Over the past 16 weeks I have been taking a Social Media Marketing Class that has given me a chance to learn and utilize many different social media tools for my business, Altoona Family Child Care Center. The following paragraphs describe, analyze and rate each one of those tools and why or why not they would be useful to my business.
Blogger: Blogger.com is a free web publishing tool from Google. Using Blogger.com taught me how to create and maintain a blog for my business. Each week I was given a topic to post to Blogger by Wednesday at Midnight. I believe this created consistency for my viewers and also a foundation for the rest of my social media outlets. Overall it was a great experience for me. I was able to publish events and insightful information for past, current and future customers. I don't believe that I would use this tool for my business in the future because it was one of the most unsuccessful modes of social media marketing that I used throughout the past 11 weeks.
Twitter: Twitter.com is an online social networking and micro blogging service that enables users to send and read short 140-character text messages, called "tweets". The assignment that I was given was to post 3-5 posts each day in reference to blogger activity, events, promotions, activities, etc. I utilized Twitter more for informing customers and followers of these events, important recalls, projects, weather, etc. I think that Twitter is a great tool to use for my business. It is able to reach the "on the go" market that has kids. With Twitter my posts are short, sweet and to the point.
Facebook: Facebook.com is a popular free social networking website that allows registered users to create profiles, upload photos and video, send messages and keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues. Our assignment was to post 3-5 times each week topics that surrounded our blog, community events, activities, etc. According to Buddy Media Report my customers were more likely to see my posts during the pm hours on weeknights. The graph below shows the most effective days of the week to engage my audience in other social media posts. I will definitely continue to use Facebook for my business. I think it is a great way to communicate, educate, promote events, share stories and build relationships for Altoona Family Child Care Center. Since I began using the page I have increased our likes to 181 and reached over 380 views on our commercial. Facebook is definitely my favorite Social Media source that we used in this class. I think Facebook is such a good fit for AFCCC because the users are the perfect market for me. See chart below.
HootSuite: HootSuite.com is a social media aggregator system for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard. This system allowed me to schedule posts and tweets at the same time to be submitted. Though it seemed to be extremely convenient it was very confusing to me. I found it easier to set a reminder to post to Twitter and Facebook than to schedule a tweet or post using HootSuite. To me it seemed like an extra, unneeded step.
Pinterest: Pinterest.com is a visual discovery tool that people use to collect ideas for their different projects and interests. AFCCC uses their Pinterest account to inform and entertain followers of educational ideas, activities, crafts, recipes and much more. I will certainly continue to use Pinterest for my business. My staff and parents have began to follow me and I love to share with them all of the fun and informative pins. Below you can see a graph that shows the demographics for Pinterest match our target market greatly.
Niche Sites: A Niche website is a website which focuses on a very specific market and has very little competition. During class I decided to join cafemom.com for Altoona Family Child Care Center. I think that this is the perfect niche for a mom but maybe not for a business. For mothers and caregivers it is a great resource for information and advice from professionals. I think this niche is more aimed toward personal relationships and not professional.
Podcats: Podcasts are digital media files (most often audio, but they can be video as well), which are produced in a series. For class I had to create a podcast for Altoona Family Child Care Center using audacity to advertise parent-teacher conferences. It was fairly easy to do but I feel that it wasn't able to reach out to my customers as well as a visual commercial would. I don't think I would continue to create podcasts to reach my audience for future events.
Vines and Videos: Vines are short, six second videos that promote activities. The videos that I created introduced my viewers to art projects that the children at the center were doing for spring. I don't think that using Vines specifically for my business would get my point across. I prefer to use Videos such as this commercial that I created. Commercial. I think that this short commercial really helped reach my audience promote my business. We received over 80 views on YouTube and over 380 facebook followers saw it. I will continue to make short commercials to reach new customers.
To summarize I would like to highly recommend using Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and videos to reach my target audience. For my specific business these social media outlets tend to reach the customers that I target. Moving forward I will continue to use these tools to market my business to engage, entertain, and inform customers. This experience has left me with a great knowledge that I am very proud to share with others. It has introduced me to many resources and ideas to build my own business as well as assist others with theirs.
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