Hi and welcome to this program.

My name is Anke and I will be your guide and one of your teachers
through this exciting journey. Since you're here, I probably don't have to convince you that social
media is shaping how we live and do business today. Social media has the power to change lives
and businesses beyond recognition. It can launch products into stratospheric success in brand new
ways. And give immediate access to millions of customers, literally delivering messages into their
pockets. We learn of good news, sports results, births and birthdays, our friends' trips, weddings,
first school days, latest dance moves and cookouts, all in the blink of an eye or the scroll of our
thumb and social media is what frames our reactions. It's the construct we use to connect to others
and to tell our stories. Social media is a perfect medium for getting your story out there and for
connecting with people. That's true for your personal story, but social media also offers a platform for
businesses to connect to customers and potential customers. Which has opened a whole new world
for marketing. With social media, marketers can become part of the conversation and when done
well, social media marketing can help businesses launch products, generate sales, and provide
excellent customer service. Good social media marketing involves making authentic connections
and providing value through content and interaction. It's a bit of a mix between art and science and
this program will provide you with all the skills and tools you need to do it well. Whether you're
looking to start a career in social media marketing, whether you work for a Fortune 500 company, a
tiny little mom and pop shop, or are simply interested in marketing your own brand and story on
social media then this is the course for you. You don't need any experience to get started, we'll start
from the very beginning. The only thing you need is an appetite for social media, willingness to put
stories out there, and a Facebook or Instagram account. This program will look at all aspects of
social media marketing. And while we will cover all the important social media platforms we'll focus
quite a bit on Facebook and Instagram. These apps are central to the social media marketing world
and mastering those applications will set you up for future success. More than that, both Facebook
and Instagram have partnered with us to create this course and we're delighted to have them on
board. We'll cover the theory behind social media and throughout this program you'll also get cutting
edge hands on experience through working on our carefully curated projects. We've worked closely
with the teams at Facebook and Instagram to get a better understanding of the crucial steps that
make social media marketers successful and those are exactly the things you'll get to practice in our
projects. These specially curated projects are a golden opportunity to put what you've learned into
practice and after you successfully completed them, you can even use them to create a portfolio to
showcase your talents to future employers. Not only is this program wonderful fun, it'll help you hold
your content creation and social media marketing abilities, and it prepares you for entry level roles
as a social media marketer. Upon successful completion of the program, you'll earn both the
Coursera certification and the Facebook Digital Marketing Associate certification. These
certifications are valued by hiring managers across industries. It doesn't matter if you want to work
for a sports team or for a movie studio or a massive tech company, or for a local photographer.
These certifications matter because mastery of social media is essential for every business today.
And employers would love to see documented proof of what employees are capable of before hiring
them. In addition to earning the certifications we'll also support you in the next step: Your job search.
Once you complete the program, you can opt in to share your information with top employers in our
employer consortium who are hiring for digital marketing jobs. There are five courses in this
program. The first course is an introduction to the social media landscape and will prepare you for
your marketing journey. The second course is all about content development for social media and
how businesses can build their presence and their brands and participate in a rich and meaningful
way on social media platforms. The third course looks at the basics of advertising on social media.
 You learn how advertising on social media works and how you can use it to amplify your message
and make it resonate deeply with your audience. In the fourth course you'll learn how to build
campaigns in ads manager, Facebook's tool for advertising across Facebook and Instagram. And
finally in the fifth course, we look at how to measure the success of campaigns and further optimize
them. We'll offer the support you need to get you on your way, but your success in the program
depends on you. Take your time going through all the videos, the practice quizzes, graded quizzes
and projects. Participate in the discussions with your fellow students and keep in touch with us
through the discussion boards. And now we come to the most exciting part of any journey, the part
where the real story begins. Good luck with the program. I'm so excited to see how you'll do with the
projects. Let the journey begin!

This is our first course in social media marketing professional certification program. This course is an
introduction to social media. Of course, I'm sure that to most of you, social media needs little
introduction. But if you're like me, you probably use some platforms on a daily basis, but don't have
frequent exposure to other platforms. I, for instance, have always been a heavy user of Facebook,
Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter, but when it comes to TikTok or Snapchat, I'm a more
recent user. And I use YouTube, but less frequently. What's more, I use all these platforms in my
personal life, but I use some of them more than others when it comes to their business and
marketing applications, and I know there's always something new to discover. That's why I think it's
always a good idea to take a few steps back before diving deep into social media marketing. It helps
to understand the landscape a bit to know how the main platforms work and how you can use them
for marketing, even if you have some experience already. And since there are different frameworks
and ways to approach marketing, it's a good idea to all get on the same page and look at the
building blocks I believe are essential to a good marketing approach, which is the focus of this
course. We'll start at the beginning. If you have some experience already then this course will be a
nice refresher with some of the latest trends and applications. If you don't have experience yet, then
you'll be all set by the end of this course to start your social media marketing journey. So, what will
be covered? The first week is all about understanding the social media landscape. You'll get a better
understanding of what we mean by marketing, digital marketing, and social media marketing. Then
you'll learn how businesses can participate in social media. You'll also get an overview of the social
media landscape and learn how to categorize different types of social media platforms. And we'll
look at how Facebook evolved and which products it offers for businesses. In the second week, we'll
start digging into the main social media platforms. You learn how they function and what
opportunities they offer for marketing. As you know, there are many platforms and we will go through
the most important ones. We'll cover Facebook, YouTube, Messenger from Facebook, WhatsApp,
Instagram, WeChat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter and some networks that focus on
niche interests. Then in the third week, you'll start getting ready for your social media marketing.
You'll first learn to set your marketing goals, then you'll define what success will look like for you and
how you will measure it. In the 4th week, we continue with the core building blocks and you'll define
who you will target with your marketing, and explore what a typical journey of your customer looks
like. You'll also complete a project where you will define customer persona and map out the journey
of that customer. That may sound somewhat abstract now, but will provide you with the blueprints for
what will become a detailed description of a target audience.

Play video starting at :3:20 and follow transcript

3:20

Finally, in week five, you'll learn how to choose social media channels for your marketing. First, you
learn how to identify the channels that best fit your goals and your audience, and then you'll learn
how to put policies in place to help manage your company blogs and social media interactions. This
introduction will give you the foundation you need to start your social media marketing journey. So all
that is left for me is to wish you good luck. I'm excited to get started and I'll see you in our first
lesson.

Working in social media is exciting and dynamic. Businesses are clamoring for experts in social
media and the number of jobs that require social media skills, keeps growing. When you
successfully finished this program, you'll receive two certifications. One from Coursera, and one from
Facebook, certifying your mastery of ads managers. These two certifications will be among the first
things many employers look for. You'll have a leg up in your job search. You'll also have the projects
that you completed during your coursework, which will build up to portfolio you can use to showcase
your abilities to potential employers. You're probably curious as to what kinds of roles you'll be
suitable for by the end of this program. Well, nearly every organization now, has a social media
presence, and many of these have entry-level positions available where fresh ideas and a
willingness to jump into new projects are highly desirable traits. Jobs in social media marketing
roughly fall into two categories. First, there are a number of jobs that focus on social media
management. In these jobs, you play a role in crafting a company's voice and social media
personality. Jobs as a social media coordinator and an engagement coordinator, for instance. As a
social media coordinator, you'll post to social media accounts and follow instructions from the
director of social media. You could be working with a well-known brand or company or even a
celebrity. An engagement coordinator is like a social media coordinator, but as well as posting to
social media accounts and messaging followers, they're also responsible for guiding the online
behavior of followers. You encourage followers to interact with your posts and you respond to
comments and react to trends in the broader social media space. This program also prepares you
for a second category of jobs in social media marketing. Namely jobs that focus on creating and
managing paid advertising on social media. These jobs exist both in advertising agencies and on the
client side. Social media marketing associate is one of the types of roles you'll find at an advertising
agency. Working for agencies is a fun and dynamic way to put all you've learned to work. You'd be
involved in creating advertising campaigns for different social media platforms. Agencies have
multiple clients and so you get to work on a wide number of different campaigns with many different
goals and for many different companies, it's a wonderfully exciting way to break into social media
advertising. Working as a social media marketing associate on the client side means you're working
for one specific client or company. This could be anything from big brands like Adidas or Pepsi to
smaller brands that rely heavily on social media. Roles you'll find here are similar as the ones you
find in agencies. But you'd focus your advertising efforts on one brand and you'd often work together
with your counterparts on the agency side. Working on the client side is a fantastic way to really sink
your teeth into one brand and to really focus on how to use your social media skills on that single
brand. Of course, you might find that smaller companies have one person focusing on social media
marketing who has to wear many hats and basically, performs parts of all these jobs or you may
decide to start your own business, in which case, social media marketing skills will come in handy as
you grow your business. In addition to the jobs I outlined so far, there are a myriad of other jobs
available to those who mastered the art of social media, including bloggers, brand ambassadors,
community managers, social media coordinators or associates managers, directors, and social
media copywriters. While many companies are looking to hire social media marketers to join their
team, you could also decide that you'd like to be a freelancer. Social media marketing lends itself
very well to part-time or freelance roles. Say, you could work on writing content for social media
marketing as a freelancer, supporting a larger company who may have an occasional need for some
extra help or you could help out a small firm with the management of their Facebook page and
Instagram accounts on a part-time basis. In other words, social media marketing offers great
opportunities for flexible jobs for those who need or desire them. Finally, great social media
marketers, generally like dynamic environments where they can learn from others. They have a love
of lifelong learning, are keen to work with others, yet also display a knack for rolling up their sleeves
and getting the job done on their own. If this sounds like you, then you could be ideally suited to a
job in social media marketing, and this program will prepare you to start your career.

Introduction to Social Media Marketing

Course Syllabus
Course Description

This course lays the foundation of social media marketing. You’ll learn what social media marketing
entails, including the history and the different social media channels that exist out there. You’ll learn
how to select a social media channel that fits your needs, set goals and success metrics, and
determine who your target audience is.

Whatever level of knowledge you start with, this course will help you build a solid foundation for
social media marketing and gain applicable skills that will allow you to make your social media
marketing efforts more successful and noticeable. You don't need marketing experience, but should
have basic internet navigation skills and be eager to participate and connect in social media. Having
a Facebook or Instagram account helps.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course you will be able to:

● Understand the landscape of traditional, digital, and social media marketing

● Understand how to become certified as a Digital Marketing Associate
● Understand the major social media platforms, how they function, and what role they
play in marketing
● Define SMART goals and identify KPIs
● Define your target audience and their customer journey
● Choose the right social media platforms and learn how to create social media policies

Introduction to Social Media Marketing Overview

By the end of each week you will be able to:

Week 1: The Social Media Landscape

● Understand the landscape of traditional, digital, and social media marketing

● Understand how social media marketing functions and the categorization of its
platforms
● Understand the social media marketing landscape and Facebook’s role in it

Week 2: Social Media Platforms Overview

● Identify the major social media platforms and how they function

Week 3: Goals and Planning for Success

● Define SMART goals for a business

● Define KPIs for marketing campaigns

Week 4: Understand Your Audience

● Define the target audience for a business

● Define the customer journey in a real-world scenario

Week 5: Choose Your Social Media Channels

● Select the right social media platforms based on your audience

● Understand the role of social media policies and how to create them

Projects and Quizzes

Week 1: The Social Media Landscape

The Social Media Landscape Quiz

● For this quiz you will answer questions based on your knowledge of core marketing
principles and the digital marketing landscape.

Week 2: Social Media Platforms Overview

Social Media Platforms Overview Quiz

● For this quiz you will identify various social media platforms based on their descriptions
as well as choose an appropriate platform for various marketing scenarios

Week 3: Goals and Planning for Success

Create a SMART Goal and KPIs Project

● For this project you will formulate a SMART marketing goal and choose appropriate
KPIs for a selected business

Goals and Planning for Success Quiz

Week 4: Understand Your Audience

Create a Customer Persona and Journey Development Project

● For this project, you will create a customer persona for your target audience and
develop a customer journey map for your selected business and SMART goal from
Week 3.

Understand Your Audience Quiz

Week 5: Choose Your Social Media Channels

Choose the Right Social Media Platform for Your Target Audience Quiz

● For this quiz you will be given descriptions for various marketing scenarios and target
audiences. Based on these descriptions you will choose the right social media platform
for the marketing goal.

How to Be Successful in This Course

Learning new skills takes courage. You must be willing to be a beginner, to experience the
awkwardness of not knowing how things work. We are wired to seek comfort and avoid failure. It
may seem counterintuitive, but the faster you fail, adjust and try again, the faster you succeed.
As a learner, if you are willing to step outside of your comfort zone, work through your fears and
keep going as you acquire each new skill, apply what you learn, eventually you’ll become a pro!

Make a Plan

Know your 'Why'

Think about why you decided to register for this course. Maybe you are curious about what’s new in
social media marketing, or you are looking for a career change and want to add the certification to
your resume, or maybe you are thinking of starting a freelance social media marketing service or are
thinking about adding social media marketing services to your current offerings.

What’s your why? Write it down and post where you can see it every day. Post it by your desk or on
your screen. Set it as your wallpaper on your computer or phone.

Set Goals
Knowing what you’re trying to accomplish and having a plan can:

● Help keep connected the reason you chose to pursue this program such as new skills,
or a new job with the work necessary to complete it.
● Provide a clear path to reach the result you desire, which allows you to know your next
step and know if you’ve achieved it.
● Boost your self-confidence by providing you a framework to come back to when you are
frustrated or tired. Knowing why you are working so hard and how you are going to
reach your goals can see you through moments you may feel like throwing in the towel.

How to set goals:

● Set a completion date and work backward

● Set your deadlines

Find the Time

Take Stock
This entire program is designed to be completed in 6 months with an estimated 5-10 hours
dedicated to course work per week.

Before you set regular study times, it is helpful to understand how you spend your time. Try to
capture everything you do in a typical week. Your hour spent at work, family obligations, classes or
clubs, time spent on hobbies, exercise and socializing. If you want to get really detailed you can
even capture the time you spend on social media or watching television.
Download the following blank template to use when taking stock of your time: There are two options
to access the Weekly Schedule template.

1. Download an excel version of the template by clicking here.

2. Make a copy of the template by clicking here, then clicking the Make a copy button. You
will need to be signed into a Google account in order to make a copy of the worksheet.

Prioritize
Once you know what you spend your time on you can decide what stays and what goes. Ask
yourself:

● What is set in stone?

● What is flexible or can be paused temporarily?
● What can you stop?

The key to setting yourself up for success is to be realistic about how much time this program will
take and how much time you can free up to give it the attention and focus necessary.

Arrange Your Life

● Identify your support system - One way to make clearing your schedule easier is to
enlist the support of your family, friends, and workplace where possible. They can
provide much needed support and accountability. Plus, if they know that you are taking
 this course and what your goals are they will be more likely to be understanding when
you prioritize your study time.
● Set Boundaries - Even with the most understanding of family members, significant
others and friends, setting boundaries will sometimes be necessary. It can be hard to
miss out on the fun, but committing yourself to your schedule and maintaining a
consistent pace will ensure that you don’t lose momentum.
● Set your schedule - Look for or create regular blocks of uninterrupted study time.
Consider cutting out tv and social media.

Set Up a Productive Workspace

Quiet and away from distractions

● Silence notifications and other devices
● Shut off distractions, turn off tv, close social media accounts, use an app to restrict your
access to social media sites for a set period of time.

Tools for the job

● Stable Internet Access
● A laptop or device like a phone or tablet. (A laptop or desktop computer is
recommended if you wish to complete the projects.)
● A Facebook and Instagram account are required, other social media accounts are
recommended, such as YouTube, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, etc.
● Note taking app, or notebook and writing implement.

Comfortable and Healthy

● A desk or tabletop at a comfortable height
● A chair that supports you for proper ergonomics
● Good lighting to avoid eyestrain and fatigue

Know Your Resources

Engage in your community before you need it

● Introduce yourself
● Spend some time reading pinned posts and forums of interest
 ● Jump into a few conversations to share your experiences and help others

Stuck? What to do first

● Reread or rewatch course content - Take a minute to rewatch videos or read through
transcripts, you’ll often pick up things you missed the first time.
● Research using outside resources - Search the internet for the concept or question you
are working on, keep an eye out for chances to dive deeper into a topic or learn about
additional tools or techniques out there that may be a creative solution to your problem.
● Reach out for help - Your fellow classmates are a great resource. Use the discussion
boards to see if your question has been asked and answered before and to post new
questions. For more details on how to access the Discussion Forums and other
avenues for support read on.

How to Seek Help

● For technical problems with the Coursera platform, visit the Learner Help Center.
● If you have questions about course content, please post them in the Discussion Forums
to get help from others in the course community. You can also learn more about How to
use our Discussion Forums.
● To report issues or errors in the curriculum please click one of these icons in the bottom
right corner of each lesson.

The thumbs up or thumbs down icons will indicate how helpful you found the lesson. The flag icon
will alert us that there is something that needs a correction, such as a grammatical error, misspelling,
broken link or other incorrect information.

Maximize Your Study Time

Pomodoro Method
This well-known technique for managing your time and avoiding burnout was developed by
Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s.
To put this technique into practice:

1. Break your learning sessions into 25 minute periods separated by 5-10 minute
breaks.
2. After four 25 minute sessions, take a longer 15-30 minute break.

That’s it! It sounds simple, and it is. Give it a try to help you stay in the learning zone longer and
more sustainably.

Active Learning
It is no secret that the more ways you experience new content the more likely you are to understand
and remember it. Active learning can take many forms including working through hands-on
activities, labs and projects, engaging in a discussion or even teaching others. By design this
program provides you opportunities to do all three.

● If you choose to take the full course you can put your new skills into practice by
completing the course projects. These not only help you apply what you are learning,
your completed projects make a compelling portfolio to share with prospective
employers.
● Head to the discussion forums to share your thoughts and ideas with your fellow
classmates. Discussing new concepts and hearing how others approach things can
extend your learning.
● The discussion forums are also a great place to use your newfound knowledge to help
other students who could use a little help. Teaching others a concept can really cement
your learning and help you build relationships with what could be future colleagues.

Connect Theory to Practice

Nothing cements new concepts like having the opportunity to put those skills into practice into a real-
world exercise.

● Spend some time on social media looking for accounts who are putting what you’ve
learned into practice. Being able to recognize the tactics and tools used by real
practitioners is a great way to extend what you’re learning here and will allow you to
continue to learn from others even after you complete this course.
● Complete the projects that are offered in this program. They allow you to reinforce what
you’ve learned and create valuable portfolio pieces in the process.

Stay Motivated
Understand Your Journey
As you’ll soon learn in this program, as a Social Media Marketing practitioner, knowing your
‘Customer’s Journey’ can help you understand what motivates them, how best to communicate with
them and how to get them to take action.

As a student, you are also on a journey. Learning new things is hard. At first, it’s exciting, but as you
progress, it can be uncomfortable to risk failure, to be vulnerable and to persevere when the going
gets tough. We all find ourselves in the ‘dark swamp of despair’ from time to time. When you
recognize that’s where you are and can draw on your support systems and find ways to motivate
yourself through these rough patches, you’ll eventually reach your goal!

Eye on the Prize

● Check-in with yourself - can you pinpoint where you are? Excited about a new concept?
In the dark swamp of despair? Climbing out? Sometimes acknowledging where you are
allows you to course-correct and can keep you from getting off track.
● Go back to the goals you set frequently - post them somewhere conspicuous
● Identify some things that help you stay focused and committed - do them every time you
sit down to work.
● Post affirmations and gentle reminders to yourself in places you’ll see them.

Reward Yourself
Having something to look forward to and work towards can be a great way to push through periods
of frustration or low motivation.

Break your week down into a few milestones, such as:

● Finish all course work for the week

● Complete x lessons by Friday
● Submit and respond to discussion prompts by Friday
● Submit a project by a certain date

Choose rewards that you are excited about:

● An activity or outing you can look forward to

● A favorite movie or tv show
● A special treat or meal
 ● Time with friends or family
● Some time out in nature on a walk or run

Reach Out
● Find an accountability partner
● Start a study group
● Network with your future colleagues
● Seek out industry events and news

It's Go Time!
Now that you have all of these tools and support in your corner, jump in and get started!

We encourage you to take this opportunity to pursue the Facebook Digital Marketing Associate
Certification. Social Media Marketing is a rapidly growing industry whose practitioners are always
learning and growing… and as of right now you are one of them!!! We’ll be cheering you on every
step of the way!

Complete

Community Guidelines
Our Discussion Forums provide an opportunity to work with other developing social media
marketers. This community is a place to network, learn, and support each other. If you want to
discuss the concepts and tools you’re learning about, this is a great place to collaborate, and
discover new perspectives. Several of your course assignments take place right here in the form of
Discussion Prompts. Please adhere to these guidelines to ensure this is a safe, productive
environment for all!

Stay On-topic and Avoid Cross-posts

Help keep our discussion forums well organized and uncluttered.

● Before posting, search the forum to see if someone else has asked your question
already. You can also use the filters to find new and interesting posts.
 ● Keep posts on-topic and don’t change topics in an existing thread. Start a new thread to
further explore a tangent or entirely new topic.
● Don’t post the same message in multiple forums.
● Click the “Follow” button under the original post of any thread you find interesting. You’ll
receive an email notification whenever a new post appears.

Read Pinned Posts and FAQs

Pinned posts contain important and sometimes time-saving information. Please read any pinned
posts before posting in a particular forum. You can also search any forum including our FAQs. This
is a great place to start if you run into any confusion or questions.

Be Civil and Seek to Understand

● It is okay to disagree, but please be respectful and do not resort to personal attacks.
Give people the benefit of the doubt and ask clarifying questions to avoid
misunderstandings.
● Choose your words carefully and consider non-native English speakers. Avoid slang
and write in full sentences, using simple language.
● Be aware that it can be easy to misinterpret humor and sarcasm in written
communication.

Stay Safe

Please don’t post your personal information or other students’. This includes location details and
physical addresses, phone numbers, and other identifying information.

Report Abuse

If you see posts that contain these behaviors, please take action:

● Bullying or threatening other users

● Posting discriminatory or hate-filled content
● Posting spam or promotional content
● Posting adult content
● Posting assignment solutions

Please report any posts that infringe upon copyright or are abusive, offensive, or that otherwise
violate Coursera’s Honor Code by using the Report this option found under the menu arrow to the
right of each post.
 For more details, refer to Coursera's Forum Code of Conduct.

Welcome to our first week. I'm really glad you're here. Social media is fascinating and it has opened
up a whole new world for marketers. I can't wait to tell you all about. It will go through three lessons.
By the end of this week, you will understand the landscape of traditional and digital marketing. You'll
also be able to define what social media is and how it functions. And you'll have a good
understanding of how social media platforms are categorized and where Facebook fits into all of this.
So, let's dive right in.

Marketing is the art and science of selling products and services. Even if you have created the
greatest product on earth, you'd have a hard time selling it without any marketing. Just think of
brands like Nike, Starbucks, Apple, and Levi's. It's likely the first thing to come to mind when we
mentioned these brands is their logo. Sure they sell good shoes, coffee, phones, and jeans, but it's
hard to imagine them being as big as they are today without marketing. Since you're in this course,
I'm sure I don't have to tell you how essential and powerful marketing is. Marketing is all around us.
You've probably seen a few ads online today, and you may have gotten an e-mail announcing an
attractive sale for your favorite clothing brands, or you may have seen a billboard or two, and a
computer or device that you're using right now probably has a brand logo. All of that is marketing.
Marketing fuels a critical part of our economy. The most significant chunk of marketing spending
goes to advertising.

This program focuses primarily on social media marketing, one form of digital marketing. But before
we dive into social media marketing, let's take a broader look at what we mean when we talk about
digital marketing. Simply put, digital marketing is marketing that uses digital technology or digital
media. It has revolutionized marketing, because it's uniquely powerful. Let's watch this ad for
Friskies cat food that aired on TV in the 1970s. The goal was to generate awareness and interest
among cat owners for the Friskies brand. [MUSIC]

Play video starting at :1:2 and follow transcript

1:02

>> The fun of Little Friskies is in its flavor, that's why cats love it. [MUSIC] >> Now imagine if Friskies
approached you today, and asked you to help them generate awareness and interest in their line of
organic cat food among cat owners. Would a TV ad still be the most obvious choice? Probably not.
In our last lesson, we saw that people are spending an increasing amount of time online, so chances
are you can get their attention there. However, that's not the only reason you should consider
advertising online. Digital marketing is unique in that it allows you to specifically target your message
to the people that may be interested, and it let's you measure the effect of your message. So let's
take our Friskies example, advertising online would give Friskies targeting options they don't have on
TV. If you advertise on TV, you can choose when your ad appears, during which show, but you don't
have much information about who's watching. It's likely that many of the people that would see the
ad on TV aren't interested in cat food and don't even own a cat. With online advertising, you can
reach people who own a cat and are more likely to be interested in organic food.

