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  • Freberg Chapter Summary- Post 4
  • Understanding Audiences- Post 3
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  • Social Monitoring- Post 1

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Brief Summary of Freberg’s Chapter: Measurement, Evaluation, Budget, and Calendar Consideration for Social Media

In this chapter, Freberg discusses some key points on how to have a successful campaign. One of the most important things that she notes is being unable to measure success without the use of SMART. Some of the key measurements talked about in this chapter are: Outputs, Outtakes, Outcomes, Objectives, Inputs, and Activities. By using these factors, organizations will be able to better understand their message and how their intended audience is perceiving them. Freberg also talks about budgeting and the “hidden costs”. She talks about four different sectors of budgeting that need to be thought about for professional social media budgeting. Lastly, the chapter discusses calendar considerations. She discusses a few different types of calendars that can be used and how creating a calendar can be beneficial to social media content creation. Essentially, her chapter talks about creating goals before diving straight into posts, tracking metrics (KPIs), creating budgets that make sense (realistic), Use calanders to help keep you organized and stay consistent, and evaluating your data and adjusting as needed to ensure that your campaign aligns with the wants and needs of your audience.

Freberg, K. (2022). Social media for strategic communication (2nd ed.). SAGE Publishing.

KFC wants to create a new ambassador program for Generation Z audience members with their new spicy chicken and lemonade drink. Outline the steps you will want to take in order to execute this program on the right foot. Discuss at least one example of a good ambassador program to follow and recommend to KFC. 

The first step that I would take to execute this program correctly is to find out specifically what KFC’s goals are with GenZ. Since this is an ambassador program, I would find out how many ambassadors KFC is looking to have. I think that this should be the first step because KFC cannot start off if its goal is too broad. There needs to be specific measures that it follows to reach its overall goal. Once this is defined, I would suggest making further goals more specific, SMART-based goals to really zone in on targeting GenZ. The second step I would take is to align the brand with the interests of GenZ. Video 1- Audience Segmentation from this week states that you want your content to resonate deeply with the targeted audience. By finding out detailed demographics (age, education, gender, etc.)  and psychographics( interests, values, lifestyles, etc.)  KFC will be able to tailor their message in the most effective way toward this audience. From the same video, they gave the example to look at the data from the social media platforms, for example, a younger crowd might like short, funny videos, whereas an older crowd prefers more text-based posts. So I would suggest that KFC takes a look at their social media presence and first see which platform GenZ uses the most, and secondly, what kind of content they are most interactive/engaging with. This data can be taken from the insights on social media apps; KFC will be able to identify metrics such as engagement rates and clickthrough rates, and adjust their social media strategy through the telling of the data. Once again, the video and the pdf from this week mentioned niche groups, which are specialized areas or communities surrounding common interests. By finding and tailoring messages towards these groups, this encourages deeper engagement. The next step I would take would be to find ambassadors. Ambassadors should be people who GenZ relates to best. This could be college students, collegiate athletes, or local content creators. As stated in the pdf from this week, brand ambassadors are considered external audiences. These ambassador’s should have a required amount of posting on their social media each month to really help boost promotion of KFC’s new sandwich and lemonade. By promoting these items, GenZ will gradually start to see through social persuasion, the social cognitive theory that this product is worth trying. Lastly, one good example of an ambassador program to follow would be Coca-Cola. I say this because I am a part of GenZ and I see many of my mutual friends on Instagram be apart of the student ambassador program for Coca-Cola. Some things that I have noticed from my following of these student ambassadors is that they post frequently and promote the brand through PR packages that they receive and hashtags and posts that they upload. They are also paid campus ambassadors and go through training on what to post and how to promote Coca-Cola. One of my friends recently graduated, was an ambassador, and received a full-time job offer from the company after they finished college. Coca-Cola would be a good company to follow, and I would recommend this to KFC because they use real college students and create a good, tailored brand message to GenZ. 

You are working for a local bakery, and your boss is looking to generate some interest, particularly with community residents that are on Instagram and love food. Provide your recommendation on who you all should target and why.

I would start off by looking into the group of people who are most likely to buy food from the bakery. More specifically, who is most likely to repeatedly come back and purchase goods from here? Video 1 mentioned that content should be generated toward people who are most likely to be your customers. As the question mentions, we want to focus on community residents who use Instagram and love food. So I would search for local people who are considered foodies and ask them if they can give a review of their food. This way, it isn’t an outsider who is super popular and might not connect best with locals. By getting content creators who are from the area, the community will have a sense of trust and be more inclined to visit the bakery. I would suggest targeting families. More specifially moms who are active on social media. This is good because typically they are hosting events such as birthdays, family parties, or even corporate events, and can generate buzz around the bakery for the community or even refer other parents to the bakery for their own events. The bakery should send sample boxes to a community member who also has children and ask them to post a “unboxing” and taste-testing video on Instagram. This way, other members of the community will likely go out and purchase something from the bakery because of social proof. 

References:

Wachanga, 2026. Audience Segmentation Analysis. pdf. Canvas pdf week 4. 

Wachanga, 2026. Video 1- Audience Segmentation. Canvas Video week 4.

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.

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.

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