Wk17: Wrapping It Up

      I can honestly say I thoroughly enjoyed this class despite the hiccups I had with my personal life affecting how and when I was able to complete the lessons. Claudia was a fantastic teacher and made the lessons very easily understood and workable. I doubt I would have learned as much or succeeded as I did with another teacher. The lessons were well thought out and written and each had a specific purpose in the class to help us create and build new skills as we move forward in our social media usage. 

     My use of social media has changed quite a bit over the semester. I am much more aware of when and how I publish my posts and ensure that my Instagram posts have included hashtags to expand my audience. I feel a lot more confident running my businesses now than I did before as I only had personal use knowledge of social media which is quite different. 

     I have seen a lot of growth on my Whatwolf pages through this class, less so on Power Gamers though that is understandable as it was not my main content focus. I'm seeing around 2-3x the amount of engagement, especially on Instagram, and it makes me very hopeful moving forward that I can continue this trend of spreading my art through the world. 

     That being said, I do intend to focus my eye a little more on Power Gamers to help push that forward. I have been having issues with our Twitch chatbot as it is supposed to run certain commands on a timer, two of which have our social media links included. Once I figure out that issue or swap to a different bot, which seems like the better choice, I'm hoping that the social media links through our Twitch, especially during our Among Us Mondays, we will begin seeing growth there as well.

     All in all, I can't say enough how much I gained from this class. I was always very unsure and uneasy about being a 'social media manager' for my projects as I had no experience outside of personal use but I'm now feeling a bit more confident in my position. I'm very excited to continue my learning of how Social Media works and can benefit me as I watch my businesses grow!

Wk16: Social Media Management Tools

      I have been using Hootesuite for a few years now to help manage my online content creation. As my businesses are quite small and do not use many media outlets I am able to get by with the limited Free plan which allows you to connect two social media accounts, schedule up to 5 messages, and have one user logged in at a time. I am quite happy the Facebook has updated their Instagram integration since I began using Hootesuite (you used to be able to have 3 accounts under the free tier, I had Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) as it has made the limited Free account much easier to use. 

     As I had mentioned Hootesuite does have a Free option but they also have 4 tiers of business options for subscription. The first is their Professional tier which allows you 1 user, 10 social media accounts, unlimited scheduled posts, and access to all inbox messages in one space, this tier costs $49 per month and includes a 30-day free trial. Next will be the Team tier which allows 3 users, 20 social accounts, unlimited scheduled posts, access to all inbox messages in one space, manage your team access and roles, and manually assign posts or comments to specific users, this tier costs $129 per month and includes a 30-day free trial. Following that we have the Business tier which allows 5+ users, 35 social accounts, unlimited scheduled posts, access to all inbox messages in one space, manage your team access and roles, manually assign posts or comments to specific users, review posts before they are published, extended functionality with some apps, and 24/7 support access, this tier costs $599 per month and includes a 30-day free trial. Finally, we have the Enterprise tier which allows unlimited users, 50 social accounts, unlimited scheduled posts, access to all inbox messages in one space, manage your team access and roles, automatically assign posts or comments to specific users, review posts before they are published, extended functionality with some apps, 24/7 support access, a quarterly business review, unlimited post promotions, reports on team performance, and custom solutions, this tier requires you to contact Hootesuite with an upgrade request.

     I can honestly and easily say I can see myself remaining with Hootesuite for the foreseeable future for its ease of use and the features I have access to in the free tier. As my businesses grow I think it would be a fantastic investment to grow my Hootesuite subscription alongside it to keep a good control over my social media accounts in one place. 

Wk15-B: Building Out Your Strategy

 Whatwolf

• Current content in production - 24 (ish) dnd portraits for practice/fun
• Current plan with these - post 4 a week, twice if I have enough finished.
• Check Facebook/Instagram Insights to see what time and weekday I published the first batch to see if that worked or I need to experiment with a more optimal time.
• Create and upload art inspired by Power Gamers campaign for merchandising
• Content in the wings: Animal Pun Stickers for Honey Inkwell, Power Gamer stickers and sticker sheets to be distributed to Honey Inkwell for production and sales, Whatwolf stickers and sticker sheets to be distributed to Honey Inkwell for production and sales, updated mosh Animaze/Facerig/Vtuber model for streaming and content recording (I have a webcam program that allows me to be mosh when I stream).

