Brock Demo

[brockdemo-blog]

Personal Reflection

As we come to the end of this class, I realize that it has been one of the more interesting classes that I have taken in my college career. Not only is it preparing us to help yourselves with online profiles, it also has taught us how to effectively analyze a business’s social media. Even if you don’t go directly into a field that involves use of this knowledge, it gives us the ability to make recommendations to employers.

It has also taught us about the reality of the internet. Personal information that can be stolen and used in ways that you wouldn’t want it to be. This provides us with a cautious approach when giving information out. I believe this to be very important because it evidently protects us from harming ourselves.

The interactive blog posting helps our communication skills as well. We can analyze others’ perspectives on the matter and compare it to our own. Then, we can give feedback on what they posted. This helps us realize that there are different views other than our own on topics. Overall this class has been really helpful. It has helped us develop in an area that will surely be in our future.

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Developing and Sharing Effective Content

To be successful through social media marketing, a company needs to develop and share effective content. To do this, they must create a content strategy. This content strategy will help the organization determine who they will be targeting through their content which will help determine what type of content to post. Organizations should also be aware of how different social media platforms have different content requirements. 

Developing a target market is crucial for a company to be successful with marketing their products as well as what content they should post. With the right analysis, posts can be targeted towards the right type of person. This will lead to higher engagement as well as viewer satisfaction. Followers will be more likely to stay following the company if they post relevant content. One company that does a great job posting content relevant to their target market is Wendy’s. What they recently have begun doing is responding to customer’s tweets. They take a fun-sassy approach to people and it’s bringing in a lot of new engagement to their Twitter account. Below are examples of some of Wendy’s interactions with people on Twitter.

Organizations need to make sure they prepare their content in advance. This will help them make sure that the content is appropriate for that medium as well as fit the requirements. For example, Twitter should have rich media and relevant hashtags. Facebook posts don’t utilize hashtags as much as Twitter but Facebook can be utilized when using visual content. 

It is important for companies to keep up to date on the type of content they are posting. It is possible for target markets to change so companies need to stay on top of that. If there is a shift in the target market then the company need to shift the content they post. Companies also need to post content that matches the requirements of the social media medium they are using.

[brockdemo-blog]

Content strategy is one the most important parts of creating an online organization. Without it, the content would be useless to those that are viewing it. It also helps you decided what type of content to post on the different social media platforms as you said. Your second paragraph talks about one of the other most important things; figuring out who your audience is. A target audience gives the ideas of what the content will look like. It could be different for people of different ages and especially different for those into different things. Preparing content is definitely a good thing to do. It allows you to refurbish the content a before post if it needs. Wendy’s does do a good job of interacting with their customers based on the examples you posted. Again, nice post!

[bardowskiholly-blog]

Principles of Effective Content Development and Sharing

It is incredibly important for a new social organization to follow the principles of effective content development and sharing. These principle are there to help organizations be successful through an online community. Ignoring these principles could lead to irrelevant content that viewers do not enjoy. This is dangerous because if viewers do not like the content, they are not going to follow those organizations. These principles include 

Organizations need to put in a strategy that will help them develop content that is relevant and engaging. This also helps individuals in that company stay organized. With a content strategy, employees can develop a plan on who to target and how they’re going to target them. This also allows for a content calendar to be created. The content calendar, when used effectively, is like a content bank that can be managed and accessed by team members who are involved. This keeps all the information organized and allows for people to see when will be posted and where to avoid duplication.

These principles also ensure that the correct type of content is used on each social media platform. Each platform is designed for different forms of content. Facebook and Instagram are two platforms that would be best for visual content. Instagram would be the preferred platform if the company wanted to use a hashtag because hashtags are not common on Facebook. Hashtags can also be utilized on Twitter. If a company has a Pinterest, they should focus on making posts with good pictures that can be pinned easily.

[brockdemo-blog]

It is true that if there is no effective content people will begin to unfollow accounts which will lead into the failure of a company’s social media platforms. I liked the way that you described a content calendar as a content bank that is easily accessible to members of the social media team. The social media calendar is very important because it does more than just set a schedule of what is going to be posted. As you said, it prevents things from being duplicated unintentionally. Nice post!

[brockdemo-blog]

Social Organization: Effective Content Development and Sharing

As a social organization, it is important to provide followers with data that is essential to them. If the data has no meaningful value to the clientele, then the social media for that company has failed. Developing and sharing effective content is the most important part of starting an online community.

When you are becoming a social organization, it is important that you first ask yourself what is the target audience that you are trying to reach. This is going to be who you base all your posts off. Research must then be done to see how an effective organization would post to relate to their followers. Without doing these first few things, an up and coming social organization won’t last long. Once a target audience been established, it is key to have content strategy. The content should be revolved around a vision statement or a goal that the company believes in. This will help add structure to the online community. With no structure, the community could turn disastrous for a company.

