A Final Blog for CSIT155

  There definitely have been changes within the past several months taking this course for our company's, American Plumbing Heating and Air Conditioning's social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.  Within this semester not only did we incorporate some techniques learned in this course, but also hired a new team, Main Street Hub, to manage these accounts!  With this we were able to increase and accomplish our main goal: improve overall web presence.  We have posted community events, posted more content that is relatable to our target market, interacted with our consumers, and such. 

  We have slowly been increasing our business, though it is not as much as we would like.  I believe this is a gradual improvement that will in time show much better results.  However, increased interaction has happened through our content posts and reviews.  There is still improvements being made on a day to day basis and we hope this will show in our results overtime.  Like I mentioned before in previous blogs, our industry struggles with online interaction.  Looking at our competitions, they too have very little interactions with their consumers, yet strive to continue to maintain their presence and engagement with what they do have today.  We too will strive for better results.  Only time will tell! 

  Social media has changed in my viewpoint, due to being more of an advantage for businesses to market, advertise, and promote rather than just a means of social interactions and such.  There are advantages and disadvantages to this, however, for some other industries social media is a power house!   Restaurants for example can obtain great engagements with their consumers and draw in more business.  Retail is another example of benefiting from marketing, advertising, and promoting their brand with their consumers and potential target markets. 

  In developing a business, this course has opened my mind as to what is needed and how to make it happen.  If I were to open my own businesses, I believe this course has shown and taught me the basic and necessary tools to do so.  Even if I had already owned my own business, I would be able to improve and find where it was that needed these improvements and make these changes.  Although, I think another course may be needed to dig more deeper. 

  Overall, this course has given me more insight as to what platforms, tools, etc. is needed to successfully grow the businesses whether it is in the food, merchandise, or any other industries.  Understanding the concepts of how each platforms operate and results one can retrieve from them is also an important insight gained.  What have you gained from this course?  What are your plans for your future in social media?

Week 16C: Blogger's Comments

I have responded to the following three bloggers:

Clark_Bryce

Conahan_Patrick

Williams_Terence

Week 16B: Planning Your Future Strategy

1.    How much time do you think your business should spend on social media marketing and why?

Social media is not yet a strong avenue for our industry, however we should be on top of our engagements, reaches, presence, and activities alike.  It may surprise us later when it does become more of a focus in our industry.  For now, our continued efforts and time will remain on YouTube, Google, and Yelp.  Time spent on our other social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, will be less than that of YouTube, Google, and Yelp.  For instance, twice a week spent of less focused areas and others would range from every other day to every morning/afternoon.  This is where our consumers are when in need and is seeking out help for plumbing, heating, air conditioning, or backflow services.  And this is where we shall be!

 2.    In your blog, please explain why you chose the tools you did, and how you might use them to use and test a strategy over the next six months.

Over the next 6 months we will use Facebook and Google analysis to see our progress and make any changes if need be.  Engagement and bringing in more calls are some that we will focus on.  Building relationships through our online engagements will increase the latter. 

 3.    Plot out a rough draft plan of the next month of content across the sites you’ve chosen, and how you hope they might grow or sustain your business. Be as detailed as possible, including daily or weekly time requirements to meet the goals. 

Since we have an outside company who will be managing our social media platforms, this leaves us to manage the content going out, being published, and such.  We are currently teaming up to actually make these plans and strategies this week.  So I'm looking forward to seeing and learning more of what we can do to progress even further!