What have you learned thus far?

Not only is this class different than my other advertising courses I have taken, it is different than I had expected it would be. I am very surprised how much I have learned just from analyzing my brands social media for two weeks. Although I have followed this brands social media for awhile now prior to the class, I have learned to look at it in a whole new perspective. Rather I'm analyzing what they're doing differently on each of the different media channels, or going further and looking at what people are commenting and how they're reacting to their ads, it really helps you understand the brands goals of why they're doing what they're doing.

This course has been very informational so far and has even helped with my other classes! All of the information from the Social Media/ guide has intrigued me and the MOZ website in general. I find myself scrutinizing websites and social media channels with this new knowledge and finding simple to fix errors in practice with how many brands present themselves. The keynote speech from Gary Vaynerchuck was very informational and inspiring!

This class is different than the other marketing class I have attended. I learnt how to analyze a brand through different parts. From its websites, from the emails they sent to me, from the media platforms they have. I think analyzing the brand tends to base on a consumer's mind, not a professional mind. That will help us to learn how to advertise a brand in more personal way. 

I am surprised to learn how much influence on purchasing a brand that the social media plays. Consumers now use the internet mostly to look at reviews and products on social media when they are deciding what to buy. Since this action is fairly new, there will be much more to social media advertising in the future. 

It's interesting to know how to analysis a brand, and the social media connect with the brand. I do the Sephora as my brand, it is an often used website, and when I never oberserved the website so carefully, and find the key message of the brand fron its website. 

I've learned a lot so far in this class. I've never had a class focus as much on brands as this one and it is very interesting to me what goes in to making a successful brand. How there are actual strategies behind posting a tweet on Twitter to a photo on Instagram. Everything is well thought out and carefully planned and just how important it is to reach out to consumers and the impact of using social campaigns. 

Personally, I'm a huge fan of social media. Instagram is my favorite platform and reading through the 2014 Pew Social Media Update, it is exciting to me to see that Instagram is one of the fastest growing networks. One of the main things I wanted to get out of this course was knowledge on how businesses grow and capitalize their social media networks. The main thing I have learned so far is that a brand has much more interactive power with content tailored towards their audiences instead of content only advertising for themselves. This is interesting because it is very different from a traditional marketing standpoint but makes a lot of sense from a consumer standpoint. It's exciting to think that my generation will be the one to revolutionize the entire advertising industry!

Im going to be a bit outside the box on this. My fellow students grew up using Social Media, and it has become a way of life for them. For me, I never saw the value. My view of Twitter, for example went somethng like this: "I'm drinking a beer", "I'm halfway done with my beer", "I'm out of beer". As far as Pinterest? I never had a real desire to find out how to make "Garlic Basil Cinnamon Monkey Bread".

HOWEVER, as a result of this class, my eyes have been opened! I have learned things about the depth of Social Media that I can put into practice immediately! I am using Social Media both in my profession, not only to follow my brand, but to enhance my communication with clients, and in my personal life as well. I am astounded by the postive feedback I am recieving. I guess you can "teach an old (actually middle aged) dog new tricks". That is pretty exciting stuff!

Something that I learned was the amount of work that goes behind looking into a brand, I never knew there were so many details that we should pay attention to for companies and how there's always a main theme they try to represent within their brand. 

Like how Coca-Cola has the whole "Coming together to enjoy each other's bond" type of theme on their social media. I'm definitely excited to look further into my brand and learn more things! 

What's interesting to me is the amount of work and planing that goes into online marketing and search optimization. Before when I saw a company tweet I didn't think twice about it but there is so much that goes into a social media campaign and all of their social media platforms. 

Although I'm not sure how much we will use Google Analytics in this class, the whole concept of Google Analytics is fascinating for me. Being able to fully understand where a website's audience is coming from, or what they are doing on the website is very intriguing and essential to the business. I wish I was able to access Bud Lights actual Google Analytics data, it would allow me to do much more and be able to understand why Bud Light is consistently Americas number one selling beer. I'm hoping that if we don't use Google Analytics we will use some other type of data mining tool. That way I am familiar with multiple tools which I can use when I start my career.  

Thus far, I have learned how important a brands message and look is to their success. I picked, S'well bottle as my brand and going through their media outlets showed me how important their message is in terms of their success. S'well's big thing is charity and being environmentally friendly. Personally, I bought a S'well water bottle over a year ago because I saw one of their Instagram pictures that talked about how a portion of the money went towards UNICEF. As I was doing last weeks assignment, I noticed Swell's website, Facebook and Twitter got the charity and environmental message across the first 2 minutes on the website or page. On the other hand, the brands look is also very important. While all of their media outlets are very clean and fresh looking, Swell's Instagram focuses on being astectically pleasing and attractive to the eye. I've noticed that a lot of new brands are focusing on the look a lot more because that is a huge factor to millenials when purchasing something. It was really interesting to see, we are always taught how important a brand reputation is but I never realized which aspects and factors were so important to the brand.  I find it very intersting that something as simple as a message and attractive pictures can convince someone to make a purchase. 

As an advertising student, we learn about brand perception being crucial. It was interesting to me to see just how important it is to a companies identity - and ultimately, the brands success. The brand I chose was lululemon. After looking at how crisp and well maintained their Facebook, Instagram and website were, it made me have positive feelings toward the brand. They have a theme to their social media that coincides with their marketing message. Their social media talks about different fitness activities in addition to just their clothes. In essence, it creates a mini community of people who live the same lifestyle and need fashionable workout gear to accompany that. It made me trust the brand more, and take more of an interest in it. This was all very deliberate by the people who market for lululemon. I hope I can harness those skills for future branding opportunities in order to create a similar effect. 

Finding out that a business' social media presence could make or break them was very interesting. I read an article that explained that a business needs to make some executive decisions regarding which social media platform they choose. I just thought that was very interesting reading how their social presence takes more planning than you would originally think.

Our class inbound marketing conversation really excited me. Digital marketing has stressed the importance of developing relationships between clients and their clientele. Traditionally, I think marketers have always thought of marketing as an outbound process. Inbound marketing includes a multitude of digital marketing activities to develop a casual customer or lead into a brand advocate. 

As we continue through this class, I'm looking forward to seeing how my brand (Anheuser-Busch) uses inbound marketing in its digital marketing strategy. 

For me, social media has always just been something used for entertainment, to pass time, or even to stay connected to old friends. I had never really thought about how much companies use social media to gain a following and grow their businesses. While doing my research, I found it really interesting how much my company (Starbucks) was using social media not just to promote their business, but to reach out and identify with their community.

As a journalism student, taking this class is very different for me. I have learned a great deal since enrolling in this course. Something that really interested me was all of the different types of "brands" there are. I have learned a lot on what makes a companies brand and how this can make or break a company/business.