Play video starting at :2:23 and follow transcript

 2:23

Another key feature of advertising online is that you can measure your ad's effectiveness on the
behavior of the people who saw your ad. That's extremely important for marketers, as this kind of
measurement capability helps to spend your marketing dollars more efficiently. You can measure
what works, and adjust your campaign when you find there are options for improvement. A lot of
what you learn in this course centers around these two key strengths of digital marketing: targeting
who sees your message and the ability to measure the effectiveness of your messages. Digital
marketing is a broad term, and its covers a wide range of marketing activities. You'll hear people
divide them up in a few common categories related to different types of online activities. Let's take a
closer look. This program is about social media marketing or marketing in social media channels,
like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on. We'll cover how marketers can use social media to
connect to people online. How you can build up and engage an audience, and we'll take a very close
look at how advertising on social media works. Examples of social media marketing you may
encounter include this Instagram account of Starbucks for instance, where they carefully curate
posts for their followers, or this Facebook ad by Kellogg's. Another form of digital marketing is search
engine optimization and search engine marketing, or SEO and SEM. Search engine marketers focus
on making businesses and their products and services discoverable through search engines like
Google. Search engine optimization focuses on increasing the chance that a website shows up as
an organic search result when relevant keywords are typed into the search engine. Organic search
results are the results a search engine returns without anyone paying to have the results come up.
Search engine marketing or advertising, on the other hand, is focused on advertising associated with
certain keywords. Let's look at this example for a search for non-stick pans. The results Google
returns for this search exist of organic search results, as well as ads. SEO, or search engine
optimization, is a series of actions that can help to make a website come up higher in these organic
search results for a relevant search, in this case for non-stick pans. An SEM, or search engine
marketing, focuses on the placement of ads for particular keywords.

Play video starting at :5:3 and follow transcript

5:03

Another common form of digital marketing is display advertising. Display advertising refers to
advertising with images or videos on websites or apps. It's a bit of a catchall term for many of the
ads you see online, like this ad from Terra Outdoor on the CNN website, for instance, or these ads
from HP and Zyrtec on Vogue.com. Then there's email marketing. Email is an important part of
online activity and marketers use it to connect with current or prospective customers. Email
marketing remains an important tool in marketers' toolbox. Here is an example from Williams-
Sonoma.

Play video starting at :5:43 and follow transcript

5:43

Content marketing is another form of digital marketing. It's a strategic marketing approach in which
content is created and distributed with the goal to attract customers to a product or service, but
without overtly advertising the product. Content marketers will often focus on informational or
educational content to encourage interest in a product. Here's an example for REI, a video in which
they explain how to change the chain on a bike. They're not promoting bikes or even bike parts in
this video. The goal in content marketing is to help build awareness and engagement with the brand.
So people will think more favorably of the brand in the future or will check out what else the brand
has to offer on their website for instance. Social media marketing, search engine optimization and
marketing, display advertising, email marketing and content marketing are the most common forms
of digital marketing. Of course, you'll find examples that don't fall neatly in these categories and that
are more of a blend of the different techniques. These different types of digital marketing often
correspond with roles inside larger marketing teams or in agencies. Often a marketing team will
include a search engine marketer, a social media marketer, an email marketer, and a content
marketer. On top of that, you'll find other roles associated with different marketing goals, like brand
marketers, who are focused on establishing and maintaining a brand and its image. And direct
response marketers, who are focused on driving immediate action from their audience. All these
roles work together, and while people will often specialize in one area, it's always good to know what
the other parts of marketing focus on. As marketing projects or advertising campaigns typically cut
across different categories. So a social media marketing campaign you develop for a particular
product or service will often go hand in hand with a campaign in search and email marketing. Now
it's time to look at social media marketing in a bit more depth in our next video.

50% of the global population is using social media. That's over 3.8 billion people, and the number is
still growing. In 2019, on average, these users spent two hours and 24 minutes per day on social
media across devices. In fact, people between the ages of 16-24, spent close to three hours a day
on social media. These are just some statistics from HootSuite, a social media marketing services
company. With such a large audience and high usage, it is no wonder that social media has become
one of the most important marketing channels. Spending on social media advertising, is predicted to
grow to $83 billion in 2020 according to Zenith. Let's take a closer look at what social media
marketing involves and which platforms and brands define the social media marketing landscape.
Social media marketing is a form of digital marketing that uses social networking platforms or
websites to promote a product or service. To understand social media marketing, it's essential to get
a good handle on what a social networking platform or site even is. Let's take a closer look. In 1996,
sixdegrees.com matched names after the six degrees of separation theory, which suggests that any
person is related to any other person, through five intermediaries. If I would take two random people,
person A and B, I can connect them to know more than five other people. Person A, knows a
person, who knows the person, who knows a person, who knows a person, who knows a person,
who knows person B. Any two people are no more than six-degrees apart. Sixdegrees.com was
really the first social networking site, where people could create a profile, find out who they were
connected to, and built a network they could communicate with. Soon after other sites emerged that
use that same networking principle, like Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Initially,
these sites we're focused on finding connections, but very soon they became engines for
communication and information sharing. This timeline was developed by Miriam Johnson, a senior
lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. It shows the different brands that contributed to the social
media landscape we know today. I'm sure there are many brands that you recognize on this timeline,
and there are quite a few that you probably don't recognize. Either, because they're no longer
around, they are prominent in other countries, or because they serve smaller niche audiences. Not
all social media brands are included here, so you may know of some that are not on this timeline.
But as you can see, social media is young, and in its short life, it has gone through many changes.
Many different companies have tried to find social media popularity, some more successful than
others. There are two core elements that typically defined social media platforms. They let people
connect and they let people create or share content. The connection is crucial, and that was the big
innovation in sixdegrees. By bringing people together in one big network, people could connect with
each other and use that connection to communicate or to share information and links. When people
start to share information, they become content creators. That's another innovative element in social
media. Social media has made it much easier for people to create and distribute content online. As a
result, content creation is no longer in the hands of a few large publishers. From blogging networks
where people share long-form content a right, to video networks like YouTube and TikTok, where
creators upload and share their videos to platforms like Instagram or Pinterest, where people can
grab or take pictures and share them. All of these platforms have put users in the driver's seat when
it comes to the content that gets created and shared. There are different types of social networks.
Some are more focused on connecting, and others on content creation. Some target broad
audiences and some are more focused on niches or interest groups. Fred Cavazza divided up the
landscape in few categories. In this overview, he categorizes the social media platforms in
networking, publishing, sharing, messaging, discussing, and collaborating platforms. Platforms
focused on publishing our sites like YouTube or blogging platforms like Medium or WordPress, for
instance. Instagram, Pinterest and photo site Flickr are focused on sharing. Then, there other
popular messaging platforms like WhatsApp, or the more visual platforms like Snapchat. Sites like
Reddit and Quora, can be classified as discussion or Q&A platforms. Then there are the
collaboration systems, often used inside organizations like Workplace or Slack. Finally, there are the
networking sites and apps. Some of those are focused on professional networking, like LinkedIn for
instance. Others are focused on networking around interests like Houzz for Building and design, or
around location like nextdoor. It helps to get a sense of the many different sides that make up the
social media landscape today, and how all of them have their specific focus. But many of these
brands span different categories, like Facebook, for instance, which started out as a networking and
sharing platform, but now also has messaging tools, groups, Facebook Watch and more. Our
focused in this program will be on the bigger social networks. But it's good to keep in mind that many
other social media platforms exist. Social media allows people to connect and it's a place where
people can create and share content. Businesses can participate in social media too. Businesses
too can connect with people or customers, and create and share content. Social media marketing
centers around that. Social media marketing is often split in two different categories. There's organic
or free social media marketing and paid social media marketing, also called social media advertising.
Let's look at what that means. Organic social media marketing, refers to all social media activity that
businesses can engage in without paying a fee. It's an important part of marketing as social media
users have come to expect that their favorite brands, or the businesses they interact with are present
on social media. Organic social media marketing typically involves establishing a business profile, or
a business presence in the social media channels that matter to users. For instance, setting up a
Facebook business page, or an Instagram account for business. Engaging with users on social
media to post tweets, comments, sharing and so on. Connecting with customers through messaging
platforms like WhatsApp, for instance, often used for more individual customer service. Paid social
media marketing, or social media advertising, refers to promoting a business' presence or message
through advertising on social media platforms. That could be ads on Facebook, or promoted tweets
on Twitter, or promoted posts on Instagram and so on. Organic and paid social media marketing go
hand in hand. Having a solid, organic social media presence matters to the success of your social
media advertising. Ads, on the other hand, can strengthen your organic presence. You'll learn all
about that in this program, but let's look at an example of organic versus paid social marketing first.
Let's take Staples, an office supply chain. Here is their Facebook page, in which they regularly post
about new products, provide useful tips and so on. They also have a presence on Instagram. Here
are a few of their posts, and you can find them on Twitter too. Staples posts on these accounts all
fall on the organic social media marketing. They don't have to pay to create these pages or these
posts, and it's a way for them to interact with their customers and prospects. But Staples also uses
advertising on social media platforms to reach a broader audience. Here are two examples of ads
 they ran on Facebook and Instagram. As opposed to their organic social media marketing, these are
posts that they did pay for. Social media marketing, let businesses connect with customers and
prospects, and it's an excellent way for businesses to share content with their audience. They can do
this, through both organic, and paid marketing. In what follows, we'll look at how business
participation in social media really works.

Social media isn't just for users. Businesses can benefit from participating in social media as well.
Actually, customers expect to find businesses on social media. Today, more than 140 million
businesses use Facebook products every month to find new customers, hire employees, or engage
with their communities.

Play video starting at ::26 and follow transcript

0:26

Businesses and marketers are participating in social en masse. Companies use social media to
learn from their audiences, build loyalty, promote their products, and provide customer service. But
in order to be successful, businesses have to remember the two core aspects of social media. Social
media lets people connect and share or create content. Participating in social media requires
attention to both of these aspects. Yes, businesses can share content and promotional messages,
but they should not forget that social media is also about connecting with people. And people have
come to expect this connection to businesses and their products and brands. In fact, Charlene Li, a
prominent social media consultant and author, wrote in her book, Groundswell, companies need
connections to their markets to create long-term loyalty. As social media has become increasingly
prevalent, businesses need to focus on connecting with and engaging their audience. Each social
platform has its own type of engagement. The way people connect and interact is slightly different on
each platform. To be successful in building a social presence, companies need to understand what
type of engagement is prevalent on a given platform, and engage with users in those unique ways.
To do that, it's a good idea for businesses to take some time to observe and understand the platform
and its users, then a business can authentically participate. Participation means creating value for
your audience, by providing meaningful contributions, you'll be able to expand your following. We'll
go more in depth into tactics for engagement and content development later in this course, but for
now, it's good to remember that businesses can participate as long as they focus on connecting, not
promoting.

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2:30

As social media platforms have matured, they've created both free and paid tools for businesses and
marketers to reach and engage their audiences. For example, Facebook.com has created dedicated
pages for businesses. Facebook business pages enable businesses to have a unique presence
online, where they can engage with their audience through posting content, as Facebook feed posts
and stories. Users on Facebook can engage with businesses through comments, reactions, one-on-
one chat through Messenger, and they can share content from businesses with their friends.
Facebook is not alone in creating dedicated tools for business. Here we see Taco Bell's Twitter
profile, where Taco Bell can engage with Twitter community through bite sized messages known as
tweets. An anthropologie's Pinterest Page, where anthropologie can pin inspirational content for their
Pinterest followers to browse. Platforms like WeChat also have unique opportunities for businesses
 to create and share content with their audience, as you can see here in these posts on Starbucks
WeChat page. Along with page, profiles, and publishing tools, which are free for businesses to use,
most of the more established social media platforms also have paid promotional offerings.
Advertising on social media can help companies to extend the reach of their message, increase
traffic to their site, and drive sales. Let's take a look at an ad by Tuft and Needle, an innovative
mattress company that has had success with ads on YouTube. [MUSIC]

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4:25

Here's what Daehee Park and J.T Marino, the founders of Tuft and Needle, had to say about their
advertising on YouTube. We've definitely seen an impact with YouTube. We started our company
five years ago with just $6000 and did 100 million in sales last year. And about a million people will
be sleeping on a Tuft and Needle mattress by year's end. We believe that we'll be able to continue
scaling our company to the size we can become using YouTube the entire way. We absolutely feel
like we're living the American dream.

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4:59

Those are some impressive sales numbers. And that's just one example of how marketers benefit
from advertising in social media. Let's take a quick look at one more ad example. Yankee Candle ran
an ad campaign on Facebook in 2019 to boost brand awareness, acquire new customers, and
enticed lapsed customers to return and make a purchase online. Tyler Conroy, manager of digital
marketing at Newell Brands, reported that using 21 stop motion-focused Facebook video ads
created in-house, we were able to beat our revenue plan by 23%, and drive a 307% year over year
increase in sessions to our site. As you can see, there are many ways businesses can use social
media to further their business goals. In the next video, we'll see how non-profits are using social
media to find their audience and raise awareness, engage their community and get donations.

While social media is a great tool for businesses, it's also valuable for non-profits to grow awareness
of their cause, keep their community informed, and raise funds. You're probably familiar with the ice
bucket challenge, the viral campaign from 2014 that had everyone from your neighbor to Arnold
Schwarzenegger dumping buckets of ice water over their heads to raise money for ALS research
and other charities. It started with three friends who wanted to cure a debilitating disease. When
Pete Frates was diagnosed with ALS, he and his friends wanted to fight a diagnosis and raise
money for ALS research. So they turned to Facebook to amplify their reach and get their story out to
the world and it worked. [NOISE] >> Very grateful. [MUSIC]

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1:06

>> Ice bucket challenge inspired the 1st generation of Facebook fund raising tools. To date there are
2.4 million ice bucket challenge videos tagged on Facebook and movement continues to raise
money today. Non-profits like businesses are able to create Facebook pages, events, use
Messenger and groups. As well as Instagram accounts for free to connect and engage with their
communities. Given the connections between people in social networks, they offer unique
opportunities to promote causes, drive awareness and raise funds. And, several social media
 platforms offer tools designed especially for non-profits and causes. Of course, just like businesses,
non-profits rely on marketers to grow and engage their audience. So if you land a marketing role in a
nonprofit, it's good to be aware of some of the core tools that exist. Let's take a look at some of
these specialized tools. With Facebook's charitable giving tools, non-profits can raise money and
awareness for their cause on Facebook an Instagram. These free tools help non-profits collect
donations and enable supporters to fundraise for a non-profit. Non-profits using Facebook's payment
platform to process donations paying no fee, so 100% of the donations go to the charity. Facebook
is not alone in offering special tools and services for non-profits, YouTube's non-profit program for
instance, helps non-profits connect with supporters, volunteers and donors. For many causes, video
is a new but essential format for storytelling. With one billion viewers on YouTube every month, non-
profits of all sizes can use YouTube videos to share their stories and reach a global audience, drive
empathy and engage supporters. For example, as part of the YouTube non-profit program, non-
profits can set up fundraisers with tools that viewers can use to make donations to an organization or
cause right from a video on YouTube. Here is an example of a fundraiser set up by Smosh Games
together with St. Judes Children's Hospital to raise money for free care for children and families in
need. So non-profits have really cracked a code on engaging audiences and turning them into
donors through the use of social networks. Let's look at this example from the WWF. They use
Snapchat to share pictures of endangered animals, images shared on Snapchat disappeared after
they've been viewed, and the WWF cleverly accompanied their image with this hashtag. #lastselfie,
they suggested to Snapchat users that they should take a screenshot of the images and share them,
so this would not be the animals last selfie. Users share their screenshots on Twitter, Instagram,
Facebook and so on. Adding viral strength to this campaign, an raising awareness for the WWF's
effort to protect endangered species among the millennial audience. Let's look at a short video about
the campaign. [MUSIC]

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5:11

Finally, I would like to mention two organisations that have created tools that help people to tap into
the power of social networks to help their cause. One of them is GoFundMe, a platform where
people can create a web page for their own fundraiser. They can share this with friends through
integrations with social networks like Facebook and Twitter for instance, raising awareness and
donations for their cause. Petition website Change.org is another platform that uses the power of
social networks to rally people behind causes. Users and organisations can create petitions on the
sites that they can share through their social networks. As you can see, social media can be a very
powerful channel for non-profits. They can tap into the unique tools and services on social platforms
to raise awareness about a cause, educate people, and raise funds. Marketing for non-profits isn't
different from marketing in businesses. Marketers work on understanding their audience, creating a
powerful message, put that message in front of their audience and then measure and optimize the
impact.

So far, we've seen that the social media landscape is fast and consists of many different platforms.
And we know social media platforms provide great opportunities for marketers to connect with
customers and share their message. In order to find your audience and to make a real connection
with them, it helps to understand the main platforms people use. By the end of this video, you'll have
a picture of the social media landscape and the different ways in which you can categorize the many
social media sites. Marketers want to be where their customers are. Given the large reach of some
social networks, chances are marketers can find their audience in the biggest social networks.
Here's an overview of the most used social media platforms globally as compiled by Hootsuite and
We Are Social, a social marketing agency. Facebook is by far the largest network with over 2.4
billion users worldwide, it's followed by YouTube. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger both owned
 by Facebook are the largest messaging focused platforms. The Chinese platform WeChat closes out
the top five. It started as a messaging platform, but now offers a lot more than just chat. Instagram,
also part of the Facebook family, is another big platform with over a billion users. Tik Tok, a very fast
growing video based network known as Douyin in China follows. QQ QZONE and Sina are primarily
used in China. The conversation platform Reddit follows, and then Snapchat, Twitter and Pinterest
and finally Chinese video sharing platform, Kuaishou. Later in this module, we will take closer look at
most of these platforms to help you get a better feel for how they work and how marketers use them.
Aside from the size of the audience of these different networks, it's important for marketers to
consider the demographics of the people that use these platforms. Understanding the demographics
of the users of the different networks will help marketers choose the social media where most of their
customers are active. To give you an idea, I've mapped the age and gender distribution for some of
the most popular networks for the US. Based on a study from the Pew Research Center. As you can
see, different products appeal more or less to different age groups. YouTube and Facebook are
used by people of almost any age group. 60% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 use
Snapchat, but Snapchat sees little usage from older age groups. Instagram also skews younger, but
we do see that 40% of people between the ages of 30 and 49 use the platform as well. Twitter
reaches a much smaller audience overall with a skew towards the younger age group. LinkedIn sees
slightly more adoption among the 30 to 49 year olds an effect of its specific focus on a professional
audience. Pinterest, while smaller, has an equal reach among the under 30 and the under 40
audiences.

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3:13

When it comes to gender, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter have a pretty similar reach among men
and women. Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram all skew slightly female. Pinterest is a clear outlier
with 41% reach among women and only 16% reach among men. So far, we've looked at the size of
the different networks and the age and gender distribution. There's another factor that I like to
consider when I think about the distinction between the different social media platforms. And that's
the intensity with which its audience uses them. YouTube and Facebook see the most intense use
from their audiences, with users spending on average 40 or 35 minutes respectively per day on
these platforms. Snapchat and Instagram follow, time spent on LinkedIn, and Pinterest is lower but
it's still substantial. Twitter however, sees limited interaction from its user base on average, even
though there's a smaller group of very intense users. We discussed the biggest platforms, but of
course there are many more. As we saw in Fred Cavazza's work, you could categorize the different
social media platforms by their specific focus. For instance, some focus on publishing, others on
sharing, messaging, discussing and collaborating or networking. You could also categorize social
media based on the specific audiences and interests they tailor to. Niche platforms like Behance for
instance focus on bringing artists together. A platform like Twitch is focused on gamers and Houzz
on architects and designers or people who are building or improving their house. Niche groups like
these can be very attractive to marketers depending on the product or service they sell. So
understanding which platforms operate in your industry or space can help you find your customer
base. There are many different ways to describe and categorize social media sites. But there are
few platforms that you will need to understand as a social media marketer today. In what follows, we
will give you an overview of the most important social media platforms, who their users are, and
what they use them for. And will also look at the opportunities they offer for marketers.

Facebook is the biggest social media platform. Facebook not only encompasses the Facebook
platform, but also Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and several others. With three billion people
across all of their platforms each month, it has the largest and most global audience. So it will come
as no surprise that Facebook features in almost any social media marketer strategy. For anyone
who wants to become a social media marketer, Facebook has a variety of essential platforms and
tools, and it's crucial that you understand how they work. In this program, we will explore Facebook
and its accompanying platforms in depth. It will help you market within the platform, but you'll also
find that Facebook has a large influence on the social media marketing landscape today, and other
platforms in the industry often follow its lead. As a result, a solid understanding of Facebook will set
you up for success, even if you explore using other social media sites. In this video, we will take a
brief look at the history of Facebook and how it became the group of apps and services that we
know today. Facebook was founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew
McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes while they were students at Harvard. At the time,
different student houses on campus, each had their Facebooks, a folder or directory with all the
members of each house. Mark and his friends wanted to create an online directory that will bring all
of these Facebooks together. They called it a site with the intention to connect students all over the
university and they called their directory, Thefacebook. Later, they dropped the from their name and
the company was moved to Palo Alto in 2004. The site was an immediate success on the Harvard
campus and soon, the four friends expanded access to their platform to more universities and high
schools. Millions of people joined and in 2006, Facebook started giving access to employees at a
few companies. In fact, at the time, I was at Yahoo and we were one of the companies that was
given access. I still remember the hype it created in the company and how quick we were to all use
this privilege and create our profiles. It helped us to connect to each other, but the platform became
really powerful once access was opened up to everyone in 2006. Usage grew exponentially and
long-lost connections were found, updates shared, and friendships rekindled. The core functionality
of Facebook in the early days was exactly as it is now. You create a profile on the site and you find
people to connect with and share updates with. But since then, Facebook has added a lot of features
and new ways for people to interact. We'll learn all about that in future videos. Let's take a quick look
through the company timeline first and see how Facebook grew over the years. Four years after its
launch in 2004, Facebook launched its first mobile app for iOS. Later in 2008, Facebook introduced
Facebook Messenger, an app to let people directly connect to each other to chat. Then in 2012,
Facebook acquired photo-sharing app, Instagram. While Facebook already offered its users the
ability to share photos, with the acquisition of Instagram, they added sharing of mobile photos. At the
time of the acquisition, Facebook vouched to keep and build on Instagram strengths rather than
integrating the functionality into Facebook, hence Facebook and Instagram have remained separate
apps, each serving their specific audience. A few years later, in early 2014, Facebook announced it
had bought a popular global cross-platform mobile messaging app, WhatsApp. WhatsApp's easy
functionality would make it possible for more people to connect, an essential part of the Facebook
mission. Shortly after, Facebook acquired Oculus VR, which at the time was the leader in immersive
virtual reality technology and the seller of the Oculus Rift headsets that transport people into virtual
reality. Using the headset, people can immerse themselves in a different reality and connect with
others mostly for the purpose of playing games. At the time, Mark Zuckerberg in a press release said
"Mobile is the platform of today and now we're also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow.
Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever and change the way we work, play
and communicate." This quote is helpful to understand the vision behind the focus on virtual reality.
As Facebook grew, it used an internal version of its platform to help its employees stay connected
and get work done called Workplace. In 2016, Facebook announced that Workplace would become
available to any company around the world that wants to use it. It is yet another way for people to
 stay connected, but now at work. In 2018, Facebook introduced Portal, an immersive video calling
device that lets people have video calls through Messenger or WhatsApp on the Portal device or
even on their TV. With some neat augmented reality features and functionality that lets the camera
follow you as you move around, it enhances the video calling experience. In 2019, Novi was
introduced. Novi is a digital wallet created by Facebook that lets people send and hold Libra, a digital
currency. Novi is new, but according to the press release from Facebook, it's meant to make sending
money as easy as sending a message. You'll be able to use Novi as a stand-alone app as well as in
Messenger and WhatsApp. Facebook is young, but it has had a profound impact on the way we
connect and interact around the world. In the next video, let's look at how Facebook's products
enable growth for businesses around the world through different marketing opportunities.

We know Facebook's apps and services are popular. I bet you've used several of them yourself. In
fact, I know that's a good bet because over 3 billion people around the world use Facebook products
to connect and share with each other. But now, let's look at these product through a marketing lens.
By the end of this video, you will know how to distinguish between the different advertising
opportunities that exist among the Facebook apps and services. If you've used any of the Facebook
products, I'm sure you've come across ads. Ads are part of the experience in Facebook, Instagram
and Messenger. For businesses, these ads are great opportunities for growth. And aside from
Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, Facebook also offers a product called Audience Network
which offers businesses yet another way to connect to their users. Let's take a look at how each of
these products can help a business. Facebook is the most widely used of the different Facebook
apps and services. Businesses and people use Facebook to make meaningful connections and
share. Just like people, businesses can create a free page to establish their company's presence
and start interacting. Facebook offers businesses different ways to grow, some paid and some free.
For example, businesses can share posts or stories. They can message customers, promote events,
sell products, accept appointment bookings or post jobs. They can also promote content through
paid advertisements. People come to Instagram to be inspired and discover things they care about,
including content from brands and businesses. With Instagram, businesses can grow their brand for
free by sharing photos and videos and exchanging direct messages with people. Plus, they can
extend their brands' reach in awareness with paid advertising. Instagram is a visual platform to
explore and interact with people looking to connect with businesses. Businesses can interact with
people through messages and comments on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. Messenger lets
businesses instantly connect with people on their Facebook page or the Messenger app and make
conversations happen in real time. Businesses can use Messenger to make suggestions, assist with
sales and offer support in one continuous conversation. They can also create ads with an integration
that let's people click to Messenger to start conversations with potential customers or create
sponsored messages to connect with people. While businesses can advertise to people on
Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, there's one more way in which businesses can use Facebook
to grow and that's true to Facebook Audience Network. While people spend a lot of their time on
Facebook's platforms, they're also spending time in other apps. Audience Network is a collection of
apps and websites that Facebook partners with to allow advertisers to extend their Facebook and
Instagram advertisements across the Internet. We will learn how to advertise on Facebook's
platforms later, but for now, it's good to know that you can advertise on Facebook, Instagram and
Messenger, but also on a collection of apps and websites that are not owned by Facebook. This
allows advertisers to reach a wider network of people and placements.

