8. our mission
➔ Prepare you for careers in social
media communication.
➔ Learn to communicate with
online communities
➔ Learn to build and maintain
consumer loyalty.
➔ Use analytics to evaluate
effectiveness of campaigns.
26. entry-level social jobs
➔ community manager participates
online as a brand ~$32k
➔ social media specialist develops
strategies ~$38k
➔ social media coordinator posts on
message ~$38k
➔ social media analyst reads metrics
and trends ~$45k
➔ social media planner allocates the
budget ~$45k
➔ social media manager runs the
campaign ~$46k
source: forbes.com
Before I tell you about the social media major at FIDM I want to start with some stats you might find interesting.
Here’s what happens in a minute on the internet today.
If you were to measure it in feet, how much content do we scroll through on Facebook each day.
In a video ad the typical story arc begins with background information and gets more compelling as time goes on until at about 20 seconds or so comes the main message is delivered
Meanwhile, YouTube tells us the viewership arc - meaning how long a viewer is watching or paying attention to our ad - goes in the exact opposite direction. like this. As time goes on, the viewers click off. Think about it, do you really ever skip pushing the “Skip” button?)
The story arc and the viewership arc intersect at about 6 seconds. Do you think there’s a problem here???
They intersect before the main message
What does this mean and what does it have to do with a social media degree at FIDM?
It means that a marketer in 2018 has to think from a customer first mindset.
Creating content that is engaging, on message, and makes use of the data now available to us to make better choices to delight our customer and serve our brand.
That's in essence our mission!
But you might read all that and still wonder, “What does all that mean?”
I like to boil it down even simpler - whether I'm talking to our industry partners or prospective students.
I call it our three pillars of a social media degree from FIDM.
The first three class are taught within a different major which also serves the purpose of mixing our students up with people with different interests.
I listed these by technical skill rather than class name. Some of these skills are learned in social media courses others are taught within our Graphics degree.
And where we're really putting a lot of focus right now is on those analytics. The marketing and the design pieces make us cross-curricular. The analytics piece sets us apart, not just here at FIDM but within higher education.
We've spoken to several industry partners and asked them what do they need from our students? And the answer is analytical skills: anyone can read a google analytics chart but can you explain the how and why? For example, we had a spike in traffic to our website last Wednesday and we didn’t do anything differently that day… how and why did that happen? That's what marketing executives want from our students and that’s what we teach.
We believe that’s the magic sauce to make you a social media titan. ANd we came to that conclusion after talking to people at agencies and chief marketing officers at companies who told us the skills they want their employees to have.
This is the degree of now.
And that need is only going to grow in the coming years. Emarketer reports that the digital ad spend will grow at more than double the pace of the overall ad industry through at least 2020.
Marketing agencies, Fortune 500 companies and small companies alike will all need employees to run their social media marketing efforts. Think about it… someone’s got to spend all those advertising dollars.
So we teach how to create the ad, design the ad and use measurement tools throughout the process to guide our choices.
There are several trends that we’re watching… I just want to mention two so you can understand our degree is more than just posting to Instagram and creating a Snap.
The mega-influencer (someone with a follower count over 1-million) is all about brand awareness and charging upwards of $200k for a promoted post. Brands can’t afford it and it’s not driving sales.
What we’ve learned is, as follower counts go down, engagement rates go up. Just think about it, when no one has liked a post by your favorite influencer you feel like maybe she’ll know you/see you/DM you.
With microinfluencers that’s always the case… I can be one of 23 likes with a microinfluencer or I can be one of 23,000 likes with a regular influencer.
Another trend we’re keeping an eye on is a bot.
Take a look at this example on your screen of the Taco emoji engine. To celebrate the launch of the emoji (something Taco Bell was pushing hard to have happen) the created this bot. On Twitter you would message @TacoBell with the taco emoji and any other emoji and they replied with an image or a gif. That auto-reply, that’s a bot. And it got INSANE ENGAGEMENT.
Taco bell didn’t stop there… (go to the next slide).
They created the Tacobot.
Taco Bell is a millennial brand so inside of an app called Slack- a workflow app targeting millennials - they allowed users to order Taco Bell.
Watch this conversation unfold… and remember this isn’t a human, this is a bot programmed to respond.
Watch the brand voice coming through.
Super amazing… super powerful marketing tech.
At FIDM we want our students to become social stars.
Not the social stars of yesteray.
This is Scott Linderbaum and Ben Majoy… they’re the dudes behind the Tacobot at Deutsch (a major marketing agency). These are the social stars we want our students to become.
We don’t expect our students will start there… they’re more likely to start here.