A company that is planning to start an online social presence needs to have a plan of attack before jumping into social media. Develop a vision statement to set structure to your online organization. Create a calendar that forecasts what should be posts on specific days. These are key items when it comes to developing a plan for social media. An effective plan will help guide the company to develop and share content that will lead to success.

[brockdemo-blog]

Developing and Sharing Content

Social media involves a lot of work if a company wants to be successful with it. There are certain ways to develop and share content that are make the content more relevant and useful to followers. The first and most important role of developing relevant posts is to have content strategy. Content strategy will give a company insight on what type of content they need to be posting, so it isn’t just random. It will help them figure out what audience they are trying to target as well.

Targeting the right audience is key to social media success. If the company doesn’t post relevant information for the targeted audience, they will lose followers and end up having a failing social media account. Facebook allows companies to target audiences based on location. This makes it even more relevant to the targeted audience.

 Having a content calendar can also increase a company’s success on social media. A calendar will give insight on when to post what information, which can make life easier when it comes to posting. The content can already be decided and even reviewed if need be. Things like curated content can also help with developing a good reputation with followers. It shows that a company is taking initiative to do research on things that are happening in their field.

 When it comes to the specific social media websites, Twitter is a good website to share the same content multiple times for those followers that might not have been able to view it the first time. Twitter also is a good site to use hashtags that might be company oriented. When posting on Facebook, it is important to keep the posts short. Followers don’t want to have to read a paragraph in order to figure things out. Write brief captions that summarize everything that is meant to be discussed. Facebook is also a good social media to incorporate links to articles. This allows customers to easily access them if they so please. On Instagram, it is important to limit the amount of posts. Followers don’t want their feed lined up with constant posts from a company. If there are multiple pictures that need to be shared, making a photo collage is a good idea. It allows for all the pictures to be viewed, but also keeps the pictures to only one post.

 A company that develops and shares good content would be Red Bull. Red Bull has a very good engagement rate, even with minimal amount of posting. Last year Red Bull average under one post per day on Instagram. With this low number, they still have around 6 million followers. This just shows that its more about the quality of the content that is posted than the quantity and to post quality content they have to spend time developing what should be posted and what should not.  

[haleygincott]

Growing an Online Community

I found that it is much more difficult to build an online community than I thought it would be. It is easier for companies that are of a bigger stature, but when you have a smaller business, it can be more difficult. It is extremely beneficial to build an online community to gain more awareness and possible business. It is important that the social media accounts have quality posts and a good following. It is better to have an online community that will add quality to your business rather than the actual quantity. If you have a loyal customer base, then they will tell their friends about your business through word of mouth. Depending on if the word of mouth is positive or negative, that can determine if someone comes to your business because listening to peoples opinions of a place really makes a difference. 

A good way to start is to create the social media accounts you would like to use for your business. Depending on the social media accounts you choose, that will determine what target markets you are trying to reach. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram are always good social media accounts to use. Depending on what kind of business you have, you could possibly use Youtube too. While having all of these social media accounts can be beneficial, you want to make sure that you are engaging in conversations with your customers to get them to keep coming back. This will make the customer think that you are interested in what they are saying and they will be satisfied with a response. This can be especially beneficial if the company is responding to those that leave negative comments. 

It is important for a company to have these principles. The client I chose to do does not have these social media outlets, besides Facebook. They do not post nearly enough on their page and could definitely benefit from gaining an online community. If they made more social media accounts, then they could gain a bigger following and respond to customers to make them satisfied. 

[brockdemo-blog]

You are right in saying that quality is better over quantity when your are talking about your community as a business. You want people that are actually interested in what your community stands for and participate in discussing about it rather than someone that joins just because they are familiar with your business. I think that engaging with customers is one of the biggest parts in developing that online community. People want to feel welcome and that there is a sense of community. When the comments are negative, I feel that responses are a must. If there is no response, someone may feel as if they are just being ignored and will most likely never come to the business again and will talk low of you. Your client definitely needs to invest in getting more social media accounts, so that it becomes easy to spread the word about the company.

[adamaldredblogs-blog]

Online Community Building

     Community collaboration is a huge importance when it comes to having a successful social media presence. Finding customers and followers that can truly be connected and helpful to your brand, and amongst themselves, is what a strong community is all about. While it is a never-ending process, the connections made with your followers can prove to be beneficial to everyone involved.

     Making sure that your company has a clearly stated vision statement not only creates a concrete brand image, it also allows for followers to find commonality with your company, which can lead to a collaborative community atmosphere. Understanding the road map for your social media accounts works hand-in-hand with that clear vision statement.

