Week 17 final

My use of social media for our business changed dramatically during this semester, in terms of staying aware with the entire tools that social media brings. I was introduced to the diverse type of platforms that were available outside of the more popular ones. These different social platforms allowed us to examine our own use of social media, and the time we needed to invest in establishing and updating various sites. This led me to understand what it takes to manage multiple sites, in terms of man hours and money. We could no longer keep up with timely posting and update information. We had to hire a social media person that managed postings and updated all sites on a daily basis. We would have never considered looking at social media for business this carefully if not for this class. We learned how important it is to stay updated on all our sites, which can lead to a positive experience for all our visitors online. 
   
The most impact social media brought to our business are local awareness and improved presence with our online exposures. We have shown a significant increase in new students showing up at the studio based on their interactions with various websites (Groupon,Facebook, Twitter, and Meetup,)

From a business perspective, my views on social media have changed. Its audience base is huge and the cost of advertising is reasonable. It provides small businesses an easy do it yourself marketing campaign, a control of contents and multiple options of scheduling your ads.

After this semester I now have a better understanding of what to develop and how to use it as an effective tool for our business. But time and money still determine the end results of how successful each of our business campaigns will be.

I found several social media platforms like blogging, LinkedIn, and Meetup that we never considered until this semester. I'm considering trying out blogging for personal and business interactions. I like the Meetup for its accessibility to group interest base on different activity plans. The response from our event posting with Meetup has been very positive with multiple people signing up with our program.