“Learning about yourself and about leadership, however, are not the same as leading. Deciding to be an exemplary leader is not the same as being one. Leading is doing. You need to make leading a daily habit. You need to do something every day to learn more about leading, and you need to put those lessons into practice every day” (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 310). This quote from The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner perfectly sets the tone for my philosophy paper, and I placed it as I believe it has some crucial messages that may educate any individual who desires to become a leader, including myself. Leading is a daily ritual of sorts. It is the phenomenon of continuous acts of expanse with knowledge pertaining to leadership. Leaders often believe they have already achieved greatness because of the title they earned or because they already are in their head, but the actual truth of a great leader comes from the practices and habits learned over years of hard work and dedication. This is precisely what I have been doing these past three months in my leadership course—studying the art of leading. I have taken in knowledge, practices and have studied the differences between someone who claims to be a leader and one who is effective at leading; over the semester, I believe I have found the exact criteria needed to be an exemplary leader. Throughout this paper, I will discuss an effective leader, how I am becoming one myself, the ideals and philosophies of leadership, important lessons from my past, and more.

To some, leadership is just a word; to others, it brings a sense of meaningfulness, a set of standards they follow to better themselves. Can you truly become an effective leader if you believe the term leader is just another word, a title, nothing more? For me, an effective leader will always have pre-determined traits, extensive knowledge, and past experiences that provide and show the reasoning behind why they handle themselves as such a dependable leader. They have become this role model, and although in their mind, they may deny this, most times they are; to guide and lead others to unity with a common cause. Before exploring and diving into more detail about what effective leadership means to me, we should go over some of the key traits I believe a leader should possess before even considering becoming one. Most of these traits should already be a prerequisite if you are a decent person or hope to get a job in the business field. Loyalty, empathy, honesty, determination, respect, selflessness, integrity, and passion; are the traits that I believe every person should carry within when they become a leader. These traits may differ from person to person, and of course, there are many more not included here, but it gives you the general idea of the prerequisites for being an effective role model and leader. Now that we have discussed the traits, we can better understand leadership characteristics, which now allows me to dive deeper into what effective leadership means to me personally.

Having a vision is one of the main elements behind successful leadership, and to me, it is the true meaning of an effective leader. As Kouzes and Posner stated there is five practices of exemplary leadership, and for me I believe I would fit into the inspiring a shared vision section. Leaders with a vision build this foundation that will encompass the business but also need to be wary when providing that vision as they need to make it provoking enough so that others can and will want to follow. Using their years of knowledge to inspire, so that together a vision can be created that will guarantee success. Having a vision is about motivation and inspiration; you need others to see the end result, or it will be much harder to have any foundation. Vision is one of the most powerful tools that can be used. Having a vision is not just a statement but rather a goal that team members and staff can get behind with a common cause. Leaders need to provide a clear and powerful enough vision so the team can understand the goals and attach themselves to it without hesitation. The vision must also align with the company’s goals and the employees; it needs to share the organization’s values and be simplistic enough for everyone to understand. Choosing a vision is not always an easy decision, and because of this, it may take a toll or become challenging for new leaders, but over time it will come naturally. I believe, as a visionary, you need to respect all team members and guide them, showing why you are doing what you are about to do; they need to realize that your interest is also theirs. You can not only think about yourself with these decisions, as it will impact not only you but also those who believe in you. A vision is nothing without an end goal and a meaning; it is your job as a leader to take these challenges and turn them into a bright future. “In every personal-best leadership case, leaders talked about ideals. They expressed a desire to make dramatic changes in the business-as-usual environment. They reached for something grand, something magnificent, something never done before. Visions are about hopes, dreams, and aspirations. They are about a strong desire to achieve something beyond good, something great and extraordinary. They are ambitious. They are expressions of optimism” (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 119).

For the last ten years, I myself have had many leadership opportunities; before starting my leadership course, I actually thought that I was a decent leader, but now I realize, looking back, I did not even know what leadership was. I had qualities and traits that made me believe I was decent; I often provided positivity, creativeness, honesty, respect, enthusiasm, initiative, and a few more, but still felt I lacked in a bunch of areas too. I believe me being in a leadership role mostly started when I coached some soccer in my earlier days, but I would say I got most of my experience working. I used to work for a company called Global Experience Specialists, or in short GES. My job was essentially to set up tradeshows all around Edmonton. This could be at Northlands, Rexall, West Edmonton Mall, Shaw Conference, or any place else that needed a booth or two. At each new location, I usually would get a new group of temp workers to boss around; this is where most of my experience in leading came from. I do not think I did much to motivate them; I just told them what to do and left it at that. I usually felt my job was not there to inspire, as I would get a new group in a few days, so it felt pointless. Nevertheless, I was wrong. Sometimes the work method would be inadequate or take too much time. Maybe if I empathized more with their values and shared my vision with them, treating them like actual team members, I would have never had to resolve any issues. Yes, I respected them and tried to show initiative, but it was not authentic leadership, or what I believe to be true leadership now. That is in the past, though, and I have learned from experience, as I am still learning to this day. As I said earlier, I believe a true vision is the best way to be an effective leader, and from my own experience, I will need to practice it more among a few other qualities that I will explain and go into with further detail.

