Social. Media. Presence. It’s something that I think about when it comes to my personal profiles and is something I’ve started thinking about when it comes to my group’s digital media startup idea. What is our ultimate goal with the startup? Which platforms will be the best for us to use and reach our audience at? What will our presence and our archetype be?

In “How to Build a Social Media Marketing Funnel That Converts,” Nicholas Scalice discusses how having a strong social media presence is important and can play a large role in your company’s marketing strategy. He also mentions that social media can serve as a marketing funnel, or the path customers take from when they first become aware of your brand to when they actually make a purchase. With social media, you have to think about where the people who are most likely to want your product are. Scalice says it’s important to start with establishing your company’s goals, to focus on a few key strategies for each social media platform, to discover your target audience, to monitor your social engagement and impression statistics and to be flexible.

With my group’s startup, we’ve talked about how Twitter, Instagram and Facebook would all be useful to our social media strategy in different ways. Twitter is where a lot of media professionals are and where a lot of people our age are, so it would be a good idea to have a presence where our customers are. Instagram is obviously reliant on visually pleasing photographs and the platform has a younger audience as well, so it would be beneficial for us if we wanted to document the events and things we are working on and to keep our audience engaged with insta stories. Facebook is great for having closed groups and for creating public and private events, which would also be beneficial tools to have. Overall, different platforms can serve a company in different ways, and some platforms aren’t the best for certain companies. As we talked about in class, it’s pointless to reach a lot of people who are not even likely to be your customer.

According to an article titled “What’s the Value of a Like?” by the Harvard Business Review, companies can use social media incorrectly. There’s a misconception that endorsing a brand automatically affects customer behavior or leads to increased purchasing. I thought it was interesting when the article brought up this point: “It’s possible that getting people to follow a brand on social media makes them buy more. But it’s also possible that those who already have positive feelings toward a brand are more likely to follow it in the first place, and that’s why they spend more than nonfollowers.”

Properly strategizing can allow for more connections with potential customers, help to build loyal customers and provide higher returns on investment, the article said. I agree and think that social media is really important in connecting and communicating with your customers.

When I started thinking about the kinds of brands and companies I follow on social media, Aerie’s social media presence came to mind. I mostly engage with Aerie on Instagram because they really thrive on photographs. Their entire campaign is that they don’t retouch their photos, so you get to see real, genuine humans modeling their clothes. It definitely makes sense for them to be active on Instagram and—as a customer—I definitely engage with their posts and find my way to the link in their bio to look through and sometimes purchase their products. It just works for me. I also follow them on Facebook and Twitter, but don’t really engage with them there.

I do think with social media, it can sometimes be difficult to strategize. Before this class, I did automatically associate a lot of likes and followers with a lot of sales or profitability. But popularity isn’t always the goal. With companies, it’s about how to be profitable.