Week 7 Recap: Social Media Channels and IMC

Another great week guys! I think you can now call yourselves IMC experts. It was very interesting to see how some brands are hitting it out of the ballpark with social media and are utilizing it fully with hashtags, an IMC approach, cross-channel promotion etc. It was even more interesting to see how many of them weren't quite up to par!

Some tidbits to take away from this week:

•  IMC is more than just logo and imagery -- it's about the overall content and campaign (and much, much more, but that would be a whole other course!). For example, although Target may be currently running Halloween specials, they still have other mini campaigns they have to maintain the marketing for to keep all aspects of their business going (i.e. Target Baby or perhaps they could have an October pink campaign for breast cancer awareness). Even if the main campaign is Halloween, a post about Going Pink on Facebook, a tweet reminding you to donate, a Pin board with Pink ideas, or a YouTube video on how Target donates to research should be part of the Pink campaign's IMC plan.


• On the majority of your analyses, Google+ was the winner when it came to being pushed aside. Sadly, if brands had a Google+ page, they barely interacted with it. There is DEFINITELY room for improvement on this channel for some major brands. I think your understanding of how beneficial a Google+ page is for a business when it comes to a presence on Google, SEO, etc. will set you apart from other job candidates.
  
  Search Social Media and IMC on Google, and guess what comes up! Google Plus posts -- an example of how Google Plus does help with SEO!:
  

  Oreo, Fiat, and the Jaguars: How they do with IMC and social media ...

  

  https://plus.google.com/.../posts/1ui5EYoMgHv‎

  Blythe Duckworth

  3 days ago - Oreo, Fiat, and the Jaguars: How they do with IMC and social media #fiat #oreo #standunited #socialmediamarketing Cookies, Cars, & Football: Taking a Deeper Look at IMC and Social ...

  NBC, ULTA and Pottery Barn demonstrate IMC: Consistency is key ...

  
  https://plus.google.com/.../posts/bP3irCKppxc‎

  Julie McKinney

  3 days ago - NBC, ULTA and Pottery Barn demonstrate IMC: Consistency is key for social-media-hopping customers. I've picked three brands that use an integrated marketing ... NBC, ULTA and Pottery Barn demonstrate IMC: Consistency is key ...
  
  
  
• Several of you chose brands that have different accounts for varying countries or sub-brands (i.e. Nike). This is an important item to consider whether your brand is as large as Nike or much smaller. On a smaller scale, it may relate to two store locations, two businesses within one location etc... Is it better to maintain one page, or have separate ones for each location? It all depends on your brand and there isn't one right answer. However, the majority of larger brands have one main account as to not dilute fans over several different pages.
  
• When planning to launch your brand on a social channel, definitely consider scalability and long-term plans. Will you expand in the future? If you do, would the business name be the same? It's a lot easier to plan your strategy in the beginning than try to encourage your fans to "Like" your new re-branded page. I ran into this issue at my previous job. Each location of the business had a completely different name, thus the branding was all over the place. Because of this what user/page name could I go with as I launched social channels?! It was one of the reasons my boss hired me --- to bring the branding under control!

Highlights

There were some great entries this week. And everyone received either an A or B! I encourage you to check out your classmates' blogs this week to see what your fave brands are up to.


This week, we are continuing to look at social media channels, but specifically ones created for specific industries. I am looking forward to your mid-term projects on your assigned social media channel as well - reminder: they are due this Sunday at 11:59 p.m.