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Implementation

Implementation is defined in the dictionary as the process of putting a decision or plan into effect. This is definitely the stage where organizations can sink or float their social media business. Learning about the right tactics on social media to use as a business can be easy, but understanding how to apply your own-self and the company, is when things can become tricky.

Networking and creating social ads on social media will fail without putting thought into the purpose, the community, and the right kind of social media platform. There are many different demographics on each platform that need their own separate plan of action. Some platforms have younger crowds, in which, entertainment, visuals, and laughter usually grab their attention. While other platforms have an older fanbase that is attracted to possibly more informational and realistic approaches. Being able to identify your target audience and understand what makes them tick, will be the key to your social media success.

It is also important that individuals of a company have the same mindset and goals as the entirety of the company to succeed. Our class lecture on implementation provided a great example explaining that the ultimate resource is resourcefulness. Comparing implementation strategies, a smaller company with only 2 paid employees used implementation effectively, while a larger company with a multi-million dollar budget failed to execute their strategic plan. This goes to show that if your resources are not thought out and used appropriately, your business will fail while implementing their social strategies. 

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Hootsuite & Client Project Step 6 - Social Advertising

I have always been curious on how the advertisements on social media are funded and set up. Scrolling through friend’s Instagram stories and Facebook posts, there always seems to be a few ads that pop up. As these can get a bit annoying, the opportunity to reach tons of potential customers is unreal!

Before your business sets up any social advertisements, you want to ask yourself and your business partners a question. “Does your company have a well-defined social media strategy with clear objectives?” Understanding your social media goals can better prepare your social advertisements to relate and reach the right following your company is looking for. 

Each social media platform has their own unique ways to create advertisement options. With over 2 billion monthly active users on Facebook and more ad options than any other platform, the opportunity to reach an enormous audience is there! Through Facebook, you are able to create ads directly off your page with an easy interface and budgeting options. To create Instagram ads, you must have a Facebook business page, which allows you to develop your own ad design. Twitter offers a great variety of ads as well. You are able to choose an objective for your campaign ads such as awareness, follower growth or engagement, and conversion. 

Gaining knowledge and understanding of these important options of social advertising will help my client, Grav Cap Brewing, build brand awareness and growth towards their following!

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How Social Media is Changing the World

I was scrolling through the web, reading different articles about social media when I found an interesting topic of conversation. The article discussed the many ways in which social media is changing the world around us. They explained how social media platforms may become the banks of the future by being able to pay your rent or make an investment through your favorite social network. We already experience the online transaction apps such as CashApp and Venmo, and these new financial technology companies are using social media to help people simply open a bank account. However, “The biggest challenge is maintaining security standards and ensuring customers knowingly provide personal information.” There are many holes in the system that must be filled before take off, but this could be a new feature in our upcoming future! Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/6-ways-social-media-is-changing-the-world/

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The Social Organization Ch. 3-5

Chapters 3 - 5 explain an excellent story-line to help a business become a social organization, form their organization’s vision, and then develop a strategic approach to community collaboration. These unique steps are methods that can make or break an organization’s success. Chapter 3: Becoming a social organization is very important and can fail easily if not managed properly. The chapter surfaces a term called “Provide-and-Pray” that is very common, where organizations provide the access to social media technology and hope or “pray” that the magic of collaboration just happens. Research indicates that only around 10 percent of “provide-and-pray” initiatives succeed. About 70 percent fall short because adoption is insignificant and no active community emerges. Lastly, the remaining 20 percent fail because the collaboration never delivers genuine value to the organization, even though a community forms. The key to becoming a successful social organization is to create a cycle of the vision, strategy, and adapt that into the community collaboration. Chapter 4: Once a business becomes a social organization through online community collaboration, it is important to form the vision behind the organization. To develop an effective vision statement, you must understand when community collaboration is appropriate, know where community collaboration is more likely to deliver value, apply an understanding of your organization’s goals, and distribute an organizational vision for community collaboration.  Chapter 5: After an organization forms an appropriate vision, developing a strategic approach to community collaboration is very important. A well-formed purpose addresses a recognized problem and is specific enough to motivate the target audience. This can be broken down into 4 segments: “Who are the target participants?”, “What is the focus of their collaboration?”, “What’s in it for participants?”, & “What value will the organization realize?”. Identifying each step clearly, will help to form a strong purpose statement for your organization. 

