My Experience With Youtube

 

I can’t imagine that anybody has gone to YouTube specifically to watch their top-of-the-line advertisements, and I am definitely part of that “anybody.” I grew up on YouTube, it was the best form of entertainment for me by fair. I was raised in the advent of Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, Pewdiepie, and other gaming YouTube channels that brought joy to my adolescent day-to-day. I loved theses creators, and honestly still do, but never did I truly understand the untouchable wealth they made from the platform until my young adulthood. Markiplier, my favorite YouTuber, has a net worth of thirty-five million dollars as of 2023. That is from making videos on a social media platform of him playing video games. This wealth is largely due to the way YouTube’s advertising works. YouTube allows creators to monetize their videos by allowing ads to play during them, creating a significant revenue stream for large creators. Creators like Markiplier who have an average of 2-3 million viewers per video can make some absolute bank by including just one advertisement per video. When I was young, I never realized it but I contributed to their advertising strategy just by being a devoted fan to their channel. This is a very unique way of advertising using social media, being very similar to watching television. Television shows have commercial breaks just like YouTube videos do. I think it’s very effective and engaging, and I’m excited to learn more about it.

Snapchat: A Secret Treasure

To the younger generations, many social media platforms of old have grown stale. They’re unused, undervalued, and are on their way to a grave that is dug by new generations. Snapchat is not one of these. Snapchat, though viewed as a platform that is unprofessional, is one of the most effective marketing tools on the internet.

I was at one point unaware of the success that digital marketers have had on Snapchat. I always have used the app as more of a chatroom of sorts, only to answer DM’s and text with people I’m not comfortable enough with to give my number to. Never did I bat an eye at the multitude of ads that are quite literally sneaked into my viewing. My mind is seriously boggled at the statistics I saw on the successes of Snapchat marketing. Ads are 2x more viewed than that of Facebook, they have an astronomically low cost, and they’re extremely effective in sales due to the fast-paced nature of the network.

 Not only this, but marketing with Snapchat plays into the role that I personally have lent it. I don’t like giving out my phone number, but Snapchat is a more comfortable medium for communication. The same goes for marketing. Snapchat is a very accessible, comforting platform for one on one interaction with a potential customer. This can make advertising much more personal, and can provide for blossoming relationships that are not seen on other social networking platforms. I’ve been a big fan of Snapchat for a long time, and this adds onto that respect. Snapchat is a fantastic network for advertising and their statistics shocked me to say the least.

Facebook: A World of Opportunity

 We all know Facebook for its reputation of being the social media platform for the elderly, but we fail to acknowledge it for what it truly is. Facebook is a marvel of human ingenuity and a beacon for marketers looking for an opportunity to get ideas out there in a quick, affordable and understandable way.

 For starters, Facebook is by far the most popular social media platform in the world. With over 2.91 billion monthly users, Facebook absolutely dwarfs the competition in terms of usage and is versatile in that it is popular on a global basis. Wherever there is a popular concept such as this, marketers should immediately be looking in that direction for their advertising ideas. 2.91 billion monthly users could quickly become millions of people directed towards whatever one is trying to market on that platform.

 

The way to go concerning marketing on Facebook is viewing how posts are doing via their intuitive business suite. Here, one can post and schedule postings, access a commerce manager, view activity on any Meta accounts, view insights into how posts are doing and create ads. With this easy-to-use interface, managing social media marketing becomes a breeze as everything is made accessible through neatly organized metrics displayed upon the screen. Rather than diving through statistics oneself, Meta produces the statistics for the content producer, allowing users to easily manage, organize and promote their content. This is not even mentioning the paid-advertising feature that is on Facebook, which allows users to pay (at a rather cheap price) for their content to be shared with other users as an advertisement. These will show up on feeds more often, allowing more exposure.

 Overall it is evident why Facebook is held with such a high regard in the digital marketing community. With an easy interface to manage marketing alongside a very large and diverse audience, ideas can flow easily and effectively via this platform. Facebook definitely receives high-honors in my book from a business angle!

