Week 16 Assignment, Part 1

What have I enjoyed most about this class? What is my future strategy? How much time will my future business spend on Social Media? If you would have asked me this questions at the beginning of class I'm sure my answers would have been a wee bit different than they are now. When you look at using a singular social media platform the answers are very straight forward. When you look at integrating all aspects of your business with multiple social media outlets, the answer becomes very complicated indeed. Here are my detailed thoughts based on the full semester's work and exploration.

I'd have to say the thing I have enjoyed most is Instagram both in my personal life and when thinking of using it for business. Except for the differences in use between a mobile device as compared to using the platform on a desktop computer, Instagram has been great. The simple interface, limited menu items, and photography centric style allows me to scale my use of it to meet all the needs of either my personal social desires or my business needs. I can use Instagram as a marketing tool or a operational tool if my business needed it. The ability to connect with other users that may be interested in my business with Instagram is pretty direct, allowing me to build my Instagram base rather quickly. Consequently, the thing I enjoyed the least as we got further into the class was the 800 pound Gorilla that is Facebook. The numerous nested layers of menus and options that are seemingly designed to force you to give up and pay Facebook to do your marketing are such a turn off. It seems designed to preclude me from wanting to use it more for my business. I can't stand the excessive number of notifications and constant push for me to spend money on Facebook marketing.

My future strategy. For a quick recap of the business that is forming in my mind, it is what you call a "motorcycle repair shop, plus". The "plus" being an event location, coffee bar, hangout and overall just a cool place to be. A business like that will require a very detailed online and social media strategy. The product I'll be offering is more of an experience that hard goods. Selling that experience will be tough to do with traditional marketing. With that being said, I think the online and social media platforms I'll use will be Instagram, YouTube, Patreon and a blog. I chose these for their ease of use, the type of media they concentrate on and my own desires I have for expressing my personal creativity. A key philosophical aspect of my business will be if people don't want me as I am, then I don't want them to be my customers. If my creative side turns away some customers, I can only hope that others are attracted to it. Instagram will be my real time updates throughout the day. YouTube will be there to really showcase the experience I am selling. Patreon will be used as a fund raiser and community builder. The blog will be for getting deeper into a subject where a slower pace and more in depth research is important.

With this multi-prong strategy I imagine that I will spend a significant portion of my day in content creation. That is why I chose Instagram as that is quick and easy and will allow me to put out material fast enough to keep people interested in my brand. YouTube will be a tough one as editing and video direction are very specific skills. I think I will start by doing this 10 hours a week at first by myself. As soon as I can, I'll expand this aspect of my company by hiring a dedicated YouTube content creator. The blog will be a few hours a week in my "spare" time. Patreon will take advantage of the other platforms. I can put out Patron first content that is the same content as on the other platforms, just released earlier to my Patrons as a reward for their funding. Fully half of my business time will be on content and I'll dial the number of hours in as the business grows.

For the next month I am going to concentrate on cleaning up my social media accounts based on the topics we covered in class to streamline how I present myself to the world. This may mean deleting some accounts and changing the settings on the others. I will also get my hobby blog back to a weekly posting schedule. I will be doing some interviews with other content creators as a way to expand my audience. I am also going to try my hand at video content creation over the next three months. It will be busy, but fun!