leahholland4

[leahholland4]

Social media ethics response - Leah holland

The current state of social media ethics: what trends are happening in the industry? What are two current cases related to social media ethics? Outline the current code of ethics for social media by a professional organization you would be interesting in joining as part of their social media staff.

There are trends of influencers advertising things that don’t make it clear it is an advertisement.  There is also a trend of creating misleading posts with fake photos or misleading coverage to tell a certain viewpoint that they want to get out to the public.  

One case was Hayley Paige, a wedding designer who had a following on Instagram where she shared information regarding her expertise.  Her employer JLM Couture took over her personal account and a judge ruled that her account was connected to her employment and her employer so it was essentially theirs.  Another case is connected to Facebook and its lack of oversight around disinformation and conspiracy theories.  There have been congressional hearings and questions about what types of action they need to take.  

This is Sephora’s Social Media guidelines Sephora’s Social Media Guidelines

At Sephora, we believe in championing all beauty, living with courage, and standing fearlessly together to celebrate our differences. Our social media spaces allow us to highlight the diversity of our community and applaud beauty in all forms.

Sadly, we recognize that online harassment is a growing epidemic, hurting those who simply want to shine their light and dampening healthy conversations. As a leading beauty retailer with a large social presence, we feel a responsibility to ensure that our social platforms are inclusive, welcoming, and free of hateful speech.

We want to create open spaces for respectful discussion. To do this, we must ensure that our clients, Sephora Squad members, Beauty Directors, and other content creators feel safe and encouraged on all our platforms without the fear of hateful or judgmental comments. That’s why we’ve partnered with Right To Be, a leader in the movement to end harassment in all its forms, to create this set of social media guidelines.

Sephora is what it is today because of our dedicated, passionate, and diverse community, and this change isn’t something that we can do alone—we need your support. So please join us in making our social media platforms a safe space for followers and talent to experiment and play with beauty.

They outline in their guidelines that there is harassment on platforms and then there are those that just want to share their thoughts.  They embrace free speech that is free of hate and embrace diveristy.

Brands/professionals with strong social media ethical codes: what brands are utilizing proper social media ethical practices? Are there any professionals that you feel practice strong ethical behavior on social media? Support your choice with evidence. What are some takeaways you can bring forth in your own practices?  

Reading about what Sephora does, they try to have a social impact with their Social Impact program.  Through this customers can donate points earned to social justice charities.  Sephora also pledges to have 15% of their shelves with Black owned companies.  This shows that they actually do the work they post about.  When you look at their posts on Instagram they post diverse individuals and share beautiful images along with their products.  It is direct, honest and backs up what they say they stand for.

Key concepts and issues: what main concepts do you are necessary to adhere to for your own personal conduct online?

I think some of the main concepts that I find it necessary to adhere to online is to be honest, kind, factual, not use altered media.  Making sure that the messages I send are appropriate and not hurtful to others.

What to do and what not to do: what main concepts do you feel strongly against and want to make sure you avoid on social media?

I feel strongly against conspiracy theories and sharing misleading information just to get clicks.  I believe this is unethical and leads to a lot of the polarization we have.  I am also against creating post that are mean spirited or making fun of some one.I believe positive messages that are factual but done well will have impact.

Bullet point 5-10 core concepts that you will follow as a practicing social media professional. Include citations that you used for sources/supports for this.

I will always be aware that my posts can be looked up in the future and think carefully about what I am posting to make sure it is not offensive.  Going viral for something negative is not a good thing.  One example of this is from the scenario described in Social Media for Strategic Communication by Karen Freberg, of Justine Sacco , a Public relations professional, who was boarding a plane to Africa and put out a truly offensive tweet.  She had many ramifications from this one action.  Think before you post is my mantra.

Being aware of when humor should not be used in certain situations.  One example of humor going wrong is when the Houston Rockets, Chad Shanks, who was their social media professional, tweeted out a message that had “two emojis (one was a horse, and the other was a gun) and said, “Shhhh. Just close your eyes. It will be over soon” (Freberg, 48).  He did this while the game was going on between the Mavericks and Rockets.  He was then fired.

I will ensure that any endorsements that I coordinate with influencers are clearly identified as such.  I will work to get authentic posts from influencers who really douse the products.  One example of why this is important is the post by Scott Disick who literally copied and pasted the brands email with out editing it, making it abundantly clear that he was just doing it for the money and not truly into the product. (Freberg, 51)

I will make sure to be honest and factual.  To build trust with the audience through my work.  Making sure that any original posts or shared posts are credible and trustworthy.  Vetting the sources we use and repost will be important. As shared in, Business Ethics Resource Center, “Five principals for avoiding ethics pitfalls on Social Media” article “Maintaining trust is the key to keeping your audience”.

As a practicing social media professional I will make sure that the conet is clear and transparent.  That it is not constant advertisements, but it is clear what it is and that it is truthful.  Offering valuable content that is not advertisement is important.  As said in Business Ethics Resource Center article “Five principals  for avoiding ethics pitfalls on Social Media” article “Transparency builds authority” and this is important to creating value from your audience.

Being careful and thoughtful about conversations on social media that I or my brand gets into.  Making sure that the story being shared is a positive one for the brand I am working with.  As shared in the article “Five principals for avoiding ethics pitfalls on Social Media” “actions have pitfalls”.  Content shared or commented on can go viral in a positive or negative way.  Being thoughtful can help make sure that there is a better chance for a positive outcome.

#socialmedia #ethics #socialmediaethics #media #college #sephora #heartassocaition

[leahholland4]

The American Heart Association platforms- How can they improve?