 

A Riveting Chapter Three

 Marketing on social media platforms is one of the most effective ways of spreading a business’s message today, and this chapter of Essentials of Social Media Marketing explained that remarkably well. I feel much more well informed about not only why social media is a fantastic marketing platform, but how it can become utilized to its maximum potential via targeting markets and optimizing social media platforms in order to coordinate a good social media marketing plan.

 Establishing a target market is crucial to marketing effectively on social media. This concept is all about identifying demographics of people that would be most interested in your good or service. These could include age, gender, behaviors, spending habits, and many other identifiable characteristics online. After this, one can make a company persona of the top traits of their target market and market from there. This is so important because it sets a foundation for the rest of a marketing strategy to set upon. Without identifying the target market, marketing would be unfocused, uncoordinated, and most importantly ineffective.

 Different social media platforms have different strengths and weaknesses. We see this by the demographics that use them. A common example is that younger people tend to lean towards Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, while older people tend to stick to Facebook. We, as marketers, can use this information to optimize the way we market on different platforms. The book did an excellent job of showing which networks are good at marketing for certain industries based upon how they present information on their specific platforms. For example, Pinterest is a great platform for the Health and Beauty industry due to its prominent visual components, but it is lacking in the Finance industry due to its lack of textual focus. Finding what social media platform is the correct one to market for your specific industry is crucial to a good marketing plan.

 Overall, it’s not the social media networks themselves that provide marketing opportunity, but rather the way we use them that provides that opportunity. By making the correct choices and being selective in matching our target demographics with the appropriate social media platform, we as marketers can establish an effective plan to bring our product to the people most likely to engage in it. I have learned a lot about social media marketing this chapter.

Interviewing a Social Media Expert

 For my Social Media Marketing class I was asked to interview a social media expert and make a podcast of that interview. This was a completely new experience to me that brought about a lot of questions initially. What exactly is a social media expert? Who would I ask? How does one go about editing and producing a podcast? Luckily for me, the first two of these questions were easily answered. I quickly figured out what an “expert,” in social media would be someone who makes a living off of it. Someone who actually knows about social media enough to make it their livelihood. I was lucky enough to actually have someone like this in my family. That being my cousin-in-law Emily Brock, an accomplished marketer who currently is working in pharmaceutical marketing at a company in New York. She works remotely so I was able to go to her house in Lima to interview her. Talk about an opportunity to learn!

 I went to Emily’s house at about 8 P.M to get started, and I wasn’t even fully aware of her immense experience in social media marketing specifically until I began the interview. As it turned out, Emily prior to working in pharmaceutical actually was a social media coordinator for most of the fast food industry of Lima, Ohio. Big names like Arby’s, Burger King, and others reached out to her hoping to gain some ground in the quickly evolving social media landscape. Needless to say, these credentials made me excited for what I was about to learn.

 And learn I did. I asked Emily a series of questions regarding her experiences with issues in social media, and for every single one it was as if she had a script that she was reading from. It was all so detailed for it being on the spot, it was truly remarkable to see her talk about these things for minutes at a time without stopping for a second thought. She told me the details of how Meta makes marketing with social much easier, such as how bots work to produce immediate responses to customers on social media. Another question I asked her was over the threat of negative feedback via social media and she had a great deal to comment on surrounding that. She told me that a good marketer never shuts off their comments and responses to social media posts because shutting down criticism is just as bad as it being there to see. To see a company’s social media shut off comments takes away a lot of credibility due to the fact that rather than rectifying issues with customers in the comments they choose to simply put them out of view. I agreed from a consumer perspective completely, as I have seen this kind of behavior on social media before and I also found it very shady.

I wish that I had more time than 5 minutes to let her continue talking about her experiences in social media, because her knowledge of the field was truly remarkable.  The show notes were as follows: Introduce Emily and allow her to explain her credibility to the audience, ask Emily two or three questions concerning issues in social media, asking her the positives of social media marketing, and also a constant reminder to put my feedback in from the consumer perspective. It is no wonder why she is considered an expert in her field. That concluded the interview and I drove home, left in awe of all I had just learned.