Week 16 Part A: Developing Your Marketing Strategy

In terms of planning my future strategy, I think Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok are the best platforms for me, as well as perhaps an email newsletter once I get a stronger following. I definitely want to better utilize hashtags in all of my posts and really figure out which ones bring in new people. I need to spend more time retweeting others' posts, as well, and following people I might want to follow ME. I know my sister did that for her business in St. Louis and that approach worked really well for her. It's a nice way to be active rather than passive in terms of getting new followers.

I personally enjoyed using Facebook and Instagram most in this class, particularly IG stories and general posts. I think those same stories could be used on TikTok too as reels, which I'm excited to test out. I'd also say the platforms that came easiest for me to use were Facebook and Instagram. Other things like LinkedIn felt a little forced since my business is pretty informal and local/not professionally related.

On the flip side, I AM interested to see if anything comes of my LinkedIn groups, along with any MeetUp groups. I do believe MeetUp could be great for my business since it's family/parenting related and a lot of parents want to do things with other people who have kids.

Another angle I would want to try is using influencers, and doing a collaboration with someone like FamDiego. A lot of my classmates had great feedback on that and some great ideas.

I would say since it's just me running the business and social media, along with my full-time job, I would probably spend (realistically) only 2-4 hours on social for my business to begin with. I definitely need to just get out there and do some activities, posts, etc. I don't have a big budget, nor a lot of manpower, so it's going to be very grassroots at first!

Eventually, once I understand my market a little better, I'd love to run a couple test ads for Facebook and Instagram. I thought the format for creating and managing them was really user friendly and fun!

I really like the idea of having a communal email account. That's really easy to set up and will position me for better communications if I grow. The editorial calendar is also something I will use. I like looking up special holidays and generating posts based on that. And it's nice to use downtime (when you have it) to generate content instead of always scrambling. A lot of my content will have to do with events, so I can always be on the lookout for things to post about. I think I would do about 50% planned posts and 50% scheduled in advance.

Using Google Drive is another great tip that I hadn't thought of. I use Google docs and sheets for work, and it's a great way for everyone to make edits, share information, and keep everything in a central location.

As for contests, I think that would be super fun to do, especially if I eventually get comped tickets to local events like tree lightings, ice skating rinks, stays at local hotels, visits to Legoland, etc. I just have to reach out to those businesses and then hopefully one day they'll reach out to me once I have a larger following!

Lots of food for thought, thank you so much!