Well here we are! We have reached the end of the Principles of Social Media course. All assignments are soon to be submitted and our last day of class has passed. Congrats to everyone! Even though I didn't get to talk to many of you throughout the class it was nice getting to know you through your blogs. Today I wanted to discuss one of the more interesting parts of the class, the social media simulation program called Mimic Social.
Mimic Social was a semester-long assignment to give students an opportunity to learn how running a social media marketing campaign really works. This simulation had us learning in stages with making organic posts, paid social posts, and working with influencers. Eventually we had to work in conjunction with all three at the same time! I have never done anything like this before. To be honest I didn't even know social media simulations were a thing. Regardless, this pushed my critical thinking in new ways.
Social media posts are complex with several moving parts to make an effective one. Posting time matters differently for each platform. Headline and caption length can make or break its engagement with viewers. The picture of the post matters just as much, if it isn't eye-catching then it isn't profit-generating. It took me a couple weeks to get the hang of the posting style and variety to make significant revenue. But then came the influencers...
This simulation made me dread influencers. The first couple weeks where I had to only do influencer posts netted me the least amount of revenue. One week I made $0 from influencers! Albeit that week I only gave out gifts to them so that mistake is on me. But each week before we could do all three types of posts were my lowest earning ones. I eventually got on my feet with everything but it was a struggle. Influencers are so needy. They wanted so much for every post it made it a struggle to fit them in my budget. This took a big hit to my class rank, landing me in 7th place by week 12.
In the end this was a really fun experience and I may even try it again for fun if I'm ever bored. But for real, influencers are the bane of my existence.
I was not happy with the influencer section of the simulation either. I spend money to give a famous soccer player bags and he does nothing?! I did not make any money in that particular round. The last few rounds that had everything the simulation had taught was hard to balance. I spent most of my money on an influencer to support the brand and got mediocre results from it.
ReplyDeleteChase Coburn: I liked them sim it was interesting to see how confusing and how many different things you had to do. I also didn't like the influencers. They were so difficult to work with and greedy on the money options. But it was a good experience.
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