Digital Brand
– Analyze 1 competitor Website or BLOG and their Use of Content and Social Media – Create a digital Marketing Strategy and Optimized personal digital footprint (Profile/blog) sufficient to apply for a job of your choice.
– Include a number of social media profiles based on your justifications and 1 compulsory optimized blog post.
– Topic of blog post should be: How my time at Salford Business School has prepared me for a career in Marketing
Report Structure:
A. Analysis (50%)
1. Identify 3 main social media trends during covid-19 pandemic and provide narrative on notable changes to consumer behavior by analyzing benefits, problems and challenges faced by businesses in using various social media marketing communication tools within complex global environments.
2. Conduct a Search and Social Media Marketing Analysis for:
o latest recruitment trends
o changes in consumer/ professional online behavior
o Key skills and attributes desired by potential employers
o Identify keywords for industry specific skills
3. Identify your top 10 competitors in a table.
o Conduct a thorough evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses in terms of their use of professional social media profile e.g. how often do they engage, what are their forms of engagement, their top networks, type of information produced and consumed, and what can you learn from their behavior using social media profiles analysis tools and techniques.
o From this list, identify 1 competitor website/blog in your chosen field of preferred employment and undertake a comprehensive review of their site i.e. keywords, images, video etc.
4. Based on your analysis, identify strengths and weaknesses, and provide a narrative on how you plan to utilize your own individual website/blog. Develop your personal benchmarks that you would like to attain within the given time and set up monitoring processes.
This Section should Include:
1. SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS INCLUDING SWOT ANALYSIS, PESTLE ANALYSIS AND PORTER’S FIVE FORCES
2. Literature review (references to relevant academic research articles, reports and books) of latest thinking on digital marketing, keyword research methods and social media influencers. 3. A table of your Keyword Research findings.
4. A tabular justification (table) of keywords selected, screenshots of current competitors ranking for your primary keyword terms. You can use different tools such as Google Keyword research tool, Google Trends, Google Insights for Search etc.
B. PLAN (25%)
Based on your analysis:
1. You must produce a Search and Social Media Marketing strategy for 12 months. 2. A practical SSMM plan that identifies you as an individual who is looking to establish a career in this field and therefore become a recognisable “brand”.
3. This would include your online profile development with a view to being identified by employers as their preferred candidate of businesses, who might be interested working with you – if for example you are planning to be self-employed etc
This section should include:
1. Literature review (at least 5 references to relevant academic research articles, reports and books) on digital strategy development and thinking of legal and ethical implications of you being online.
2. Map out your target audience and how you will target particular networks and groups to channel your overall communications. Your long-term plan or strategy – what it is that you want to be known for and how this will help you in your future career.
3. Key SMART objectives – for your strategy implementation – using the Specific, Measurable, Achievable Realistic and Time bound indicators. These can be justified with industry benchmarks or examples of other profiles that you are using as a “template” or “guide” for your personal identity.
4. Critically justify the selection of specific Social Media platforms. For example, if you choose Twitter – how will it help your employment or business development? If you have chosen LinkedIn – why have you joined it and how do you link it to Twitter if at all and why? It may be a combination of many ie. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube etc.
5. A Gantt chart – indicating the main tasks you will be engaged in to implement your SSMM plan with clear starting dates and it should start with the day the assignment was handed out and end in a year.
6. Risk Assessment – outline the main risks, their potential impact and how you are going to monitor and mitigate these.
C. PRACTICAL PLAN IMPLEMENTATION (25%)
1. Your personal/professional digital marketing strategy – As part of this process you have to implement your plan, an aspect of which has to be at least one optimized blog post, which will allow you to be noticed by the industry. Consider creating a profile on free platforms such as www.wordpress.com which allows you to install and customize a WordPress blog. You can choose the platform of your choice. Please show evidence of amplification.
2. Key criteria for your assessment is the development of a digital marketing strategy focusing on content/messaging and implementation of as many SSMM techniques as appropriate for your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) positioning. For example, how you have approached search engine optimization, social media (including video, audio, etc.) or mobile opportunities. The
more of your profiles you manage to rank on the first three pages, the higher your chances of being noticed. The keyword for the SERP positioning is your “first and last name” for example “Mirage Islam”. At least one other primary keyword for which you have to optimise your profiles is that related to the industry that you have identified in your plan.
3. Based on your self-assessment you should draw conclusions on your performance and reflect how your profile could be improved.
This section should include:
1. Based on your plan (primary and secondary keywords) demonstrate how you put the theory into practice by developing and optimizing your profile using appropriate online channels. 2. Screenshots of SERPS before and after you have started your project highlighting your digital identities and explaining how this will benefit you in the long term.
3. Screenshots of your different profiles and indication of how you have used your keyword research to optimise on-page and off-page assets. For example, how you wrote your Twitter profile description and used the primary keyword in the choice of your username and linking to your other online properties.
4. If you are using LinkedIn how you completed your professional profile and how you identified the relevant user discussion groups etc.
5. For the blog post you could take a screenshot and highlight in the code the positions of your keywords and their importance in helping you to rank for a particular keyword.
PROVIDE A HARVARD STYLE REFERENCE LIST AT THE END