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3:38
Businesses can deliver the same ads they create for their Facebook campaign through the Audience
Network and it will automatically adapt to fit the app or website where it appears. For businesses
who want to grow and connect to their audience, these Facebook apps and services are very
powerful. The tools you can use to access these platforms as a business are all connected, making
it possible to create content on one platform and deliver it across the other apps. For example, you
can create one advertising campaign that will deliver ads to Facebook, Instagram Messenger and
the Audience Network. You learn in this program how to do that in Facebook's ads manager. You
now have a better understanding of the different products Facebook offers and the apps and
services businesses can use to grow. Now it's time to look at the main social platforms in a bit more
detail. We'll start with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and then we'll cover other platforms
outside the Facebook family.

This brings us to the end of our introduction to social media marketing. Great job sticking with us. I
think you'll find that having a solid foundation will help you throughout this program to situate what
you're learning and how it relates to the larger marketing landscape. A quick recap of what we've
covered and what you should keep in mind as we move on. Marketing is the art and science of
selling goods and services. We saw that the key focus in marketing should be on providing offerings
that have value. We then explored digital marketing, which differs from traditional marketing in two
core aspects: it offers granular targeting opportunities or the ability to put a message in front of a
specific audience, and it also enables measurement of results in ways that aren't possible in
traditional marketing. Social media marketing is one form of digital marketing, and it's centered
around connecting people and giving people the ability to create and share content. We saw that
social media marketing isn't just for users, businesses and non-profits can participate as well, as
long as they stick to one very important rule, they have to focus on connecting not just promoting.
Finally, we touched on a way to categorize the many different social media platforms that exist and
how Facebook puts its stamp on the social media landscape we know today. Now it's your turn, go
and explore the social media landscape. Anyone exploring social media marketing rules will benefit
from a good understanding of how social media platforms work. The best way to build that
understanding is through firsthand experience. If you don't have a profile on Facebook, Instagram, or
LinkedIn yet, now is a great time to create one, you'll need them for this program. If you already have
profiles, start browsing around on few networks that you aren't familiar with, we mentioned Twitter,
Snapchat, Pinterest, WhatsApp, and TikTok for instance. We will delve deeper into what all these
platforms are about and how marketers can use them next week, but this way you get a head start. If
you want to connect to your fellow students in the program, post your profile or handle in the forum
so you can find each other. I can't wait to talk to you about marketing in the main social media
platforms next, but first, check your knowledge with the following quizzes.

3.8 billion people around the world are social media users. I'm pretty sure you're too, but just like me,
you're probably not using all social media platforms on a regular basis. We've seen last week how
many there are. As a social media marketer, you'll want a solid understanding of how the most
important social media platforms work, who they caters to, and how you can use them for marketing.
That's what we'll focus on this week. Over the next two lessons, we'll cover the largest social media
platforms in more detail. We'll talk about how they work, who uses them, and how marketers can be
part of these networks. By the end of this week, you'll have a very good understanding of Facebook,
YouTube, WhatsApp, WeChat, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, Snapchat, Twitter, and Pinterest. We'll
touch on some other Niche platforms and their role. Well, that's all to cover. Let's get started.
Start Here: Some Videos Are Optional
This week, you will learn about all of the major social media platforms. We've provided some
additional content on other social media platforms as well. You'll be assessed on some of the videos
you'll see this week while the rest are optional.

You will be assessed on:

● Use Facebook to Connect People and Businesses

● Engage and Entertain with Video on Youtube
● Make Connections on Whatsapp and Messenger
● Find People that Care About What You Do on Instagram
● Build Professional Connections on LinkedIn
● Use Short Video to Connect on TikTok
● Join the Conversation on Twitter

You will also find optional content on:

● Connect, Engage, and Transact With WeChat

● Boost Your Messaging Game With Snapchat
● Showcase Your Products and Services on Pinterest
● Connect on Niche Interests on Social

As you've seen in the previous videos, there a few social media networks that are so big that you
need to keep them in mind as you plan your social media marketing. I'm sure you use several of
them on a daily basis, but even if you don't, it's a good idea to understand how people use them,
who uses them, and how businesses can participate on each of these platforms. In this lesson, we
will give you an overview of the biggest platforms, we won't go through all the details. But by the end
of this lesson, you will have a good feel for how people and businesses use the major social
networks. In this first video, we focus on the biggest network: Facebook. We have already given you
backgrounds on the company and the different products it offers. But now let's look at how people in
businesses use Facebook. Facebook is one of the most widely used social media networks in the
world. Today, 2.6 billion people use Facebook every month. According to Pew Research Survey,
roughly 7 in 10 adults in the US use Facebook, and 74% of the people who use it report visiting
Facebook at least once a day. Facebook is popular amongst teens in the US with 51% of America's
teens reporting being on Facebook, but other social networking platforms like Instagram and
Snapchat are more popular amongst America teens. It's interesting to note that usage of Facebook
is growing among older Americans. The number of Americans over 65 using Facebook has more
than doubled since August 2012. Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community
and bring the world closer together. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family,
to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them. On the
other hand, businesses can use Facebook to learn more about their customers, find new ones, and
build lasting relationships with them. Let's look at how people use, the platform many features it
offers, and how businesses can be part of its vibrant community. To start using Facebook, you need
to create an account. Note, you must be at least 13 years old to create a Facebook account. To
create a Facebook account, all you need to do is to go to www.facebook.com or the Facebook app
on your mobile device. And the enter your name, email or phone, password, date of birth, and
gender. After you create your account and log into Facebook, you can start editing your profile, your
profile tells your story. You can choose to share information about yourself like your interests and
personal information, your hometown for instance, and your birthday. You can also choose who you
want to share this information with by controlling your privacy settings. You can opt to share the
information with the public, which means that anyone who has a Facebook account can see it, or
you can just share it with your friends. Friending someone on Facebook helps you stay connected
with people you care about. Adding a friend means you'll be able to see each other's profile and
activity on Facebook. You control who your friends are and you can always unfriend someone or you
can block people if you don't want them to see you on Facebook. Stay connected by creating a post
to share updates about your life with your Facebook friends. Here are just a few things you can
share with your post. You can share words to express your thoughts and opinions, or a feeling you
have right now, like feeling grateful, or feeling pumped, or an activity you're currently doing, like
celebrating a birthday or attending a wedding. You can share photos and videos that capture
significant moments in your life, or animated gifs that reveal your moot. Animated gifs are very short
video fragments often played on repeat. You can also share your current location, show people
where you are by checking in. A link to a site you want people to check out, like an article you just
read or a recipe you just tried. You can also choose to share your updates by adding them to your
story. Your stories will be visible to your selected audience for 24 hours. Any photos or videos you
add to your story on Facebook will also appear in your story on Messenger. Stories use a vertical
format which was designed with mobile phones in mind. When you share a post, it may appear on
your friends news feed, a rolling list of updates that people see when they first log on to Facebook.
Similarly, after you added friends on Facebook, you'll also be able to see their updates on your news
feed. Stories appear above the news feed of the people you decide to share your story with, as well
as in their, Messenger inbox. When you see a post from a friend on your news feed, you get
engaged with it in a few different ways. You can like the post by just clicking Like or express a more
specific reaction to it such as love or laugh, sad or angry. You can leave a comment in the form of
words, photos and videos or even GIFS to share a response. If you want your friends to see the
post, you can also share the post on your own profile by clicking Share. In addition to posts from
your friends, you could also see updates from people you find interesting but don't know personally
like journalists or celebrities on your news feed. While you can't directly add them as a friend, you
can do this by following them. Well known public figures with large followings are verified by
Facebook and they have a blue badge next to their name to help you know that they really are who
they claim to be. Connect with other people by joining groups on Facebook. Groups are a place to
communicate about shared interests with certain people. You can create a group for anything, your
family reunion, your after work sports team, or your book club. When you join a group, posts from
that group will start appearing in your news feed as well. As you can see, Facebook makes it easy
for people to not only stay connected with their loved ones, but also stay up-to-date with things and
issues that interest them, which can include a business. When businesses use Facebook, instead of
a profile, they can create a Facebook page. It's where people can connect with the business to learn
more about its products or services. Similarly to a profile, when you set up a page on Facebook, you
can add information about your business. You can add a cover photo and profile picture that best
represents your business. You can also provide contact information like your website, your address,
your phone number and business hours. Just as you can post updates on your profile, businesses
can also share posts on their page. People come to business pages looking to learn more about the
business and its products, hear about latest news and promotions. So it's important for businesses
to post on a regular basis. Many businesses build a presence on Facebook to tell their business's
story. There are a variety of visual formats available to help you with that. Here are three different
types of posts you can create on a business page: story posts, video posts and photo posts. These
 different post types help to capture attention and prompt action. Let's take a look at how stationery
company Ink Meets Paper uses their page to communicate with their customers. They've chosen a
profile picture that represents their business and an appealing cover photo that features one of their
products. This is an example of a video they shared that demonstrates how their products can be
used, specifically their brush pens in this case. They keep their customers updated on the latest
status and their store opening hours through a photo and a status update. They also kept people
informed of their store hours during COVID-19 on their page, which shows up as an update. And
they set up a Facebook shop which allows them to sell their products directly on their page. There
are many other free tools businesses can use on Facebook to achieve their unique business goals
like events, groups and jobs. More than 140 million businesses use Facebook products every month
to find new customers, hire employees or engage with their communities.

Play video starting at :8:49 and follow transcript

8:49

As businesses grow their online presence, they may want to reach more people than those that
follow their page already. Facebook offers advertising solutions where you can create and run
campaigns using simple self serve tools and track the performance of that campaign with easy to
read reports. Running an ad directly from your page is the easiest way to start advertising and find
more people who might be interested in what your business has to offer. This is called boosting a
post. Boosted posts to do exactly what their name suggests. You can boost a post you already made
on your page so more people see it. Beyond boosted posts, you can also use a tool called Facebook
ads manager. You can think of ads manager as a one stop shop for all things advertising with
Facebook. Facebook ads created through ads manager offer more advanced customization
solutions. There are more options available to help you reach your specific business goals and the
audiences you care most about. Ads manager makes it easy to create ads, it let's you create ads in
a step by step process. You'll choose the market. Objective that most aligns with your business goal.
You'll choose the people you want to connect with, the places to show your ads, and what the ad will
look like. And you control exactly how much you spent on advertising. Ads Manager has advanced
targeting tools that can help you focus on the people who matter most to your business. Whether
you want your ads to be shown to people based on age, location, hobbies, or something else Ads
Manager can help you connect to people who are likely to be interested in what you offer. We will
learn a lot more about Facebook in the rest of this program, but I hope that this overview is a good
starting point. As you get a better feel for the different social media platforms that can feature in
marketing. Next, let's look at another very large platform, YouTube.

So far we've covered Facebook and we've learned about the influence the company has on the
social media landscape. We've also looked at it's largest product, facebook.com and Facebook app.
But there are many social media platforms outside of Facebook. In this video, we cover YouTube. By
the end of this video, you'll have a better understanding of how the platform works and how
businesses use it for marketing. Let's dive in with this video. "So here we are in front of the
elephants. Cool thing about these guys is that they have really long trunks, and that's cool.

Play video starting at ::48 and follow transcript

0:48

That's pretty much all there is to say..."" What you just saw was the very first video uploaded to
YouTube. That was Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. Jawed founded YouTube in 2005 together
with his colleagues, Steven Chen and Chad Hurley. The three friends wanted to provide an easy
platform for people to upload and watch videos. YouTube quickly became one of the fastest growing
sites on the World Wide Web, and by 2006 over 25 million videos were uploaded to the platform,
and that same year Google bought YouTube. Now, over two billion people visit YouTube each
month, and every day people watch over a billion hours of video on the platform. More than 70
percent of YouTube watch time comes from mobile devices, and you can navigate YouTube in a
total of 80 different languages. YouTube has made it possible for any video creator to get an
audience, and while that may seem natural to us now it was quite revolutionary at the time. While
many of us may not think of YouTube as a social network in the traditional sense, it has the core
ingredients of a social network. Users can post videos, share videos like or dislike videos, and they
can comment. So the content is generated by users and users can connect and interact with the
content. For many users, YouTube is a place to watch video, a form of entertainment even if they
don't upload or actively participate in the sharing on the platform. That may be why some people
think of it slightly differently from other social media sites. In the US, we see an even split between
men and women on the network. But we do see skew to younger audiences. Eighty-one percent of
15 to 25-year-olds in the US use YouTube and 70 percent of the YouTube views are on mobile.
Users spend a lot of time on the platform with average usage in the US around 40 minutes per day.
Let's take a look at how people and businesses around the world use YouTube. First, let's take a
quick tour of the basics. When you go to www.youtube.com or the YouTube app on your mobile
device you can start watching right away. If you want to comment, share, or save videos, or follow
other people's channels you need to log in with your Google ID. If you want to upload videos, you'll
need to create a channel. You can create a channel under your name, or you can choose a brand or
company name. Once you have a channel, you can choose to make it public so people can
subscribe to it and it can come up in search. If someone subscribes to your channel, your channel
will appear on their YouTube homepage. Creating and managing your channels happens in
YouTube Studio. Here you can edit your videos, sort them into playlists or groups of videos that you
think work together, read and answer comments, and get insights on the performance of your videos
and growth of your audience. Creators on YouTube who run the gamut from people saving a few
individual videos to professional creators like Dude Perfect, or more traditional media publishers like
CNN. Since anyone with a phone or computer can be a creator on the platform, YouTube has given
rise to a whole new group of celebrities, the YouTube stars phenomenon. YouTube stars are people
who've built their fame through broadcasting themselves on YouTube. Stars like Rick Garman, David
Dobrik, and Jenna Marbles have very large and loyal followings, mostly made up of young fans.
Their authentic style and low-key production make them quite different from celebrities in the
traditional media. But it seems that those exact features are what make them attractive to their
audience. These YouTube creators monetize their channels by sharing and the revenue from ads on
their channel, or from sponsorships and payments they receive from businesses who want them to
plug their products. Outside of the main free user-generated video platform, YouTube also offers a
live TV service in the US called YouTube TV where people can stream over 70 TV channels. This is
not the only subscription product YouTube offers. There's also YouTube Music, a music streaming
service, and YouTube Premium which gives users an advertising-free YouTube experience and the
option to download videos. In the US, YouTube also offers YouTube Kids, which curated content
deemed appropriate for kids under 12, and some parental controls. Clearly, YouTube offers a variety
of ways for people to keep themselves entertained. Now, let's look at how businesses use YouTube.
How do marketers use YouTube? First, by building a presence. Businesses and brands can
participate in the same way people can create their scan. A business can create a channel with
content to engage its audience. Many brands create content on the platform from helpful tips and
how-tos to behind-the-scenes content of how products are made. Marketers think about contents
that may engage their customers and use YouTube as a way to distribute that content and engage
people deeper into what the brand has to offer. Let's look at this channel from L'Oréal for instance.
It's full of helpful tutorials, videos about products and so on, and L'Oréal organized it's playlist in the
channel around different product lines and events. Educational videos and tutorials are popular
among YouTube users and many brands rely on them to engage their audience. Second, marketers
use YouTube for advertising. YouTube offers many attractive advertising options. Given the high
 number of people on the platform, YouTube is an attractive medium for marketers to find their
audience. Ad types on YouTube include skippable video ads that appear before the main video, or
short six-second video ads that cannot be skipped and that are often used specifically for mobile
devices, and ads among YouTube search results on the YouTube homepage and alongside related
videos. One other way in which marketers engage on YouTube is through the use of influencers.
YouTube stars have a loyal audience and they often cater to a younger demographic. That audience
is attractive to marketers and they'll often partner with these YouTubers who have a lot of influence
over their fans. They will strike deals where the YouTuber will plug, or review a product, or mention a
brand. Marketers will carefully select the influencers they work with based on the demographics of
their followers and the nature of their content, their personality, and their communication style. While
working with influencers is certainly not limited to YouTube, the rise of the YouTube stars has made
YouTube one of the most important ways to get a message out through influencers with a large fan
base. YouTube has come a long way since the iconic video at the San Diego Zoo. It's a vibrant
network of video creators, an entertainment platform, and a way for people to connect through video.
With over two billion users globally, it's an attractive place for marketers and one that features in
many social media marketing campaigns.

The rise of social media networks in the last decade has gone hand in hand with the growth of direct
messaging apps. In this video you learn more about the biggest messaging platforms, WhatsApp
and Messenger which are both Facebook products. We look at how the tools work and how
businesses can use them to connect with our customers. People are increasingly relying on
messaging apps to easily chat, call and share photos and videos with their loved ones around the
world. Indeed, research firm eMarketer forecasts messaging app users worldwide will have reached
3.12 billion by the end of 2023. WhatsApp is a free messaging app that works both on mobile and
desktop. WhatsApp let's you connect directly with people through chat messages and calls for free.
In February 2020 WhatsApp announced that they have more than two billion users around the world,
making it to most popular messaging app in the world. On WhatsApp, you can message your friends
and family using your phones Internet connection so you can avoid SMS fees or charges you may
incur on your data plan. When sending text messages. Similarly, you can also make free voice and
video calls even to people in another country. You can also send photos and videos on WhatsApp
instantly with WhatsApp photos and video sent quickly, even if you're on a slow connection.
WhatsApp also has a feature called status which allows you to share text, photos, videos and
animated gifs that disappear after 24 hours in order to send and receive status updates to and from
your contacts. Both you and your contacts must have each others phone numbers saved in your
address book. Around the world we see that people are increasingly relying on WhatsApp for a few
simple things chats, calling and sharing. There are more than one billion WhatsApp accounts active
everyday and two billion minutes of calls are made every day. There are 450 million WhatsApp
accounts that are active on WhatsApp status every day. On WhatsApp you can share messages,
photos and videos with one person or with a group of up to 256 people at once. 9 out of 10 of the
messages sent on WhatsApp or from one person to another and majority of groups have fewer than
10 people. WhatsApp provides the intimacy of communicating one on one or we just a few friends.
Which is why privacy is a priority for the company. WhatsApp's commitment to user safety includes
collecting is little data as possible. All a person needs is a phone number to get started. Each and
every message delivered on WhatsApp is automatically encrypted end to end. So not even
WhatsApp or Facebook can see its content.

Play video starting at :3:2 and follow transcript

3:02

Another popular messaging app is Messenger chat platform that was developed as part of
Facebook. In September 2017 Facebook announced that more than 1.3 billion people use
Messenger every month, which puts Messenger as the second largest messaging app in the world
after WhatsApp. When you send a private message on Facebook, your messages sent on
Messenger, the messaging app was originally developed as part of the social network but it
launched as Facebook chat. In 2008, in 2011, however, Facebook separated its messaging
functionality by creating standalone iOS and Android app and a website messenger.com. In the
United States Messenger ranks as the second most popular iOS app of all time behind Facebook.
There are many different ways you can connect with people on Messenger. Here are just a few
features you can make calls to other people using Messenger. You can create group chats. You can
share photos and videos. You can send stickers, emojis and gifs. You can play games with your
friends or you can send Maps and your location. You can also use the Messenger camera to create
playful photos and videos. You can capture a moment, doodle, then send it to your friends and you
can share the final piece to your Facebook stories. Another feature of Messenger camera you can
use is the AR or Augmented reality filters. Add fun filters like bunny ears or a disco background to
make your photos and videos more playful. For instance, if you're feeling creative, you can even
create a filter of your own with spark, AR, Facebook tool for building augmented reality effects.
When you create and share a reality experience, it can reach anyone who's using Facebook.
Similarly to WhatsApp, people use Messenger mainly to chat, call and share photos and videos. In
April 2019, Messenger reported that 20 billion messages were sent between people and businesses
on Messenger each month and 410 million users video chatted on Messenger monthly, with 40%
year over year growth in the amount of time spent in video chat. 17 billion photos were shared in
Messenger each month. In April 2020, Facebook also announced a new group video chat feature for
Messenger called rooms. People who don't have Facebook accounts, can just join an open room
with a link, and up to 50 people can join. If you have the Messenger app, you can play with AR
effects like Bunny ears, and features like immersive 360 backgrounds, and mood lighting for
instance. The growth of messaging apps is not only changing the way we communicate, but also the
way that people want and expect to engage with businesses. Think of the simplicity of being able to
message a business. You open up a message, you don't have to wait on the phone for a reply, you
can come back to it. It's easy to use, it's effective, reliable, it's documented, and it's fast and fun.
Actually, 61% of people would choose messaging a business over picking up the phone. And 59% of
people would choose messaging a business over sending an email. So with these user expectations
and preferences in mind, many businesses have established a presence on messaging platforms.
So let's talk about how businesses can use WhatsApp and Messenger. In January of 2018,
WhatsApp officially launched WhatsApp Business, a free to download app available on Android and
iPhone. WhatsApp Business gives businesses access to tools to automate, sort, and quickly
respond to messages, while still keeping the apps main chat functionality. Businesses on WhatsApp
can create a business profile with basic helpful information like address, business description, email
address and website, which allows people to find them. If your business has a presence on
Facebook, you could also choose to use Messenger to stay connected with your customers.
Messenger makes it easy to be responsive to customers, whether you want to manually manage
conversations, or set up a custom set of automated responses to help you manage your
communication. Both Messenger and WhatsApp have features that can help businesses automate
their messages, and stay connected with their customers 24/7, even when they're offline. You can
set welcome messages, instant automated replies, or create quick replies, so you can save and
reuse messages you frequently send, so you can easily answer common questions in no time. You
can also use these quick replies to send rich media messages such as gifs, images, and videos.
Messenger and WhatsApp also let businesses make it clear to customers when they're available to
respond, so you don't need to worry about questions that come in when there's no one available to
answer them. On WhatsApp, businesses can use labels to help them organize their contacts or
chats, so they can easily find them again. This can help businesses organized customers based on
how far down the purchase process the customers are. They can then take action to help customers
along. For example, you may want to message existing customers that haven't purchased the
product in a few months with a promotion or a coupon. Or you may want to send a thank you to
customers that just purchased. You can use labels to help organize and segment your contacts,
 which will enable you to access them faster. Let's take a look at how Mexico-based entrepreneurial
mentor and coach, Lissette Mondragon used WhatsApp business to increase her sales. Lissette
established Mujer Assertiva, a coaching and mentoring program for other female entrepreneurs back
in 2016. Interest in Lissete's services, including one on one and group coaching, mentoring
sessions, online conferences, and monthly challenges was growing. So she needed a way to
connect with more women with a consistent message. To do so, she began using the WhatsApp
Business app in March 2019. Lissette now connects with all 300 of her clients who are spread
across ten states in Mexico, the US, Colombia, Peru, and Spain via the WhatsApp Business app.
The app's labels feature helps Lissette organize her diverse clientele, by the services they want. And
a quick reply feature has boosted her efficiency in responding to frequently asked questions from
workshop invites to reminders and followups. The WhatsApp business app has helped Lissette to
connect with more women in business and strengthen their leadership. Mujer Assertiva saw a 40%
increase in new client contacts and a 10% increase in sales between March and December of 2019
as a result of its use of WhatsApp. Messenger and WhatsApp have become crucial tools for people
to stay connected, and they clearly offered interesting ways for businesses to stay connected to their
customers. A presence on WhatsApp and Messenger is often a great way for businesses to round
out their social media marketing approach and enrich it with more personal customer care.

Play video starting at :10:44 and follow transcript

10:44

In our next video, we'll turn our attention to another social channel with roots in messaging WeChat.