When you think of yourself as a leader and how you became one, you often do not question how you got there, it usually has been a long road of hard work and dedication, and you are already where you wanted to be, so why does it matter how you achieved the goal. I say this because I never really recollect any of the vital lessons I was taught growing up with leadership. I never truly thought about these experiences and identified any importance in them. Most of these lessons I forgot about I did take with me subconsciously so there was still value with them. Thinking about past experiences is always a weird subject for me. Often I do not know what to say or feel as there may be some form of judgment. Although, in leadership, any decision can also be a benefit, as it is learning from experience. Earlier, I wrote about some key traits that should be a prerequisite as a leader, and yes, I believe all the ones I listed should be prominent in any leadership role, especially how vision is the most critical trait to becoming an effective leader, but there is also more I have discovered while reminiscing and taking the time to delve deep inside myself and my past. In the last paragraph, I provided an example of how I took the initiative and some of my leadership qualities, but now I will discuss some of the lessons I have learned throughout my life that I was taught from following instead of being in charge as a leader, and show why these may have influenced what I consider the archetype of a leader to be. Three examples come to mind, two positives, one negative—each different.

Inclusivity and diversity issues are scenarios that affect every workplace, either small or large, and in most cases tend to be negative. The negative cases you hear about are rather heartbreaking, as they may affect that person for their entire life. For my first example, I will start with the negative experience, explaining what happened and what I learned from it. After this experience occurred it helped me understand inclusivity and diversity dynamics within a workplace better, it also taught me how to value an employee too. This occurrence also led me to believe leaders need to share the values of their employees, and not treat them as just another person to control. “Shared values are the foundation for building productive and genuine working relationships” (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 60). To start, When I was younger, I had a rather ugly experience; I used to work at a McDonalds, now this place seemed great. It was close to my high school, close to home, and the money was excellent for a teenager with no responsibilities at least. For the first month or so, it seemed perfect. After working there for a bit, the staff eventually hired a person who was in his early thirties and immigrated from another country. The man, who we will call Seb, had only been in Canada for roughly two years before hired. Seb’s issue mostly took place whenever he was working with a particular manager who we will call Mike. Now Seb was not the best worker, sometimes he was slow or would mess up orders, but it was not entirely his fault, his English was not the best, and I could see that he was trying most times, even if he did mess up on occasion. Now when Seb and Mike worked together, there would often be some heat generated between the two, mostly with Mike, as Seb was very shy, quiet, and easy to boss around. If you said something to him, he usually would not argue it, and do what he is told, even if it seemed cruel or distasteful. Now Mike was usually a great guy, towards me at least, he was the one who hired me, and taught me everything I needed to know within the first couple of weeks, but I could kind of see his true colors whenever he worked with Seb. At first, Seb and Mike were okay, normally Mike would say some racial jokes, but light-heartedly, you could not tell if they were malicious intent, but the more Seb would annoy Mike or mess up either his work, the more frustrated and menacing Mike would get. This gradually escalated over three months. Eventually, Mike started threatening Seb, making fun of his English almost every day, talking behind his back, and giving him the worst jobs, like cleaning the toilets. I eventually went to Seb and told him to speak with Mike’s superior; Seb declined as he did not want to get into trouble himself. Although I told him he did nothing wrong, he was too afraid to get fired. Luckily, or not so luckily, Mike confronted Seb for the last time during a work period where all three of us were on shift. Mike started using racial slurs towards Seb, insisting he would fire him if he did not fix his English. Seb still did not do anything, so I took matters into my own hands. Even though I liked Mike, I went to the McDonald’s district manager and reported him anonymously. The next day, he was fired. Mike did not know who caused him to get fired, but at first he thought it was Seb, and almost attacked him, but I told Mike that it was me, and after some vulgar words and a tantrum, he left. That was the last I ever saw of Mike. To this day, Seb should have said something earlier, as it is very disheartening to hear situations like this. As a visionary leader, you must listen and include all others into your vision, no matter race, sex, or beliefs. I believe if leaders empathized more with the person being attacked, fewer situations like this would happen. I know for me personally that I would include everyone in my vision, hoping that no one feels left out or excluded. Even though this conflict seemed difficult at first, and I did not think of it for a long time until now, I believe it affected my leadership ethic, in a way that was not visible to me before; it helped me maintain proper empathy for inclusivity. As a visionary leader, I take diversity issues seriously, and would not hesitate to help a fellow employee. Inclusivity is great, you get different views and different aspects of life helping you and your business to achieve the overall vision, creating trust and bonds between people which will only generate more success. “The most effective leadership situations are those in which each member of the team trusts the others. When trust is the norm, decisions are made efficiently and swiftly, innovation is higher, and profitability increases” (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 198).

