Feb

10

SWOT- Post 2

February 10, 2026 | Leave a Comment

What is SWOT analysis and why is it important is social media research?

As I received my undergraduate degree in Communications with an emphasis in Public Relations, SWOT is something that we used a lot in class. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. According to the readings from this week, SWOT is a traditional part of the communication and marketing campaign process and a key component to social media strategic planning. This analysis is used for both internal and external factors. Strengths refer to what the business is doing well and positive attributes, such as an established presence on specific platforms. Whereas weakness is the opposite. Weakness refers to where the business lacks and what is stopping it from reaching good performance levels and completing goals and objectives. Opportunities are things that a business can take advantage of. A good example of this is market trends, a business can look over and see what consumers are buying and take advantage of the market trend by tailoring their product or brand to match the wants and needs of the consumers. These opportunities can lead to new approaches and behaviors. When I think of threats, I think of people that a business is going against, in other words, competitors. It is important to be aware of your threats because you want to be able to be one step ahead of them. A good example of a threat is listed in ” Social Media for Strategic Communication” in Canvas on page 15.

SWOT is important in social media research because it can help you better understand how your business is doing. Because strengths and weaknesses are identified through internal factors, this will tell you what you can control. External factors such as opportunities and threats are external factors. You cannot necessarily control these parts, but you can respond to them, or better yet, take advantage of them. SWOT helps you stay up to date and compare yourself with your competitors. It is a tool used to measure how your business is performing and what areas need to be adjusted to be successful.

References:

Wachanga. 2026. Social Media for Strategic Communication. Canvas page- Module 3.

Feb

3

Social Monitoring- Post 1

February 3, 2026 | 1 Comment

Question: You are entering a client meeting, and your boss says, “Monitoring is too expensive; we need to get rid of this.” What is your response? (For your blog post)

For starters, I would like to explain what social monitoring is. According to our PowerPoint slides from this week’s module and Freberg’s book, provided by Dr. Wachanga, social monitoring can be defined as “Using scientific research to monitor and measure your SM performance” (Wachanga, 2026). In other words, monitoring is used to understand and analyze data gathered from social media. In audio 2 from this week’s module, the video states that monitoring is more reactive than listening and does not have a set time frame, meaning it can take place over days, weeks, months, or even years. Ultimately, monitoring evaluates the success of a company or brand. (Audio 2 Wachanga, 2026).

Now that I have established what monitoring is exactly, I am now going to state what I would do if my boss told me that monitoring is too expensive.

I would say that monitoring is needed to evaluate the success of the company. I would highly suggest that we continue to keep monitoring a part of our budget because it gives us a lot of insights into how we are performing. While it might be expensive, the value that it brings to the company is unmatched. Monitoring tells us what is and isn’t working, and from there, we are able to adjust our ideas or content that we are creating. Monitoring can give us insights about our audiences, too, and tell us about their growth, which will keep us up to date with what we need to create that supports what they care about. This also helps us keep our goals aligned well with our reputation. Monitoring also helps with tracking sentiments. These are just a few things that I listed as to why monitoring is such an important tool to have. The price we pay to keep it is worth the information that we receive back about our company. Therefore, we need to keep monitoring a part of our budget to ensure the success of the business.

References:

Wachanga,2026. Freberg Social Media for Strategic Communication, Second Edition, Chapter 6: Research in Social Media: Monitoring, Listening, and Analysis. Powerpoint.

Wachanga, 2026. Research in New and Social Media. Powerpoint

Wachanga, 2026. Social Listening & Monitoring. Audio.