     One company that has clearly done a great job when it comes to creating a great community atmosphere is PlayStation. They have a unique way of connecting PlayStation users to one another, maybe more than connecting the users to the actual company. Nonetheless, the community atmosphere is clearly apparent.  The PlayStation Community has done an exceptional job at providing an online space for gamers to connect. Users are able to zone in on their specific interests, whether it be by game, interests, or the type of support they need, and it’s clear to see how the network caters for the pillars of feedback, advocacy, and support.

[brockdemo-blog]

I definitely agree with your statements in your post. Finding loyal and truly interested customers for your brand is a never ending process. The more of these types of customers you get, the stronger the community will be. A vision, I believe, truly is the most important part of the community. Without it, members can make the community into whatever they please which will lead to the failure of it. We saw this when the company employees tried to use their community as a way to find dates. The community was shut down immediately because thats not what it was intended for.

Playstation is a great example of a strong online community. Playstation and Xbox both have created communities that now thrive on their own mostly without the actual company itself. The users can connect to one another to play games of interest. Companies like them have set and example of what a stellar online community should look like.

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Growing an Online Community

One of the things that I learned from Hootsuite’s growing an online community is that the quality of the community is better than the quantity. It is more important to have people in your community that are genuinely interested the topic at hand than to have a bunch of people that aren’t has motivated about the topic. A good way to find people for your community that fall into this category is to invite people that have been to events that you host to join your online community. This way you know that the person has an interest in what your online community is about. I believe my client is looking for more quantity of followers over the quality of them. It is good to have numbers so people know about your business, but that will come with time. It is important for this business to build a base of followers that make the community seem unique, and once it proves to be unique more people will want to join and be a part of it.

It’s also important to have two-way conversation with those in the community. Many companies, including the one that I’m using for my client project, doesn’t have much two-way communication. They put out a post, people respond, and then there is no comment back to the individual who commented on the original post. This two-way communication results in a stronger community. People feel more welcome to share with the community. I think this can lead to community that grows in size. Many people want to have that feeling of personal connection that you get from a response or just a comment on one of their personal posts.

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Online Community Building

When building an online community, there is a lot of thought that must go into it. First, you must make sure that the collaboration is suitable for a mass audience. A mistake here can set your business up for failure. A collaboration of the masses usually means that you are looking for multiple perspective on things. One of the most important things in creating an online community is making sure you know what the goals of our business is and the purpose for which you are creating the community for. Without the vision of the online community, it will most likely fail.

There are six “F’s” in attitude towards social media that can also make or break the community that is trying to be created – folly, fearful, flippant, formulating, forging and fusing. Folly, fearful, and flippant attitudes are ones that you should tend to avoid. The attitudes that you want towards social media is formulating and forging. Formulating is when you realize the value of the community but also realize that it must be organized to succeed. Forging is when people of the company are productive in collaboration on a daily basis. Fusing is the rarest form of the “F’s” as it is when collaboration is a necessary part of their daily lives.

Companies need to have a strategy in place before thinking about starting an online community. There are important questions that you must ask yourself before starting to form the community. Things like “Is there a desirable purpose?” or “Is mass collaboration suitable?” These are very important questions to ask yourself and if there isn’t a good answer you should start over to make sure that it is a good idea to start something.  The purpose also must have magnetism. It must attract people. Usually this means that they are going to benefit from it some way or another.

There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes in creating an online community that most people don’t know about. And if these steps are taken with complete care, the online community will most likely fail. There are many companies out there that have created very strong communities and GoPro is one of them. They have one of the strongest communities out of any company in my opinion. People are connecting all the time from all around the world to give feedback to each other and GoPro themselves. Besides their social media accounts, they even have a spot on their website where you can share your videos and watch others. It is a diverse community that expands throughout the entire world.

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"The Legal Side of Big Data"

After watching “The Legal Side of Big Data”, businesses should be aware of some things when using big data. Big data presents some challenges. One of the biggest in my opinion is privacy. When companies look at large pools of data they have to make attempts to protect the privacy of individuals. The best way to do this is through anonymization. This is not always as easy to do as it seems. It is only going to get more difficult, too. The Internet will continue to grow more people will have access to it.

The privacy concept goes both ways. Businesses should be aware of it, as well as consumers.

I think that the best way to balance the opportunities and threats presented by the development of big data is to just be educated and preventative. Businesses and consumers a like should be aware of the threats and take caution in order to not be affected by them.

[brockdemo-blog]

I have to agree with you. Privacy is the key issue with big data. The data usually contains sensitive information that people don’t want public, but it is hard to protect it from hackers. I think, like you said, that it people need to be aware of the risks when freely giving information out. The risk can be minimized by just not giving as many companies your information. Nice post!

