Jessica's CSIT 155 - Spring 2023 Class Blog

      My use of social media has definitely changed over the course of this semester. I have learned new techniques on how to format posts for specific social media platforms. Also, I learned more about how to properly use hashtags for Instagram. Additionally, I have realized how important it is to look at my analytics.     I definitely want to look more into using Google for Business to reach more of our audience. Like I mentioned, looking at the analytics and seeing what the audience reacts to the most is what I have found to be the most effective way of tailoring our content to fit the audience's tastes. I think it is important too to interact with our audience when they comment.     Our business has definitely improved in the past few weeks. We have gained new followers on Instagram and Facebook, and hit 1,000 subscribers on YouTube. We also have a YouTube video that has over 100k views now. We have seen an increase in podcast listeners too....

I can only create posts for the podcast episodes that my mom has already recorded or has notes for that I can go off of, so as of right now I do not have the ability to plan out a whole month's worth of work. This is what I have for the two weeks of podcasts for Instagram. We find that reels are the most popular form of content so we try to have at least two or three of those per week.  Choosing your Business Structure   Wednesday 5/10 - repost podcast post on story   Thursday 5/11 - pros and cons post  - takes about 20 minutes to make  Friday 5/12 - instagram reel - 15 minutes to make Saturday 5/13 - youtube promo story  - 5 minutes to make Sunday 5/14 - soundbite reel w captions  - 30 minutes to make  Sunday 5/14 - mother’s day post  - 20 minutes to make  Monday 5/15 - post  - 25 minutes to make Tuesday 5/16 -   teaser story  - 10 minutes to make Salon Valuation   Wednesday 5/17 - repost podcast post on story  ...

 Instagram is definitely the social media platform that integrates best with my business. I really enjoyed learning about the Google Business and the features that it has. It seems like it could be very beneficial for any business. I have also enjoyed using Instagram the most. It is the platform that I am most familiar with, and it is easiest to tailor posts for it. As of right now, I would say I spend an average of two to three hours a week on social media posts for my business. I do think it is a great place to start, but that is taking into consideration that we are only utilizing Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Once we start using other platforms as well, my time may increase to about five hours a week, which I think is a good amount. 

 This month, my business has reached over 600 people, gotten 247 post engagements, and one new follower. Ideally, we would want all of that to be more, especially the amount of followers we gain in a month. Admittedly, we tend to forget about Facebook more than Instagram, so it is understandable why we have not had that much growth in the past month. 

 One of the features that I think would be most beneficial to my business is proactive insights. If something becomes significantly more popular in the industry, if we know about it, we can tailor our posts to include whatever trend is happening. Real-time reporting would also be nice because it would tell us what kind of activity is happening on our website, and what people are clicking on and interacting with. Engagement reports are definitely helpful, so we see what people tend to interact with the most. 

 I commented on Christian's post, Anthony's post, and Sascha's. It seems like the others had the same opinions on most of the social media management tools as I did. It was interesting to me that Sascha said that she wouldn't utilize any of them, but financially I think it is smart to start with a free version first. 

     One of the social media tools that we use for our business is Meta Business Suite. I really love this tool and find it very helpful for managing social media. I believe it might be able to be used for more than this, but I use it to schedule posts. You can upload whatever picture or video you want to post, write the caption, tag people, add hashtags, and then schedule it for whenever you need it. We use it for Facebook and Instagram, and you can schedule those for two separate times if you want to.  I believe it is free also. I know there are other tools that can do similar things, but I have found that this one works for me.      Out of the ones that I researched, Hootsuite sounds like one of the best ones to me. It gives you detailed analytics and customized reports, which can be very helpful for businesses to see what they can do to improve. It is fairly pricey though, as it is $99 per month, but they do have a free trial for 30 days. It also s...