Whether you’re a casual user or trying to implement it into your business, social media has become an important aspect of our everyday life and has helped an endless amount of people boost their brand.

If you don’t have social media yet in this day and age, you might get looked at as an alien from another universe. Social media platforms are almost certainly on everyone’s phones. This is the age of digital media. If you’re not yet a part of it, here’s how you can make social media useful for you.

First, and most obviously, create an account on the social media platform you think will best suit your style and purpose. There are multiple platforms to choose from including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. These are arguably the five most popular social media sites and they all have their own specific tools and aspects that make them unique. Although all these platforms involve a lot of similarities, Facebook and Twitter are similar in that they are mostly posts that are focused on the words, while Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok focus on posts with an image or video.

You wouldn’t necessarily want to download every single social media platform known to man right off the bat without first dipping your toes into one to see how you like it. Let’s say for the purpose of this article, you first download Twitter. Once you create your account and get your profile set up, here are some things you can then follow up with.

First, personalize your profile and make sure it best represents you. Include an updated picture and bio of yourself so other people know it is indeed you.

Next, find accounts of people you may know personally, famous people you are interested in keeping up with, accounts that can give you the type of news you want, your favorite sports teams, and so on. Any account you think will benefit your feed with valuable information is worth a follow.

Also, keep in mind that not everything is worth a tweet or a post on whatever social media site you’re using. Your followers most likely do not care that you had steak for dinner. Unless your passion is cooking food or being a food critic, only post things that your followers will enjoy seeing and benefit from seeing on their timeline.

Social media has turned into a prime place for people to promote their brand. It is almost a must for businesses to use social media in order to raise awareness about their company. Think of using social media as a way to either promote your own brand, your business, or valuable ideas that others can consume and benefit from.

When you use social media for the first time or are someone who doesn’t use it often and wants to get back into it, don’t overdo it. Don’t immediately start posting random pictures from your camera roll or overused jokes people have heard of for years. Instead, figure out what you like, follow people you enjoy or know, and share things that are important to you and things that others will also enjoy. It’s all about posting content that is valuable to the consumer. Once you find out what is valuable to you and your followers, that’s when you start to post, and tweet, and share.

Digital Marketing is one of many crucial things you’ll need to include when running your business. You need it in order for people to see and recognize your brand. Digital Marketing isn’t just about putting out ads or billboards with your logo. There are multiple aspects to the advertising game that any existing business or startup can utilize. If you want to become a digital and social marketing star, here are 10 tips to help out.

1. Find Content Valuable to Consumers

The content you include in your marketing scheme should be useful and effective. When people read what you post, they should come away having learned something positive about your company. Then, hopefully, they’ll invest in what you offer. First impressions are always key.

2. Create A Marketing Strategy

Probably the first thing you do after recognizing what kind of content you want to create is manufacturing a marketing strategy. After coming up with what works best for your business, make a habit of updating or tweaking your marketing strategy to make sure you’re maximizing your performance online. Don’t lose track of what is successful for your company.

3. Establish an Email List

Having people sign up to receive newsletters or special announcements is great for a business. It keeps them engaged and they’ll think about your business when they see that email reach their inbox. Email lists can also include special deals exclusive only for people who sign up to receive emails.

4. Have a Positive Social Media Presence

Maybe the most important tip and that’s having a great presence on your social media platforms. Social media has become king for spreading information and getting the word out there about businesses. Use it often, and more importantly, effectively. You don’t necessarily have to post something every day on your social media accounts, but keeping a consistent trend of posting throughout every week is key. Utilizing a social media calendar can also be great for your business. Knowing when and what kind of content you post can make sure you’re not overdoing it on specific topics or forms of content.

5. Be Mobile Friendly

Make sure your business can be accessed from people’s phones. Everyone has a phone and everyone is probably on it too much during the day. Something as easy as a daily notification can spark something. Also, make sure your website can be viewed in a mobile version and that the website is clean and easy to navigate through.

6. Promote with Ads

It doesn’t hurt to spend a little money on digital advertising. Ads can be annoying but if they weren’t effective, businesses wouldn’t continue to spend money on them. Sites that get a lot of traffic can be the most helpful for your business as more people will see your name and logo.

7. Track Social Media and Business Analytics

Analytics can be your new best friend. Not every business looks at analytical data for their social media posts and website. Keeping track of how much and what kind of engagement you’re getting can only help your future decisions for your business. Your goal is to gain as much traffic as possible and having an analytics-type database to keep tabs on will be beneficial.

8. Include Great Design Aspects

One way to easily turn away potential customers is ugly or bland designs on your website or brand campaign. Make your brand look cool. Keep it fresh and trendy with today’s atmosphere. With your website, but also in each individual post, use design tools to your advantage and make the most of each thing you post. Having great things to post and talk about is crucial, but when your content is pretty to look at, that’s a cherry on top.

