Simulation Overview

In Principles of Social Media, a simulation was integrated into our coursework. Stukent’s Social Media Simternship allows students to manage and operate the social media for Buhi. Buhi is a company that sells backpacks to different audiences such as hikers, business professionals and more. In the simulation, the demographic of people who enjoyed hiking and being adventurous seemed to be their main target audience. This audience generated the most revenue, especially on Facebook.

Each week, a new round of the simulation was due. This helped us to pace ourselves because completing it all at once isn’t practical. I personally liked this structure and felt that it was beneficial. It was always easy to manage. Each round took me about an hour to complete. Some of the higher rounds took more time because there were three components. This consisted of making organic posts, paid posts and scheduling influencers.

While I have my own social media accounts and have experience as a social media manager, some of this was new to me. I struggled to create paid posts at first, especially when I didn’t have a clear objective. It was certainly a learning curve, but I finally got the hang of it. My favorite part of the simulation was creating organic posts because it’s what I was the most familiar with. Scheduling influencers was unique, but not hard to do. The only issue was that the best influencer cost more than the budget they gave me. Instead, I had to settle for someone else.

The entire simulation taught me trial and error. At the start, I would look at the buyer personas and figure out what social media platform would best target that audience. Once I did that, I would post at random times throughout the day to see what was best for each specific audience. Some audiences were better at 4 p.m. while others at 11 a.m. I had to tweak things along the way to find what worked best. As the simulation progressed, I was able to generate more revenue.

Through this simulation, I learned how to target specific audiences, tailor content to audience preferences and implement marketing strategies. I was able to create organic and paid posts as well as schedule influencers to promote Buhi. Overall, it was a cool experience.