WEEK 2: A Conversation with Guest Speaker Clint Schaff by Fiona Pepiqi
By UCLA X469.21 Student Fiona Pepiqi
The world of social media is becoming more and more exciting each day. On one hand, individuals can enjoy access to endless information, networking, personal connections and fun! On the other hand, business entities can take advantage of social media to reach out to their audiences, create/maintain brand awareness and generate profit!
Our guest speaker for the second week of #SocMedUCLA was Clint Schaff (Vice President of Strategy & Development at the Los Angeles Times), who did a great job transmitting his positive energy and sharing his rich background and knowledge.
Clint talked about his career through the years by sharing what he learned during each step along the way. It was interesting and inspiring to hear how he grew from being a paper boy as a child to become the lead business strategist for the Los Angeles Times. He credited this evolution with continuously learning and staying up to date on the fast-changing marketing world and its transition from traditional to online media channels.
Clint talked a lot about marketing on social media platforms and tools to achieve business objectives. He specifically pointed out the importance of creating a Social Media Playbook, and shared tips on how to create and customize such a document for a business or campaign. According to Clint, a Playbook helps guide the business team through the entire online marketing effort. It keeps everyone on track and helps the team monitor what is and isn’t working on a day-to-day basis. In turn, it also facilitates ongoing improvement.
The process of creating a Social Media Playbook clarifies business goals, target audiences and the best tactics for generating effective content. Diving deeper into content, Clint highlighted the importance of developing a content allocation breakdown based on goals and target audiences. A sample content allocation could break down as follows: Inform 15%, Empower 35%, Motivate 25% and Fellowship 25%. Balancing content allocation helps keep your audience’s attention and encourage them to take action!
It was a pleasure to meet such an experienced and fun personality as Clint Schaff, and I look forward to applying what I learned from him in my future marketing endeavors.