By: Leah Holland

The non-profit I chose is the American Heart Association. The American Heart Association is a non-profit that helps fight heart disease and stroke. The organization supports getting information out on heart health, training people in CPR, helping to invest in research and more. This organization is meaningful to me because I was born with a heart defect. In highschool I created a senior project that was geared towards heart health. I used the American Heart Association to help me throughout the process.

The American Heart Association's vanity metrics are impressive. They have a generous amount of followers on different social media platforms, although not as many as you might expect for a big organization.

I believe that The American Heart Association could improve their metrics by having more interactive posts. For example on their instagram they have a lot of posts that state facts or quotes. This is good information but it doesn’t draw in the audience as much as if it was a video or content that you can interact with. I think the thing they should focus on is gaining a wider range of audience. Most of their followers are 30+ after looking at their following. A good way they  could improve this is doing collabs with the younger generation for example a college sports team talking about it and helping promote it. 

The advanced metric that would be helpful for the American Heart Association is Audience Engagement.  Utilizing influencers and advocates to encourage others to interact and engage with the content.  This would be particularly effective on TikTok(link) and Twitter (link). Audience Growth would be another metric that would be beneficial for the organization to expand.  Increasing their audience and the importance of the organization and their efforts would be a helpful way to get their message out to more individuals.  For Audience Growth, focusing on TiKTok and Instagram would be beneficial.

The Channel Metric that would be important to increase would be insights.  Reaching more individuals and getting them engaged on Twitter and TikTok could help extend the message to substantially more individuals. For Behavioral Metrics Click through links are probably most important since they are working to get people involved and to their website.  Utilizing Facebook (link)and Twitter would be important for this metric. They can use click-through links to specifically drive the audience to the donation page as well as specific information on heart health and the organization.

[leahholland4]

The American Heart Association platforms - how can they improve?

By:Leah Holland

The non-profit I chose is the American Heart Association. The American Heart Association is a non-profit that helps fight heart disease and stroke. The organization supports getting information out on heart health, training people in CPR, helping to invest in research and more. This organization is meaningful to me because I was born with a heart defect. In highschool I created a senior project that was geared towards heart health. I used the American Heart Association to help me throughout the process.

The American Heart Association's vanity metrics are impressive. They have a generous amount of followers on different social media platforms, although not as many as you might expect for a big organization.

I believe that The American Heart Association could improve their metrics by having more interactive posts. For example on their instagram they have a lot of posts that state facts or quotes. This is good information but it doesn’t draw in the audience as much as if it was a video or content that you can interact with. I think the thing they should focus on is gaining a wider range of audience. Most of their followers are 30+ after looking at their following. A good way they  could improve this is doing collabs with the younger generation for example a college sports team talking about it and helping promote it. 

The advanced metric that would be helpful for the American Heart Association is Audience Engagement.  Utilizing influencers and advocates to encourage others to interact and engage with the content.  This would be particularly effective on TikTok(link) and Twitter (link). Audience Growth would be another metric that would be beneficial for the organization to expand.  Increasing their audience and the importance of the organization and their efforts would be a helpful way to get their message out to more individuals.  For Audience Growth, focusing on TiKTok and Instagram would be beneficial.

The Channel Metric that would be important to increase would be insights.  Reaching more individuals and getting them engaged on Twitter and TikTok could help extend the message to substantially more individuals. For Behavioral Metrics Click through links are probably most important since they are working to get people involved and to their website.  Utilizing Facebook (link)and Twitter would be important for this metric. They can use click-through links to specifically drive the audience to the donation page as well as specific information on heart health and the organization.

[leahholland4]

Thoughts on social media - Leah holland

When thinking about social media and how I define it, I immediately think of apps like instagram,tiktok, snapchat and then facebook for the older generation. In general I would define it as a platform where users can create and explore different content. It’s also a way to communicate. The reason I think of those specific apps is because those are the ones I use the most and know how to work well. I also feel these apps are the most common among people. I do enjoy parts of social media and like the capability of exploring new things. I’ve gained great opportunities from it including jobs, Miss RI and more.  I would characterize myself as someone who watches social media more than producing regular content. Yes I do post but not regularly, I don’t worry about interactions made with my post. I do it for fun. Being young I believe I do have a few strengths when it comes to my outlook on social media. Some of those being, I understand the good that can come from social media for example new and different opportunities but also the bad and the negative content that can affect you. I have a different perspective on social media than someone who is older. Social media definitely has positive and negative sides to it. Something I struggle with is being gullible when it comes to certain posts and believing it without doing extra research. For example if I were to see an influencer use a product and rave about it, I may believe them and not actually look at reviews and do proper research to see if what they are saying is true. When I was younger I noticed I would forget how pictures are manipulated to be “perfect” and not everything's real, I've caught myself looking at a photo and wondering why I didn’t look like that. This is very common among most individuals. One thing about social media that is hard for everyone is how hate can be spread, that’s something I understand because hate comments are common in younger people. It’s a way to attack someone without being face to face and so they feel it’s “okay.”  In this class I want to gain more knowledge on communicating through social media and how people view you through a post. I want to learn more about this because in the future I want to go into social media marketing where I promote brands products and content through ads,videos and pictures through their social media platforms. This topic is important to learn more about. I also want to dive into the growth of social media and how it has affected people throughout the years. This will be beneficial to my career so I can track statistics and how a post may do. To wrap up my thoughts on social media, I believe it affects our daily lives and is seen every day. It’s hard to escape. Social media is going to change and adapt over the years and we all will have to adjust to it.