Go beyond just using social. Help your company or organization thrive.
What is the most compelling piece of social media content you’ve shared this week? Was it a video? A picture? What about ads? What’s the most compelling advertisement that motivated you enough to either click or buy?
Social media, mobile and digital are no longer stand-alone tactics and have evolved quickly beyond their descriptive names to be integrated strategically into advertising, PR, media and the communication industries. Social media strategy has quickly become one of the most important ways to communicate.
Facts Don’t Lie
A recent study of social media research shows that there are two key factors driving the social web:
- Mobile – people accessing the internet via mobile increased by 60.3% to 818.4 million between 2012 and 2014.
- Older user adoption – on Twitter the 55-64 year age bracket is the fastest growing demographic with 79% growth rate since 2012, while the fastest growing demographic on Facebook and Google+ is the 45-54 year age bracket.
Social Media Engagement
- 88.2% of U.S. companies will use social networks for marketing purposes, and that number is estimated to reach 89.4% by 2017.
Social Media Trends That will take over in 2017
- 28% of consumers said a brand's social presence was the biggest reason to try new products or services.
Knowing this, how would you say you’re leveraging mobile in your workplace? How about social adoption? How are you successfully leveraging social media and user data to help your company or organization thrive?
We understand social media is important. We’re on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn. But many companies use their corporate social channels in the same fashion that they use it personally. This doesn’t work.
No Clear Strategy
A recent study conducted by the Altimeter Group found that marketers from companies of all sizes, experience levels and positions shared the same struggle in accurately measuring the ROI for social media marketing. As a result, nearly half of the surveyed marketers are not purposefully measuring their social efforts. They also found the vast majority of brands don’t have a thoughtful social media measurement system in place.
If everyone is online and social, how can we effectively connect to them in ways that matter for our companies and organizations?
Dr. Saleem Alhabash has some ideas. One is to call out the elephant in the room. He says that some people are “excellent users, but poor strategic communicators using social media.” There has to be a way with resources and experience to move the needle towards taking what we naturally do on social media and making it matter for our intended audiences.
"The StratCom M.A. program really helps you conceptualize your work. You can still do okay with trial and error, but here you have excellent faculty that have already gone through this and also learned about it from a theoretical and methodological basis so they can really compile this into a number of courses you can take in a small packet and can use that to advance your professional career." - Dr. Saleem Alhabash
Learn More About Digital Media Strategy
Time to Practice
Part of the fabric of the StratCom M.A. program is the marriage of theoretical to practical. The program and faculty partner with students who are practicing to find a “sweet spot” of learning and practice. As you learn in the program, you can immediately practice what you’re learning in your workplace. It’s no longer theoretical. It’s both an on-demand learning and practice together.
“There is no digital strategy, only strategy in a digital world.” - Bud Caddell
Learn how to apply a wide variety of strategic communication functions including digital and non-digital fundamental elements such as digital advertising, crisis communications, media relations, branding, corporate communications, employee communications, influencer targeting, content creation, curation, data analytics, ethics and more.
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Visit stratcom.msu.edu to learn more about the program including a weekly 30-minute informational webinar for details and additional resources.