Results of Community Based Team Projects
What?
This semester our group
focused on a social media marketing campaign for Darcy Lear who is a Spanish
Lecturer at the prestigious University of Chicago. Here business, DarcyLear.com offers a variety of
services including academics (writing coach for PhD candidates), job/career
transitions (resume critiquing and interview preparation), and on campus
workshops (interview preparations, professional school applications, and job
search documents).
In a time like now when
social media is extremely popular, we knew that we needed to utilize the most
commonly used outlets in order to ensure that Darcy’s services would be publicized
to the fullest. One major source that we utilized was Darcy's Twitter page, which was very
beneficial to our project. Twitter allowed Darcy to be connected to other
professionals that offered similar services while simultaneously promoting her
own. Marcos and I were also aware of the “peak” hours of Twitter (which can be
classified as the time of day where individuals are the most active on the website)
and we recognized that Darcy needed to produce tweets during this time. We took
into consideration the busy schedule of Darcy and decided to use a database
called Hootsuite which gave Darcy the ability to plan her tweets from days to
even weeks ahead. The database would automatically post her tweets which
enabled her to market her services without the constant stress physically
tweeting every three hours.
One important aspect of
Spanish 332 that we also decided to use was the “hashtag”. In class, Professor
Abbott spoke about the importance of the hashtag and how it has the ability to
expose a smaller business to a broader audience. What is so fascinating about
this is that it is completely free of charge. We were able to promote Darcy’s
services faster and more efficiently.
In total, this campaign was
very successful. Darcy has increased her Twitter followers and has received some
clientele from this project. Although her numbers did not increase drastically,
we are very content with our results. It takes time to build a strong
foundation for a social media marketing campaign.
So what?
One thing that we have
definitely learned from this experience is the importance of time management.
In order for a social media marketing campaign to be successful one must
constantly be engaged on various outlets of social media. We are full aware
that life can be very busy so utilizing databases like Hootsuite, or
SocialOomph will make marketing less time consuming.
We also recognized the
importance of having multiple accounts on different platforms. During our
project, Marcos and I completely forgot about our Facebook clientele and this
is problematic because we could have potentially lost clients. By not staying
actively engaged on both websites, we put our Facebook campaign at risk. We are
now fully aware of how beneficial it is to pay close attention to multiple
outlets of marketing.
In short, Marcos and I
learned that there are easier ways to produce desired results. We also learned
that it is imperative to be familiar with new technology so that it is easier
to maneuver throughout the databases (Twitter, Facebook, Hootsuit, SocialOomph,
etc.). As technology continues to evolve, I am certain that newer resources
will be created for small business owners like Darcy Lear.
Now what?
With the videos and tweets we
helped Darcy compose, we are also reaching out to a wide variety of people. The
videos are posted on YouTube offering interview skills techniques in bothSpanish and English. Since YouTube is so widely used, the chance to reach out
and affect others outside of the Champaign-Urbana community dramatically
increases. A lot of the time, person who are looking for jobs aren't sure of
how to appropriately respond to a lot of the questions. With help from such an
academic professional, like Darcy, were able to best assist those needing
guidance for their interview processes. Working with social media and Darcy has
helped us learn a lot about the "twittersphere" and the plethora of
people we actually reach out to. Even if we're not able to personally help
these people, they can use any of the other videos Darcy's posted as references
or also look up Darcy's Twitter for informative consulting and advising tips.
Within the community it's important to spread the word about projects and people
like Darcy. Being in such an academic setting, the advice is very useful for
those seeking employment post-graduation or throughout their education.
Although Darcy's Twitter followers have increased a lot as well with Facebook
subscribers, there's still a long way to go. To maximize the effectiveness of
Darcy's consulting, the course and community should follow and subscribe to her
page. The easiest thing about this all is that it's so simplistic. It's either
on Facebook, Twitter, or Darcy's blog so it's really accessible to the majority
of people. Hopefully Darcy Lear's social media can grow to help a lot more
people than just the Champaign-Urbana and UIUC community and that others may
gain such insight from the very useful information.
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