Simternship Reveiw

 The semester is coming to an end, which means we're wrapping up learning new content and completing projects in our Principles of Social Media class. One of our main recurring assignments was the Stukent Social Media Simternship. This was a digital simulation of a career as a social media specialist for a pretend bag brand called Buhi. 

    For fourteen weeks, I created social media content for the brand, selecting media, writing captions, and focusing on targeting specific demographics over multiple social media platforms. There were four distinct sections of the simulation. For the first few rounds, I was tasked with focusing on creating organic social media posts. There were regular posts on platforms like facebook and Instagram. While I did have to pay for the images I used, there was no budget set for daily targeting. This was probably the section I was msot successful in overall.

    The next section was paid social  media posts. These are like the ads you see on your feed when scrolling through social media. For this, I set a budget for marketing and created target demographic groups to optimize spending and promote conversions. I used these posts mostly to promote sales. I did like that these ran for the entire week so there was less individual work to do and I had to create fewer posts that were just a little more detailed in the set up process.

    The influencer rounds were my least favorite part of the simulation. I felt like the influencers were particularly greedy and asked way too much for the few number of posts I asked them to create. I soon figured out that the moderate and micro influencers were more effective than the the big famous ones. I would typically hire one of medium popularity and then do a couple posts form the micros to supplement. I just had a hard time coming up with an offer the influencers would accept in the three tries I got.

    The final rounds combined all three elements, which was honestly a lot to handle. Overall, I think this was a really good learning experience. I feel like I have a better understanding of the process and reasoning behind social media marketing. IT can be difficult to get started, but once you get the hang of it, it can be a really effective marketing tool.