Now that the negative experience is out of the way, I will talk about my positive ones and how they positively affected me as a leader. You could say the negative experience gave me a more positive outlook, but it came from a villainous leader and an adverse scenario; these two both came from positives and leaders who were more aligned with a hero persona. As I said above, my negative experience helped me learn how to handle diversity and inclusivity issues while allowing me to see how important trust is within any work dynamic. The two positives helped me better understand why I valued the specific characteristics and traits needed for what I believe to be an effective leader. At first, it was hard for me to think of scenarios where I was a follower and explain why specific characteristics and visionary leaders resonated with me more, but after an astral projection one night while thinking, I believe I figured out why. These two situations that happened, although similar, took place years apart. The first one started when I was only eleven, maybe twelve and continues to this day. The second occurred just last year. When I was a kid, I often had difficulties talking to others; I was shy and way more introverted than I am now; I would consider myself even an extrovert today. Every day my mom had this goal to teach me something new or a different way to view the world and branch out of my shell. I believe this is one of the main reasons why I eventually, over time, became less shy and more confident. For the first leader from my positive experiences, it would go to my mom. She taught me valuable leadership lessons without me, even realizing it. Because of how she taught me to view the world and how to do what is right, she also taught me how to empathize with others, have determination to succeed, and how to communicate appropriately. These stories and lessons my mom taught provided me with lots of valuable information, as Kouzes and Posner said, “Through stories, leaders pass on lessons about shared values, define culture, and get others to work together” (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 86). I believe communication may have had the most significant impact out of the three traits above, as it is one of the notable traits that indicate an excellent visionary leader. Communicating your vision with others and also allowing them to share theirs with you. Speaking about communication, it is only appropriate to provide a clear example of how my mom helped me increase my communication skills without me even realizing it. My mom helped me understand the value of listening, I did not question why she wanted to teach me these lessons or what was the reasoning behind the way she thought it could better me as an adult, but the more I think about the experiences she taught me while growing, the more I understand. Listening is part of communication, and I always listened to what she had to say. I followed and trusted her and eventually, over time, became more knowledgeable and confident because of the practices and values I learned. Without even knowing I would benefit from any of the lessons, I did them anyway. I am glad I did what she told me when I was younger and still to this day, as it helps me view the world differently and open my eyes to a lot more things. Maybe this is why I value a leader with a vision, and one that can empathize and listen to the dreams of others too. “The best leaders are great listeners. They listen carefully to what other people have to say and how they feel. They ask good (and often tough) questions, are open to ideas other than their own, and even lose arguments in support of the common good. Through intense listening, leaders get a sense of what people want, what they value, and what they dream about” (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 108).

The second positive experience also includes elements of communication, but it also incorporates some other traits. Last year I had the opportunity to model for a fashion line, and I quickly jumped at the chance due to my obsession with clothing. The aesthetic of streetwear and the plenteous amount of options to choose from when deciding on a wardrobe always fascinated me, and gave enjoyment; I also just loved spending my money on clothes. So I had to jump at the opportunity the second I got offered. Before even getting to be in the fashion show, I had to do plenty of background work that caused mental and physical stress. I had to do a lot of research and learning on the environment and what I needed to do to achieve success so I could envision myself where I wanted to be. “Envisioning the future requires you to connect with your deepest feelings. You have to find something that is so important that you are willing to put in the time, suffer the inevitable setbacks, and make the necessary sacrifices” (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 104). After a few weeks of testing my patience and resilience, I got the confirmation that I would be getting the official job. Now, this was not your type of monthly paid full-time salary job, it was a two-week gig, with hardly any pay. You were going for the experience and the other benefits that could come with it. Once I arrived for the first week, I was taught multiple lessons almost every day. I had to sit and listen for hours on end, studying other’s performance, and getting taught many different techniques on what I needed to do, and how the industry was run. The lessons I was taught were from multiple people, all in the leadership roles, each one influenced me differently, but in unique ways. As I said earlier my mom was the sole example for my first positive experience, this second one had me learning and listening through communication from a bunch of different people, and each of them I respected fully as they also were showing and providing the same hard work and dedication I did to get there, and that I was still continuously doing. While practicing I underwent long twelve to fourteen-hour days, I had the determination to succeed, so I kept at it. “As necessary as enhancing self-determination is, it’s insufficient. Without the knowledge, skills, information, and resources to do a job expertly, and without feeling competent to execute skillfully the choices required, people feel overwhelmed and disabled. Even if they have the resources and skills, there may be times when people do not have confidence that they are allowed to use them or that they will be backed up if things do not go as well as expected. There may be times when they just lack the self-confidence to do what they know they need to do” (Kouzes and Posner, 2017, p. 233). Kouzes and Posner speak of determination as enhancing one’s self, and the prerequisites needed to succeed, I believe because of the leaders I met while getting taught lessons about and for the fashion industry I was able to learn efficiently. I had the resources already provided, which helped me immensely, giving me self-confidence, and eventually, the self-determination I knew I needed if I wanted to succeed.

To evaluate my current leadership skills was not very difficult for me because I know myself pretty well. I already have spoken about many existing leadership skills I possess, like creativeness and enthusiasm, and some I believe an effective leader should have, but I will only evaluate the ones I learned with my three experiences to make things not too complicated. I will also briefly reflect how I am a visionary leader, as it is my main goal for effective leadership. The skills and traits I will be evaluating and assessing will be my inclusivity and diversity growth, how trust is crucial, communication skills, determination, and vision. Starting with inclusivity and diversity, I would say that I am fairly decent at that as a leader. I explained thoroughly about it above and gave some ideas about why and how I believed in it as a person. I think it is necessary to be diverse as a leader because of all the opportunities that come with it; it also makes you a better person, not just a better leader. Growth is an essential aspect of diversity, as you need to grow as an individual and allow yourself to view others’ perspectives. To identify my score for diversity and inclusivity, I would give myself a solid (6.5/10). I believe I am decent at it as a leader, but I often exclude others on occasion and may find myself targeting someone if their viewpoint differs from my own. I usually tend to be very inclusive, but there are scenarios where my personal judgment gets the better of me. When I discussed the situation with Seb, and Mike I believe I have a very high scoring regards to that type of diversity, or inclusivity, but when using it for other methods, I may not be as good, such as including others into my overall vision, which is how I landed on the 6.5. “When there is greater gender and racial and ethnic diversity in leadership, there is not one majority group to which everyone needs to conform. Each leader is more likely to maintain his or her individuality and be less likely to blindly follow the group if he or she disagrees. Moreover, diverse leaders look through at the world through their different cultural lenses which lead those types of groups to create better solutions” (Ladders Contributor, 2018).

