Week 17: Wrapping It Up

    This final post will sum up the collective knowledge and experiences that I've had with CSIT 155- Social Media for Business. I've learned multiple new tools and new ways to use tools I knew to help me with my own social media platforms. I never viewed social media as much more than an entertainment source but now I'm fully intrigued on how to use it to grow my own platform as well as how to utilize it in my current career.

    My views on social media has definitely changed since before, during, and now at the end of this class. I felt like I was stuck in a rut when I was active on social media-never really going anywhere and feeling like I was shouting into an empty room. It was a huge reason why I shifted away from posting to only viewing and engaging. Working through the class, I feel like I've built up a want to post again and jump back into the social media world to keep putting out what I love to do and communicating with like-minded individuals. While I'm still working on becoming more productive and active on my platforms, I do feel like I can dive back into posting on social media platforms now that I've learned so much more about the in's and out's (not to mention that I've found more down-time from switching career paths!).

    This class helped me understand more about the tools that can be used to not only grow a business but analyze the data that comes from reach and engagement. While I'm not much of a Facebook user, being able to explore it's capabilities and the reports from a business like Aztec was very beneficial to be able to break-down data and analyze it to grasp a better understanding. Google's analytic tools were a foreign concept to me and I can't say I'm an expert with it I feel like I could take on the challenge of learning about it and utilizing it in the near future. I wouldn't say that I'm a professional at using the platform now but I definitely could tell my employer that I could help on projects related to Facebook and other social media platforms as well. Working through this class really helped build skills and knowledge of tools to better understand how social media can benefit and greatly contribute to a business.

    I don't think that I'm quite ready to branch out in using social media tools and analytics like Google or Facebook for myself yet. Right now, I'm focusing on working on planning and promoting my platforms through consistency and simple built in analytic tools for Twitter and Instagram and maybe in the upcoming year I will start to look into YouTube and possibly Twitch to branch out to. I do hope that in the near future I will be able to use these platforms, skills, and tools that we've developed for my own platforms and possibly in my new career. 

    I'm very hopeful for this new start and ready to take on new challenges that have come from starting up my social media accounts. This class has helped me start to organize my goals and processes for social media and has lent me plenty of knowledge on where to turn to when I want to dive deeper into growing a business. Cheers to the final post for CSIT 155! Happy Holidays and on to a new year full of excitement and experiences!