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Client Project Step 4

I have been learning more and more about my client and ways to improve their online appearance as time moves on. The Hootsuite modules for this week were all about building and growing an online community throughout the different platforms available. Each platform has its own unique attributes that can be very beneficial if used correctly. 

In order to build an online community, you must stay active and interact with your audience. By taking the time to create content such as hashtags for your accounts can bring more attention to your profiles and your brand. Customers love anything with the words “Free or Discount” in it. Providing incentives for your customers to follow your brand on each platform and post about experiences for a gift certificate or discount on the next visit will sky rocket your following and bring customers back! With my client being a local brewery, I thought it would be an excellent idea to provide a free beer or glass of wine to every customer that follows Grav Cap Brewing on each social media platform and create a unique post about the company. In my personal opinion, one free beer would lead to me paying for another one! This could be a great marketing tactic to build a following and cycle Grav Cap’s name throughout social media, as well as bring in revenue from other purchases! Many social media platforms have the ability to live-stream and every company should take advantage of this opportunity to show the world all the great things they are doing on a regular basis! Grav Cap has tons of different events from euchre parties to shuffleboard tournaments to live bands weekly. Live-streams could be the perfect way to advertise and show off all the fun activities that are going on, as well as include a brief comment from customers (winner of the euchre party & shuffleboard, or the live band). All these unique aspects from each platform can be an excellent way to build and involve your fanbase!

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Social Media Client Project

To update on our assigned social media evaluation client projects, I have been communicating back and forth with my client, Gravel Capital Brewery in Oxford, MI. After having a good evaluation on my client’s social media, the Hootsuite social media modules have been very helpful to push this information further in the auditing process. 

Understanding my client’s goals and objectives and tactics for budgeting their advertising and marketing strategies, will improve my ability to make their productivity more measurable. The Hootsuite module for this week has helped me narrow down to the three important components for auditing, which involves the audience, internal factors, and my client’s competitors. To evaluate local competitors and gather the information on what content is out performing Gravel Capital, will introduce great tools for me to provide to my client. Building a SMART analysis (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Resourced, Time-Bound) is the perfect step to provide my client with the right path towards success and how to measure each stepping stone correctly. I look forward to continuing this evaluation process with Gravel Capital and learn more tactics through the Hootsuite modules!

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Big Data

Big data is a crucial aspect that allows businesses to observe consumer related patterns and trends. Through every interaction with technology, consumers are creating more unique personal data for companies to take advantage of. This is a huge competitive advantage for leading corporations and can create an infinite amount of new growth opportunities. With all the cost efficient benefits big data provides, businesses need to know when not to cross the line. Having such vital customer information, it can be easy for businesses to get carried away and create red flags in business operations. 

For many technology users, big data is an unknown and overlooked aspect. Every consumer should be aware that their information and trends are being recorded while they are surfing the web and apps. Most of the time, big data is collected and sold to companies for advertising and marketing purposes, but there is always a higher level privacy concern. Consumers should be aware of the information they provide, and the information that is being collected. The technologies used to store and process big data information does not have the highest security and has been breached several times throughout history. Important consumer information getting into the wrong hands can be very dangerous to companies and consumers.

I think the best way to balance these opportunities for business and the threats for consumers is to provide information to consumers about what type of data is being collected and when. I would feel a lot more comfortable if I knew when and what type of data is being collected and where it is being given to. I understand the advantages that big data provides for all companies, but having the comfort of knowing your own information is in safe hands will benefit the consumer-business relationship. Having a more secure data storage, which cannot be hacked or leaked will keep our companies and consumers safe from any terrorism or inside threats.