At this point, we've taken a look at a number of social media platforms and the unique ways in which
they engage their users through status sharing, photo and video sharing, messaging, and more.
Now, we're going to take a look at a social media platform that incorporates them all and may give
us a glimpse into what the future of social media may look like, WeChat. WeChat is owned by
Tencent, a Chinese online communication and gaming company. Beginning in 1998, they began
launching other successful social media platforms, including QQ, a messaging platform, and Qzone,
a microblogging platform and various other e-commerce and search functions. But Tencent was
looking to create a platform that was mobile-first. In 2011, Tencent launched Weixin, which means
micro-messages, as a phone messaging platform. In 2012, they launched outside of China and
began using the name WeChat. The app continued to grow in features as well as usership, and
today WeChat has over 1.2 billion active monthly users worldwide. The majority of users, actually 53
percent of them, are between 25 and 35 years old, and over 45 billion messages are sent on
WeChat per day. Most users, a billion of them, are located in China and many users have more than
one WeChat account. Users say they live on WeChat because of the vast diversity of its
functionality, and a third of users spend four or more hours a day on WeChat. So is WeChat a
messaging site like WhatsApp? Is it a social media app where you can connect with friends like
Facebook? Is it an e-commerce site like Amazon? Or a money transfer app like Venmo? Or a place
to order food like Grubhub? Or an app you can use to summon a rideshare car like Uber? Is it for
business communication like a company intranet? Can it be used for payment like Apple Wallet?
The answer is yes! In fact, Fast Company calls WeChat the app for everything. An investment firm,
Andreessen Horowitz calls it a portal, a platform, and even a mobile operating system, and one
Chinese user told the New York Times that it's not an exaggeration to say that I live in and work on
WeChat. I spend about one-third of my daily nine-hour phone time on WeChat, and that doesn't
include the 2-3 hours I use WeChat's web version. To make it easier to understand WeChat, you can
think of it's functionality in three big buckets. First, it allows you to connect with people through
extensive chat functionality. Second, it lets people share. You can share moments, files, and
locations, for instance, and third, it lets people manage their personal or business life. Let's learn
more about WeChat's functionality and how users and businesses use this extensive Platform.
WeChat may be one app, but it gives users the ability to digitally manage nearly every aspect of their
lives. Instead of one platform offering one specific activity or service like Messenger or LinkedIn,
WeChat collects all the apps you would interact with on your phone or the websites on your browser
into one. That way, users have a one-stop shop for their everyday needs. Users can setup a
personal account on WeChat, but they must know someone already on the platform who can confirm
their invitation. Once registered, users find a minimal home screen with four options along the
bottom navigation; chat, contacts, discover, and Me. The core of WeChat is, as the name says, chat.
Like other messaging apps, users are able to send texts, voice messages, images, and emojis.
WeChat also has a translation function and the ability to recall texts. Users can interact one-on-one
or in group chats. They can also do voice calls, video calls, and group calls. If users want to have a
little fun, they can shake their phone and it will connect them to WeChat users nearby. WeChat also
features moments, which is a social feed similar to what you'd see on Facebook or Twitter. Here
users can post status updates, share links, photos and videos, and like and comment on other's
posts. Users can choose who can see their posts through the privacy settings. Posts can be made
public or available only to those members of a specified group, like work friends or friends from
college, for instance. Users have access to over two million various mini programs or mini apps
through WeChat. They access these mini programs by scanning a QR code at a brick-and-mortar
location on a sign or a poster at an event, or even from another user's phone. Though, WeChat
hides these mini programs on their app in order to focus users on chat, WeChat's core business
offering. But users can swipe down on their homepage to find them. What kinds of mini programs
does WeChat offer? Well, pretty much everything. You can order food or check on wait times at your
local restaurants. You can play games, make travel reservations, order a car share or a bike share,
track your fitness, search libraries for available books, and send friends a coffee. There are even
apps that allow you to customize your own jewelry, book doctor appointments, or apps that can tell
you about an upcoming court date. WeChat will also hold an electronic version of your government
ID. WeChat also offers WeChat Pay, which not only stores bank information and allows users to pay
through their phones like with Apple Pay, but also allows users to transfer money to other users, split
bills, pay their utilities, book a train and a flight ticket, buy movie tickets, book hotels, manage their
wealth, and shop. WeChat has tapped into Chinese tradition with their red envelopes feature. In
Chinese culture, gifts are given in red envelopes at holidays and on special occasions. On WeChat,
in addition to straight forward money transfers users are able to send each other digital red
envelopes with monetary gifts. The red envelope can also serve as a game in that the first user of a
group text who opens the red envelope gets the entire contents. When WeChat launched red
envelopes in 2014, it gave away 1.2 billion envelopes to its users who needed to shake their phone
to get a chance at winning the gift. Now that we've seen the kind of value and functionality WeChat
can bring to users, let's take a look at ways businesses can use WeChat as well. Because the
WeChat ecosystem runs on an assortment of small apps, businesses have the opportunity to partner
with WeChat to make their services and products available to WeChat users through their own mini
program. With 1.2 billion users who spent $115 billion in 2019, businesses have a large market
ready to buy on WeChat. For example, the McDonald's mini program serves as a rewards program
where diners can scan their phone at checkout and accumulate points. It's a small, easy way to
interact with the brand, but it gets users engaged and coming back for more points. French luxury
brand, Longchamp, is using its mini program to facilitate e-commerce sales. Only one branch in
China holds physical stock of new custom designs. While all the rest display QR codes that potential
buyers can scan, they then get access to the full catalog through the app and can purchase from
there. Armani's cosmetics line launched a mini program where WeChat users were able to try on
various lipsticks through the app's augmented reality feature. Users could then purchase the
products that they liked immediately. Luxury fashion house, Fendi, launched a WeChat game where
users can walk around Rome collecting coins unlocking levels and learning about Fendi's history.
Fendi then chose players to win a trip to Italy. Since many programs are smaller, lighter versions of
apps, businesses don't have to invest in creating fully formed heavy apps like the kind you see on
iPhone and Android. Additionally, WeChat takes care of all the settings features like notifications and
logins so businesses don't have to. Businesses can also create official accounts, a bit like they can
create business pages on Facebook. These accounts allow businesses to push out content to their
users, have a website-like functionality in their account page, and offer customer service interaction
among other features. WeChat also has a search functionality. Through search, users can discover
accounts to follow or mini programs they can use. Brands can create a brand zone, which is a hub
where a brand can provide a central overview of all it's WeChat activity. For instance, it can list it's
different mini programs in it's brand zone. This is a way for brands to get exposure to people that
don't follow their official account. Brands zones come up on top of the search results in searches for
the brand. Here is an example from Cartier, who uses it's brand zone as a way to direct traffic to its
e-commerce site so people who are not following the brand on WeChat can still shop. Businesses
can also advertise on users' Moments feed like similar sponsored content on the Twitter or Pinterest
feed. Businesses can target users by location, interest, and various demographics. WeChat also
offers banner advertising as well. Be aware that businesses need to apply to be verified by WeChat
first, and WeChat gives preference to Chinese businesses over international companies. WeChat is
one app that offers a massive amount of functionality for its users and integrates thousands of
programs that apply to every aspect of daily life. Yet, when you look at it WeChat functions very
similarly to an entire iPhone or Android ecosystem with its collection of standalone apps that users
can download à la carte to provide the same functionality. So is WeChat a future of social media
where all apps, services, games, and functions will be contained in one platform? We'll have to see.
Now, let's turn our attention to social media platform that has also added increased functionality over
time, Instagram.

Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, is one of the leading social media networks around the
world. Over a billion people use the app to share and connect with others. Instagram was founded in
2010, and when Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, they were perfectly positioned to become the
platform of inspirational content while Facebook centered around connecting with others.
Instagram's mission is to bring you closer to the people and things you love. Instagram does that by
letting you share photos and videos accompanied by a short text caption. You can follow friends,
family, interesting people, brands, and businesses you want to hear from. You can also chat via
direct message conversations. Instagram is widely used around the world. According to Hootsuite,
89 percent of the users are outside of the US. The countries that followed the US with the highest
number of Instagram users includes: Brazil with 70 million, India with 69 million, Indonesia with 59
million, Russia with 40 million. In terms of gender, Instagram usage is pretty much evenly split with
52 percent women and 48 percent male users worldwide according to Hootsuite. Instagram is
especially popular with younger users. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in early 2019, 72
percent of teens from the ages 13-17 said they use Instagram, compared to 69 percent for Snap
chat and 51 percent for Facebook. This is especially relevant for companies or businesses looking to
 reach a younger audience. An eMarketer survey conducted in 2019, 73 percent of US teens report
that Instagram is the best way for brands to reach them about new products or promotions.
Instagram usage keeps growing. Two months after Instagram launched in 2010, the app had 1
million registered users and that number grew to 10 million in the first year. In June of 2018,
Instagram reported that they reached 1 billion monthly users worldwide, and usage has kept growing
since. Let's explore how people use Instagram, and what platform could mean for marketers. To
start using Instagram, you simply download the app on your phone and you create an account. All
you need to sign up is an email or a phone number. Then you create your profile with a picture and a
short bio where you introduce yourself and you are ready to start sharing and connecting. You can
upload photos or videos and share them with your community. You can edit your photos and videos
directly from the app with the embedded filters. You can add captions and tag people and the
location if you like. Then your image is ready to share and other users can see it in their feed. They
can then like, comment and share the post. With your privacy settings, you can restrict who can
follow you and see the photos and videos you've shared. You can also share images and videos to
your Instagram story. Stories appear at the top of the feed and the content you share in your story
disappears after 24 hours. Unlike posts shared in the feed, Instagram stories make use of the full
mobile experience. You can add filters, stickers, and other fun interactive elements to create an
immersive experience. If you want to share longer videos than 60 seconds on Instagram, you can
use IGTV. You can access IGTV through its separate app or from it in Instagram. If you use the
separate app, you will see videos from the accounts you follow. IGTV videos are shown in vertical
format as it is a mobile first application. Live, is a way you can share a live video on Instagram.
When you go live on Instagram, you can connect with your followers in real-time. People can tap
your profile picture from their feed or go to your profile to join your live video. Once people are
viewing your live video, they can leave comments, like, donate to your cause and share it. After you
end your live video, you can add it to your IGTV where people can watch longer and full screen
videos on your profile. Here we see an Instagram feed which consists of photos and videos from
people, businesses and hashtags you follow. When you go to your Instagram profile or click on the
home button, you will see your feed. If you just signed up for Instagram, your feed will be pretty
empty. As you explore the app, you can add friends, family and businesses as well as other people
you're passionate about. To find the accounts you want to follow on Instagram, you can search by
specific topics or hashtags, location and account names. When you post on Instagram, you can
accompany your posts with texts including a hashtag. Adding a hashtag categorizes your post as
related to the topic that follows the hashtag. For instance, if I post this funny cat picture and I add the
hashtag, #funnycats. This picture may come up in searches for funny cats. Another way to discover
accounts to follow is through explore. Explore resurfaces trends as they emerge in real-time.
Connecting you to events and conversations both near you and around the globe. Explore will also
update depending on your activity on Instagram. Posts are selected automatically based on things
like the people you follow or the posts you like.

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6:03

Now that you understand a little better at who's using Instagram, let's dive a bit deeper into how
businesses can use Instagram for their marketing. People on Instagram want to dive deeper into
their interests and discover new ones, they're eager to learn more, connect with the community and
hear from the people and businesses that inspire them. In fact, in a survey commissioned by
Facebook in November 2018, 83 percent of people surveyed said that they discover new products
and services in Instagram. In addition to being a discovery Engine for brands, Instagram can also
drive sales and advocacy. Eighty-one percent of people surveyed said that they researched products
or services on Instagram, and 80 percent use Instagram to decide whether to buy a product or
service. People discover products and services on Instagram while they browse their feed.
Businesses can share photos and videos on Instagram and thus generate awareness and interests
 for their products. By sharing photos and videos, showing the behind the scenes of a business, or
announcing new products or services or sharing customer testimonials, businesses can tell their
story on Instagram. Instagram's visual nature allows businesses to be creative and showcase their
personality. Instagram stories offers a unique way of sharing photos and videos, and another great
opportunity for businesses to share more about their products or services with the Instagram
community. The interactive features and Instagram stories allow the community to directly engage
with the business. By using stickers, businesses can encourage people to engage with them directly,
like prompt them for questions, poll them on their preferences, and let them send messages.
Instagram also has features that are accessible only to business accounts, but the business
account, you can include more information about your business and encouraged people to get in
touch, you can add a link to your businesses website and include your businesses phone number,
location, and email. From there, you can start accessing features that can help keep customers
informed, manage direct messages more easily, learn how people interact with your content and be
discovered by more people. Let's look at an example. Here is the Instagram account of Classy
Claws a nail salon in Vancouver. They specialize in funky nails and they use their Instagram account
to showcase the nails they've been working on, they give a behind the scenes look of their business
while also celebrating their employees. They let people book appointments and message the salon
through the app, let's listen to what Bee Lalli, owner of the salon has to say about that. "One of the
things that's helped me build the brand that I built is really the ability in responding back to your
direct messages on Instagram builds such a strong community. The people that you respond to start
messaging you all the time and the amount of people that relate to my brand come through to my
slide. Marketing myself through Instagram helped my business evolve from a table in the corner of
my kitchen to Studio in Vancouver. Without the Instagram I would not have gained attraction, gained
the clientele, gained the respect around the brand that I built."

Play video starting at :9:32 and follow transcript

9:32

Here's another example, this time a much bigger company, restaurant chain, Chipotle. They use
their Instagram account to share a mix of content related to their food with a funny twist. Many of the
posts relate to their customers law for their burritos and taco plates. Posts includes news about
promotions like disposed on national burrito day, and some posts encouraged people to tag a friend
for a chance to have a free meal delivered to that friend. Chipotle also used Instagram live during the
lock down for a guacamole making class with their executive chef.

Play video starting at :10:13 and follow transcript

10:13

When you have a business account on Instagram, you can also start advertising. Advertising on
Instagram makes it possible to reach audiences who might otherwise not see your posts. If you have
a business account, you will see a promote button appear on your posts to turn your posts into an
ads. When you promote a post, it will appear as a sponsored post in other people's Instagram stories
or feed. In addition to creating ads on Instagram, you could also use Facebook tools to create ads
that appear on Instagram. For instance, you can create ad campaigns in ads managers, ads
managers provides comprehensive tools to create ads on Facebook and on Instagram. When
businesses use ads manager, they get access to a large suite of creative options and opportunities
to select the audience to reach better advertising message. It also comes with rich insights and
optimization opportunities. We'll learn all about that later in this program. Let's look at an example of
an ad campaign on Instagram by Clif Bar, focused on generating awareness for the new Clif Nut
Butter filled and Fruit Smoothie Filled Products. Clif Bar used a series of 15-second ads in Instagram
stories with a message high-end taste appeal like this one. The team showed these ads to people
whose interests aligned with the characteristics of its core customers, health-conscious, active, and
adventure seeking. The campaign resulted in significant lift in brand awareness and purchase intent.
The visual nature of the Instagram platform and its users interest in discovery makes Instagram a
very attractive platform for marketers. In this program, we will explore in a lot more depth how
Instagram can feature in your social media marketing. Now, let's first look at another large but very
different social media platform, LinkedIn.

As you've now seen, there are many different social media platforms that offer their own unique
focus and engagement for specific audiences. Let's now take a look at a social media platform
devoted exclusively to professional networking, LinkedIn. When Reid Hoffman, the founder of
LinkedIn launched his first social media site, an online dating platform, roommate finder and
professional networking site called SocialNet, it failed because it did way too much. Learning from
that experience, Hoffman then decides to focus on one thing, professional networking, and he
officially launched LinkedIn in 2003, making it one of the oldest social media platforms around.
Today, LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network, with almost 700 million users worldwide.
It's a place to connect with colleagues both past and present, discover new people in your industry,
or even find your next job. While 12 percent of users visit daily,the majority check into LinkedIn
multiple times per week. Amongst users, men edge out women with 57 percent to 43 percent. While
the largest age group interacting with LinkedIn is between 30 and 49, the platform is also reportedly
growing fastest among 18 to 24 year olds. Additionally, 57 percent of users access LinkedIn through
the mobile app. LinkedIn has only continued to grow in recent years. Off LinkedIns' 690 million users
worldwide, 160 million are found in the US, with Europe coming in close behind at a 157 million
users. India, with 66 million users is the third largest user of the platform. As you can see LinkedIn
truly is a global network. But are all of these users just job seekers? According to LinkedIn, 90 million
of them are senior level influencers, 63 million are decision-makers, and 40 million are what's called
mass affluent or individuals who have assets between a 100,000 and a million dollars. 17 million are
opinion leaders and 10 million are C-suite level executives. This not only means that every level of
the professional ladder is represented on LinkedIn, but that users are able to follow and interact with
industry leaders as well. Individuals can use LinkedIn to boost their career, but LinkedIn offers a lot
of value to businesses as well considering it's not only a place to engage with the public, but can
serve as a hefty recruitment platform. Let's have a look in the next section. For the career focused,
LinkedIn is the place to center your professional life, grow your network, develop new skills, and
search for your next job or career. Even though it's a social media platform, you won't find users
sharing pictures of their dogs or vacations, instead think of it as an interactive resume. When you set
up your LinkedIn profile, you'll be asked to include summaries on your job history, your education,
any specialized skills or certifications you have and any accomplishments. Be sure to add a
professional photo and include a summary of who you are and what you do. You can also set your
profile to public or private and even denote if you're open to job opportunities. There's also a
recommendation section, where you can receive testimonials from colleagues, you can also give
other people recommendations as well. You can ask current colleagues, past coworkers, family, or
friends to join your network. Once someone is in your network, they're considered a first degree
connection. As you come across new connections, LinkedIn will tell you if you have someone in
common and they will be a second degree connection. This will make networking introductions
easier. LinkedIn will also recommend people you may know based on places you've worked or
where you went to school. Each user has their own definition of a connection. For example, many
users only connect with someone if they've worked together in real life. But other users connect to
those they've never met in order to extend their network. Use the search bar at the top to easily find
connections. If you don't want to connect with someone directly, you can also follow them, which
means you can see their posts on your news feeds, but you're not part of their network. Also, other
LinkedIn users can follow you as well. Just be aware that LinkedIn users can set who can follow
them, all users or just those they know. You can also follow businesses as well. Are you looking to
further your career? On LinkedIn, you can search for jobs according to location and skill and set up
alerts to be notified of open positions. LinkedIn will also recommend new positions based on the
information you added to your profile. For example, if you add web design to your skill section,
LinkedIn may suggest web designer and developer positions to you. Businesses can post open
positions on their own profile pages as well and LinkedIn offers the ability to apply to a job with your
LinkedIn profile. Did you know that 55 job applications are submitted every second and every seven
seconds someone is hired? Back on the homepage, you'll find a newsfeed which functions similarly
to Facebook's newsfeed. You can post job status updates or announce that you're looking for a new
position. You can also link to articles on industry news or professional growth. You can write your
own articles as well. Like, comment, or share those posts to increase your interaction with other
LinkedIn users. In 2015, LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com, one of the leading online learning platforms
and launched LinkedIn Learning which features videos and courses on everything from accounting,
to graphic design, to Excel. LinkedIn users must pay a subscription to access the courses. But if a
user's company has a license, they may be able to access the entire library for free. While all these
features are included in an individual free plan, if you want more from LinkedIn, you can upgrade to
a premium account. Premium gives you more information on profiles, access to hiring managers
through InMail, access to the expansive LinkedIn Learning Library, and insights into who is
searching for you. I'm sure that by now you understand the benefits LinkedIn can have for your
career. Later in this program, we will explore a bit more about how you can use LinkedIn and create
a great profile to help you in your career as a social media marketer. Of course, as I'm sure you can
imagine, the certification badges you will be awarded after successfully completing this program will
become an important asset for you. While LinkedIn provides great value for individual users seeking
to further their careers, LinkedIn is also a great tool for businesses looking to expand their
engagement or find their next talent. With nearly 700 million users, the LinkedIn community is ready
to interact with businesses they know and looking to discover new businesses or industry leaders to
follow. Similar to other social media platforms, businesses are able to create profiles, share content,
and engage with users around their brands. Users can follow businesses and have their content
appear in their newsfeed. Businesses can also see what kind of content is trending in their
community and target specific segments with their posts. Let's take a look at a LinkedIn profile of
Squarespace, a company that provides software for easy to build websites and hosting. Because of
the networking nature of LinkedIn, businesses are able to connect their colleagues to one another.
Going behind the face of the brand to the people of the company. LinkedIn users can see who works
at a company as well, through the people section of the profile. LinkedIn will recommend
connections to users simply through affiliation with the same company. Additionally, if a company is
global, LinkedIn is a great way to engage employees in one space. Businesses can use LinkedIn as
another option for recruiting. Because user profiles are essentially resumes, businesses can find
new talent based on skills, experience, and availability, and even connect directly with the users on
the site. Businesses can post open job positions and allow applicants to apply directly with their
LinkedIn profile. Because users are already looking to engage with brands, industries, and ideas,
LinkedIn can also serve as a great advertising platform. Businesses can use LinkedIn to target
specific demographics or segments and not just recruiting offers, but in seeking out new clients or
 customers. For example, on the home page, you'll find a promoted box where businesses can
advertise services that may be helpful or interesting, including online business courses or services
for small businesses. Additionally, you'll see suggestions of businesses to follow, which may also be
paid. Given LinkedIn's massive userbase across 200 countries and territories that contains millions
of senior-level professionals and top leaders, advertising can have a much greater reach and even
draw in a new customer segment. In fact, LinkedIn is considered one of the best social networks for
business-to-business marketers to attract new customers and followers. You've now learned the
basics about LinkedIn and how it is a unique platform that focuses specifically on professional
networking and career advancement. With its global reach and increased growth, you can also see
how it provides a unique space for marketers to engage with new audiences in different ways. Next,
we'll look at a very different and much younger social network, TikTok.

As we continue our look at social media platforms, let's turn to one of the newer platforms that have
seen incredible growth in the past few years, TikTok. Unlike some of the other social media
platforms we've looked at, TikTok didn't originate in the US. It was created in 2012 in China as a
lipsyncing app known as Douyin, and it's owned by a company named ByteDance. In an effort to
expand globally, in 2018, the company that owned Douyin acquired a US app called Musical.ly, a
short video music focused app. They rebranded it and TikTok was born. Since 2018, TikTok has
been one of the fastest growing platforms in the world, with over 800 million users. 90% of users
access TikTok everyday. Users are overwhelmingly from generation Z. In fact, 69% of TikTok users
are between 13 and 24, and millennial usage is growing. But what is TikTok? TikTok is an app that
features content in the form of short videos. Think YouTube, but with 15 to 60 seconds clips. While
the app's original focus was singing, dancing, and lipsyncing and comedy, now videos go as far as
users imagination can take them. Parody videos, memes, cooking clips, tutorials, skits, and short
films, challenges, storytelling, and more. As with all the social media platforms, TikTok has its
celebrities, not just celebrities who use TikTok to post their own videos like Alicia Keys or J.Lo or
The Rock, but its own homegrown celebrities who have gained fame through the platform. TikTok
launched dancer Charli D'Amelio's career and she's now the most followed account on TikTok. The
second most followed TikToker is Zach King who posts edited magic videos. And the song Old Town
Road was unknown before it was uploaded to TikTok where the song went viral through yeehaw
challenge meme, in which people transform into cowboys while dancing to the Old Town Road song,
like in this video.

Play video starting at :2:29 and follow transcript

2:29

[MUSIC] Above all, TikTok is about individuality. Videos usually features someone speaking to or
performing for the camera. [MUSIC]

Play video starting at :2:59 and follow transcript

2:59

TikTok is also informal and fun. When it first launched, the New York Times called it the only truly
pleasant social network in existence. And as we'll see, this informality provides a unique opportunity
for businesses as well into rethinking how they provide content. Let's take a look at how everyday
users can interact with the world through TikTok.

Play video starting at :3:26 and follow transcript

 3:26

It's incredibly easy to get started with TikTok. Simply download the app and start watching, no
account needed. Set up an account to start following users, curating your home screen, an creating
your own unique content. Let's take a tour of TikTok. Tap on the Home button on the bottom nav bar
to immediately access videos. There's no scrolling through options and picking the videos you want
to watch, instead, videos launch immediately, drawing you into a never ending scroll. The home
screen offers two options, following for videos from user you follow and for you, which shows videos
that are suggested for you based on accounts you follow and videos you like and share. When a
video plays, you'll see information at the bottom, including the account's name, a caption, and any
relevant hashtags. Hashtags are a way in which users categorized the content. The hashtags
followed by a keyword indicate what a content relates to and makes it searchable for users. On the
side, tap the account's photo to follow, tap the heart to like, or tap the comment bubble to write
something back. You can also share the video or save it. Head to the next video by swiping up.
You'll also notice a spinning records in the bottom right corner because TikTok has its roots in music,
every video can have a soundtrack chosen from TikTok's massive song library. Tap on the Record to
find other videos that have used this song or saved the song to your favorites. Tap on the Discover
button to see what videos are trending. You'll find videos collected on the various hashtags like
#BlackLivesMatter or #homechef. #TikTokanimals, #rarethings and more. Click on a video to start
that stream. You can also follow hashtags and videos with that hashtag will appear in your following
stream. TikTok also has its famous hashtag challenges where users create their own videos based
on the hashtag and share it mentioning the hashtag in the caption. Usually the challenge is
something that's easy to replicate but general enough to put your own spin on it. It could be
something like doing a dance under #distancedancechallenge, or featuring your own comedic twist,
like in hashtag chaotic energy. There are no winners in these challenges, but it helps to create more
visibility for your profile. Hootsuite reports that 35% of users have participated in hashtag challenges.
Your inbox is where you'll find notifications, likes, and comments. Finally, the Me button is where
you'll find your profile and all the videos that you've created. And for anyone familiar with Instagram,
you'll see that a navigation layout is exactly the same. To create a video, simply tap on the plus
button. You can record a video that's 15 seconds long or 60 seconds long. If you're not sure where
to start, TikTok provides templates where you can upload photos into a slideshow. Similar to
Snapchat, you can set a filter for your video, add colors, characters, backgrounds, or interactive
games. Tap on the word sounds at the top to add a soundtrack to your video, tap to record, and tap
again to pause the recording. Tap again to restart the recording. This allows you to build scenes into
your videos. Not happy with the last segment? You can delete the most recent clip by tapping on the
delete button. Once you're done, tap the checkbox. You'll then have the opportunity to add text,
visual effects, stickers and more. You can also edit your video, add a voiceover and change the
voice effects. Finally, add your caption, add relevant hashtags, decide if your video will be public or
private and post. Not sure what to post? Creative expression is key on TikTok. Post a video of you
doing a dance or a funny scene you rolled and act it out. Talk about a book you love, add your take
on one of the means like the wipe it down challenge or choose your fighter. Or just share your
personal story on the best of the day or black voices or my pride for instance. Tik Tok is about
everyday users posting unique, authentic, fun videos. Next, we'll see how that can be an opportunity
for businesses.