9. Understand Trends

Don’t always fall back to ideas and posts that did well months or years ago, unless of course those posts and ideas are still relevant in the present day. Be knowledgeable of what’s trending. It’s not a bad idea to promote a team towards all things social media-related, including the trends that could keep your business always one step ahead, or at least towards the top.

10. Listen to All Ideas

Digital Marketing isn’t possible with the mind of just one person. Creating a team of multiple people that can share ideas and put everything imaginable on the table leads to better ideas and actual things getting done. More people putting their heads together and thinking about the same issue is better than just a few.

I enjoyed taking a deeper dive into the digital marketing aspects and what makes a great marketing campaign for a business. The certifications were definitely effective and made me think more outside the box. They presented many different ideas and tips for a creative and useful digital marketing scheme. I was personally surprised at how easy it was to identify 10 tips to use for beginners. Being a beginner myself, it makes me more confident in what exactly can be done to maximize the amount and kind of content I can produce for my own business or a business I could potentially work for.

This assignment reminds me of the content calendar we created in a previous assignment. A content calendar now seems more important to use for a business. It’s so key to stay in the know on what’s popular and trending in the social media world. Being able to plan ahead and break down posts in a content calendar can be extremely beneficial for a business. They can try and be one step ahead of the competition and could ultimately attract more customers, or at least more traffic to their platforms.

Overall, I now have something that I created myself that I could go back and look at for some help if I continue towards a career that involves social media and marketing. There are so many articles out there about anything, not just digital marketing, but having your own work to look back at makes me feel good. Also, the sites containing all the information for the certifications are always there to access again. The amount of ideas they present is almost overwhelming and I’m glad we have those resources at our disposal. I also enjoy continuing to complete assignments in our own personal blog, which allows me to keep using it and become more invested in it.

I feel like a lot can be taken away from consistently writing a blog. I began writing for a blog a few years back along with a buddy of mine but we failed to keep up with it and only made posts every week for about two months. We wrote about our most passionate topic, that being sports. Whether it was college or professional, we experimented with writing articles for just a short period of time.

Now, with the help of some blog post readings, there’s a slight itch that has crawled back to me about wanting to write articles again, but try to keep with it for an extended period of time. The article from Spencer Haws titled, “29 BIGGEST OBSTACLES TO STARTING A SUCCESSFUL BLOG OR WEBSITE,” is a useful article to keep tabs on for any problems related to starting a blog and keeping with it. The biggest obstacles being finding good content to write about, how to get traffic, and maybe the biggest obstacle for me being time.

I think beginning a blog can attribute to your personal brand as well. It seems now more than ever people are trying to create a popping brand for themselves and produce worthy content. Learning about how to create an effective blog that people will invest into and gaining traffic for the blogs is something I hope to accomplish in my future career.

As long as people are still interested in sports (which they definitely are), revamping the website and getting back to writing blogs can be in my near future. I feel like there’s still an interest in reading blogs too. I take time occasionally to read articles on sites like ESPN and Barstool Sports. These articles are usually posted on their social media accounts too which is an effective tool to gain more traffic. Maybe the most important tool is social media to help jumpstart a trend of blog posts.

I came from Greenfield, Indiana, and went to a small high school, Eastern Hancock, which is about 40 minutes east of Indianapolis. I graduated with 115 kids in my class. I am currently a senior at Ball State, majoring in Public Relations and minoring in Marketing. I have really enjoyed the classes I’ve taken in three and half years so far on campus. Between journalism, marketing, and communications, I’ve learned important and useful tools that I’ll be able to incorporate in my career and for the rest of my life.

I first learned about digital marketing tools when I began the school days of my junior and senior years working at a radio station. It was important for the radio station to promote itself to the public and get more ears to listen to the station. Also, for a small community like where I’m from, those people can rally around the station and promote it themselves, especially if the station is a positive factor in the community.

Nowadays, I’m involved with a group that broadcasts high school sporting events throughout the entire year in and around central Indiana. I’ve been a broadcaster for Indiana SRN for just over one year now. SRN has a great presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. Twitter and Facebook are used to promote our games, and the schools we work with. The YouTube page is used to live stream the games. Not only do I commentate on the games but I also help my boss create and maintain relationships with local businesses that may want to sponsor our broadcasts. I’m also very active with my personal social media accounts, and the SRN accounts, making sure I post meaningful content that promotes our coverage and directs fans to our games.

I appreciate the help that Ball State has offered to me in the courses the past 3 and a half years I’ve taken and I know it will go with me in my future endeavors and digital marketing ability.