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Social Media

For this blog, I decided to look up some interesting facts behind social media. Walking past people everyday staring at their phones, I was curious to what the total amount of social media users is worldwide. The Internet has 4.54 billion users with social media right behind it with 3.725 billion active users. I also saw another interesting fact that social media users grew by 328 million between October 2018 and October 2019. As I was scrolling through all these ridiculous facts and statistics of social media, I found a graph near the middle of the article relating positive and negative effects to social media. I couldn’t help to notice that of the negative effects, depression, anxiety, and sleep problems were present. This caught my attention and made me do some more research on these effects!

“In March 2018, it was reported that more than a third of Generation Z from a survey of 1,000 individuals stated that they were quitting social media for good as 41 percent stated that social media platforms make them feel anxious, sad or depressed.” Many self-esteem issues are being developed through body comparisons and other actions, which is causing a huge epidemic among our young social media audience. Hopefully some social media influencers and others can use their following to turn this issue around!

Sources: https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/amazing-social-media-statistics-and-facts/ https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/social-media-mental-health-negative-effects-depression-anxiety-addiction-memory-a8307196.html

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Social Media Evaluation

For the client project of evaluating a small company’s social media platforms, I chose a local hometown brewery in Oxford, Michigan called Gravel Capital Brewery. I thought this was a perfect company to help evaluate because: 1.) Gravel Capital was opened up by some family friends (which I would love to help) &  2.)  they are roughly one year into the business. 

After some evaluating of their different social media platforms, I think they have a pretty decent start to creating a reliable following. Some of their strengths include staying active and constantly posting in advance for new events such as food trucks, euchre parties, corn hole tournaments, and “paint and sip” parties. 

Learning more through the Hootsuite modules on how to properly setup professional social media accounts, I already have a good feel on how to help Gravel Capital succeed!

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Social Media Presence

My social media presence has changed so much throughout my college career. Everyone wants to make their accounts, especially Instagram, look like they’re living their best life. Traveling, shopping, expensive clothes and cars, everything that screams making others jealous. I can admit that I was also a victim to this “lifestyle”. Although I still post vacays and other awesome adventures I have experienced, I feel that I have grown tremendously with my social media accounts. 

Being a senior at CMU and starting my professional career, I want to portray myself as a professional who is ready for the next step of my life. I feel that I have spent more time on apps such as LinkedIn, creating my network with other professionals and companies. I plan to trim up the fat of on some accounts such as Facebook, that has had content for over a decade that might not be a good representation of the person I am today. A strategy I plan to improve on is staying consistent with posting positive and creative work to my professional accounts to try and make a name for myself within the business world. I am starting a sales/recruiting job with Kelly Services this summer, whose main focus is recruiting eligible professionals to other striving and Fortune 500 companies. I feel that social media will be a very important part of my job to find the best talent and match them with the right clients.

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Social Media Consulting

As a young adult, we might believe we know everything there is to know about our social media platforms. However, what does it actually take to become a good social media consultant? Within this blog, I will identify the most important qualities for a social media consultant to have.

In my opinion, the first quality that comes to mind is having a general knowledge of the different platforms that are available. Whether the platform is mainly used for pictures, blogs, entertainment, advertising, or etc. is a key aspect that anyone who is using a certain app should know. You need a social media consultant that has an overall understanding of all the biggest social media networks with some knowledge of the new ones as well.

Another very important quality is the ability to align with your business goals. Understanding social media is not just about gaining more followers and constantly posting material to your different networks. It’s also about how all these different platforms and content tie into your business goals and objectives. Having the ability to understand a business’s goals and intertwine them with the unique strategies that each platform has to offer is a huge advantage! It will be difficult for a consultant to match business goals of their clients within social media if they use a “one-size-fits-all” approach. As a consultant, being flexible and available to adapt to create a unique social media package is a very important quality to have!

Sources:

https://www.business2community.com/social-media/7-qualities-to-look-for-when-hiring-a-social-media-consultant-01297363

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Ads on Ads on Ads!

