supersailor4life-blog

[supersailor4life-blog]

Social Media in Times of Tragedy

Social media has become a staple in today’s society, it allows us to stay up to date on what’s going on in the world even more so when tragedy strikes. When this happens companies start sending out tweet’s or posts showing support for those affected by the event. But sometimes those companies but their foot in their mouth. For example the company Epicurious, following the Boston Marathon bombing they tweeted that their hearts where with Boston and here’s a breakfast bowl recipe to start your day. Now that dosn’t seem so bad but one of the don’ts is to avoid promoting your brand. On the flip side Boston PD kept up to date information about where not to go due to street closing which allowed people to avoid those areas and remain safe. One of the do’s for social media during tragedy is to just stay off social media turn off automatic posts and wait before posting so as to not say something wrong. An example of tweeting before knowing what was happening occurred a few hours after the Aurora movie theater shooting occurred. American Rifleman, affiliated with the NRA, tweeted out “Good morning shooter! Weekend plans” while any other day of the week this might not seem to have been in poor taste, tweeting this a few hours after a mass shooting is for sure not the time tweet that. The most important Do following a tragedy is to know what the hashtag trending means. A clothing botique not knowing what # Aurora meant sent out a tweet thinking it was trending because of their Kim K inspired # Aurora dress. People all it takes is a little digging to find out that that’s not why something is trending.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ariellecalderon/19-companies-that-made-huge-social-media-fails

While it’s easy to talk about brands that did the wrong thing on social media let’s talk about the good things that come from social media. Following Hurricane Sandy people were still able to access wifi networks and cell towers and update their social media letting friends and family know they were safe. Social media allows people to remain connected during times of tragedy but it also allows phone lines to remain open and to be kept up to date on events that could still be transpiring.

https://buffer.com/resources/social-media-history

Most important take away is to stop automatic social media posts and to know why a hashtag is trending before using that hashtag. Knowledge is power people.

[supersailor4life-blog]

Influencer’s

For my influencer I picked Shawn Johnson East, she is an Olympic gold medalist as well as a Dancing with the Stars winner. She has thousands of followers from aspiring gymnasts to fans of hers to people who want life advice. Her life is her brand, she has multiple social media platforms where she talks about her relationship with her husband, her gymnastic career, and how she had to basically reinvent herself once she retired from the sport. I believe that she is an influential person because she champions for people to live a healthy lifestyle through showing how she lives a healthy lifestyle without making it preachy.

Why I think SMM influencers are more successful than traditional ads is because with a traditional ad you have a spokesperson saying hey look at this product isn’t it great, and getting paid to say it. While a SMM influencer says hey I’ve used this product and these are the results aren’t they great. To me I would listen to the person who didn’t get paid to use the product over the person who was paid to say great things about the product.

[supersailor4life-blog]

Unwired

Over the weekend, Saturday, I went all day without using any type of media (I did use my Kindle e Reader). For me personally it didn’t seem all that different from any other day, I’m not usually on social media constantly so not looking at it wasn’t hard for me. Also that wasn’t the first time I’ve been “unwired” but unlike last time I wasn’t floating in the middle of an ocean. For me being unwired is kind of freeing, I woke up and went outside with my dog and read Catch 22 for a little bit than went to the dog park. When I came home I made some lunch and continued reading with intermittent playing with the dog involved. So that was my unwired day just lazy around the house with my dog and an awesome book.

[supersailor4life-blog]

Goals

Well here goes my first ever blog post, my name is Shannon Stoddard and I am a Marketing minor at the University of North Alabama. I’m currently taking four online classes and one of them is a social media marketing class. My three goals for this class are first to become more knowledgeable in this area of the universe, second to be able to better utilize  the social media networks that are available, and finally to not be such a social mediaphobe (I’m terrible with social media I only have Facebook).