Play video starting at :8:8 and follow transcript

8:08

There are many different ways businesses can leverage their brand on TikTok, both to creating fun
organic content and through advertising. Above all, brands need to be aware of the unique
personality of TikTok. Short, informal, personal videos and tailor their marketing efforts to fit into that
culture. One of the best ways businesses will be able to connect with users is to get personal and
 fun. Because TikTok videos are based around individual users connecting with their audience,
businesses need to think about how they can lift curtain on their branding to show the people behind
it. Let's take a look at a few examples. The Washington Post, one of the most highly respected and
premier newspapers in the USA, has decided on a very fun way to interact with users on TikTok.
While they post news clips and stories, most of their content revolves around their social media
guide dif. Acting out fun skits that relate to current events, defining words for the audience or playing
dumb to educate himself. This way the Washington Post is able to engage users in informal, funny,
but extremely relevant ways. Another business that has personalized its interaction on TikTok is
Lush, a hands made cosmetics company. The Lush TikTok account features videos of users using
their products, but they have a little fun as well and have posted videos of their store reps dancing
their products, dancing or acting out skits. And even participating in TikTok hashtag challenges as a
brand. They've even built connections around the hashtag Lush community. Chipotle is another
example of businesses using Tik Tok in innovative ways. They not only post their own Videos but
share videos from their followers, including users posting videos on how to make different meal
combos or hacks from the Chipotle app. These videos have hundreds of thousands of likes each.
Chipotle also provided fun filters for users to use on their videos. Businesses can also create
hashtags to raise awareness of their brands. Or get users to participate in posting content related to
the brand. For guesses in MyDenim campaign, for instance, users were simply asked to post a
picture of themselves in their jeans. Which helped raise brand awareness. Businesses can also work
with TikTok influencers to raise awareness for their brands. Businesses can purchase advertising on
TikTok in a few different forms. TikTok offers in feet ads where, like with Twitter or Pinterest, a user
would see a video similar in content to others on their feet, except it would be sponsored. TikTok
also offers what's called a branded takeover, where a business's ad would show on users screens
as soon as they open TikTok. Businesses can also offer branded filters and lenses to their users.
TikTok is an entertaining way for users all over the world to connect to one another in fun visual
ways. Challenge one another through fun games and memes and showcase their own individual
creativity. Businesses are also using TikTok to connect to their audiences on playful personal levels
that go beyond traditional advertising. Go download TikTok so you can experience some of this
yourself.

Play video starting at :11:38 and follow transcript

11:38

Next, let's look at another Chansey favorite, Snapchat.

As we have been learning about social media platforms, we have seen a variety of platforms with
different functionalities. Let's now look at another app that has its roots in peer-to-peer messaging,
Snapchat. Calling itself a new kind of camera, Snapchat was founded by three Stanford students,
Reggie Brown, Evan Spiegel, and Bobby Murphy as a place to, in their own words, share awkward
selfies and funny photos with our friends. Seeing more and more apps offering ways to make photos
prettier, they wanted to make photos more fun. Snapchat launched in 2011, and early users were
high school students sending funny snaps back and forth to their friends. By October 2012, over one
billion snaps had been shared. Today, Snapchat has over 229 million daily active users globally who
share four billion snaps a day. 62% of users are below the age of 30. As for split in gender,
Snapchat is equally used by men and women. Users spend about half an hour on Snapchat per day
interacting with friends and content. Snapchat has expanded beyond just an individual messaging
app. Users can also follow celebrities or brands, new sites or channels curated to include videos
related to certain themes like DIY projects, magic or comedy. Snapchat has also added augmented
reality into many of its lenses and filters, enhancing photos and videos with computer-generated
elements. By the way, that is what augmented reality really refers to. It super imposes computer
generated elements on top of reality. The result is a mix of what you can see with some added
features, like in this image for instance. Snapchat reports that over 75% of their daily active users
engage with augmented reality every day. But, what makes Snapchat so unique? It's the idea of
impermanence. Snaps don't stick around and once they are viewed, they disappear. In some of their
early blog posts, the founders expressed how they didn't want their users worrying about untagging
themselves in photos from years ago before a job interview or fixing up photos to make them look
perfect. They wanted to create a more authentic, real connection for their users. They also saw the
uniqueness in what they called the ephemeral nature of human interaction. The interaction happens
in the moment and doesn't leave a trace. Let's take a look into some of the fun and unique means
users can use Snapchat. Like some social media platforms, users can interact with Snapchat solely
as an observer. But, considering it was created to be a messaging app first, Snapchat is more fun
with friends. Download the app and create an account. You can connect your phones contacts to
your account so you can find friends quickly. You can also connect your Bitmoji account, which is a
personalized character or avatar you can create through the Bitmoji app and use across a variety of
platforms. Your bitmoji will appear as your avatar around Snapchat. The Snapchat home screen is
simple with only has three options. Create a snap using the middle button, start a chat with one of
your friends or a group of friends or discover content created by celebrities, organizations or brands.
Once you connect with friends or group of friends, you can start chatting. Snapchat can be used as a
text-based chat app but, it's been used in sending pictures back and forth to one another. You can
start a photo from either the chat screen or the main screen. To begin creating a snap, navigate to
the big circle button on the bottom of the screen. When you open Snapchat, it will default to creating
a snap as well. You can simply take a photo and send it. But, Snapchat offers the ability to make
your photo or video unique. Tap on the smiley face next to the photo button and a line of filters and
lenses will pop up. They can be as simple as adding butterflies around your head or you can change
your surroundings to look like sketch drawing. Snapchat's camera reads your facial features and is
able to change them according to the filter. Try on glasses or dog ears, distort your smile or change
your hair color. There are even filters that have games or questions you can interact with. Tap the
"Explore" button to find more lenses and filters from simple polarizing filters for your camera to
background effects, to turning yourself into a talking potato or fruit. There are even filters to utilize
your Bitmoji and place them in your world through augmented reality or filters to add cartoon
characters to your surroundings. Need some options? Tap the scan button to get suggested lenses
based on items the camera sees, like animated food characters, but it captures food, or animated
plans, but it captures the window. Also built into the scan feature is the ability to scan an item and a
popup to Amazon will allow you to purchase. The scan feature also lets users discover augmented
reality features when out and about in their city. Once you've taken your photo or video, you can add
text in different forms and colors or hand-write your messages, you can add stickers to your snap,
add links, and more. At this point, you can save your snap to access it later. Otherwise, you won't
see it again. You can also choose to add the snap to your story, which your followers can see as a
compilation of snaps you've created. Ready to send, hit "Send To", and pick your friends. But once
you've sent it, it's gone, and once they view it, it disappears. Then you're onto the next snap. All
these filters and lenses may seem silly but that's the point of Snapchat; having fun and being playful
with friends. Half the fun is also playing around with the filters and augmented reality features for
yourself. At the same time, Snapchat considers itself a camera company through which people can
experience the world in different ways. Let's take a look at ways businesses can use Snapchat. With
a worldwide user base of 229 million people, many of them teenagers, businesses should be looking
at Snapchat as a way to connect with their audience, gain new audiences and provide unique
contents they might not be able to on other platforms. The major ways businesses can utilize
Snapchat is to standard advertising, providing lenses and filters to increase engagement, and
creating unique content. Because lenses, filters and other augmented reality features provide a fun
around creating snaps, businesses have discovered creative ways to engage followers through
unique branded lenses and filters. These filters may be available on the app or customers can find
Snapcodes at retailers or at events to unlock certain filters or lenses. L'oreal, the personal care
company, was able to leverage Snapchat in Germany to engage potential buyers around the launch
of a new men's line. Users were able to play with the lens to try out different products, styles and
looks. In-store buyers were able to find Snapcode to unlock lenses so they could try products in the
store. Coupled with in-app commercials, they were able to increase their brand awareness and had
a successful product launch. Businesses can also create content for Snapchat as well and post
stories, tutorial, and fun videos for their audiences. Because businesses can use stories to string
together a series of snaps, they're not limited to one and own videos. Instead, new sites like The
Wall Street Journal, for instance, can provide extended coverage of a new story through a series of
snaps, or a brand like tasty can do a series related to one food product like ice cream. Businesses
can advertise on Snapchat through its ads manager, where they can create different types of ads
and target them to different users. Businesses will often run campaigns in which they combine the
use of filters with ads like Domino's Pizza in Norway for their new bigger, better campaign, posting
comedic commercials showing that pizzas were now almost too big to carry. Combined with
Domino's filters, users could share with their friends. The campaign was a success to the extent that
the head of sales and marketing was surprised at how many filters were used. Another company that
used Snapchat in a unique way is Hopper, an airline booking app. They targeted Snapchat users
based on location, door Snapchat users that lived near airports, and offered advertise deals based
on the city of the Snapchatter. While their ads were simple, they were hyper tailored to specific
markets, where they were able to gain new customers. As you can see, Snapchat holds its own
unique place in the world of social media platforms. It can be used as a more traditional social media
platform, where users can follow the contents of celebrities, organizations, or brands, but above all,
it's a way for friends to connect in a fun, zany and playful fashion. Next stop in our exploration of
social media platforms is Twitter.

As we continue our look at different social media platforms, let's turn our attention to a platform that
may be the most immediate of them all, Twitter. Did you know that Twitter was originally inspired by
text messaging? Jack Dorsey created Twitter as a platform that focused on real time status updates.
A way for people to update others on what they were doing at the moment, which is why some
people refer to Twitter as a micro-blogging platform. When Twitter was released in 2006,
TechCrunch called it a sort of group send SMS application. And because of SMS limitations, posts
or tweets were limited 140 characters. The first tweet, it was from @Jack and read, just setting up
my Twitter. But it wasn't until the 2007 South by Southwest conference when Twitter really took off.
Attendees were able to text message to sign up quickly and they were given access to follow
ambassadors at a conference. Today, 340 million people use Twitter worldwide, on both its desktop
and mobile app. To give you a sense of how popular the platform is, there are 165 million daily
active users, and those users are sending 500 million tweets per day. 75% of Twitter users are
under the age of 50, and a majority of users are millennials. So people between the ages of 26 and
40 years old. Additionally, Twitter users in the US tend to be more educated when compared to the
general population. As for gender divide, Twitter has more male users at 69%, which women making
up 31% of users. According to pew research, nearly 1/4 of Americans use Twitter. But their findings
 also discovered that only 10% of Twitter users are generating 80% of the content. Who are the
biggest Twitter accounts out there? The most follow the count on Twitter is Barack Obama, at 190
million followers. Followed by Justin Bieber, at 111 million followers. The most followed brands,
number 1 is PlayStation, at 80million followers, followed by Xbox at 40 million followers and Chanel,
at 30million followers. Because of its real time updates and direct conversational nature, Twitter
users engage with it for everything from following breaking news to following niche interests, to
sharing personal updates to simply casual chats. Businesses can use it for everything from real time
customer service to interacting on a personal level with their followers. Let's take a closer look at
Twitter.

Play video starting at :2:58 and follow transcript

2:58

Twitter is all about immediacy, as the platform was created for real time updates that capture the
present moment. The heart of Twitter is it's timeline, a constantly updated stream of tweets of what's
going on in the world. Sometimes, new users to Twitter get overwhelmed by the amount of
information coming at them, but will give you some ways to utilize Twitter to your advantage. First
time users to Twitter will create an account, with a short bio, a profile picture, and all that information
you want to include, like your city or a link to your home page. Users can have multiple accounts and
also with personal accounts who also manage business accounts can easily switch between the two.
Users with large followings can be verified by Twitter or have their identities confirmed and receive a
check mark next to their name. Tweeting is easy. Simply tap the tweet button and write your tweet.
You can add pictures, a video, a gift or a pole. You can also add links to articles or websites and
Twitter will add a Twitter cards or a picture and link preview to your tweet. As you type it will tell you
when you're approaching your character limit and won't let you tweet if you're over. Have something
longer to say? You can add tweets into what's called a thread, which will post connected to one
another's on the timeline. Users typically note that are using a thread, by marking them as 1, 2, etc,
or by writing a thread. Because of the rise of smart phone usage, the original 140 character limit was
no longer needed. So in 2017, Twitter expanded tweets to 280 characters, giving users the ability to
say more while still preserving the brief simple nature of the platform. Twitter isn't just about what
you want to see. Twitter works best when you follow others and curate your timeline. You can follow
new sites, celebrities, authors, organisations working for social justice or, Anything you like, but keep
an eye on your timeline or you may miss content that will be useful to you. Twitter isn't just a site you
can check just once or twice a week, because active users tweet multiple times a day. And because
the timeline is constantly being updated, tweets from even a few hours ago may already be long
forgotten and out of the timeline. Twitter's immediacy appeals to immediate interaction as well.

Play video starting at :5:26 and follow transcript

5:26

As with all the social media platforms, you can like peoples tweets and share or retweet them. You
can even add your own comment when you retweet. You can also comment or reply to specific
tweets because so many people from famous to unknown are on Twitter with the same kind of
access to one another. Twitter provides an opportunity for celebrities and companies to directly
interact with their followers. Twitter also has a direct messaging function for private conversations.
One of Twitter's greatest advantages is its use of hashtags, which was actually a user created
function many years ago. Hashtags are used to collect all related tweets on the single theme, and
Twitter allows you to view all tweets under one hashtag in one place. For example, if you want to
follow what's going on in Boston, you would follow hashtag Boston. If you're at your cousin's
wedding and wanted to follow along with the festivities, you could follow hashtag Bob and Jen get
 hitched. Hashtags are a way for users to have a concentrated conversation around one specific
topic, and many companies and events create hashtags specifically so their followers can interact.
Even though Twitter is free for all, that open nature of the platform has given rise to malicious
parties, creating fake Twitter accounts or bots. Fake account presence has been so high that many
believe these accounts may have interfered with elections. And getting out to write information about
COVID-19, for instance. However, Twitter has taken significant steps in reading out spam accounts
from their platform. And has just recently started adding labels to tweets that warn users of
potentially incorrect or misleading information.

Play video starting at :7:19 and follow transcript

7:19

Twitter presents a great opportunity for companies to interact in real time with your customers and
followers. It also offers companies a place to engage followers with content and update their
followers with any breaking news or changes. Twitter also gives companies a chance to discover
what topics are relevant to the moment. Let's take a look at ways businesses can maximize Twitter.

Play video starting at :7:44 and follow transcript

7:44

One of the benefits of Twitter's platform is that companies can interact directly with customers on a
real time basis. Whether it be providing in the moment customer service, having a conversational
exchange, or tweeting along with followers on the hashtag. Companies may set up separate
customer service accounts that handle just customer feedback. For example, Starbucks handles
direct customer service at Starbucks Care and Hubspot provides support at HubSpot Support. This
is a great way to not only help customers, but build trust and loyalty by responding quickly. But of
course, it also means that companies need to monitor that account at all times to give a quick
response. Another way companies can engage their followers on Twitter is through direct interaction
and conversation. By asking direct questions or responding to followers comments in light, informal
ways. One account that does this surprisingly well for a business is fast food restaurant Wendy's,
which has chosen a very informal, conversational voice for its Twitter branding strategy. In addition
to regular promotions, Wendy's will often post games, cryptic tweets, roasts other fast food
companies, and even weigh in on things not related to food like video game culture, for instance.
The whole point is to get conversation going with their followers, and they typically reply to everyone
who replies to them. To go with this informal interaction is to make the brand fun and relatable.
Businesses can also gather followers to interact with them and others around hashtags. Recently,
Hulu has done this in hosting watch parties for its new series, Little Fires Everywhere and Mrs.
America. While new episodes of shows are released to be watched whenever, Hulu took to Twitter
to get those who want to join a watch party to hit play at a certain time. And hold a big discussion on
Twitter under the hashtag. Hulu also invited actors, writers and producers to join in the conversation.
This way of using hashtags allows followers to feel part of a community around something that's
inherently solo. Examples show that not only is Twitter an excellent platform for businesses. But also
shows that a business needs a thoughtful, detailed engagement strategy. And that editorial planning
posting tweets multiple times per day, as well as re tweeting and commenting is crucial. Platforms
like TweetDeck and Hootsuite which provides scheduling tools and a dashboard to monitor
engagement are very helpful.

Play video starting at :10:27 and follow transcript

10:27
Businesses wanting to advertise on Twitter can do so through what's called promoted tweets. These
advertising tweets have a similar format to the rest of the content on Twitter. They are inserted in the
timeline so users see them as they scroll. Twitter ads are also targeted so businesses can be very
deliberate in their campaigns putting content in front of those most likely to respond. Still, advertising
may not cause as much response on Twitter as thoughtful organic engagement. Hopefully you've
learned more about what kind of platform Twitter is. How its users can engage with topics, trends,
and one another, and how businesses can use it to increase engagement and build brand loyalty.
Now let's look at a different kind of social media platform, Pinterest.

So far, you've seen various types of social media platforms including more mainstream sites or apps
and some that focus on specific or unique offerings. Now we'll take a look at one of the most visual
of the platforms, Pinterest. Like all the social media sites you've seen, Pinterest's founder Ben
Silbermann started another site first that failed. It was called Tots. It was a shopping app that had too
many features. But then Silbermann founded Pinterest which centered around one thing, images.
Pinterest was launched at the end of 2009. The founders helped foster early usership by meeting up
with users in person and giving out personal contact information so users could connect with them
directly. Additionally, early Pinterest access was invitation-only, creating an exclusivity that only grew
their following. Today, Pinterest is considered a visual discovery platform that boasts 330 million
users worldwide. Just under half of Pinterest's user base is located in the US. Most Pinterest users
can be found globally with its top countries being Germany, France, and the UK. What distinguishes
Pinterest from other platforms? Aside from being focused on visuals, Pinterest doesn't rely on real-
time updates, it doesn't need to. Neither does it includes status updates nor really any text-based
sharing. While it's considered a social media site and while users can interact with other users,
Pinterest offers the option to use it without ever interacting with another user. Who uses Pinterest?
Over 330 million people worldwide use Pinterest, both online and through the mobile app and have
pinned over 200 billion pins. More than half of those users check Pinterest at least once a week and
two-thirds of those users are women. Most users, 69 percent, are under the age of 50, with an even
split between 18-29 year-olds and 30-49 year-olds. Let's take a closer look at this image centric
platform, how users can create boards and pin images and unique benefits of this platform for
businesses. Pinterest has one goal in mind, inspiration. Because Pinterest understands that images
provide a visual communication that goes beyond words, they've created a platform that allows
users to search and find images or pins and then add those images or pin them to a board. The idea
is to recreate a practice of pinning photos, clippings or magazine cut-outs to cork boards. User-
created boards are collections of inspiration from interior design to vacations to inspiring quotes or
mood boards. When you create an account, you'll fill out some basic information. Then to get to
know what pins to suggest on your home feed, Pinterest will ask you about your interests and give
you some categories to follow. Feel free to start browsing your home feed, which will be a collection
of images, games, and videos. But before you can save or pin an image, you'll need to create a
board. Boards can be anything you want to create, a collection of ideas for a new renovation or new
recipes to try, a dream vacation board or even a fashion board. In fact, Pinterest will now allow you
to shop through the pin and 83 percent of users have purchased something they pinned on
Pinterest. Boards can be made public or be made private. Pinterest's machine learning and
computer vision is able to search images and bases pin suggestions on similar colors, patterns, and
contents to images users have pinned before. Let's say you want to redo your living room and
needed some inspiration for your project, go to the search bar and type in living room and you'll
immediately see some pins filling your screen. Pinterest will also suggest styles or categories so you
can get more specific. You may also see promoted pins along the way as well. Already have a color
scheme in mind? You can type in living room blue, for instance, into the search bar and Pinterest will
now show you all pins with a specific color palette. If you find an image you want to add to your
board, Pinterest gives you two ways to pin it, first, you can simply hover over the pin and a red Save
button will appear. Before you can save, Pinterest asks you to pick a board to save it to, or you can
click into the image, this wont only expand it, but will now give you a new home feed of similar pins
you can browse. You can see how you could get sucked into Pinterest for hours. You may be
asking, "What exactly makes Pinterest a social network?" The majority of pins originate from other
users and have been shared and curated since the beginning of the platform. When users pin
images to their boards, they're essentially sharing or retweeting that content. Users can also
comment on pins but it's not a common practice. Users can also follow other users or other users
boards. Users can also upload their own photos into Pinterest to create an original pin. When you
upload an image to create a new pin, Pinterest will ask you to write a little bit about what the pin is
an add a destination link if you have one. Once that pin is uploaded, it joins the rest of the pins in the
Pinterest ecosystem. Users can also add Pinterest pin-it extensions into their web browsers, to be
able to pin images found around the Internet. Because of the image-based nature of Pinterest,
businesses have the opportunity to appeal to their customers in visual ways and get their products
and goods in front of eyes on a platform outside their own website. Pinterest itself reports that 77
percent of users have discovered a new brand or product on Pinterest and that a massive 98
percent of users have tried something new they found on Pinterest. Additionally, Pinterest notes that
of their female users, 8 out of 10 are mothers who are typically in charge of buying for their
household. This gives businesses a great opportunity to convert visual pins into paying customers
for their products or services. In order to make shopping easier, Pinterest has rolled out ways to
shop from boards. When users click on a board or pin, they'll find a space beneath the image that
allows you to shop your pin. Advertising is also available on Pinterest and similar to Twitter's
promoted tweets, it's in the form of a pin that slides into user's home feed. Businesses can choose
what that pin looks like, whether it be a classic static image, a video, a carousel of items or a direct
call to shop a product. Advertising is targeted based on demographics but it can also be targeted to
interest and keywords. Pinterest also offers targeting to people who have similar interests to your
customers as well. For example, let's say you want to go on a road trip, head to the search bar and
type in road trip. As you scroll through your home feed, you'll see promoted pins scattered
throughout. These ads aren't just placed randomly but linked to articles or provide useful information
related to your search. As we just saw, Pinterest is a fun, colorful, engaging social media platform
that functions in very different ways than most traditional platforms like Facebook. While it's visually-
based like Instagram, it's not rooted in real time status updates. It's also a great place for
businesses, especially e-commerce businesses, to grow their base and find new customers for their
products. Now that we've covered the largest social media platforms, let's turn our attention to a few
niche ones in our next video.

We've now taken a look at major social media platforms that host millions of users worldwide. But
what about ways to connect with smaller groups of people around a common interest or lesser
known topic? Let's take a look at some of the social media platforms that focus on specific niches.
And as we'll see there seems to be a social media platform for every kind of interest out there. Let's
start with Twitch, a live streaming platform for the gaming community. Twitch began in June 2011
and is the place to find live streamed video game competitions, and individual gamer streams, and
 tutorials. Because of the nature of the platform, Twitch really has two user groups. Its 3.8 million
unique broadcasters and its 144 million audience. To make it even more interactive, the streamer
and viewers share a live chat on the screen. Today Twitch is beginning to grow beyond its gaming
roots to include user made entertainment on all kinds of topics. Businesses have the opportunity to
advertise on the site or sponsor competitions.

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1:19

Next is a social media platform for visual artists called DeviantArt, which has been around since
August 2000. Considered the largest art community in the world with 48 million members worldwide,
DeviantArt is a place for artists to share their work. And to date has featured 370 million pieces on its
platform. From paintings to sculptures to pixel art and anime. Members can like or comment on
different pieces and follow artists and their work. Businesses have the ability to create art challenges
or work with influencers to leverage their brands.

