Introduction
In the Mimic Social Simulation, I ranked 1st in my course out of 76 students. Now you may be wondering, what is a Mimic Social Simulation? It is the world’s first social media marketing simulation where you act as a Social Media Manager at Buhi Supply Co., which is a fictitious company that sells different types of bags. You will be in charge of creating and regulating social media marketing campaigns for Buhi using 6 social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube. If you plan on working in the marketing field, oftentimes employers will look for familiarity with these social media platforms. Completing the Mimic Social Simulation will give you the following hands-on experience in social media marketing:
Moreover, you will receive a certification of completion that you can add to your LinkedIn profile and your resume. By ranking high on the Mimic Social Simulation, it demonstrates your skills and performance in social media marketing.
The following are 3 tips on how to rank 1st on the Mimic Social Simulation:
Let’s go into more detail for each section.
1) Familiarize yourself with Buhi’s marketing segments
Write down the percent of the market, age, gender, and interests for each persona because this will come in handy when you are posting content.
After doing so, go to the analytics tab in the scenario. Write down the gender ratio and the age group from each social media platform. Compare this with the percent of the market, age, gender, and interests for each persona. You are now able to know what social media platform will best target each persona.
2) Always view the analytics for your posts
Before proceeding to the next round of posts, make sure you analyze the results. If you are unsure of what to post, use the first round to test the waters. I used the first round to analyze which pictures, infographics, memes, and blog posts performed well and which ones did not. I noticed infographics and memes were not performing well, so I started to avoid using them as I progressed. Additionally, I noticed blog posts did well on LinkedIn. Following the “Spend 25% on content, and 75% on promotion,” I avoided purchasing promotional videos since the budget is $5,000 and purchasing one video would be over $1,250.
Below is an infographic I created with the daily post frequency and the best days and times that I found worked best when creating content for the Mimic Social Simulation.
Recommended by LinkedIn
I used the content that performed really well on the best days for a specific platform. For instance, since Facebook’s best day to post is Saturday and the best time to post is 3 PM, you would post the best performing image on Saturday at 3 PM. Make sure to follow the post frequency for Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin. Pinterest and Twitter are harder to follow since you would have to post numerous times. You can choose whether to follow the high post frequency, but you should be fine as long as you post more than 5 contents. Additionally, viewing the analytics can aid in familiarizing you with Buhi's market, which leads us to my next tip.
3) Use hashtags in posts captions
I recommend using hashtags that would relate to each content. For instance, if you are posting a Philippines beach image. You should use #ocean since this picture would tailor to the Seaside Sally persona. You can include additional hashtags that would cater the image to other personas as well. Adding #travel to the caption would target City-Hopper Sue, Up-and-Comer Raj, Energetic Jill, and Daypacker Tom personas. If the image has a person wearing a backpack, adding #backpack would target every persona beside Energetic Jill.
According to Twitter’s research, using hashtags can increase brand engagement by 50% and double user engagement. Although hashtags should be used, you should not overwhelm your captions with hashtags. Each platform has an optimal number of hashtags to post. The most common number of hashtags on Instagram is 1 to 3. I utilized a max of 3 hashtags for all social media platforms on the Mimic Social Simulation.
Conclusion
Overall, following the 3 tips I mentioned has led me to rank 1st out of 76 students in my Social Media Marketing course.
This simulation has helped me become familiar with 6 social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Numerous marketing jobs require that the candidate be familiar with social media. Since I am interested in the marketing field, this applies to me. I would recommend this to anyone who wants their familiarity with social media to grow and wants to gain hands-on experience in social media marketing.
If you completed the Mimic Social Simulation using this blog, comment below how you performed and what was your final rank in the class out of how many students. Feel free to share in the comments any advice I did not mention in this blog. Share this blog with others who plan to do the Mimic Social Simulation. Thank you so much for reading!I hope you can achieve a high rank in your course too.