Due to a lack of available backlogged content, I am a little limited in what I can currently plan with Whatwolf. I am taking the summer semester off to focus on myself/my ventures before completing my degree so I intend to create a small backlog to ensure I have more consistency in my postings. 

 Power Gamers

• Current content in production - 
• Monday Nights from 7-9pm PST community game night for Among Us to build audience & rapport with current viewers.
• Alternating Fridays from 7-9:30pm PST The Auror's Academy- A Harry Potter Based/Inspired D&D campaign
• Saturdays from 7:15-9:30pm PST The Legends of Lyria: Adventures of Clan Omerta - A low fantasy adventure D&D campaign
• Current Ideas for future content -
• Fan art (when it is made) posted to Twitter/Facebook
• New emotes and merch art (to be done this summer)
• A potential newsletter summing up the first 2 chapters and then released monthly or bi-monthly with episode synopses (in discussion with the group about logistics etc)

Wk15-A: Developing Your Marketing Strategy

      For Whatwolf my strategy moving forward will be to continue engaging mostly on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to continue to grow my audience while using Twitch to supplement it. These platforms will allow me to stay under the guise of my persona mosh and keep the brand fluid with itself. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are the best choices for Whatwolf in my opinion as they have a focus on media posts and I can keep people abreast of art and life updates swiftly and I can use Twitch alongside them to continue to grow my audience by finding new people with similar interests. 

     For Power Gamers, much of the above is valid except for Instagram as we do not usually do media-style posts outside of stock images or gifs with session announcements. We have a community game night every Monday from 7-9pm pst where we chat and play Among Us with viewers and we have used that to steadily grow and expand our audience.

     I really enjoyed learning the various social media platforms during this course, it gave me much more insight into how algorithms and advertising works and gave me a better idea of how to market myself. I think that my businesses should primarily focus on social media marketing outside of content creation as I continue to build my name and audiences. 

Wk14-B: What we Learn from FaceBook Analytics

      Facebook has a wide range of important analytical information that you can access once you have reached 100 page likes at minimum. This information can help you plan when the best times to schedule posts or new information releases to ensure you get optimal engagement. Over the last month, I have been toying with post upload times and days of the week to get a wide spread of information to further help me figure out my page audience's trends.

     Despite my low health recently I have been making moves to keep up with semi-regular posts on my Whatwolf page to show off the new art I have finished and begin to drop hints towards accepting commissions soon. It has really shown in my analytics that I am posting rather sporadically and I am having varying results currently because of that. 

     For instance, let's take a look at my Post Reach and Post Engagement numbers. They are both currently in the red as you can see in the following screenshot. Now, this comes as a surprise to me as I legitimately thought I had been experiencing much more engagement and reach than the page was used to. Now, while that is technically true if you look at other analyses from the page with the views, likes, and follows being positive the engagement and reach have gone lower. This is telling me that I need to change how I present the posts, maybe try a new style of captioning, find ways to directly engage the audience despite not actively engaging via comments initially. 

     I am also seeing that my shares are not getting the attention that I had hoped they would. I was trying to use them to expand my audience into other areas that I am interested in but I am unsure if I will continue with this plan as a 'main' thought as it isn't giving my page the boost in views or engagement that I had hoped it would. On one hand, it's fantastic, knowing that my audience would prefer to interact with my creations versus the ones that I share from other pages but on the other, I was truly hoping for some small audience boosts via these posts.

   In conclusion, there are a lot of handy insights you can access through Facebook and Instagram analytics. Use them to your advantage to find the best times and days to post your content and learn how and when your audience is most likely to engage and your business page will succeed!

Wk14-A: What we Learn from Google Analytics

      I think that for my own pages the best analytics to focus on initially would be users/new users and the average engagement time. With an art page, the longer people spend on the website the longer they are looking at the work and potentially purchasing the work. Eventually, engagement when I have more interactivity involved, i.e. contact forms/buttons, merchandise page hits etc. 

Wk13-B: Developing Online Advertising

 

     I built these ads to reflect what I know catches my eye. In the 3rd screenshot, you can see the audience interests that I input to help target my audience on Instagram and Facebook. I think that they would work well, at the very least better than the last ad campaign I ran! I tried to choose the most eye-catching images I've uploaded recently as well as a wide range of styles of art I do.