Play video starting at :2: and follow transcript

2:00

Tumblr is a blogging site that allows users the ability to create blogs not just with words, but it
photos, GIFs, links, memes, cartoons, fan art, and more. Users can re-blog posts, like, or comment,
and follow other blogs. Tumblr was founded in 2007 and today has over 50 million blogs on its
platform. Businesses are able to purchase sponsored posts much like on Twitter and Pinterest and
have the option for platform takeovers as well.

Play video starting at :2:35 and follow transcript

2:35

Medium is another blogging platform that focuses on, as they say, readers, writers, and the
insatiably curious. Medium was launched in 2012 and reads like an online magazine where users
can write short and long form articles on topics ranging from marketing, to personal finance, to
travel, to science, and more. Medium contributors range from no name writers to famous influencers
like Barack Obama. Readership has grown to 120 million readers. And writers are able to partake in
a partner program where they get paid when readers read their posts. Businesses have discovered
Medium to be a great place to host their blogs, which can then drive traffic to their websites. GitHub
founded in 2008, is the platform for coders, developers, and engineers. Focused less on the social
aspect of social media and more on connecting over projects and initiatives, GitHub is an interactive
space where its 50,000,000 developers share their work, can help each other build code, and
collaborate on each other's projects. 2.9 million businesses use GitHub as well to attract coders to
help build new initiatives for them. While GitHub does not offer advertising, businesses can connect
with developers through professional collaboration.

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4:01

Similar to GitHub is Stack Overflow, also founded in 2008 and part of the stack exchange network.
Stack Overflow is a community for developers and programmers that focuses around questions and
answers. Its over 100 million users ask questions that other users answer and answers can be
 upvoted depending on their helpfulness. Users can also win badges for their contributions.
Businesses are able to cultivate their authority and expertise by offering answers or by advertising.
Businesses can also post job openings for the developers and programmers in the community.
Another question and answer social media platform is Quora, founded in 2009. Quora covers a vast
array of topics from business to science to writing, to travel. And its over 300 million users post
questions about those Topics or answer questions others have posted. Users can personalize their
feed to see topics they are interested in, and contribute their knowledge to the discussion boards.
Users can also upvote the best answers. Businesses can get involved as well either through
answering questions to build their credibility, or through sponsored posts. Probably the most well
known sites that functions as a question and answer format is Reddit founded in 2005. Its 430 million
monthly active users or Redditors are able to join specific community forums, over 130,000 of them
and post questions, observations, stories, or videos that other users can then respond to. Users can
upvote responses and can earn higher scores for better answers. Businesses can get involved by
adding sponsored ads or jumping into discussions. Another site that focuses on the tech community
is Product Hunt. A tech E-Commerce site/discussion board company founded in 2014. On Product
Hunt users submit products or services and other members are able to like or upvote those
products. Products range from pitch decks to Chrome extensions to websites to apps. Businesses
and particularly startups use it to gain visibility for their new products. Next is Goodreads a social
media platform for readers where they can connect over the books they've read. Launched in 2007
Goodreads has over 90 million members who track what they've read in a virtual bookshelf, write
book reviews, make reading lists, and discuss the books they love with the other members. 2.6
billion books have been added to the Goodreads platform and users can follow other users' accounts
to get ideas for their next read. Authors use this site to connect with readers and publishers use the
site to give away advanced reader copies, and engage with audiences around new releases.

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7:10

Another social platform like Goodreads only for films is Letterboxd, launched in 2012. Letterboxd
offers users the chance to track and review the films they've watched, follow other users for movie
suggestions, create watchlists, and chat about films they've seen. Letterboxd also provides
information on which streaming service you can find certain movies on as well. Letterboxd has 1.5
million users interacting on their platform. Businesses that want to target film buffs can advertise on
the site. Let's look at a social media platform based around people wanting to get healthier.
MyFitnessPal, launched in 2005 is a calorie and fitness tracker that can help people lose weight, eat
better, and live a healthier lifestyle. With 180 million users MyFitnessPal also offers a community
forum where users can follow each other and comment on each other's progress. There are also
group discussions, recipe sharing, and fitness challenges. Businesses looking to target to health and
fitness market can find a perfect audience on MyFitnessPal. You wouldn't necessarily think to use a
social media platform to connect to real life people around you but Nextdoor allows you to do just
that. Nextdoor, launched in 2011 is a social media platform for neighbors. It segmented into
neighborhoods where neighbors can get to know one another, post about events in the
neighborhood, connect over volunteer activities, flag issues in the neighborhood, and even post
items for sale. Local and state agencies can post alerts in the Nextdoor news feed as well.
Businesses can target very specific demographics through their advertising on this platform too as
over 260,000 neighborhoods are on Nextdoor.

Play video starting at :9:10 and follow transcript

9:10
 Finally we end on one of the first social media sites to gain a massive userbase. Myspace, founded
in 2003, it was the largest social media platform in the world from 2005 to 2008 before it was
overtaken by Facebook's popularity. Since then Myspace morphed into a site for musicians and
even has its own record label. It still boasts 7.5 million users and is still going strong today. Aside
from these social media sites many businesses are leveraging this idea of connecting and personal
interaction more and more in what they do. Think about review sites like Yelp and Rotten Tomatoes
that wouldn't be what they are without individual contributions. Think about the rise in live chat on
websites so that the browser can connect with a person to answer their questions. Think about sites
that have added community aspects to it or even the box "invite your friends" that may pop up when
you sign up for a new service. Businesses are recognizing the benefits of person to person
connection. And are also discovering the returns they can get by personalizing their interaction with
their own customers as well. And even though we've covered a significant amount of social media
sites, you never know when the next big platform will pop up and what changes in society may
create a need for the next new thing. So keep watching this space, explore networks that are
interesting to you. It will help you as you navigate the social media marketing world.

Congratulations, you made it through our second week of this introduction to social media course. I
know this was quite a lot to go through, but I'm sure that this emergent into the social media
landscape will really help you as you become a social media marketer. So great job for sticking with
me here. You learned about the largest social media channels. We covered Facebook, YouTube,
WhatsApp and Messenger, Instagram, LinkedIn, WeChat, TikTOK, Snapchat, Twitter and Pinterest
and we looked at some examples of niche social networks as well.

Play video starting at ::42 and follow transcript

0:42

As I go and explore these different social platforms myself, I always learn something new. Obviously,
all these platforms keep evolving. They keep adding functionality for users and for businesses. So I
hope that this overview inspired you to start exploring some of these platforms in a bit more depth.
Of course, it's normal that you feel more affinity with one or a few platforms. I'm not a heavy user of
every platform myself either, but I have them all on my phone and I do check them out on a regular
basis. After all, the more tools you have in your toolbox as a social media marketer the better you
are equipped to come up with messages and campaigns that can reach the different audiences of
these platforms. Next week you'll learn the building blocks or the foundation for your marketing
activity. Combined with your knowledge about all the platforms, you'll be well prepared to start
building your own marketing campaigns, so I'll see you next week.

By now you have a good understanding of the social media landscape. It's fast, fast evolving, and
full of opportunities for marketers. In order to make best use of all that social media has to offer to
help grow a business or get your marketing message out, it's a good idea to plan ahead. There are a
few core building blocks social media marketing uses as its foundation. This week we'll cover two of
them, your marketing goals and your success metrics. In this first lesson, we'll take time to reflect on
our goals. What are they and how can you define them clearly so you know when you've reached
them? Then we'll focus on how to measure success. How will you know whether you've reached
your goal? I'm sure that by the end of this module you'll agree that taking the time to plan a bit will
help you not lose the forest for the trees when you start your social media marketing. Well, a lot to
cover, so let's get started.
It's time to take your first steps in planning and developing your marketing in social media. But
before you start building a business presence and start creating ads, it's important to first reflect on
what you want to achieve with your marketing. Before starting on a journey, it's good to determine
where you want to go. It's the same with marketing, you need a goal post and a way to measure
whether you're successful. By the end of this video, you'll understand the meaning of business and
marketing goals and why you need them. When you're starting a marketing campaign, you may be
tempted to just dive right in. Why wait and why waste time writing down what you want to achieve?
You may feel like you have a good sense and you won't forget. Well, I can tell you from my personal
experience that it really helps to formulate your marketing goals before you get started. It helps to
crystallize the description of the results you would like to achieve. It helps you to communicate what
you want to achieve to other people in the team, and it helps you decide on the metrics, you'll need
to assess success. According to dictionary.com, a goal is the result or achievement toward which
effort is directed. So it specifies what you want to achieve and it helps to make sure that you and the
people you're working with are all aligned. In fact, research from Gail Matthews in 2005 showed that
when people write down their goals, they accomplish significantly more. While the research focused
on personal goals, it's no different for businesse. Writing down the goals for a business really helps
to achieve them. Let me introduce you to Calla and Ivy a flower business located in Amsterdam.
Calla and Ivy was started by Imra when she opened the flower shop on one of Amsterdam's canal
streets. Her hand bound bouquets became really popular in Amsterdam, and Imra started a website
where people can order bouquets for home delivery. Okay, if you go to Amsterdam to find the store,
you'll be disappointed as the company doesn't actually exist, but we're going to use it as one of our
examples throughout this course. Imra started a company with the objective to sell flowers and
delight people with her creations. But she was able to grow her business by setting clear goals for
herself and writing them down every year. When she brings employees on board, she shares the
goals with them, so they are always clear on what they're trying to achieve. Imra firmly believes that
this habit has been crucial to the success of her business. Businesses have goals at different levels.
For example, Calla and Ivy's overall business goal is selling flowers. But different teams or people
with different roles can have their own goals. For instance, to marketing department may have the
goal to increase visitors to the Calla and Ivy website and maybe the operations team has goal to
reduce costs for packaging and shipping or flowers. These are subgoals that all serve the bigger
business goal, selling flowers. In what follows, we will look at how you can formulate your goals in
such a way that they will help you to be successful.

Before getting started with marketing, it's important to formulate a goal, but there are different ways
in which you can do that. By the end of this video, you'll have a blueprint for formulating your
marketing goals in a way that sets you up for success. Let's look again at Imre's flower business
Calla & Ivy. Imra's handbound flower bouquets are very popular, but after having run the store for
about three years, Imra realized that she could only reach people who live close enough to bring her
flowers home. She decided to set up a website, to offer her flower bouquets to people throughout the
country, she found a reliable way to ship bouquets. Now she needs to make sure people who don't
know about her store get to know Calla & Ivy, and start purchasing flowers online. Goals can help
you stay focused on what you hope to accomplish with your marketing efforts. In Imra's case, she
wants to get the word out about her new website so people who are not near the store can purchase
flowers from her. Having clear specific goals will, help her in our team stay aligned and focus their
marketing activity to ensure that they're spending their marketing budget wisely. As you think about
 your own marketing goals, it helps to make them specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and
time bound, in other words, SMART. Let's take a closer look at each element of the SMART
acronym. Your goal should be specific, and you should be able to write or say it in a way that anyone
could understand. After all, you want to make sure that there's no confusion about what you're trying
to achieve. You could say for example, sell 100 products, get 200 new subscribers, or generate 20
qualified leads. Your goal should also be measurable. You should be able to evaluate, whether you
achieved your goals in a quantifiable way, like for instance, number of sales, revenue, or number of
visitors to a website. Your goal should be something that you can achieve, be realistic, set goals that
are feasible for you and your team and that you believe are possible, with your available resources.
Setting goals that are unrealistic can be really demotivating. If you have a lofty goal in mind that may
not be immediately achievable, break up your goal in a few sub goals or milestones that you can
reach. When you set your marketing goals, you also want to think about their relevance. Will they
help achieve the bigger business objective? It's important to make sure your goals align, with your
greater business strategy. Your goals should have a start and an end date. That way, you can track
against the milestone and you know when it's time to measure the outcome and evaluate whether
you were successful.

Play video starting at :3:2 and follow transcript

3:02

Let's look at Calla & Ivy again and Imra's initiative to create a website where people can buy her
bouquets. As a first step, Imra wants to make sure people get to know her business, and discover
her website. She's planning some marketing for the site, and at the start of the year sets herself the
following goal. Get 10,000 website visits during the month of May.

Play video starting at :3:25 and follow transcript

3:25

Imra's goal is SMART, it's specific and clearly states what she wants to achieve. It's measurable, she
can track the number of visits to her website, with the software she uses to create her website.
Given the success of the story in Amsterdam, Imra feels that this goal is challenging, but achievable.
And the goal is relevant after all, it's her intention to sell flowers online, so getting more visitors, will
ultimately help her to sell more flowers. And it's time bound, she set herself a deadline by the end of
May. Imra knows that she will have to build up her audience, but by May, she hopes to have a total
of 10,000 visits over a month.

Play video starting at :4:9 and follow transcript

4:09

We discussed that it's important to write your goals down. Here is a very simple template to help
assure your goals are SMART. We've added a few questions to guide your own goal development.
Let's check our goal one more time in this template. Get 10,000 website visits during the month of
May. Yes, this is specific, we know what needs to be done. It can be measured, the website software
will tell Imra how many visit she got. It's achievable, Imra believes it can be done. And it should be
done as part of the bigger business objective to sell flowers, so it's relevant. And finally, it will be
done by the end of May, so this goal is time bound. Let's look at one more example. James
manages a social media marketing, for DCB Cleaning. The company focuses on cleaning services
for small and medium sized businesses. They take the headache out of managing, cleaning, and
janitorial services for small businesses. In DCB Cleaning clients use an app that let's them manage
 the cleaning service they need, and pick and choose from a list of tasks the cleaning crew can focus
on. No need to call or talk to anyone, and everything gets taken care of, with a smile. Now DCB
Cleaning is introducing a new service called DCB Snackwall, where businesses can set up a snack
wall at their office, and DCB keeps the snack wall stocked. Clients choose the snacks through the
app, and they can change their selection at anytime. For the initial rollout, DCB will only provide a
snack wall to their current clients. James boss told him that she would like to see a social media
marketing plan from him to help her achieve a 25% client enrollment in Snackwall. James is very
excited about the new product, and he can't wait to set up the new campaign.

Play video starting at :6:6 and follow transcript

6:06

Before James get started, he asks his manager when she hopes to achieve the 25% enrollment. It
turns out the company wants to achieve this milestone, within six months as they plan to decide on a
bigger roll out then. With this information in mind, James can formulate a SMART goal. Let's look at
his goal in our template. The goal reads, enroll 25% of the DCB Cleaning clients in Snackwall in six
months from now. The goal is specific, it's measurable, James can count the number of subscribers.
James is confident that this goal is achievable, and he knows it's relevant to the company's efforts to
expand in this new product line. And the goal is time bound, he has six months to meet it. In short,
it's a SMART goal. You now know how to formulate SMART goals, it's a very important starting point
for your marketing efforts. Now let's turn our attention to the M in SMART. In the next video, you
learn more about the measurement part and how to define the metrics that really matter.

Preparing For Your SMART Goal and KPIs

Project
Your project this week consists of a couple of stages. We encourage you to get started as you move
through the material. This week's readings will be the worksheets you need to complete for your
project.

Step 1: Select a business

Select a business you would like to work on throughout the entire project. You may select a business
of choice, or one of the businesses we have created for your use: Paola Snaps or FocusVu. You can
find information on these business below.

As you write your business description, be sure to provide as much detail as possible in the business
description for a peer reviewer to be able to assess your content. Don't worry if you aren't sure how
much detail to include. You will have an opportunity to edit before submitting.

Consider the following as you complete your business description:

 1. What products or services does the business offer?
2. What type of business model does the business follow (e.g. B2C, B2B, etc)?
3. Is the business brick and mortar, online, or both?
4. Is there any key contextual information that needs to be included here in preparation for
completing the remainder of the project (e.g. a new product is being offered)?

Step 2: Open the Business Description Worksheet

There are two options to access the Business Description Worksheet.

1. Download a PowerPoint version of the worksheet by clicking here.

2. Make a copy of the template by clicking here, then clicking the Make a copy button. You
will need to be signed in to a Google account in order to make a copy of the worksheet.

When you set goals for yourself or for your business, it's good to think about how you will track
whether you're making progress. In marketing, we do that by defining the key performance indicators
or KPIs for your goal. By the end of this video, you'll know what KPIs are, how to define them for
your goal, and you will know some of the most common marketing KPIs. So let's explore.

Play video starting at ::31 and follow transcript

0:31

Say it's your New Year's resolution to focus on your overall fitness and you set yourself the following
goal. By the end of this year, I want to run the Honolulu Marathon in under 4 hours. That's a SMART
goal. In other words, it specific, it's measurable. You know you want to run 26.2 miles in under four
hours. It's achievable, if you train of course. It's relevant since it's a goal that relates to your plan to
get very fit and it's time-bound. You have until December to get ready since that's when the Honolulu
Marathon is scheduled.

Play video starting at :1:6 and follow transcript

1:06

Say you plan to train for this using Strava, an app that helps you track your running progress. You
have a plan and you gradually increase your mileage. Here's a report you get for one of your
practice runs on Strava. It gives you the distance you ran, the time it took you, your pace. You also
get some data on elevation gain and calories burned. All of this information is interesting, but the
most important information here is pace. You see that you're running at a pace of 11 minutes and 49
seconds per mile. If you want to complete a marathon in under 4 hours, you'll need to run at
approximately 9 minutes per mile, so you have a little bit of training to do. Pace is a key metric for
you to track to assess whether you're making progress towards your goal. All the other data
available is interesting and it's related to your goal, but not as crucial as pace when it comes to
achieving your goal. In this case, you can call pace a key performance indicator or KPI. KPIs are
measurable values that can help you track your progress towards your goal. KPIs are usually
quantitative, meaning they can be measured. They are directional, they go up or down. And they
have a direct relationship to your goal. For marketers, KPIs are an important tool to help identify the
 metrics that really matter and distinguish them from the data that are interesting. But that don't
necessarily tell you whether or not you're achieving your goal. Throughout this program, it will
become clear that a lot of data is available to digital or social media marketers. All activity online
generates a data trail and the amount of data can quickly become overwhelming. KPIs are helpful to
prevent it. And if you set your KPIs related to your goal ahead of time, you will protect yourself from
getting lost in the data. KPIs are a tool to help you evaluate the success of your marketing. In our
next video, we'll look at how you can define your KPIs.

KPIs are marketer's friend and especially in digital marketing. They will help you focus on those
metrics that really matter when you are evaluating, whether you achieved your goals or not. So
reflecting on your KPIs before you start your marketing efforts is really important. In this video, we
will give you some tips that will help you set your KPIs. As we saw in the previous video, a KPI is a
measurable value that can help you track your progress towards your goal. A KPI is measurable,
directional and directly related to your goal. Let's look at a few examples of KPIs in a marketing
setting. Let's go back to Calla & Ivy, the flower business you got introduced to in the previous video.
Remember how Imra wanted to get started selling her bouquets online and how she established a
SMART goal to help her kick start that initiative. Get 10,000 website visits during the month of May.
A key performance indicator for Imra will be number of monthly website visits. It's measurable. You
can quantify the number of website visits. It's directional, can go up or down, visits to the site can
increase or decrease over a period of time. And it's directly related to her goal of increasing traffic to
her new site. The software Imra uses to manage her website also provides server to dashboard that
includes metrics like number of pages viewed, average time spent per visit and number of
transactions. All of these are interesting metrics and they will lead to the website Imra's marketing
activity, but they're not key to evaluating success for Imra's goal. The KPI for her to track is number
of monthly website visits. Let's look at another real life example. Vodafone Play is a one stop
entertainment destination for Vodafone Telecom subscribers to stream their favorite content, be it
live TV, popular shows or movies. In September 2019, Vodaphone kicked off an advertising
campaign on Facebook for Vodafone Play. Vodafone wanted to reach a wider audience, an increase
its market share for app installs in the increasingly saturated and competitive online streaming
market in India. Well, we don't know the exact goal, Vodafone said. Let's assume it can be
formulated as increase app installs by 30% by December 31st in 2019. Vodaphone ran a
comprehensive advertising campaign on Facebook using video ads like the one you see here.

Play video starting at :2:47 and follow transcript

2:47

Vodafone saw a 43% lift in installs after their Facebook campaign by measuring the number of app
downloads or installs, they could evaluate whether they reach their goal. So the number of app
downloads is an important key to evaluate Vodaphone's campaign success. Depending on your
marketing goals, you will use different KPIs. Here are a few very common examples of marketing
KPIs, sales revenue or how much money you generated from sales. Cost per sale or how much it
costs you in marketing dollars to generate one sale. Cost per leads or the cost to get one lead,
where a lead could be an email address, for instance, of a potentially interested customer.
Conversion rate or the number of people that taken action out of a group of people you attracted, for
instance to your website. And finally, brand awareness or the percentage of people who know about
your brand. These are just some examples, and we'll encounter them again in this program. Of
course, there are many more. When you decide on your KPIs, always ask yourself, how will I know if
I've achieved my goal? What indicator or metric will I use for that? Then make sure your KPI is
measurable, directional and directly related to your goal. Let's see how this works for James at DCB
Cleaning. James is planning the social media marketing campaign to help the company with the
launch of Snackwall, a service where clients can set up a Snackwall in their offices. Choose the
 snacks to stock it with and the DCB Cleaning staff will keep the snack supply coming. James'
SMART goal is enroll 25% of DCB Cleaning clients in Snackwall within six months. James decides
that his KPI will be the number of people that subscribe to Snackwall. He can measure that with the
information he gets from the DCB Cleaning app dashboard. He can monitor the trend to make sure
the numbers keep going up and this metric is directly related to the goal. James can monitor how the
number of people that subscribe to Snackwall relates to the total number of clients and that will tell
him whether he's reaching his goal of 25%. You now know how to set your KPIs related to your
SMART goals. Make sure to take your time to reflect on and define your goal in KPIs for any
marketing activity you start. It will help to keep you focused and be successful in your marketing
efforts. Next, we'll talk about your target audience and who your marketing efforts will be directed to.

Well, another week under your belt. Great job. You now know how to set SMART goals for your
marketing efforts and what's more, you know how to define the key performance indicators that will
help you evaluate your efforts. These are core building blocks for a successful marketing strategy
and I think you'll find them very helpful. Next week, we'll work on two more building blocks, your
target audience and their customer journey. I'm looking forward to seeing you there.

Welcome to another week in our introduction to social media marketing. This week, we'll continue
preparing by focusing on two more core building blocks for your social media marketing. Once you
have a clear goal post and you know how you'll measure success, it's time to specify who you want
to reach with your marketing. In our first lesson this week, you'll learn how to define your target
audience. Next, I'll walk you through the customer's journey, the path your audience takes to buying
your product. You'll learn how to map your customer's journey, which will come in really handy as
you think through your marketing strategy later.

Play video starting at ::45 and follow transcript

0:45

Understanding your audience is a crucial step for marketing success. Your audience definition will
guide every step of your marketing, so let's get started.

Let me start this video with a quote from management consultant and author Peter Drucker. He said
"the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him
and sells itself." I like that quote. I came to marketing through consumer research. I focused on
studying customers and understanding their needs. I studied how consumers cook when working for
Unilever's pasta sauce division. How they quench thirst when working in a team that developed Ice
popsicles. And how they use computers and email when I worked for Yahoo. And much more. While
the topics I studied varied, I learned one really important thing. If you can clearly identify and
understand the group of people that has a need for your product, the foundation for your marketing
campaign is built. This group of people will become the target of your marketing action. At the end of
this video, you'll know what marketers refer to when they talk about their target audience and
audience segments. Let's start by defining what we mean by target audience. A target audience is
the group of people you want to reach with your marketing message, because they may be likely to
take action as a result of seeing it. And while you may be tempted to say that your audience is
everyone, that's not realistic. Not everyone is interested in every product. And as a marketer you will
have a limited budget, so you don't want to waste your precious marketing dollars and time on
 people that have no need for your product. You want to try to reach those people who are most likely
to be interested in your product.

