic Communication Imperative.
Social Media Insights for COMI 610The three quotes below from well-known and respected executives at FedEx, Cendant, and Dell show in concise terms, how important strategic communication is to the success of a company.I don't know about you but I would not argue with a "shoot, move, communicate" strategy and thus, am in full agreement- Since this was my first official blog post both for this class and for the public, it was important to start off strong and drive traffic to my blog as soon as I published the post. Therefore, I posted the following Tweet to tease my first post. This first blog post ended up with the most pageviews.
First blog post is up! Find out some strategic communication wisdom from top CEOs. Check it out here: http://socialmediameg.blogspot.com/ .- I included an infographic within my blog post called "The CMO's Guide to the Social Landscape" and repinned it to Pinterest to create a link to my blog.
- Blog Number Two: 'Timing is Everything: Optimal Times to Post on Social Media.' - February 12, 2014
Social Media Insights for COMI 610In my job in email marketing, I am always getting asked by clients when the best time is to send an email for optimal opens and responses.Our response back to them is always test, test, test.I cannot tell you the best time to send an email for your brand without having some data to back it up.Some questions to consider include: Are the majority of your users viewing on a mobile device?- I was the Digital Leader for week two of blogging and thus, that allowed me to select a social media topic of my choice to blog about. I am always getting asked by clients when the optimal time to send an email is and our answer is always to test. I included some helpful questions to consider when discussing email send times as well as a list of optimal social media posting times. I pulled the social media posting times from an infographic from fannit.com and incorporated that into a Pinterest Pin as well. You'll find my teaser Tweet below with the inclusion of the Marist 610 hashtag this week.
- Are you optimizing the timing of your social media posts? Check out my digital leader topic this week. http://socialmediameg.blogspot.com . #marist610
- Blog Number Three: "What Happens in Vegas Vegas Stays on YouTube" - Social Media Security, Privacy, and Policies. - February 24, 2014
- For blog number three, we were tasked with reading several articles and watching a Department of Defense social media training module in order to compile our own social media security and privacy checklist. Although this blog post came in second for number of pageviews, it garnered the most comments (19) out of all three. This was also the first week I posted a link to my blog on our class Facebook group page as well.
Social Media Insights for COMI 610If you're reading this blog right now, it likely means that you also engage in activities on social media sites such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Google+ and many more.With the many security breaches that have occurred over the past few years, most recently at Target, consumers need to be careful of the information they are sharing while engaging on social media sites.- Although an important topic, it can be a bland one so I incorporated a humorous, yet informative YouTube cartoon depicting the do's and don'ts when using social media. I Pinned the video to Pinterest and Tweeted a teaser for my social media privacy and security checklist.
- What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? Think again! Check out http://socialmediameg.blogspot.com for your social media security checklist! #marist610
Analysis
- Erik Qualman states that "the business challenges marketers face with social analytics include knowing what factors to measure, how to measure, and how to analyze the data that comes out of these measurements" (Qualman, 2013, pg. 256). The "how to measure" aspect for me included a combination of Blogger Stats and Google Analytics.
Blogger Stats shows that blog number one "Tell the truth. Tell it all. Tell it now." received the most pageviews (81). - Blogger Stats also showed me that feedspot.com and plus.url.google.com were the highest referring URLs for my blog.
- I was surprised to see traffic from Russia as the number two source according to Blogger Stats. As for operating systems, I am not surprised that mobile phones and tablets ranked low due to the interactive requirements for commenting and researching required for these assignments. Although tablets and mobile phones are more portable, sometimes it is just easier to type and research on a laptop/computer.
- Google Analytics went into greater detail around my pageview statistics. Please note that this is for my overall blog URL (socialmediameg.blogspot.com), not each individual blog page.
Unique Visitors: 40
Pageviews: 238
Pages/visit: 2.36
Average visit duration: 05:19
% New Visits: 38.61% - Google Analytics also broke down my audience for me by age, interest, and gender. Gender was split fairly equally and the 25-34 age range did not surprise me as my target audience was my IMC graduate class.
Conclusion
- Overall, I achieved my goal of creating compelling content with real life application proven by the number of pageviews and comments on each post. Blog number one "Tell the truth. Tell it all. Tell it now." received the most pageviews, however, blog number three, "What Happens in Vegas Stays on YouTube" received the most comments and interactions. This tells me that my introduction of a video within my blog during week three and the addition of posting on the class Facebook page may have driven the comments/interaction.
According to Google Analytics, I fell just short of 50 pageviews during the week of February 16th, with 46, however had 82 the next week so it averages out. Additionally, my percentage of new visitors went down which is to be expected since the visitors from the class were saturated by the second week of blogging. I was successful in encouraging at least five comments per blog post by five unique people but not all followed up with another comment.
I did not hit my Twitter and Pinterest follower goal because I was not aggressive enough in expanding outside of the class for followers. After this class, I will most likely move back to using my personal Twitter account and will keep my blog live which will hopefully increase the amount of followers.
I've learned that managing a blog and the social media sites associated with it requires daily effort in order for it to be successful. A comment that is left unattended to or a blog that is not linked to from other social media sources will show disinterest and disengagement on the part of the author. Blog authors are looked to as subject matter experts and thus, a constant stream of research is required to ensure that you are responding accurately to comments. In general, this applies to the concept of client services that I focus on in my job. You should be actively engaging with clients on a daily basis and responding promptly to their requests so they know you are dedicated and trustworthy. I hope to use the specific lesson of social media integration in my strategic recommendations to my clients on how to improve engagement with their emails and with their brands. References
Argenti, P.A. Howell, R.A. & Beck, K.A. (2005). The Strategic Communication Imperative. MIT Sloan Management Review. Retrieved February 3, 2014 from https://www.dartmouth.edu/~opa/communicators/fall08/reading/Sloan_MIT_Strat_Comm_Imp.pdf ….
CMO.com. (2010). The CMO's Guide to: The Social Media Landscape. CMO.com. Retrieved February 3, 2014 from http://www.drewsmarketingminute.com/files/CMO-SOCIAL%20LANDSCAPE-R5.pdf ….
Qualman, E. (2013). Socialnomics. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Scott, D. M. (2013). The New Rules of Marketing & PR. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