I enjoyed watching Maciej Ceglowksi speak about the dangers of the internet. As these type of conversations have been hidden from the internet users since the existence of the World Wide Web, it is refreshing to hear some truth. With all the free information and accessibility, we have as users of the internet, there is no way there could be no other strings attached. Ceglowski couldn’t have made it any clearer by saying, “Our personal data is a lot like radioactive waste. Really easy to generate, incredibly toxic, and impossible to dispose of.” This is a scary thought when you sit down and think about it. He also said that a company’s average lifespan is roughly around 10 - 20 years, but this toxic, personal data lasts a lifetime! As we have discovered that advertisement companies can target who they want to see certain ads, you have to understand how much of our data is really out there. I have had an ad-blocker system on my browsers for around a decade now, and even some websites now-a-days will not allow access to their information unless the ad-blocker is deactivated. After the past couple classes I have taken on social media and technology within business, I have definitely become more careful with posting certain information!

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The Data Brokers

This week, us students were asked to watch an interesting video done by 60 Minutes called “The Data Brokers” (link below) and a video lecture explaining information privacy. Both videos were somewhat frightening to watch and to realize how much of our personal information is leaked into the world, is unreal. Big data is a storage and analysis system of large and complex data sets. I believe this is such a powerful tool because through every click of the mouse and any online search, different information is gathered from organizations and sold to another for their own benefit. In the 60 Minutes video, it was said that “retailers now have a secondary source of income and the data about customers are more important than the actual product or service that a company is selling. 

There are many dangers behind the abuse of information privacy. It is claimed that there are 1,500 pieces of information on more than 200 million Americans yet these data companies remain hidden and vague behind their answers of privacy breach involvement. With the constant abuse, some of our very private information could be placed into the wrong hands. A well known problem with big data is that our data is permanent and beyond our control. If doctors must have signed permission to access our medical history and documents, but multiple companies can analyze and sell this type of personal information, you know there’s a problem! Every now and then, it is nice to see products relating to what you have searched and bought, but when other private information is being leaked and you are unaware of where this data is being sold, it’s a major issue. I believe data that relate to shopping history and things of that nature should be allowed for retailers and other companies to thrive off of. However, I think these data companies should not be allowed to work in silence as no one knows. If they were forced to reveal their name when a user is scrolling through the internet and were only allowed to collect a minimized portion of information, I believe that people would feel more secure. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAT_ina93NY

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Response to Social Media Log Assignment

FOMO. The fear of missing out. Overwhelmed, frustrated, sadness. Many emotions are tied to our social media platforms. The constant struggle of staying up-to-date with new trends, famous celebrity news, and the recent gossip has us stuck in a hurricane of mixed feelings and social media madness.  Through a class assignment, us students were asked to keep an activity log of how much screen time, social media usage, and texts/calls we performed within a 24 hour period. The results were shocking. I spent roughly five and a half hours on my phone and four hours of this time were spent on social media apps. On average, I sleep around seven to nine hours, which gives me about 16 hours of available time. If I had to be completely honest, while I was on social media for these 4 hours (1/4 of my available time a day), nothing productive was produced. Learning about these numbers, it really makes you stop and think about what other options could be available for us to get into if we simply put the phones down. I have always wanted to learn a second language, there are business concepts and communication skills that I want to master within the workplace, and other sports and hobbies that I would like to try out and become better at. All these productive activities and mindsets are being pushed aside, when they could be improved tremendously if we just gave it the same amount time and attention that we give our social media platforms. Lets start a movement to become better people and improve ourselves by putting our phones down!

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Response to Sherry Turkle & Louis C.K.