“When your team trusts you as a leader, it increases commitment to team goals. Communication improves, and ideas flow more freely, increasing creativity and productivity. Perhaps most important, in the hands of a trusted leader, employees are more comfortable with change and more willing to embrace a new vision” (Behance, 2014). Speaking briefly about trust, I think that this quote demonstrates everything you need to say about it within a work environment. Communication and trust are similar in a bunch of areas, so I will not go too in-depth, but I believe trusting is just as important as any other leadership trait. Right now, I would say that my skills in trustworthiness are exceptional, as I feel it is best, to be honest in most situations. Lying may always have some benefits, but it is also risky, and has major repercussions. I believe overall being trustworthy on its own can single-handedly carry a leadership team. For my current ratings for trust, I would say I am an 8/10, but hopefully one day can be a 10, as I think it is very important to build a team around trust as it can turn an uncoordinated team into something exceptional.

Next, I will speak a bit about my communication skills. I would say my communication is definitely a strong point for me today; before, when I was younger, not so much, due to being an introvert, I probably would have even said back then I was a 5, maybe even a 4 on the rating scale. Because of all the experiences I have faced through life and the lessons I was taught, I could confidently say I am a (9/10) for communication. I often can communicate appropriately to others, but I feel that is only half of what communication offers; the other half is listening to the needs of others too, which I have also been able to develop decently well, which is how I landed on the 9. For an example of how I use my communication skills right now, I would say I use my leadership communication skills in my group projects in my current classes. Still, I have had a lot of experience with communication throughout my life in different ways. These experiences come from listening to others leading and leading others around when I am in the spotlight, and I shared some of those experiences in my examples above.

Moving onto determination, I mostly focused on this leadership trait when I explained the pursuit of my job as a model in the fashion industry, but it is also apparent in many other parts of my life. Trying to get the job and succeed, there was much adversity there I needed to face. Because me wanting it so bad, I was determined to get it regardless of all the mental fatigue. Determination, I believe, is vital in leadership as it is a quality that drives you to get what you want; it gives you the persistence to continuously aim for the top, which is what every leader should strive for. I would not say determination is my best trait because sometimes, if I feel overwhelmed, that determination will gradually fall off, but I am somewhere a little bit above better than average. If I were to rate myself, I would say I am roughly a (7/10). Determination has helped me out, though not only in my modeling aspirations but also in life in many scenarios, like hoping to build a better life for myself. I had self-determination within to go back to school and learn to better my future, and now I am here doing it, so I believe if I put my mind to it efficiently, like when I wanted to be in the fashion industry, I can overcome difficulties, and keep on persisting.      

Lastly, for what I believe to be an effective leader, vision. Vision is essential to me because, without a vision, there is nothing guiding others towards what the end goal is. You want to accomplish your objectives as a leader, and the best way to have support from others is to provide a clear and powerful vision. Visionary leaders do not only incorporate their own vision, as they also listen to others. I thoroughly explained visionary leaders above, so I will not go into significant detail as I do not seem redundant. Still, overall, having a vision is the best practice to learn as a leadership quality, as it will improve your performance and the performance of those around you too. As a visionary leader, I would say it is my weakest trait being discussed, as I do not have much practice with it at the moment. I would say I am a (5/10), but I hope to eventually grasp what it means to be a true visionary eventually. I landed on this rating because I do understand the concepts of a visionary leader, so with more practice, I believe I could be adequate, but right now, without the proper practice and only the knowledge, I cannot seem to give myself any higher, as I believe that would be false.

In recent paragraphs, I rated some of my leadership traits; now, I will create an action plan for the scores I did not do so well and evaluate them with the SMART framework. The SMART framework has five specific roles to follow, and I will analyze each trait by the specific letter within the SMART goal setting framework; we will call them SMART goals. For determination, communication, and trust, I feel my scores are already decently high, so I will only focus on the two I perceive to be my weakest links: vision and diversity. Vision is what I value the most, and have vocalized how I believe it is the best trait to have for effective leadership, so it should only be necessary that I try to improve. Above I said I would rate myself a (5/10) because I have not had enough experience with it, but if I create an action plan going step by step, I could eventually see it rising. First, for specific, I need to make sure my goals are tangible. Saying what I want to achieve here should be my first goal, and that is to have more practice using my vision to influence others to follow. I have studied and have pertained knowledge about visionary leaders, but I still have not been able to use it in a work environment yet. To achieve this goal, I will evaluate whether I can see myself improving. If I get the opportunities to use my vision, I could measure it by asking to see if others believe in the future I have provided and see themselves having their vision the same as mine. This goal is roughly attainable, it is a bit challenging to hit where I want to be because of how much hard work must go into practicing and creating an appropriate vision, but I believe I can still get where I need to be with hard work and determination. Achieving this goal is very relevant to me as it is the main reasoning behind what I believe to be an effective leader, which is valuable to me and worthwhile to achieve. To motivate me to achieve this goal, I would like to hit where I need to be within the next five years; hitting that goal may even only improve one or two points, but any improvement is better than none.

