How Social Media Impacts the Consumer

 For my final blogging assignment, I wanted to discuss how social media has affected me as a consumer. This summer, I learned about different marketing techniques with social media and the various strategies for each platform. You can’t use the same strategy for YouTube as you would for Instagram, so it is important to learn a separate strategy for both! I also learned about branding, the target audience, and how to be successful. So, with all of this information I learned this semester, I felt that it would be cool to reflect on my own experiences as a consumer to see how effective some company marketing strategies are.

To properly evaluate these efforts and strategies of companies, an important step would be to identify my consumer persona. I would identify myself as a college student who loves to run and exercise, be outside and spend time with family and cats. This has led to following some companies on Instagram like Hoka, Gooders, Chicken Legs and other exercise clothing companies. I also follow plenty of running and cat-loving influencers on social media. With that being said, I have gotten my fair share of advertisement and promotion of running shoes, gels, glasses, shorts and more- and it works!

While I don’t typically buy something from Instagram or another platform, nine times out of ten I find myself looking up the product and adding it to my mental wish list. And if I don’t buy it on social media at that moment, the next time I am looking for that item, I think back to the wish list and purchase it. I find that I see more things that I would like to purchase now from social media than I do online or in stores. 

Because people spend so much time online and on my social media platforms, it makes sense that I find the products that I like on my feed and promoted by people I follow. I thought that reflecting on my own experiences as a consumer using social media would be cool so that I could see what I learned about affected my own life and consumer journey! I’m excited to see where social media goes in the coming years and how it will continue to change the marketplace. 

That’s all for now,

Abby