The Social Media Magnet practicum allows students to choose any topic they want for the project. Kat was worried in the beginning about the potential success of her project because she perceived her current social network to not be as large as others in the class. Also, as a self-proclaimed introvert, she struggled at first to reach out to others in her community to promote her blog.
To compensate, she spent a lot of time on writing posts and taking pictures. While quality posts are important, she claims, it is also essential to spend just as much, if not more, time on the marketing aspect. She sometimes got carried away with planning posts and neglected to focus on growing her social media accounts. She admits that she falsely believed at times that quality content would draw subscribers.
But she soon realized that her blog was filling a gap in the “realistic” millennial space, and was contacted by another blog to guest post. She then realized the value of others in social media. So Kat started joining Facebook and Pinterest groups. Shortly thereafter, Kat had a Pinterest pin that went viral across her groups, and what went from a minimal following grew quickly to over 18,000 average monthly viewers on the platform, channeling a large percentage of that traffic to her website.
What started out as a fear, turned into delight. In describing her class takeaways, Kat states, “I learned so much from this class, and I will be able to use my experience in my future career… I learned about the importance of collaboration. If I didn’t reach out to other bloggers for Pinterest group boards, I would not have had the viral pin, and my numbers would be much lower. Additionally, I realized the importance of offering incentives to get people to subscribe to your email list. People are very stingy when giving out emails, and only when I offered incentives did people start to give me their addresses. Finally, I realized the importance of researching methods and target audiences before starting a blog. I did a lot of outside research on blogging that helped me understand strategies and tools for growing my campaign.”
Find out more about The Social Media Magnet, an educational platform designed to teach college students about digital inbound marketing, by visiting us at the socialmediamagnet.net. You can also visit us at Facebook or LinkedIn for current blogs and information.