Now for my diversity and inclusivity SMART goals, I believe I landed on a higher score than my vision trait for several reasons, and the main one being I have had an experience related to diversity and inclusivity in the workplace. I landed on the (6.5/10) because I understand the dynamics of what is needed due to real-life experience, but I also have room where I need growth and can see myself improving in critical areas. So diversity and inclusivity are issues that do not only affect workplaces but affect you almost everywhere you look, online, at the mall, out at the park; issues like this always pop up regardless. It is just human nature. Some diversity issues such as racism are much nastier than an inclusivity issue at work, but each will still impact the individual targeted, so everyone needs to be aware. Following the SMART goal framework, for the first letter S, to achieve this goal, since I have already had experiences from it, just learning off of those. Using my past knowledge and my own personal values to help out in the scenarios. I had the issue with Seb and Mike, and I believe I did what I needed to do, even if it took me a little longer than it should have. I find those scenarios awkward, and it is probably the area where I could see myself needing a bit more growth. Inclusivity is where I would say I have more strength; often, I try to include everyone, no matter where they are from or their views and values. That is just who I am. In specific scenarios, I may be blinded and not see that I am doing wrong, but I know that I can improve, as I can see myself becoming better at it just by writing this paper. For how measurable this goal is, I would say I can defiantly see success in my future, a lot faster than the vision trait too. Whereas vision takes a lot of practice and knowledge, diversity and inclusivity are things that you can learn on your own that come from within, so if you try to create a cohesive and diverse work setting, you can easily measure and attain those goals. It is also attainable since I am already starting to expand my mindset with inclusivity and diversity; there may be some barriers when I try to stop the conflict, as I find those issues awkward, but I am personally an open-minded individual, so I welcome all. Diversity and inclusivity issues are among the one of, if not the most, that affect workplaces with negative experiences; I think even today, this is more relevant than ever. I think trying to improve in this aspect is very important, as it is right for my values, and can see it improving every experience I have within a team. Since I already see improvement in myself, I could say that I will gradually become better within the next two to three years, which I can see as a very realistic time frame, as I have and am still learning.

My personal practice will continue to develop long after this course is done, and because of this, my leadership style will grow as well. Each leader has their own way of exploring potential leadership techniques, so each leader will take unique paths. Which is why I cannot see a predetermined route for me, I know areas where I need to improve, and areas where I am already starting to excel at, if I continue down this path of growth eventually I will get where I want to be. This development of being unique does not make only some leaders adequate but instead explores different leadership methods for individual leadership styles. Not every leader is universally able; this is where broadening out comes into play. A leader will develop themselves over years of routine, some taking longer than others to achieve what they believe is an effective leader. So, as I continue to grow and learn from experience, I will become the leader whom I want to be, so this journey of becoming an effective leader has only just begun.

References

The Leadership Challenge Sixth Edition: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations: James M. Kouzes, Barry Posner, Brian Holsopple. (2017).

Ladders Contributor. (2018, November 12). The value of diversity in leadership roles. Ladders | Business News & Career Advice; Ladders. https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/the-value-of-diversity-in-leadership-roles

‌ Behance, I. (2014, September 29). The Most Important Skill for Great Leaders? Trustworthiness. Adobe 99U. https://99u.adobe.com/articles/32883/the-most-important-skill-for-great-leaders-trustworthiness#:~:text=When%20your%20team%20trusts%20you,freely%2C%20increasing%20creativity%20and%20productivity.&text=%E2%80%9CWhen%20your%20team%20doesn’t,agree%20that%20trust%20is%20good

Decoding Social Media Analytics: What Does It Mean?

“Social media analytics is the process of gathering and analyzing data from social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It is commonly used by marketers to track online conversations about products and companies” (Wikipedia, 2020). You will use these analytics to collect data from social media websites. With this data, you can evaluate and research further to make successful business decisions to drive your brand and goals forward. With analytics adequately used, you can find in-depth information about what your consumer wants and who they are, allowing your business to find their right consumer, which in theory should create brand awareness and community engagement. Not only do analytics help you understand the audience you have, but it also shows the best social media networks for your product or service, what type of data tracking you need to create better content, information to understand competitors, and statistics to help create a better social media strategy. If you have correctly integrated your company into social media platforms, you may also succeed with users buying products directly from your social media posts or ads. This can be beneficial as users do not have to leave the website to purchase the advertising product. If your community is striving and the engagement is high, you will see your analytics improve; you need to carefully watch over, and be sure to study why you are having success, or it may start to implode if not managed carefully. Social media analytics is an essential tool for all companies.

Driving Measurable ROI on Each Channel

In the age of social media and where the internet runs rampant, you will need a platform that will give your brand and organization success. Each platform is different. Whether you advertise or sell your product solely depends on your current market and key performance indicators you have set; are you looking to generate revenue or create brand awareness? Some of the top-performing social media websites are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. If you plan to advertise or sell on any of these platforms, make sure you have aligned your social media goals with your business objectives. Suppose you have created a recognizable brand by following the steps provided and using analytics and software to gain insight into where you need to succeed. In that case, you will have a higher chance of creating engagement and can earn more revenue and views with your social media posts. If you have trackable goals, you may also monitor visitors and define the actions needed for your brand awareness to improve. The key is to manage and measure so you can have a substantial increase in your investment into these platforms. You will want to understand the insights and why buyers are engaging with your product and efficiently optimizing keywords so you can improve your search reach with customers.

Bonus Strategies for Maximizing ROI

To maximize return on investment you can, manage metrics and analytics, follow likes and engagement within your community, or see why and how social media creates value for your organization; these are all great ways to manage and create healthy brand awareness. Still, there are also more subtle things you can do to help too. To help marketers fully succeed, you can follow the main four pillars, but to get an advantage over your competitors, you can also use smaller or “bonus strategies” to create growth. Some of these strategies include creating website visits using Twitter cards, sales with Instagram stories, writing short and engaging paid posts, built-in YouTube tools, and the Google Campaign builders. These are just some of the necessary side steps that can enable you to get that advantage and the right number of viewers for your product. These are not all crucial to your development or four pillars but may be necessary to get to the next community engagement step.

