Social Media as a Passion

Hi I'm Melanie and I am passionate about all things social media! Welcome to my blog! 

I am a firm believer that having passion for something whether it's your career, hobby or a subject will definitely work in your favour in the long run.  I love social media and I feel lucky that it's not only part of my personal life but my professional life as well. When I recently watched Social Media: The Movie for this course, I had initially thought that I would be familiar and experienced with the majority of the material however, I was pleasantly surprised that there was still much that I have to learn despite my years of experience. A key takeaway from all of the social media experts was to focus on the platform you love and go with it!! Do not feel the need to use all platforms for your business because unless you have the capacity to manage all of them with sufficient passion and frequency, they WILL fail!

Looking back on brands I know, one can always tell which companies invests in social media vs those that don't prioritize it and do not believe it is worth the investment of time or money. I often find that many smaller businesses do not have the funds to hire someone who is dedicated to growing the company's online presence but instead believe they can do it themselves. Often, due to the business owner's passion, they themselves take on the responsibility to develop and grow the brand's social media presence however, they do not have sufficient time or energy to invest in social media.  The million other critical items take priority and the social media presence takes is forgotten or takes a back seat. 

When I was watching the movie's Instagram expert - she mentioned that the top 3 categories that succeed on the platform are the three F's - Fashion, Food and Fitness. Luckily for me, I work for 2 food companies. When I took on Crave Doughnut's social, I was given the task to help grow their Instagram presence. At the time, they had already succeeded quite well with their Facebook page and as a brand, they were looking to expand onto Instagram. Facebook was great for word of mouth but I noticed that a lot of their Facebook fans were in an older demographic. As such, I wanted to expand to a younger audience who would appreciate how beautiful and "Instagram worthy" the doughnuts were. With the help of analytics/insights I have been able to determine what photos work as well as the posting times that encourage the greatest engagement. I'm proud to say we've grown to almost 30k in just under a year! 

Overall, the movie helped me realize that it's important to focus on the platform that you are most passionate about and once you succeed, you can go to the next one!