Week 1: A Conversation with Guest Speaker Laura Knapp by Vincent Hernandez
By UCLA X469.21 Student Vincent Hernandez
Here’s a summary of what I learned from our Week 1 guest speaker Laura Knapp.
As we know, networking is very important, especially when we’re talking about social media. One of Laura’s first suggestions for our class was to join Social Media Club LA. as a way to network with like-minded professionals – both online and offline.
She then turned to some of her favorite tools and tactics for major social media platforms, starting with Instagram.
- Don’t edit your post during the first 24 hours, as this will decrease its reach
- Make sure to ‘geotag’ posts and stories to increase engagement
- Use video content to create a deeper relationship with your audience
- Try using IGTV. It’s trendy right now, and you can post longer videos that include a link in the description (this provides an opportunity to generate traffic to your website).
- Always use video on Instagram wisely by asking yourself: “Would I be willing to put this video on my website or YouTube channel?” If the answer is yes, go ahead and publish. If the answer is no, don’t!!
- Use polls, GIFs and emojis in your stories to create a deeper connection with your audience.
Laura then discussed her favorite low-cost tools for us to take content creation/editing and campaign measurement to the next level.
Content creation and editing tools:
- Unfold (for Instagram stories)
- Canva (for design and layout)
- Boomerang (to stitch together busts of photos into a video that plays forward and backward)
- Magisto (to automate video editing)
- Befunky (general photo editing)
Campaign measurement tools:
- Hootsuite (there are lots of analytics tools within the Hootsuite app)
- Sprout Social (same goes for this app, which like Hootsuite provides single hub for social media publishing across various social profiles)
- Facebook Insights (native analytics)
- Google Analytics (general website analytics)
- Twitter Analytics (native analytics)
- Iconosquare (Facebook and IG management and insights)
- SocialInsider (social media competitor analysis)
Laura wrapped up her discussion by encouraging us to stay current on the latest social media developments by visiting news sites like SocialMediaExaminer, which she said we should check out regularly.