Conclusion

For this blog and the idea about social media and creating engagement, I have an example that can be applied directly from my life and how I went about creating ads for a particular interest I had. My goal was to create a community for selling and trading high-end clothing. Think of it as a unique personal page to sell and interact with individuals with the same interests in clothes and fashion. When I advertised, I was not selling one product and was not trying to seek a return on investments for the ads I created; I was merely trying to create a community to engage with while also hoping to sell some designer or hype clothes. When I started this community, I followed the metrics after researching and watching a few videos, I did not know as much as I do now, but my community still grew over time. My philosophy on the project as if I just had some individuals interested after creating a little awareness, they may tell their friends and create more. In my opinion, I succeeded as I had a few hundred join in my own privatized group where we would all trade and sell and post information on new clothing drops. I was also able to make a fair amount of profit from some of the items I sold. Overall I believe social media marketing is essential for every company and individual. I used it as just one person, but imagine the possibilities a company with tons of revenue and marketing can do.

References

Wikipedia Contributors. (2020, February 28). Social media analytics. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_analytics

(2020). Linkedin.Com. https://www.linkedin.com/learning/social-media-marketing-roi-2/reading-facebook-insights-data-on-business-pages?u=2109516

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The main direction I believe of this course is “the new way of marketing” (Adams, M. 2018). This involves the usage of social CRM, which helps to combine all the info from social media analytics to determine how an organization may use this information for their best interests. With the correct use of CRM, companies can discover secrets and techniques to correctly engage with their audience and maintain efficient forecasts for market trends; if organizations use these tools properly, they can also predict behaviors of an individual. “The integration of social CRM into your organization’s marketing strategy will enable you to create exceptional experiences, products, and services for your customers simply by listening to them and acting on that information so you can see that social CRM is the new way of marketing” (Adams, M. 2018). The best way to manage your social CRM is with a set of tools, and there is a bunch of tools designed for specific scenarios so choosing what goes best for your operations must be picked carefully, that way you can monitor your customers while also receiving the best benefits towards your companies mission statement. When you are ready to introduce a social CRM framework into your business you must have appropriate resources as well, new technology is rather tricky to implement so having adequate resources, organizational support, and being able to identify any outliers or problems within your company will help profoundly when adopting new systems into your organization’s culture.

Develop Your Strategy

To maintain proper branding and social CRM, your business needs two critical criteria; these are humanization and personalization. Often a brand representative is a faceless identity with no personality, how can you have a conversation with some you do not honestly know? It is hard to have a conversation with a brand. This is where humanizing your brand comes in handy; this will shape your business and allow it to grow, giving it a much-needed personality lift to help ensure your customers want to continue to communicate with your organization. Secondly, for personalization, this is having your customers creating impacting ways it can connect with your business; it allows them to play with the brand and specifically have an impact on what happens and how things get done. An excellent example of this would be ordering through any fast food service, which allows you to earn rewards, customize products, and even get employees to call you out by your name. Your brand is there to help you as an organization is distinct from competitors, so using humanization and personalization, you can create a lasting impression with your customers. Organizations have limitless opportunities to be a well-known due to impacts of social CRM and branding, and even unknown customers can be highly involved with your brand if you can create marketing campaigns with social CRM in mind.    

Manage Social CRM

“True influence drives action, not just awareness” (Baer, J). To expose your brand, you need to find networks with influencers that have thousands of followers. An influencer is “a form of social media marketing involving endorsements and product placement from influencers, people and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or social influence in their field” (Wikipedia, 2020). You have the potential to expose your brand with just a simple blog, tweet, or post to thousands of users, and, if done correctly, will drive potential followers to your brand. Influencer marketings are so useful as it is reliable and cheap. Engagement is just another way an organization can continue to evolve their social CRM. With tools, you can create engaging actions that will lead your organization to the ideal customer, listening to what your customers are saying about you, and what they want or need from your business is just one of the many ways to help create an engaging business. This is valuable because it can lead your company to find more targets exposing your brand, similar to what influencers will do. Be careful when trying to make your brand more engaging, though, as customers can misinterpret many things. To create a successful brand, the best rule to follow is to value your customer, you want to show why they should be involved with your organization, and how you value their purchases. Creating value is not as hard as it seems with the right customer service team. If your brand already has a more humanization outlook, the interaction between the customer and the company should help maintain a long-lasting relationship. Your business has many ways to communicate in the age of the internet; whether it be landline, email, text, or internet, you will always have some way to have an interaction with customers. Social CRM integration is key to customer service as it will allow your management to resolve issues quickly, and will allow your employees to identify and understand issues the customers have. “When your digital customer service channels are fully integrated, agents can work simultaneously on email, social, live chat, while providing seamless support and a great multi-channel experience for the customer” (Adams, M. 2018).

Your Tools

Social CRM strategies are imperative for long term success within your organization. A strategy is usually created when efforts between an organization’s marketing team, sales department, and customer service are using resources to better engage with customers and to create better overall brand awareness; it is not only about gathering data. Every business will run different strategies for what suites their business, but more often now, companies are implementing social tools to help their organization. Your first goal is to always identify the evident problems and to figure out what goals you have. With the use of tools, you can not only identify problems within your organization, but you can also create a strategy that will have analytics, monitoring, and engagement with your customers. With analytics, you can create measurements that will enhance the overall customer experience, and see what type of interactions your company has with its customers.

