The what, why, and how to brand your business on social media
Solopreneurs, having to wear all hats in their business operations, don’t generally have time to manage social media marketing. They create content and post products and mostly participate because they understand the power of social media, but they don’t have a strategy for posting content, or an understanding of how to analyze engagement data and make better decisions to increase returns on investment—not just ad dollars, but time invested in creating content. This course will address four aspects of social media marketing:
Andragogy is the first learning theory because this course is designed for working adults. This course is primarily experiential learning as students will examine their own engagement data on one of three social media platforms. It requires learners to actively participate, reflect on data, extract insights from their observations, and apply their learning to the next opportunity (Coleman, 2023). Chunking course content offers flexibility for adult learners to choose the content most relevant to them. While I’ll require them to choose only one context for the course, they have the freedom to examine the information for other contexts if/when they decide to expand their marketing efforts.
The second learning theory integrated into this lesson is connectivism. Because the learning for this course is social media, much of the learning is gained from the data collected by observing the behavior of others across digital engagement platforms (Bates, 2022). Aspects of connectivism that might impede effective learning in this course is digital literacy— specifically, navigating social platforms and analyzing the data for insights. Learners may be apprehensive about or overwhelmed by the amount of options available to engage their target consumer, however, part of the learning will address this by chunking learning and drawing clear connections between the engagement and data insights. Another possible challenge is the abundance of information or the pace at which feedback is provided (Kimmons, 2022). Aspects of connectivism that enhance learning is the immediate observation of successful models—learners get to examine successful content campaigns at the surface. They can also access success models across multiple industries and even businesses that have similar makeups as their own in size, revenue, and product offerings.
There is an underscore of behaviorism in social media engagement as strategies are determined largely in part by user responses in the form of likes, shares, reposts, comments, mentions, hashtags, and other social media indicators of engagement. Examining these indicators contributes to the rapidly shifting social landscape—a tenet of connectivism—as learners adjust their efforts in response to insights gathered from analyzing this data.
Andragogy requires setting clear learning goals, so I intend to first establish three key learnings (objectives) for the course. Because I’m also using the context of three social media platforms (LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram) I plan to demonstrate the objectives within each platform. This allows me to chunk the course content, i.e., data analytics on LinkedIn. One of my learning activities is developing a persona profile. This exercise requires companies to identify their target client/customer/consumer. One of the research assessments I would implement is challenging learners to search their social media context to find profiles that fit their personas, and collect (screenshot) three proofs (profilee posts and comments) that qualify them as the ideal client. This requires learners to have a clear assessment strategy for recognizing their market and making meaning of incoming information (Kimmons, 2022). Another activity I would have my learners do would be to match data analytics to desired insights using some company’s real engagement data. For example, examine a graph of user engagement, extract understanding, and adjust “X” Company’s strategy to leverage the information for increased engagement. This would be done in pairs since solopreneurs often work in silos. Collaborative learning opportunities expand PLNs in connectivism.
Bates, T. (2022). Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for designing teaching and learning (3rd ed.). Tony Bates Associates Ltd. https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/teachinginadigitalagev3m/
Coleman, H. (2023, June 8*). What is Adult Learning Theory and How to Use It In Employee Training.* eLearning Industry*.* https://www.ispringsolutions.com/blog/adult-learning-theories
Kimmons, R. (2022). Education Research Across Multiple Paradigms. https://doi.org/10.59668/133
Pappas, C. (2023, May 1). Everything You Need To Know About The Connectivism Learning Theory. eLearning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-connectivism-learning-theory