Play video starting at :1:45 and follow transcript

1:45

People in your target audience will have certain characteristics in common. These characteristics
usually fall into three broad categories. First demographics, they may have the same age, gender,
household, income, occupation, education, and location. People in your target audience may also be
described based on interests they share. They may all be interested in certain products, topics, or
activities. Or they may share certain behaviors. Maybe they read the same publications, visit the
same online destinations, have certain hobbies, or play the same sports. In marketing you'll hear
people refer to groups of people with similar characteristics like demographics, interests, or behavior
as segments. Your target audience is thus a segment of the population you want to reach with your
marketing message. Identifying and describing your target audience based on these characteristics
will help you develop your marketing. Let's look at an example. HelloFresh is a leading provider of
meal kit subscriptions. They delivered fresh ingredients for meals with recipes and instructions to
cook a full meal at home. According to HelloFresh, their target audience is women between the ages
of 30 and 50 with a busy lifestyle. Does that mean that no men in the 65 plus age group would be
interested in their meal kits? No, probably not, but they decided that group of people most likely to
buy their meal kits are busy women between the ages of 30 and 50. So they decided to spend their
marketing dollars on messages targeted to that group. It is possible for a company to have more
than one target audience, but usually there's one target audience that company is most focused on,
that's the primary target audience. A primary target audience will typically get the most attention,
since the people in this group are expected to become your most valuable group of customers.
Secondary target audiences are other groups of people with common characteristics who may be
interested in your products or services, but are unlikely to become your most valuable customers.
Secondary target audiences can help you structure your marketing efforts. Especially, if you sell
more than one product, or service, or if you feel your products or services may appeal to distinctly
different groups of people. Let's take another look at Calla & Ivy, the flower business we introduced
in our previous videos. Remember how Imra is setting up the website for the business so she can
sell her flower bouquets online. She has planned some marketing for the website. And in order to
spend her money wisely, she wants to target people who are most likely to buy her flowers online.
Based on her experience with the customers in her flower shop in Amsterdam, she decided to define
her primary target audience as follows. Women between the ages of 30 and 55 who live in urban
areas have some higher education and who are interested in interior design. But she's also learned
over the years that men visit her store to buy flowers for special occasions, birthdays, Mother's Day,
Valentine's Day, etc. Or sometimes just to surprise a loved one. So she decided that it would be
good to define a secondary target audience that she would direct her special occasion and gift giving
campaigns to. She describes this target as professional men between 35 and 65, who live in urban
areas, and who commonly give gifts. Having these specific targets in mind helps in Imra think about
her marketing. In fact, the more specific you can be in describing the target audience, the better. In
our next video, I'll walk you through the steps you can follow to create your target audience.

Understanding the people you're marketing to is crucial. If you understand who they are, what they
need and what may be interesting to them, it will be a lot easier to create a message that will
resonate with them. In the previous video, we discussed what a target audience is. In this video, you
learn how to define your target audience using a template that will guide your marketing. Your target
audience is a group of people with similar characteristics that you believe will have an interest in
your product. It's a good idea to describe your target audience in as much detail as possible. It'll help
you down the road when you are creating your marketing messages. Here is a template you can use
to do this. This template was designed with social media marketing in mind. You'll see later that's a
different categories in this target audience template correspond to different decisions you'll make
when you create a marketing campaign. Let's take a look. You start by describing the need your
target audience has that you know your product or service can help them with. Remember Calla and
Ivy, the flower business. When Imra thought about the need for her primary target audience, she
described this as follows. A need to beautify a space, it's a simple yet core need that she felt many
of her customers expressed when they came to her store. They would talk about how they needed a
nice bouquet to spruce up the living room to bring them enjoyment or because they had visitors
coming over. They had different reasons, but she felt that it always came down to this specific need,
they wanted to beautify a space. Then it's a good idea to write down the demographics of the people
you're targeting. You can think about their age, gender, household income, education, and or
occupation and where they live. Imra used to following demographics for her primary target
audience. Women between 30 and 55 years old, some higher education who live in Dutch
Metropolitan areas. Next, you should reflect on what your perspective customers are typically
interested in. And here we don't mean that they're interested in your product, you want to describe
some interest that people in your audience have in common. It will help you later on to decide where
to find your audience and how to appeal to them. For instance, for Calla & Ivy, Imra knows that her
audience has an interest in interior design, fashion, and sustainable living. Finally, it helps to
describe some common behaviors among your target audience, it's good to especially reflect on
their media consumption. For instance, which website do they visit? Which magazines do they like to
read and so on? Calla & Ivy's target audience browses interior design, websites and magazines.
They also like to follow a few well known Dutch lifestyle bloggers and they enjoy yoga, the outdoors,
and entertaining friends. Finally, you can give your target audience a name, and if you like, you can
even add an image. Marketers will often picture a typical consumer, one they really believe
exemplifies the audience they're trying to reach. They use name and image that reminds them of all
the typical target customer might look like. This type of profile of typical target customer is often
referred to as a target persona. In this example for Calla & Ivy, we could refer to our target persona
as Monique and we can use this image to refer to her. Having a target persona like this with the
name and image often helps people in a company when they are communicating within their teams.
It helps to make sure everyone can picture who the audience is they are planning to market to. Imra,
its Calla & Ivy learned about her target audience through her interactions with customers at her store
in Rotterdam. She got to know them by talking to them day in, day out, but what if you don't have
store? How do you define your target audience? How do you get to know who they are, what their
needs are, their interests, and how they behave? That's where research comes in. Companies will
use different types of research to establish a better understanding of their target audience. Larger
companies may rely on larger qualitative or quantitative studies. Qualitative research is research that
relies on less structures observations. It could be in person interviews, or focus groups, or field
research where researchers observe how people interact with their product, for instance.
Quantitative studies are more structured and typically rely on questionnaires or data resulting from
the behavior of many people. Large companies will often hire research agencies to help them at this
study. They will then focus on understanding users of their products, of the competitors product, and
how the products fit in their lives. But even if you don't work for a large company, or if you don't have
the budget to hire a research agency to help you better understand who your target audience is,
there are several steps you can take to get a better picture of your target audience. First, start with
your current customers. Specifically, those that buy the products or services your marketing efforts
are focused on. Think about the characteristics they have in common and brainstorm with your team
to describe them, you may even have some sales data to help you. In case you're already active on
social media, and you have a company profile or account on some platforms, check out who the
audience is that follows you or that likes your brand. Second, monitor your competition. Get a sense
of how they communicate an where they are talking, are there particular social channels they are
active in? Do they seem to target certain audiences? A bit of exploring to understand their strategy
can help you understand the audience they go after and define your own target audience better. And
 finally, talk to customers, friends, and even strangers that may be interested in your product. Don't
be shy, people often like to tell you more about the products and the brands they like.

Play video starting at :6:33 and follow transcript

6:33

Let's look at one more example, James at DCB Cleaning is working on his social media marketing
campaign for Snack Wall. The snack supply service to companies introducing for small and medium
sized businesses that already use DCB cleaning services. The goal for James's campaign is to
enroll 25% of the DCB cleaning clients in Snack Wall within six months. James is starting to think
through the message for his campaign, and he takes a moment to write down the target audience,
so he has a clear image of who the message goes to. In terms of demographics, James is targeting
an audience that's typically between 40 and 55 years old, mostly male, highly educated, and in a
managerial role. The DCB clients are mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area. James is modeling this
largely after the current client base of DCB Cleaning since his goal is to attract clients to Snack Wall.
To further characterize his target audience in terms of interests and behavior, James sent out a short
questionnaire to current customers of DCB cleaning in which he asked them whether or not they
were interested in providing free snacks to their team. He also asked questions about the type of
business the client was part of. Based on the answers and a client profiles, James had access to, he
completed the target audience template as follows. In terms of interests, James believes that his
potential clients are interested in startup culture, workplace wellness, and employee benefits. In
terms of behavior, he characterizes his audience as reading tech news publications, craft coffee
aficionados, and focused on networking. He also found that his target is active on Reddit. James
then pictured a fictitious person to represent his target, he added this picture and he called the
persona venturing Jim. With this image in mind, James starts to reflect on his campaign and he uses
this information to discuss his plans with his intern. It helps them to brainstorm what messages might
appeal to venturing Jim. Clearly, defining your target audience is an important step in your marketing
preparations. It pays off to take some time to reflect on your target audience. We discussed how
research can help you to better define what your target audience looks like, and next you'll find some
tips and tools you can use to conduct that research.

An important part of a social media marketer's job is to come up with powerful messages that can
help make people buy a product or service, and put that message in front of the target customer at
the right time. How do you do that? It helps to understand the journey your customer goes through
before deciding to buy your product. In this video, I'll explain what a typical buyer or a customer
journey looks like, and how you can benefit from understanding it. Let me tell you a story. I like to
ride my bike. I grew up biking back and forth to school, and ever since, I've loved using my bike to
quickly get to our local bakery, ride to the office when I can, and just go for a ride for fun. I have a
trusted bike that has been serving me well for the last 10 years. One day, I walked into the local bike
shop for repair and this PUBLIC bike caught my eye. I loved it. Just looked very cool. Pretty colors,
and nice leather touches. It was the first time I learned about PUBLIC, the bikes brand. But I didn't
need a bike, so I left and forgot about it. Then, I happened to come across an article in the local
magazine about PUBLIC bikes and the founder's design vision. It reminded me of the bike I saw in
the store, so I decided to look them up. I checked out the website and read a bit more information
about some of the functionality of the bike. I liked how they were modeled after Dutch bikes, and
how they're ideal for errands and commuting. It actually peaked my interest, but I had a bike. A few
weeks later, as I was browsing Facebook, I saw a post from my friend with a picture of the PUBLIC
bike she got. I went back to the website and checked out the bikes again. I even picked out a
favorite model. Yeah, I really wanted one. I started following PUBLIC bikes on Facebook and
Instagram. Beautiful pictures kept popping up in my feed of people like me using their bike to shop or
commute. Then, around the holidays, our local bike store had a promotion and it just felt like the time
was right to say goodbye to my old bike and hello to my very own PUBLIC bike. I love the bike, and
I've been telling my friends about it. In fact, one of them is a colleague here at Aptly, and who now
also has a PUBLIC bike. Now, I'm not telling you the story because I want to advertise PUBLIC
bikes, but I think the story illustrates my customer journey that led to my buying of the bike. A
customer, or a buyer journey refers to the process a user goes through when purchasing a product.
The customer journey is split in five stages. First, there's the awareness stage, or the point where
the customer first hears about or becomes aware of the product or service. Then, there's the interest
stage, which is where the customer becomes interested in what you have to offer. A third stage in
the customer journey is the desire stage, or the point at which the customer would really like to have
your product or service. Then, comes the conversion stage, which is where the customer takes
action and buys your product or service. We refer to that in marketing as a conversion. In other
words, it's the stage where a person converts to becoming a buyer. Finally, there's the advocacy
stage, which is the stage where people become advocates of the products or service they bought.
Let's look back at my bike purchase. I first became aware of the PUBLIC bikes when I visited our
local bike store. Then, after I saw the article about PUBLIC bikes, and went to do a little bit more
research, I became interested. As I saw the posts from my friends and the cool pictures on
Instagram and Facebook, I actually wanted the bike. I was in the desire stage. When I then saw the
promotion my local bike store had over the holidays, I finally took action and converted. After riding
my bike for a little bit, I loved the experience and I became an advocate. So I went from being
content with my old bike to an advocate for my PUBLIC bike. That was my customer or buyer's
journey. I went through all five stages and was, of course, suddenly pushed by marketing to advance
through my journey. The customer journey is not always equally explicit or linear. In some cases,
people may jump a stage, or they may go back and forth a bit through the different stages. For
instance, some people may desire a product at some stage and then lose interest after a little bit, but
with the right marketing messages, they may become interested again and desire the product and
even buy it. Even with that in mind, it's a good idea for a marketer to map their customer journey as
they plan out their marketing. Marketing is all about moving people through the customer journey. At
every stage of the journey, you want to get a message in front of the people in that stage to
persuade them to move on to the next stage. Depending on the stage a person is in, different types
of messages will work better than others. First, you have to generate awareness for your product
and get people interested. Ads that show your product and brand and the associated benefits are
typical for that stage. In my bike example, this could simply be an ad or an image of the bike
showing its beautiful design and some of its key features. Then, to move people from being
interested to desiring a product, as that bring to life how a product may fit in a person's life, what
outcomes they can expect and so on will help. In my bike example, that could be Instagram posts of
people grocery shopping in the city on their bikes, for instance. They are the types of messages that
help people imagine themselves with the product. Then, to move someone from the desire to the
conversion stage, marketing or advertising that helps people make the jump to action helps.
Promotions are typical way to do that. It could be a coupon, a sale, or maybe a gift that comes with
the purchase. For my bike, it was a seasonal sale that made me decide to buy. You might think that
the task of the marketer is done once people buy the product, but that's not actually true. Once
someone has bought a product, it's important to turn that person into an advocate. That may
guarantee more sales down the line and it could help to generate some word of mouth marketing,
one of the most valuable forms of marketing, where your message gets spread by happy customers.
How could you help at this stage? Great after-sale service can help. Make it easy for people to start
using your product, or contact you with any questions they may have. Encouragement for people to
review your product or post about a product on social media can also help. The process of moving
people through the customer journey results in what marketers refer to as a marketing funnel. The
funnel symbolizes the fact that not all customers at a certain stage will move on to the next stage. In
fact, gradually, more and more potential customers will drop out. Not all the people that are aware of
your product will also be interested, and not everyone who's interested will really desire your
product. Of the people that would really like your product, not everyone ends up buying, and the
people that buy don't all become advocates. Of course, marketers will try hard to minimize the drop-
off at every stage, but funnels are a good representation of marketing reality. Understanding your
customer's journey will help you craft your messages and reach your customers at the right time to
help them move along their journey. In our next video, we'll take a closer look at how you can map
your customer's journey.

If you understand the typical journey a person goes through before buying your product, it will make
it easier to come up with good messages at the right time to make people advance in their journey.
Social media provides us with excellent opportunities to put these messages in front of people. As
we plan our social media marketing, it's a good idea to map out what a journey of a customer looks
like and when and how we can push them along to becoming a buyer. At the end of this video, you'll
know how to map a customer's journey. Customer journey sometimes called the buyer's journey,
refers to the experiences people have before deciding to purchase a product or service. As we
discussed in the previous video, this journey is comprised of five different stages. Awareness,
interest, desire, conversion, and advocacy. Marketing is all about helping people move through this
journey so they end up purchasing your product and ideally become advocates. To do that, it helps
to ask yourself when people might proceed from one stage to the next and how this may happen.
Let's go back to DCB cleaning, the business cleaning services company. Remember James in the
marketing department, he's thinking through the marketing campaign that can help current DCB
customers become customers of SnackWall. James has determined who his target audience is, their
current customers interested in providing benefits for employees and contributing to employee
wellness, he also knows that his target audience follows startup related news and is active on
Reddit. Now, he's trying to imagine what a typical journey may look like for a targeted customer
before they become SnackWall customers and when and how they may move from one stage to the
next. First, James thinks about the awareness stage. He asks himself, when his target will be most
receptive to becoming aware of his product and also having an interest it. James believes that it's
best to talk about SnackWall a few weeks after a person became a customer of the cleaning service.
He figures that by then, customers will understand how the DCB service is different, convenient and
personal, and they may be receptive to thinking about a new product they offer. James believes that
the best way to introduce SnackWall, is through a message in the DCB cleaning app, which his
customers typically open on a weekly basis. He also plans to post about SnackWall on the DCB
cleaning Facebook page. Then, when a person has seen an initial message, they may be interested
but James thinks he needs to do something more to make people really want the service. He wants
to prove to them that the snacks are different from the usual office candy, so he thinks a promotion
could help. He could give people a credit to purchase the snacks in the app. That way, they get to
experience what it's like to be a customer of SnackWall, so he plans a 20-dollar credit for each DCB
customer to try out the snacks. James believes that this trial, will move many people into the desire
stage. He would then follow up a few weeks later after people tried to snacks with another offer. A
coupon for 20 percent of the first snack delivery. He thinks that this will lead many customers to
convert and become a customer of SnackWall. For those people who converted and put a
SnackWall in their office, James plans to follow up with a surprise. A box of new fruit bars free of
charge. The only thing he will ask for, is that customers follow the SnackWall on Facebook page. He
hopes that that will make for loyal customers and real advocates for SnackWall. Of course, different
customers may go through different journeys but by mapping what you believe, is a common
journey, you have a good starting point to plan your marketing campaign. Here is a template you can
use to map your customer journey. You can use this to reflect on what a typical journey could look
like for your target audience. For each stage in the customer journey ask yourself, when is my
customer ready to move on to the next stage? How can I help them to move forward? Note that the
answers to these questions, are really your best guess at this point. Over time, you can adapt the
answers as you get more information about your actual customers. Let's go back to Imra at Calla &
Ivy. She's working on introducing her website so people can buy her bouquets online. Imra wants to
target design conscious women between the ages of 30 and 55 who live in Dutch metropolitan
areas. She knows they browse lifestyle blogs and design magazines. Imra knows her bouquets are
unique and she believes that they speak for themselves. After design conscious women become
aware of her website, Imra believes that images of the bouquets will raise interest among her target
group. She believes that if she can show more images of women receiving the bouquets or showing
them off in nice interiors for a few weeks after someone becomes aware of Calla & Ivy, women in
her target group will start to desire the bouquets. Then she believes a promotion may make people
take action and buy a bouquet. She's thinking about a promotion in which you can buy a bouquet
and gift one for free to a friend. Imra's bouquets commit instructions on how to best keep them fresh
and a thank you card from Calla & Ivy with a coupon for a next purchase. Imra hopes that this extra
care after the conversion, will make advocates out of her customers. Mapping the customer journey
isn't hard, it's all about putting yourself in the shoes of your target audience. If you can, use
information you have about your targets and your customers. Talk to them about how they decided
to buy your product or track the information you have from your existing customers. Don't forget to
look back at a journey you described from time to time. As you get more information about your
customers, you can adapt the customer journey map. It will help you to fine tune your marketing.
Now that you've set your goals, your KPIs, and you've decided who your target audience is and you
thought through with their journey, it's time to select the social media channels that will help you get
your message in front of your customers. In our next video, we'll take a look at what to consider
when you select the social media platforms for your marketing.

Customer Journey Examples

The customer journey (sometimes called the buyer’s journey) refers to the experiences people have
before deciding to purchase a product or service. The customer journey consists of 5 stages:
Awareness, Interest, Desire, Conversion, and Advocacy.
First, there is the awareness stage, or the point where the customer first hears about or becomes
aware of the product or service. Then there is the interest stage, which is where the customer
becomes interested in what you have to offer. The third stage in the customer journey is the desire
stage, or the point at which the customer would really like to have your product or service. Then
comes the conversion stage, which is where the customer takes action and buys your product or
service. We refer to that in marketing as a ‘conversion’ in other words, it is the stage where a person
converts to becoming a buyer. And finally, there is the advocacy stage, which is the stage where
people become advocates of the product or service they bought.

Let’s take a look at some examples of the Customer Journey

Calla and Ivy Flowers

Calla and Ivy is a flower subscription and gift service. They are known for their hand-bound bouquets
and regular flower deliveries. Let’s take a look at how Parvin, a customer, goes through the
customer journey from becoming aware of Calla and Ivy to becoming an advocate for their services.

Awareness: Parvin wants to prepare for Mother’s and Father’s day and find out where she can buy
and send beautiful flower arrangements. She goes to her search engine and looks up “best local
flower bouquet service” and finds a blog post that lists the best flower shops in the area. At the top of
the list is Calla and Ivy. Now Parvin is aware of the Calla and Ivy shop.

Interest: As Mother’s day draws near, Calla and Ivy posts an ad on Instagram showing a sale and
limited edition bouquets. Parvin sees the ad and is intrigued by the sale and unique arrangements.
Parvin now has an interest in Calla and Ivy’s shop and limited edition offer.
Desire: A week before Mother’s day, Parvin does a bit more research on flower bouquets. She has
seen beautiful bouquets online, but she keeps thinking about the bouquet she saw on Calla and Ivy’s
Instagram ad. She decides to visit their website.. She looks through the different options available
and likes that Calla and Ivy is offering the sale and limited edition bouquets she saw in the Instagram
ad. She now desires Calla and Ivy’s product.

Conversion: After pondering, Parvin decides to purchase a combo containing a carnation bouquet
and a box of chocolates. She pays using her credit card and ships it to her mother’s house as a gift
in time for Mother’s day. Parvin is now a converted customer.

Advocacy: When Mother’s day arrives, Parvin’s mother is elated by her bouquet and chocolates.
She shows the arrangement to other family members and friends, and they ask where Parvin found
such beautiful flowers. Parvin tells them that she found them at Calla and Ivy and that they had
offered an amazon selection along with a Mother’s Day sale. Parvin is now an advocate for Calla
and Ivy.

Inu and Neko

Inu and Neko is a Japanese-inspired pet store that offers organic foods as well as grooming and
training services for pet owners in the city. Let’s take a look at how Renato becomes a customer and
advocate for Inu and Neko.

Awareness: Renato moved to the city last week and is in search of a pet store to frequent for his
puppy, Augie. It’s especially important to Renato that he finds a store that provides organic food and
training services for young puppies. When at the park with Augie, Renato asks other pet owners for
their advice and many of them recommend Inu and Neko. Renato is now aware of Inu and Neko.

Interest: When Renato arrives home from his walk, he looks up Inu and Neko on Google. On the Inu
and Neko website, he sees that they offer the organic food that Augie is currently eating, as well as
grooming and training services. The website asks if Renato would like to sign up to get emails about
sales and special offers. Renato enters his email and is now an interested customer.

Desire: A week goes by and Renato notices that he is almost out of Augie’s food. When he checks
his email, he sees a coupon for new customers and decides it’s time to visit the Inu and Neko store.
He takes Augie with him and browses the various food options and asks the groomers and trainers
about their services. He’s also relieved to see that Augie seems comfortable around the groomers
and trainers, which further confirms his desire to become an Inu and Neko customer.
Conversion: Renato picks up a bag of Augie’s usually prescribed food and uses the coupon to
purchase it. He learns that he can also save by subscribing to a food delivery service and books a
grooming appointment for the following day. Renato is now a converted customer.

Advocacy: The following day, Augie gets a shampoo and haircut session at Inu and Neko. The staff
at Inu and Neko asks Renato if they can post before and after photos of Augie on their website and if
Renato would like to leave a written review of their services. Renato happily obliged to become an
advocate of Inu and Neko.

Customer Journey Worksheet

You've learned about SMART Goals, KPIs, your Target Audience, and Customer Journeys. This
reading includes the last of the worksheets you will need to complete for your peer review project:
the Customer Journey Worksheet.

For this worksheet, develop a customer journey map including all 5 phases, answering each of the
questions provided below:

● Awareness: When is my target audience most receptive?.

● Interest: How can I relate my products to my target’s needs?
● Desire: How can I show my target my product really fits in their life?
● Conversion: How can I get my target to take action?
● Advocacy: How can I make my target into an advocate?

As you work to answer these questions, review your previous worksheets: Business Description,
SMART Goal, KPIs, and Target Audience. Make any updates now that you've learned the whole
process.

Open and complete the Customer Journey worksheet: There are two options to access the
Customer Journey Worksheet.

1. Download a PowerPoint version of the worksheet by clicking here.

2. Make a copy of the template by clicking here, then clicking the Make a copy button. You
will need to be signed into a Google account in order to make a copy of the worksheet.

Below is an example of a customer journey:

 Phase Response to question

Awareness Fleur is most receptive to purchasing the subscription we are offering

when it is on sale so we want to make sure we bring it to light a
couple of weeks before launch.

Interest We want to emphasize imagery - make sure all images are bright and
light, we want to emphasize that we are local and providing
sustainable flowers. Also want to emphasize the subscription is fun
and designed for all levels so it can take very little work or a lot of
work depending on what Fleur wants and what fits in her life style.

Desire We want to show some stories of individuals with similar backgrounds

and needs to Fleur as part of our ad so she can see that our product
fits in her life.

Conversion We want to emphasize the initial sale of the subscription, perhaps an

opportunity to test it out before committing so she has the flexibility
but can enjoy the fun of the subscription.

Advocacy We want to provide the best possible customer service, reach out for
testimonials after Fleur starts using the subscription and provide
opportunities for her engagement via Instagram in the form of posts
she can like and share and questions she can answer and respond
to. Also want to give her an opportunity to share sales and codes with
her friends.

Amazing, you finished another week in this course. I am a big believer in taking time to plan, and
prepare before you start something. I apply that to my social media marketing too. A good chunk of
time goes into preparation in laying the groundworks of a campaign, but you'll see that it pays off.
The building blocks you master in the past two weeks, will reappear many times as you go through
your social media marketing campaigns. You now know, what marketers mean when they refer to a
target audience. And you learned how you can find and describe the target audience for your
marketing. You also learned what the customer journey is, and why it matters. And finally, you
learned to describe the customer journey for your target audience. Now, it's time to put what we've
 learned so far together. Remember, how you explore the social media marketing landscape. Now,
that you know the building blocks for your marketing, it's time to learn how to select the social media
marketing platforms. That match your marketing goals. That's what's next.

Now that you have a good understanding of the social media landscape and you have established
your goals, KPIs, and you have defined your target audience and you understand the customer
journey, there are only a few more steps you should take in preparation for your social media
marketing. You want to select the right channels, so your message really gets in front of your
intended audience. You also want to start thinking about who in your team will help you get a
message out and how you can make it easy for people to know what you would like them to focus
on. We will focus on those last steps, and by the end of this week, you will be very well-prepared to
get started with your social media marketing. In this first lesson, we will draw the link between your
understanding of the social media landscape on the one hand and your goals and understanding of
your target audience on the other. Linking them together, will let you decide which platforms you
should choose for your social media marketing activity. I will walk you through an approach that can
help you in this process. Then, in the next lesson, we will focus on how you can channel the energy
and enthusiasm of other people in an organization that may want to participate in your social media
marketing. You will learn how to create a social media policy, and even if you don't plan to be the
one who has to create such a policy, knowing how they are constructed helps to understand what
boundaries companies like to adhere to in their social media outreach. We also take a look at how
company blogs contributes to social media marketing and how you can use them to connect with
your audience. Finally, in the last lesson of this week, it is time to start reflecting on your career and
how you want to use all your knowledge and new skills to benefit your career growth, a lot of exciting
stuff. Let us start.