Conclusion

I believe that social CRM is significant. An excellent example of it is when either a business or even a customer create a fan page for your company, product, or art. If someone has an interest in your product or brand, this is basically creating free awareness just by having a great social CRM business. If you create a way for customers to receive value while also integrating proper elements for branding, you will have a unique following and gain an advantage over your competitors. This does not always happen though; I would say more often, it is easier for your business to have social CRM if you are a video game, movie, tv-show, or anime company. The more appealing your product is, the more others will find a deep connection, this will always be seen as a benefit towards your business and its goals. That is how I feel anyway, as whenever I grow a connection towards something I enjoy, I have a more significant impact towards it than say my bottle of shampoo, so each company has to make sure they are competitive enough and have a great product to have a strong following.

References

Wikipedia Contributors. (2020, March 6). Influencer marketing. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influencer_marketing

(2010). Linkedin.Com. https://www.linkedin.com/learning/social-media-marketing-social-crm/process-documentation?u=2109516

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Create a LinkedIn Profile

“LinkedIn is a powerful tool for students who are preparing to graduate and start the next exciting chapter of their lives. It can help you define your career path, build a professional network, and even find your first job” (Schinkten, O. 2018). Do you ever feel qualified for a job, but are anxious and can’t seem to figure how to go about getting it? Well, LinkedIn can help. LinkedIn is a networking site that can help you achieve your goal when trying to score that dream job. Creating a profile on LinkedIn is secure and feels mandatory when trying to build a career. The mainstream ease of access between you, and the networks provided is more than enough to entice any individual to create a profile. Creating a profile gives you the competitive advantage you may need to boost your career, which can help when creating your own professional network, searching for employment, conducting industry research, and more.

To create a more alluring profile for employers, you will want to make a LinkedIn page showing all your strengths providing why you need to be hired. Once you have completed the sign-up process and figured out all the small details try adding a background image and a profile photo that makes you look sophisticated; try not to use pictures you would typically put on Facebook or Instagram. The picture attached to your profile will be the first thing anyone will see when viewing your account. From there you can personalize a headline and a summary that will attach viewers to your profile, reeling them in to not only learn more about you, but to also take an interest in hiring you. A summary should be dedicated to providing your mission statement, achievements, career goals, skills, and personality. From there you can add your work or volunteering experience, as well as education. Creating a profile that manages to hook users into wanting you for their company is not a hard task if you take the simple steps provided to make the best profile possible.

Build Your LinkedIn Network

Once you have created your profile, it is time to start thinking about whom you want to contact and what kind of network you see yourself in. LinkedIn is not your typical social media site, instead of talking to friends or relatives, you will be talking to professionals whom you see yourself gaining knowledge or a job opportunity from. “A strong professional network can help to provide insight, and advice, knowledge and the exchange of ideas, collaboration, opportunities, access to resources, and often will open the door to job opportunities” (Schinkten, O. 2018). Your profile may be viewed by tons of different companies looking to find their next hotshot, so try to connect and surround yourself with a network that can help further your career. Searching for careers or conducting research about schools is easy on LinkedIn, you have filters to specify any search that you want narrowed down. Are you looking to find relationships with users who attended the same school as you? Or maybe want to look up jobs or companies? The search option is perfect for that as it has tons of filters to find the result you want.

Using LinkedIn Day-to-Day

LinkedIn is a powerful resource; you will want to use it just as much as any other social media platform; that way, you can keep current with potential job offers and access to useful resources. LinkedIn has a built-in news feed page where you can check whenever or wherever you are. This news feed is specialized towards you, making sure you see the information that is relevant to you, like the companies or influencers you follow. You can also post messages and statuses other users are able to see on their homepage too. Remember, everything you do online is creating a footprint others can see, you are technically building a personal brand even if you don’t realize it, so when you are sharing updates, publishing articles or content be careful about what you post; it may not offend you, but others may not take it the same way.

Job Search and Company Research

We know LinkedIn has a variety of filters to find the search results you desire, but it also can explore potential careers, and learn more about companies. With nine million companies on LinkedIn, finding information about a company is easier than ever. You can visit any webpage and either follow or see potential jobs. Following a company is a great way to see insights about how they work and what they care more about, such as their corporate social responsibility, customer relationship management, and tons more. LinkedIn is more than a social media site; it is a platform to help all kinds of people search and apply for jobs, you can even set up alerts about potential offers to stay up to date with any relevancy about the job.

Manage Your LinkedIn Account

LinkedIn has two different types of accounts; one is premium, and the other is free and available to anyone. The premium account has more features and is less restricted, so if you feel the need to upgrade as it is a viable option when trying to pursue a career, do it. Besides the two account types, LinkedIn also has privacy settings where you can block others, and set specific permissions on a bunch of different categories; you may also choose your account type there too. If you found you have had enough of LinkedIn, you can also delete your account in the settings options, which will permanently delete all your data, so if you think this is a necessary action, you may want to download your data beforehand, if you care to keep it.

References

Schinkten, O. 2018. Linkedin.Com. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/learning/learning-linkedin-for-students/why-use-linkedin?autoplay=true&u=2109516

