Hello all, here is my post reflecting on and reviewing Stukent’s Social Media Simulation. In this post, I will discuss my successes and my failures of this simulation…alright mostly failures. What can I say it was a learning experience for sure. Also, everything in this post is based on my experience at this time. If you do this simulation later on things may have changed and therefore lessens the value of this post. So, proceed with caution.
What Is It?
This simulation has you create posts for Buhi Bags it gives you company information and some basic information on potential target audiences. It will also provide objectives for you in each round, as well as for analytics for you to analyze. As well as have you answer questions from potential questions. You are also given a budget of $5,000 each round to use to create and promote your posts for the company of Buhi.
Additional Tools
Here are some tools that may help you in gaining the most out of this simulation.
- Stukent
- Expert Session Videos
- Book ( click on stukent link above)
- HubSpot Social Media Certification on Social Media This is free to use tool that provides lessons on marketing subjects, as well as certifications in those lessons to add to your resume.
- Here is a link to a post I did base on Buhi’s competitor Hershel and how they use Facebook and Instagram.
What I Like/Pros Of This Simulation
- The opportunity to try and create basic social media posts and gain data back from them.
- The questions asked after each round helped reflect and learn, so you hopefully do better in the next one.
- Types of content available, from images to video, and more there was a decent variety for the number of choices. Although I do wish they had included more videos.
- I like that we got to answer questions in later rounds. As well as see how well we chose the right answer to their questions.
What I Don’t Like/Needs Improvements
- Content library, which is very limited in every category, which is partly made of images, videos, meme, ads and more.
- More data needed, I wish we could see how many likes, hearts, etc. versus dislikes because right now it only gives total engagement. Which includes likes, comments, dislikes, etcetera. While it’s helpful I think was basic, maybe there is a technical reason why they can’t do this, but it would still be nice.
- I also wish we could filter post in the post history, as well as seeing how many people of our personals saw/engaged our post versus people who were not our persona.
My Overall Experience
What I Did That Worked
- Hashtags: This was brought up in class discussions and I think it helped but I personally I didn’t utilize them to their greatest potential. So really think about your hashtags.
- Shout outs to customers: I would give fake names to customers and thank them for reviews, etc (look at the picture below as an example).
- Talking to my audience about things they are interested in like travel vs just about the company/products.
What I Would Do Differently
- I would have talked about our brand and products less even though I wasn’t overtly trying to sell with most of my posts. I found the more you talk about things that interest them like hiking or travel tips, the more success you will.
- Use fewer meme and infographics because while on occasion they could produce ok results they tend to be throw away posts, with little value in my experience.
- I wish I had focused less on conversions at the beginning and more on engagement as well as impressions. It is only one metric and is not the end all be all, which was hard to unlearn.
- I would not have chosen my second persona to be City-hopper Sue I think there were better ones to pair from the provider list with Daypacker Tom. Who was a good decision in my opinion due to making up a majority of the market share.
Final Takeaways
Overall This simulation was interesting and left me with something to think about once it was over. I’m glad because as we all know sometimes it is hard to understand why we are doing certain assignments in a class until years later, which wasn’t the case here.
My final Tips/Advice:
- First, write posts like a conversation ask questions that are interesting and would make you want to talk or in this case write back.
- Watch the introduction video, trust me it may seem boring but it is important.
- In the Help and Instruction tabs there are infographics.. yes they are different slightly but they will help you decide when within a range you should post on each platform.
- Use hashtags, and questions but don’t overwhelm your posts with them also make sure your hashtags are fitting for the post. The misused of a hashtag can make people feel negatively towards your brand if you are not careful.
- Talk to others if you can, in my class we would usually have a portion of the class to see what was working and what was not from others. While each person may have different experiences or results I still found this helpful.
- Your questions from the previous round will remain until you submit for the current one. Review them, they will help if you spent the time to answer them in the first place, I promise.
- Lastly, always export the CVS and review them this will give you even more data than what is on the analytics page, The CVS will have the data from ever round you have completed thus far so if you wanted you could delete the old ones from your computer to save space but still have the necessary information.
Okay, guys, I hoped this helped in some way. If it did please leave me a comment down below as well as feel free to check out my other Stukent posts which are linked down below. I hope you have a wonderful day.
