The second two classes in the digital marketing concentration of my MBA program were a practicum in eCommerce and a class on social media and mobile marketing. The social & mobile class involved some very interesting case studies, including analyzing Starbucks’ loyalty program success.
Course Description
The explosive growth of social media, geo-tagging, and web-enabled mobile technologies is continuously transforming the way consumers interact with each other and firms. While advertising spending on traditional media is declining, increasing amounts are spent online on the web, social, location-based, and mobile media. These new communication channels present new challenges to marketers in selecting the best strategies to maximize returns. Mobile devices (phones, tablets) have become devices for both the production and consumption of social and rich media to communicate with firms, brands, and peers–augmenting their original purpose as one-to-one communication devices. In this course, we will explore the social and participatory aspects of mobile and social media consumption and generation and their implications for consumers and marketers.
Case Studies and Books
Book: Quesenberry, Keith. Social Media Strategy
WestJet: A New Social Media Strategy
The Boycott of Stoli Vodka and the Power of Social Media
Hamilton Won More Than Twitter
(Many online readings assigned as well.)
Hootsuite’s Academy social and platform courses
Course Goals
- Course Goal 1. Understand how the confluence of social and mobile (especially 4G smartphone) technologies has disrupted traditional marketing practices and unleashed opportunities for a wide variety of innovative services and experiences for firms and consumers (B-C, B-B) in social, mobile, as well as offline channels.
- Course Goal 2. Be familiar with cutting-edge research and theoretical basis underlying changes in consumer behavior and decision making in social and mobile media and network influence emerging as the new currency in any exchange
- Course Goal 3. Understand and gain proficiency in social network analysis, influencer analysis, mobile app design skills required of digital marketing professionals.
- Course Goal 4. Gain knowledge about advertising models, media buying and budgeting involving paid, earned and owned social and mobile media managed in an integrated marketing environment.
- Course Goal 5. Develop analytic and measurement skills to measure impact, effectiveness, and returns from social and mobile media investments.
- Course Goal 6. Analyze best practices in social and mobile marketing strategies and be able to apply them.
A Few Lessons
- Twitter engagement using specific hashtags for class on relevant information to class was 10% of the grade, mostly using Hootsuite’s tools and classes.
- Social Media Fundamental Building Blocks – the blocks are a honeycomb pattern seen here.
- Customer interactions and social network analysis using the WestJet case.
- Influencer marketing and Twitter data analysis using the Stoli case.
- Social media strategy using the Hamilton case.
- Social media advertising and analytics using Salesforce Social Studio, analyzing data around social sentiment for GDPR (during the week GDPR started being enforced so it was talked about a lot on social media.)
- Mobile marketing using the Starbucks case study.
I started an online MBA at Montclair State University in January 2017.