Facebook Advertising Overview

Creating an ad is an exhausting process. You are creating a piece of material that inherently has to be perfect for the audience you are trying to pursue. Perfecting this process will come with time and experience. The Facebook Overview on LinkedIn is there to guide you through steps to achieve this goal sooner rather than later. By following specific guidelines, you can become successful at creating a flawless ad which will attract consumers and promote healthy growth with your business. Within the first couple of minutes, Megan Adams, the voice-over and reader, introduces us to a key phrase that will help marketers identify their mistakes. “Not knowing why.” The idea behind this phrase is most marketers don’t realize or evaluate the situation they are in or product they are trying to promote. “It’s so much more than your budget, idea, tagline, and imagery” (Adams, M. 2019). If you want to be successful when advertising you need to make an ad that makes sense while also creating an overarching goal with your product, from there you can narrow down your target audience, define the purpose, and figure out how to manage your expenses. Ads are powerful tools used by companies and entrepreneurs, which often create a call to action. Each ad will have a clear call to action, and if done correctly, will drive people to the landing page, which should eventually make you start thinking, am I sending people to the correct area, and if not, what is the purpose for my ad? If you have successfully created your call to action, figured out all your weaknesses, have done a bit of research, and now know the exact reason for running your ad, you can start to generate awareness and gain interest in your product or service. People need to start knowing more about you and your product before they will ever think about purchasing it. If you have genuinely narrowed down your audience, you can even get more specific with using relevant information to the users seeing the ads. Doing simple steps, such as using a target location, particular demographics, hobbies, behaviors, and purchase habits, can influence the people you want connecting with your product or service to purchase. You want an ideal customer. By individually targeting a customer, you can generate buzz and start to create impressions and receive feedback, which can help you see the performance, and ad fatigue if you have any.

How Facebook Ads Work

When creating a Facebook ad, you have a variety of options which can be changed depending on your current objective, and how you are trying to promote your ad. You will want to target users based on their age, location, gender, interests, education, workplace and more. With each of these options narrowed down, you can create an ad that is targeted directly to the audience specific to your product. Before you create an ad, you must create an account and attach some type of payment. From there, you can customize your ad freely, with a wide array of options to choose from. You will want to create an ad campaign for the objective you have. Do you want a different ad for current customers and one also for people who live in a different location? Each of these is viable options when creating an optimized target ad. Using the powerful tools on the Facebook website, you can choose any objective for any ad set, creating a unique experience for each individual who sees your ad. Using the ads create tool will help you create ads based explicitly on your objective. You will always want to think about what your goal is and how you will choose it, are you looking for more brand awareness or traffic? When you start thinking about what you want people to do once they have seen your ad, you will begin to build a better campaign.

How to Create Facebook Ads

Once your objective is clear, your next goal is to define your target audience. You will want people who are interested in your product or service and will not only be wanting to purchase it but needing to purchase it. Choosing an audience is just as important as choosing the right ad. If neither is correct, you will not make any money. “You want to increase a likelihood that people will not only interact with your ad, but they will perform the intended objective” (Adams, M. 2019). You have the potential to reach any customer type you want to interact with. The options given are very intuitive and have plenty of select targeting to get the most out of your ad. You can personalize your ad in a plethora of ways, when the audience does react to your ad, they know what to do and how to receive your product while also being the intended target market. You may also target users based on interest targeting or behavioral targeting. Interest targeting is when Facebook users get shown products based on their apps, liked pages, posts and more. This may help when trying to reach out to a broader audience. Behavioral targeting is a technique used that will collect information about a user to display ads relevant to their search history. Both are excellent choices; it always will come down to how you want your ad to be displayed. Before you are ready to finalize your ad, you must follow the steps listed to show the best promise for your ad. Identify your audience, refine your audience to a specific group, choose a budget, manage your ad placement, and where you want it to be seen and finally choose your ad creative; which is essentially the last step in creating your ad.

View Your Advertising Data

Viewing the data, you receive from your ads is a crucial part of making your product a success. In the ad dashboard, you can inspect any element or section of your ad to follow your advertisement. This will allow ease of access to keep up with the status and the changes needed for the ad. In the overview, you can manage your ad where you are able to see all the specifics. You can tell how much you are paying for viewers, the time of day people often react to your ad, the age and gender more influenced to purchase your product, billing summary and more. If you want to understand fully how your ad is performing, creating an advertising report is necessary. The report will allow you to receive data where you can see if you are attaining your goals and where to improve the ad if needed. Understanding why and how to fix the problem is the key to success. If you can adequately dictate where you want your ad to go, and what changes need to be done, you will see more healthy growth. “With so many different types of goals and objectives, it’s really important to understand your success metrics. When we look at a report, we are often doing so with the mindset of optimization” (Adams, M. 2019). Viewing your data is vital as it will allow you to fully understand the metrics of your ad and allow you to create more beneficial ads for your product.

Implement Best Practices

Having a clear call to action will help the performance and creativity of your ad. Create an ad for the audience you want. Often you may not be aware of your ad is getting across properly to the targeted market, but you can do simple techniques to stead ahead of the curve. Running multiple versions of your ad, or changing some different areas are good examples to have a more evident call to action with the correct audience responding to your product. Imagery is an important thing to get right, as some may view and image entirely different than how you would test multiple images on audiences to see which one responds better, you can also try a different image for each particular audience you want to target. Continuously refine and evaluate your ad to see if there is anything you can improve on. This will overall improve your report data, and have you keep up with current trends while identifying what weaknesses or strengths you had previously.

Conclusion

To implement Facebook ads properly, you need to follow a certain amount of instructions; that way, you will be able to perform each decision you do with confidence. Start by having an idea, some imagery and a tagline, from there; you can figure out a budget with a clear call to action. If you can depict what you need to do, you can quickly gain the right audience for each targeted market you have chosen. I would personally implement the techniques of doing test trials on different users, as I know my opinion differs from many others and I may be biased towards my ad. Showing multiple images, and taglines to the same audiences may help me pick a clear winner which might end up doing better overall than my interpretation of what I think is better.

References

Adams, M. (2019, Oct 2). Advertising on Facebook. Retrieved from LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/learning/advertising-on-facebook-2/facebook-is-an-advertiser-s-dream?u=2109516