Social media has created an entirely new world. There is the person that you are throughout daily “real-world” life and then there is usually a form of exaggerated self that exists in the virtual world of social media. The social media phenomenon has influenced people to become someone they are not. Whether someone believes that they are attractive enough to model, athletic enough to become a pro athlete, or possibly artistic enough to become a famous artist, they will always think or see that someone else is better than them. Although, in the real world, this can be a positive and negative effect causing one to possibly work harder to become their fullest potential, through social media, it has evolved a new perspective. Social media platforms have created a new form of “fake it till you make it” perspective, showing only the best qualities of life and hiding the truth behind a phone screen. These two video interviews of polar opposite people, Sherry Turkle and Louis C.K., prove the same points behind the misfortunes of cell phones and social media. Sherry begins her interview describing how the benefits of social media have turned towards negative effects on people by explaining the three promises to social media. “Always be heard, be wherever we want to be, and never have to be alone.” These simple ideas have allowed us humans to become alone together. Alone together, two opposite words that fit together so perfectly with this example. She discusses that being so dependent on our phones and our apps, we expect more from technology to keep our conversations and friendships alive rather than depending on each other. 

Louis has found an almost humorous way to show the world how the topics that Sherry described are becoming more and more toxic. I like Louis’ point saying that people are losing the ability to be their-self and how the phone is taking away that ability in being a human. Having a small cellular device that is becoming a distraction from any relationship, emotion, or passion that us human beings were built to create and rely upon, has turned us into living robots. In order for everyone to be themselves, one must feel pain, sadness, or fear to become truly happy!  Links: https://billmoyers.com/segment/sherry-turkle-on-being-alone-together/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c

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Social Media Experiment

To start my social media experience, I decided to create four 6-hour periods of no social media usage to see how I would react and what other activities might occur. The apps in the image above, are just a few of the platforms that I use constantly and daily. At the beginning of the first 6-hour period, I thought to myself, this will be a piece of cake as I have so many other valuable things to do with my time. However, this quickly changed. Luckily, on the day I decided to partake in this experiment, I had to turn in my current phone into the Sprint store to receive an upgrade. This gave me about an hour to two hours of free time without having my phone available at all. As soon as I jumped in my car, I instantly reached for my pocket to turn on some music from my phone. I quickly realized that this was going to be a long 6 hours...  Over the course of these two hours, I caught myself trying to grab my non-existent phone at least 5 times. I know, it’s pretty pathetic! I managed to fulfill these four 6-hour time frames, only using my phone between periods and roughly 30 to 45 minutes when I was trying to reset my new phone and insert all my passwords for each of my apps. I thought this was a great experience because it made me motivated to do something beneficial with my time, where otherwise, I would of probably laid on the couch scrolling through Instagram pictures that mean nothing to me! Not only was I able to complete the time frame challenge, thanks to Sprint, working 12 hours, and a two hour car ride home, but I feel that I have developed my social media usage even in the break periods. During my break periods and even on other days, I have been using LinkedIn as my number one app lately. Not that this app is 100 percent better than the rest, but I do see LinkedIn as a bit more resourceful. By reading up on the latest business trends, analyzing what my company is doing, and networking my profile to others, this is definitely a better route than following up on the latest drama of celebrities! I enjoyed taking a minor break from these social media platforms, as I believe this should be a normal routine!

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TED Talk: Clay Shirky

“How Social Media Can Make History” discussed by Clay shirky showed a creative way on how our world’s communication systems have changed and developed over time. Not only has our communication systems changed but so has our way of innovating the world around us. 

What I thought was most interesting was the example Clay used of the earthquake incident in China. As secure and private as China’s government is with their social media platforms, the spread of communication about this natural disaster was incredible. While the victims of this earthquake suffered as they lost their homes, belongings, and loved ones, they were able to record and post the disaster as it was happening. With this information being noticed by authorities and people around the world before China’s own government even had a clue, money was being raised almost instantaneously to help rebuild China. 

It seems that social media has been seen as a negative form of communication lately, only showing the drama behind celebrities and the vicious cycle of our politics. We tend to overlook the positives of being able to communicate freely with whomever, whenever, and basically wherever. The ability for businesses to communicate back and forth amongst their employees and other companies while in different cities, states, or even countries has allowed the 21st century to innovate and benefit beyond belief!