We're almost ready to dive in and start our social media marketing efforts. So far, you've learned
how to prepare by setting goals, determining the associated KPIs, defining a target audience, and
mapping the customer journey. And you have a good sense of what social media landscape looks
like. There's one last important step a marketer needs to take, and that's deciding which social
media platforms matter to achieve your marketing goals. You may be part of a business that has
already established it social media presence. And they may have already chosen the channels they
are active in. But you could also be the one who needs to make that choice. In any case, it's
important to know what you should think about before deciding on the social media channels where
you will interact with your customers. By the end of this video, you'll know what to keep in mind as
you make this decision. First, let's take a look at this interview.

Play video starting at :1:7 and follow transcript

1:07

>> My name is Penny Berryman and I manage social media for IBM Watson Health.

Play video starting at :1:16 and follow transcript

1:16
 IBM Watson Health is an essential data analytics and technology partner for the health industry.
Watson is artificial intelligence, deep learning, learning to learn, and great capacity to mine data and
make sense of it faster than humans ever can. IBM and Watson help team are an amazing place to
work. There is opportunity for innovation, ideas, talent and growth that I thought maybe only existed
in words but actually exists in culture.

Play video starting at :2: and follow transcript

2:00

So my job on a day-to-day basis involves three main components. The first one is social listening,
the second one is the preparation of posts, and the third one is the analytics of what we've done. So,
starting with the top one, social listening means that I'm going online to the three main channels I
manage YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter and I am looking at thought leaders. I'm looking at trends
and hashtag I'm understanding what's happening on that platform, what people are talking about.
Because that's going to matter for the second part of my job, which is preparing the posts. So I want
to make sure that when I'm writing the post and I'm working with the stakeholders that we're putting
content out that makes sense for the audiences on those platforms. So for preparing the post, I'm
going to work with product marketers who want to talk about a product. I'm going to work with the
visual designers to come up with a graphic for the social post. And I'm going to work with our legal
team to make sure that as a stakeholder, we are on brand as well as in a health setting. There are
certain types of content we put out that we have to make sure we're aligned with on. So those three
partners are the biggest part of the preparation stage. So visual designers, the content writers, and
then of course our legal team as a stakeholder. So part of my job in that writing stage and preparing
to post it is applying the social lens so we know that social is has a tone to it. If you're on LinkedIn,
it's a little more businessy. You see fewer pictures of dogs and vacations. If you're on Twitter, it's like
a microwave. It's fast, it's quick, people are responding, it's casual. Lots of emoticons, so
understanding the language of the making sure that when we're going out on those platforms that
were matching it. So we get our message out, but in the right ways. And then the third part of my job
is the analytics, so it's great to have wonderful content that looks good. People like it on the
platforms, but the end of the day we still have to prove that social has value. And so in my job I use
several different platforms to look at how many people are engaging, how many people are clicking
when they're clicking where they going from there? Are they going to our website? Are they
registering for the webinar that we want them to? Are they staying around long enough to do a
second action on our website. So social really is the analytic side It's not always clear cut what the
value of it is. So part of the value for social is the conversation is called social media for a reason.
And so it can be hard to say the value of this post that got 200 likes is that 200 people like us more.
But really you're also building relationships. You're building your brand so it does matter, but you
also have to be able to provide some of those harder numbers, which is this many people came to
the website. This many people registered from the webinar because they clicked on our social posts.
So the analytics is an important piece, perhaps a little bit harder than just the writing and the fun
part. But it's equally as valuable and makes the case for why social is an important channel. One
piece of the analytics that is growing in importance is the customer service piece. So this is a metric
or one of the ways of measuring success on social that if you have a complaint and someone named
your brand as a brand you want to get on that you want to be able to respond, you want to be timely.
If someone has a question about something you've posted, you want to respond to it. And so setting
up the right systems and knowing how quickly you're going to respond to questions and complaints.
And how quickly you're going to respond when someone mentions your brand in a positive way is
also an important measurement that we look at. >> Social media marketing is all about interacting
and participating in a community. You can find that community on different platforms, but as you
probably gathered from watching our interview, being active on social media takes time and effort.
Not only do you need to create the content to post in a different channels where you're active, you
should also respond to questions, interact with people on the platform and try to be visible when
there are trending topics related to your business or product. All of that takes time and effort. You
can't be active on every platform. It's better to focus on a few social media platforms and concentrate
your time and effort on participating there. Rather than trying to cover all platforms and not having
enough time to really interact with customers on each one of them. So before you get started,
evaluate your resources and keep in mind that it's hard for one person to manage a vibrant social
following on more than two or three platforms. Time and resources will often force us to choose a
few social media platforms to be active on. So you need to make that choice wisely. In the next
video, we will help you with tips on how to select the social media platforms that best suit your
marketing goals. [MUSIC]

To make the most of social media marketing for a business, it's important to focus on a few channels
that are important to your audience. You'll find that being active and really engaging on all social
media platforms is not realistic. So it's crucial to select the ones where you can have the most
impact. How do you do that? In this video, I will walk you through four steps you can take to make
your selection. Start with your marketing goal, and evaluate what outcomes you hope to achieve
through your social media activity. These typically fall into the following categories. First, could be
brand building, generating awareness and interest for your brand. Second, generating sales or sales
leads. Third, providing customer service, and finally, building community and customer loyalty.
Different social media platforms focus on different things. Remember how we discussed the social
media categorization from Fred Cavazza? This categorization can help guide you when you evaluate
which platform may be best suited for your goal. When you're focused on brand building, publishing
or sharing platforms can help. Showcasing your product on platforms like Facebook, Instagram,
YouTube, or Pinterest, for instance, can help you raise awareness and interest. When your focus is
on generating sales or sales leads through social media marketing efforts, your interest may slightly
shift to platforms that offer immediate shopping integrations for instance. Sharing platforms like
Pinterest and Instagram do that. If you're focused on providing customer service, you may decide
you need to be active on messaging platforms so your customers can easily communicate with you.
WhatsApp or Messenger can help you in one-to-one communication, and Twitter is also often used
for customer service purposes. If your focus is on building community, you may want to look at
discussion, or collaboration, or networking platforms where communities interested in your industry
hangout. Or you may want to rely on Facebook, a platform where community is central.
Understanding the nuances of different platforms will help guide your decision. But it's key that you
keep in mind what your goal is. The next consideration, of course, is the audience you're targeting.
We saw that the demographic profiles of the users of different networks vary, and you want to make
sure that the platforms you choose are the ones where your audience is active. If you're going after
younger audiences, you may want to take a look at platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat,
for instance. If you're focused on reaching professionals, LinkedIn or Facebook may be a better
choice. Here is our overview of the reach of the largest platforms among different demographics. But
I suggest that if you get a chance, you ask your target audience which social media platforms they
use most. While it is very important that you focus your attention on platforms your audience uses, it
is also important to think about the typical content format in those platforms. YouTube is all about
video, Instagram is about images, etc. Ask yourself, what kind of content can I share? Is it easy for
me to create videos, images, and what type of content will best feature by product? Say you're a
fashion brand, Instagram or Pinterest, maybe interesting platforms for you. But if you're selling
software, it may be a bit harder to imagine a Pinterest board that works well for your product. If you
are a DIY brand, it may be very easy for you to create how-to videos, a type of content that performs
really well on YouTube. If you sell a complex product that's rooted in research, you may opt for
sharing white papers and explainer videos on LinkedIn, for instance. You get the picture. Use your
understanding of the different social media channels to decide on where your content would best fit.
After taking your goal, your target audience, and the content you plan to share into account, you will
probably have narrowed down the set of social media platforms that could work for you. As a final
step, it's worth taking a look at what your competitors are doing. Where are they interacting with
customers and what are they sharing? Check out their Facebook page, their Twitter, and Instagram
account, and so on. Evaluate where the conversation is happening. You probably want to be part of
the conversation in those places. Let's go back to James, at DCB cleaning. James is selecting the
social media platforms he'll use to talk about SnackWell. Let's see how our four steps could help
James make his decision. Remember James' goal. He wants to see 25 percent of the current DCB
cleaning service clients subscribe to the new SnackWell service within six months. To do that, he
needs to create awareness. Since James' company is already active on Facebook, it seems like a
natural place to start. James knows that his target audience is typically active on Facebook. They
are professionals between the ages of 35 and 55. But James is interested in adding another
channel. He believes there is opportunity for his team to expand their activities. James believes that
SnackWell offers some interesting opportunities to create image-based content. He believes that
funny office life pictures featuring the snacks could grab attention. So he's thinking about adding
Instagram to the mix. He knows that Staples is quite active on Instagram and he likes their
approach. He's also seen another few accounts of competitors on Instagram, so he decides to give
that a shot. Why not LinkedIn? You might ask. After all, James is going after a professional
audience. Well, James decided that with the image rich content he has in mind, it's better to go to a
platform where images are key and where people are browsing through content to be inspired. While
LinkedIn indeed focuses on professionals, James knows that the professional crowd he's after is
also a user of Instagram in their personal lives. So that's what led him to focus on Instagram instead.
As you can see from this example, the four steps we walked through can help you choose the best
social media platforms for your marketing activity. In some cases, several platforms could work for
you, but limited time and resources may require that you focus your energy on the platforms that you
feel are the best fit for your audience and your product or brand. Once you've selected the social
channels you'll be active in, there's one more thing you should think about. Who will manage them in
your company or in your team, and what policies do you need to put in place to manage them well?
In the next lesson, you'll learn how to put those policies in place.

For businesses, social media marketing is a powerful way to grow their online presence. Consumers
today expect brands to be present on their favorite social platforms. In fact, according to the 2020
Sprout Social Index, nearly nine in ten consumers will buy products from a brand they follow on
social media. Now, more than ever, brands must engage. And businesses know that employees can
be a real asset when you're trying to get the word out. They have their own social media accounts
and they offer a way to reach more people. But to make employees into real advocates, businesses
must ensure that they understand what the business is trying to accomplish. And no matter, whether
someone posts in an official capacity or on a personal account, it's important that they use the
appropriate tone, and messaging, and that they know what to avoid when talking about the business
on social media. Whether a business is creating content for its website or blog, engaging with
customers and potential customers in real time on social channels, or benefiting from the power of
its audience, employees, and other influencers to spread the word about their product or service, it's
important that they establish and follow a set of social media policies that everyone can understand.
In this video, I'll walk you through an approach you can use to create a policy that directs your
organization's social media strategy. Although companies often focus their social media efforts
through social media marketing professional or a team within their organization, studies have shown
that nearly 60 percent of people rely on the information that comes from regular employees. This
means that their payroll clerk, front-line customer rep, or network administrator may have the power
to significantly impact their brand's reputation. With little training, and clear guidelines, it's no
surprise that employees can be a brand's greatest advocates and sources of influence in helping to
amplify their companies social media marketing strategy. However, when the boundaries between
social media interactions for business or personal become blurred, it can cause confusion and
potential risk. Companies want to be sure that an employee's posts will not expose the company to
legal problems or public embarrassment. Therefore, when inviting employees to participate in a
company's social media efforts, it's important to first set the ground rules by establishing a social
media policy and ensuring its firmly in place. Let's take a look at the social media policy of retailer
Nordstrom. They post their social media policy on their website, so anyone, even people who don't
work for the company can see it. Here it is. The policy starts by specifying that only people trained by
Nordstrom can post on the official Nordstrom account. So there's a group of people that's trained to
post on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and so on, those people would be social media marketers.
Then the policy gives some information on what employees cannot post. Employees often have
sensitive information, information that the company does not want to make public, so it's a good idea
to specify clearly what people shouldn't talk about. Next are some lines about respecting customer
privacy and avoiding disparaging comments about coworkers and vendors. Then Nordstrom makes
it clear that employees can be held legally responsible for what they post, so they should make sure
to stay within the company guidelines. One of the guidelines is a guideline for endorsers, which
states that employees have to disclose that they are affiliated with Nordstrom, and they have to
make it clear that their views are their own. Next, are specifications around conflict of interest. For
instance, employees cannot use their social media profiles to promote a competitor. Posting
contests on social media is popular, but Nordstrom does tell it's employees here that they need to
get approval before running a contest or a promotion. Finally, Nordstrom recognizes that any activity
on behalf of the company should be valued, and they state that they will pay their employees to talk
on their behalf in social media, at least if approved. A social media policy is meant to achieve three
core things. First, it must empower employees. A social media policy should encourage employees
to get involved in sharing important company messaging, with their personal and professional online
networks, and give them the confidence to do so appropriately. In our Nordstrom example,
employees are given clear guidelines, and Nordstrom encourages participation by reinforcing that
employees we'll be compensated for their work. Next, it must protect a brand. It helps protect the
company's online reputation. A social media policy for a company sets the guidelines, rules, and
responsibilities of employees when they post and comment on social media networks, whether it's
on their personal profiles or on company owned accounts. It tells employees what tone and voice
you want them to use when interacting with customers, which helps protect the brand's image. In our
example, Nordstrom referred to company guidelines that can help employees to represent the
company in a way that doesn't harm the brand. Finally, it must guard against legal risks to the
organization. Businesses deal with legal restrictions and different policies they need to adhere to,
privacy, financial regulations, data security, and so on. Providing guidelines for what employees can
and can't say, reduces the risk for them and for the organization. Nordstrom's policy gives clear legal
guidelines and with this information, employees can feel more confident that their participation falls
within the guidelines and does not put them at risk.
Now that we understand the reasons for having a social media policy, let's look at the steps you can
take to create such a policy. While different companies include different things in their policy, these
are the steps I suggest you follow. First, list the official social media accounts for the company and
ask employees to follow them. For example, a company may have a LinkedIn, Facebook and
Instagram account, and another may have Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Having a list and a
short description of how they are being used can make it easier for employees to find them and use
them appropriately, and by following the accounts, employees will get a good sense of how you like
to talk about your business on social platforms. Next, help employees understand who is responsible
for what and specify which responsibilities individual employees have. Here are the steps you can
take. Specify who's responsible for posting on company accounts. If you have a social media team,
provide their contact info. Communicate that employees can talk about a company in their personal
accounts, but that they should do so in a responsible manner that's consistent with the brand's
image. Tell employees they should disclose who they are and where they work when posting about
a company. As a third step, clearly specify what people can talk about, tell employees what's
considered confidential information. You should provide clear examples of what can be shared. For
instance, you can tell employees that news about product launches or official press releases can be
shared. For important announcements, consider creating sample posts that employees can post on
different social media platforms. Make it clear to employees what can never be shared, like internal
communications, financial or other proprietary information. Some industries like pharmaceuticals, for
instance, have strict regulations when it comes to disclosing information or promoting products. If
that's the case for your organization, you should tell employees how this affects how they
communicate on social media. Fourth, focus on how you want employees to talk on behalf of the
company. Some people refer to this as the tone of voice that's used on social media platforms.
Common guidelines includes, be honest and polite, make sure to cite your sources, don't post
negative comments about people or competitors, and remind employees that what they post on
social media is permanent. Even if they delete a comment later on, someone may already have
taken a screenshot. So it's a good idea to give some thought to what you post. Here's an example
from Intel social media policy, where they refer to what they want employees to keep in mind when
participating in social media. Don't slam the competition or Intel. Play nice. Anything you publish
must be true and not misleading and all claims must be substantiated and approved. Finally,
recognize that mistakes happen and provide a plan for dealing with conflict, negative interactions, or
a real crisis. It's a good idea to provide clear direction on who to alert and what process to follow for
reporting negative interactions. The company should also designate people or departments who are
responsible for helping to manage the situation. Include contact information and encourage
employees to immediately share any issues they see. It's important that a company tries to
discourage people from reacting to negative messages. Always better to forward those to people
who are trained to deal with them. Following these steps will help educate and enable employees
who would like to participate and talk on the company's behalf in social media, and it will help to
protect a company. In our next video, we'll take a look at company blogs, which often form a starting
point or a hub for the messages a company wants to communicate.

For many companies, their blog is a vital part of their social media strategy. Blogging allows a
company to educate, entertain, and engage with their audiences. It can be a place for them to more
fully tell their story and with some guidance, it can be a way for employees to lend their voices. In
many ways, blogs act as a bridge between a company's website and their social media accounts.
Housing content that companies can share in posts, which in turn drives traffic back to its website.
By the end of this video, you'll know the difference between a blog and a website, blog best practices
and how to set up blog guidelines to help employees share perspectives, organizational and industry
news, and invite commentary. Blogs are a type of website and although they can sometimes stand
alone, they are most often a part of a company's traditional website. But there are some differences
in the nature of the content you'll find on a website versus a blog. A website's content is static, it
changes infrequently. The writing on websites is typically more formal or professional, and the
content tends to not be interactive. For example, you cannot comment on everything you read on a
website. Websites often let to you transact or in other words, you can buy products and services on
some websites. Blogs on the other hand, are more dynamic. New content is added all the time and
content on blogs is organized in reverse chronicle order. So the most recent posts or articles appear
first. The content is typically also a bit more informal and it's meant to engage and readers are
encouraged to comment or share the content. Blogs themselves are not focused on selling products,
or at least the actual transaction typically does not happen on a company's blog. The bottom line is
that a company's website and blog go hand in hand. Websites tend to focus on commercial
functions. They are used to generate leads, sell products, or present information about a product or
service to consumers. Blogs are inherently social. They encourage conversation and interaction.
With these social sharing benefits, a blog can help a company to expand its audience and start a
dialog. Here's an example of a company blog from Teleflora. Teleflora is an online flower business.
They use their blog for anything from tips on how to arrange and keep flowers, to how to unwind at
home, to gift ideas for Father's Day. The blog content is meant to engage readers and taking
comments and share. As you can see, you cannot buy flowers from the blog page. That's what a
website is for. One of the big advantages of having a blog is that you can add content to it without
the need to know how to code. Tools like WordPress or Medium for instance, are easy to use and
they let you write and publish your personal or business blog posts in minutes. Now let's talk about
the benefits of blogging for a business. First, blogging can be a way to make your brand's personality
shine and make authentic connections with your audience. Companies who use their blog to lift the
curtain on the people and stories behind their products are able to connect at a deeper level with
their audience. Customers want to know and love the brands they do business with, and blogging is
an excellent way to let them get a glimpse behind the scenes. This helps them get a clear sense of
your corporate standards, business identity, and the vision of the company. Second, blogs can help
nurture relationships with new and existing customers. Blogging not only provides the opportunity to
attract new customers, who may look to a company's blog to learn more about the products they're
interested in. It may also reengaged existing customers who already know and love the brand and
value the content they find there. In addition, the ability to read comments from blog visitors and
respond is a great way to build trust and learn about your customers. Third, blogs let you expand
your content's reach. One of blogging's most noteworthy benefits is the opportunity it creates for
others to share links to your blog posts on numerous social media platforms. When others share
your content on social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter, it can
amplify your message and send visitors your way. So not only does a blog serve to provide original
and engaging content for all of your social platforms, but it also helps drive traffic back to your
website and could lead to exponential business growth. A fourth benefit of blogs is that they help
with search engine optimization. Search engines like Google rank contents for quality, length,
relevance, and recency. Blogging is an efficient way for a business to give these search engines
what they want. When a business creates quality keyword rich blog posts frequently, it gives search
engines fresh content to add to its database and that will help boost the company in search results
pages. Businesses who are skilled at inserting keywords that matter to them into their posts are
likely to rank higher and improve their chances that their posts will show up in relevant search
results. A final benefit of blogs is that they help build credibility. Businesses can use their blog as a
platform for sharing their expertise and establishing themselves as thought leaders in their industry.
This not only builds trust with customers and potential customers, it can lead to important networking
opportunities and improved search engine optimization as other blogs and websites share your
posts and link to your content. Done consistently, posting valuable content helps elevate a company
as a trusted resource within their industry, leading to more visitors, more potential customers, and
more sales.

Of course, to reap the benefits of having a blog, it's important that the blog is well managed. So,
what does that mean? There are four key elements you need, to have an effective blog. First and
foremost, you need quality content. Keep in mind that blogs should engage an establish expertise,
but not self-promote. Like other forms of social media, blogging is all about connecting with people
and communicating your story. It's not a medium for one-way communication. Blogs can help you
improve the search rankings for your product. But in order to achieve that, it's important to use
keywords that matter to you throughout your blog posts. As with all content, if you want to engage
readers, you need to make sure the content is tailored to them. Write about things that you know
matter to your target audience, from entertainment to discounts, inspiration, and education. If you
post content that matters to your audience, chances are much higher they will comment and share.
In other words, they'll engage. Finally, pay close attention to read those comments and questions.
Monitor the conversation and be sure to react or respond. Let's go back once more to Calla and Ivy.
Remember that Imra is interested in launching a website so she can start selling flowers online. We
saw how it is Imra's goal to get 10,000 website visits during the month of May. Imra realizes that in
order to achieve that, she'll need to generate some awareness for her website. She plans to post on
social media, but she also realizes that it could be cool if she could link in some of her social media
posts to some longer articles with information that's helpful to her target audience. She decides to
add a blog to her website. Imra thinks this will be a great way to convey some of the fun and friendly
atmosphere she's been able to create in her local store. She plans to write about her love of flowers,
explained some of the technique she uses to make bouquets. She also wants to educate her
audience a bit on how to care for fresh flowers, something she usually does in the store, but she
wants to make sure people online can benefit from her advice too. She also wants to provide some
behind the scenes content and she wants to invite some of her employees to write their stories too.
She's even thinking about having her main flower supplier or local flower farm to do a guest posts. I
think these are Imra's great ideas and they align well with our four best practices for blogging. First,
Imra will need to make sure her content is of high quality. But the topic she's thinking about are spot
on, they're helpful and fun, but not overly promotional. As Imra writes these posts, it's a good idea for
her to include keywords that matter to her. Those keywords could be features that are unique or
typical for her products. For instance, she could try to include keywords, bouquet binding, flower
bouquets, cut flowers, etc. Those could be the types of keywords that she would like to be
associated with so that when people type them into search engine, her content comes up as a result.
Imra's blogs should appeal to her target audience. Remember Imra targets 30-55-year-old women in
the Netherlands with an interest in design, fashion, and sustainable living. The content is Imra is
planning will be quite interesting to them. Finally, Imra will need to make sure that she monitors her
blog. Once she posts content, people can comment and share her post and she'll want to make sure
she responds to the comments that way, her blog will really become a tool for her to connect with
her audience. Imra plans to have her employees contribute to her blog. You'll finds that in large
companies, it's also common to have employees contribute. Employees can be a great source of
various voices for a company blog. But as with all their social media activities, there may be
questions or concerns about how to handle employee blogging, whether on the company blog or
employees personal social sites. Including policies and best practices to guide employee blogging
efforts as part of a comprehensive social media policy can help protect a company from potentially
embarrassing or damaging posts, but can also help employees post with more confidence and
increase the chances that they'll be willing to do so. Here are a couple of examples of how big
companies have approached their blog policies. HP blogs are written by a variety of employees at
different levels and positions in the organization. Here's an excerpt from HP's blogging code of
conduct that references confidentiality, stating our standards of business conduct will guide what we
write about. There's some topics we won't comment on, such as information about financials, HP
intellectual property, trade secrets, management changes, lawsuits, shareholder issues, layoffs, and
contractual agreements with alliance partners, customers and suppliers. Adidas's policies are a little
less formal. They remind employees that they're responsible for the content they post and that posts
online are essentially permanent. Telling employees, you are personally responsible for the content
you publish on blogs, wikis, or any other form of user-generated media. Please remember that the
Internet never forgets. For any company that starts a blog, it's a good idea to put some policies in
place. If you work at a company that has a blog and they ask you to contribute, check out a policy to
make sure you stay within the company guidelines. We'll refer to blogs again when we talk about
managing and planning your social media content in our next course. But for now, it's good to
remember that blogs are different from websites. They offer a great opportunity to engage and
interact with your audience, built authentic connections, and they can also help you increase your
search rankings. Of course, it's good to put some thought in what you post, choose for contents that
will appeal to your audience, but don't overly promote. Make sure to monitor your blog so you can
respond in time to comments from readers. Blogging can be really rewarding and fun, so you may
want to give it a try.

[MUSIC] Congratulations! You finished the first course in the Social Media Marketing Specialization.
I know we threw a lot of information at you, but you're now very well prepared to start creating and
managing content in social media. You know how social media developed and how people and
businesses can use it to connect. You also understand the broader landscape and you know how to
determine the type of social media platform that suits your marketing needs. And you can lay the
foundation for your marketing by developing a smart goal, setting key performance indicators, define
your target audience and describe their customer journey. You also know how to find the right social
media channels to get your message in front of your audience. You've also learned how to develop a
social media policy, should you need one, and you know how to use a blog to engage your
audience. Yes, that is a lot, you're well on your way to becoming a social media marketer. In the next
course, you'll learn how to set up your social media presence and how to create and manage
content for your target audience. I hope to see you there. [MUSIC]