STUKENT + DECA
Social Media Marketing Challenge Guidelines
October 1 - December 1, 2024
The Stukent Social Media Marketing Challenge provides participants the opportunity to compete in the world’s first social media marketing simulation used by top institutions around the world. Participants will test their social media marketing skills by managing a weekly budget in simulated ad dollars for a fictitious, global bag company. The strategy will include marketing on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and Pinterest.
Challenge Guidelines
- Each participant must be a registered DECA member of a high school chapter at the time of registration.
- Please have your students use their school emails when registering for the challenge.
- Advisors and students both must register. If a student wishes to participate, his or her DECA advisor must register on behalf of the student.
- Once the advisor submits the student’s registration request, the advisor will receive an email that includes the link to the challenge. The advisor will then forward the email to his or her student(s) to complete the registration.
- DECA membership will be verified for all winners. Entries with incomplete information or students who are not registered DECA members will be disqualified.
- Any students who do not complete each round in its entirety will be disqualified from the challenge.
- Any form of cheating (or suspicion thereof) will not be tolerated. Forms of cheating include, but are not limited to:
- Registering and competing using more than one account
- Plagiarizing: using another person’s work and claiming it as your own
- Collaborating with one or more people, whether they are also participating or not. This includes participating in a group setting under a single account.
- Posting the same or strikingly similar content repeatedly.
Awards
The top 3 qualified individuals with the highest scores in the Simternship will be recognized by Stukent and DECA and receive the following monetary awards:
- 1st Place: $1,500 cash prize
- 2nd Place: $1,000 cash prize
- 3rd Place: $500 cash prize
Timeline
The Stukent Social Media Marketing Challenge will begin Tuesday, October 1, 2024 and end Sunday, December 1, 2024. Participants may register anytime during these dates but must finish their simulation rounds no later than December 1, 2024, at 12:00 AM Mountain Time.
Knowledge and Skills
Upon completion of the challenge, students will be able to:
- Write targeted social media ads
- Perform demographic targeting
- Learn social media content promotion strategies
- Measure key performance indicators
- Budget ads
- Schedule Content
Participants Will:
- Learn and test different promotional strategies to create compelling social media ads across various social media network platforms
- Gain experience writing ad copy that increases engagement and conversions
- Analyze which types of content on which social platforms resonate best amongst different demographics
- Learn the difference between earned, owned, and paid social media marketing promotion strategies
- Analyze various forms of media and different strategies to achieve the greatest reach
- Measure and improve marketing efforts by analyzing the performance of key indicators
- Manage a weekly social media marketing budget, while placing competitive bids to drive clicks, shares, likes, comments, etc.
- Schedule their marketing content to post and go live at optimal times