-Brock

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Successful Social Media Strategy

The company I found that had a very successful social media strategy was McDonald’s. McDonald’s posts on twitter very often and their posts are interesting. They post a variety of videos, pictures, and they even post links to articles about themselves that people could read. McDonald’s also does a very good job at responding back to customers who are craving their food or even have a comment about McDonald’s. Not only does McDonald’s keep up to date on their Twitter account, they also keep up to date on their Instagram account. McDonald’s posts pictures/videos of their new products on a regular basis. By keeping their social media accounts up to date and responding to customers, they are making their business more successful. The more often a company posts on social media, the more customers they will bring in. This is because someone who is hungry or trying to decide what to have for breakfast, lunch, or dinner can see one of their ads and may choose McDonald’s over other places. Overall, I think McDonald’s does an excellent job with their social media strategy. Below I have placed some pictures of the types of posts McDonald’s has.

[brockdemo-blog]

They definitely have a great social media strategy. They post pictures of their food and make it look amazing. This gets people to crave it and essentially go to the store and buy something. It is also great that they respond to people’s posts. I think that this is one of the most important things. People like the interaction. It makes them feel like the company cares. Nice post!

-Brock

[brockdemo-blog]

Companies and Social Media

A good example of a company that is doing social media “right” is Ford. They are constantly updating their social media accounts and interacting with customers. To go beyond this though, they have created their own blog site. This allows customers to tell their personal Ford story. It creates a page where customers can interact with each other. It also has a page for the customers to present their ideas. This means that the customers are basically working for Ford by giving them new ideas all the time about how to improve their product. This is a very effective way to use social media. In fact, it is one of the most effective ways in my personal opinion. 

https://social.ford.com/en_US.html

This is the link to Ford’s social media site. It has back stories and new things happening in the company. Ford really has an effective social media strategy on all their accounts.

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The Legal Side of Big Data

Businesses need to be aware of the dangers of hackers getting access to big data. This information is sought after highly because it can contain very sensitive information. An example that was talked about in the lecture was when Target got hacked. Millions and millions of data records were taking in 2013 from Targets database. It eventually cost Target tens of millions of dollars to pay back victims of the attack. It was one of the biggest hacks of all time. Businesses need to be very careful with the information they hold. It needs to be constantly secure otherwise it could cost them a fortune.

Consumers should be careful on what information that they give to certain companies. A company, such as Target, may seem very safe and trustworthy with your personal data, but as we saw it always isn’t protected. As a consumer, you should limit the amount of personal data that you put out there that could potentially be stolen. Make less accounts with less company’s because it lessens the chance that your information will be stolen. Consumers still need to be aware though that as long as they have given data out, there is a chance that it could be stolen.

Big data can be very useful for companies because it can help track its consumers. It becomes very dangerous however. The data contains sensitive information about the customers that needs to be protected from potential threats. The more data that is collect the better for the company, but also with more data it becomes a bigger loss if it were to get hacked. It becomes a tradeoff. The best way to balance this in my opinion for the business is to only get the information that you really need or as a consumer only give the information that is necessary. This way there isn’t an abundant amount of information that can be stolen. Then as the business, have high security measures that protect his data. Businesses need to make it as difficult for hackers as they can. With less information and higher security measures the risk becomes low.

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Important Qualities to have as a Social Media Consultant

Along with being knowledgeable about current social media platforms and industry best practices, a social media consultant must possess a variety of important qualities. The qualities that I believe are most important in social media consulting are: strategic analysis, listening skills, flexibility, and improvisation.

First, it is important for a social media consultant to understand strategical analysis. They must understand what is working and what is not, why something is or is not working, what variables will affect the outcome, how to produce the best outcome. Like Dr. Melton said in his lecture video, clients usually do not have their problem pinpointed. It is up to the consultant that they hire to be able to identify the problem and look across all variables to find the best solution.

The next quality that I believe is important for any consultant to possess is listening skills. Consultants must be able to listen to their client with an open mind to hear their input and ideas. Since consultants are hired directly by the client, they must listen to what the client wants to achieve to be able to give the best end result.

Flexibility is another important quality for social media consultants to have. Along with this is improvisation. When working in social media, it’s important to know that unforeseen changes can happen very quickly. Since the audience, or “followers,” can leave feedback or comment on a certain business’ reputation with little control, consultants must be flexible in changing their plan and be able to improvise to respond to current situations.

While these are not the only qualities that a social media consultant must possess, they are the ones that I believe to be most important.

[brockdemo-blog]

You have explain three very important qualities for a consultant to have. I think strategical analysis is one of the most important. If they continue to do things that aren’t working, then the company will never succeed with their online presence. And yes, most clients don’t know what the problem is which is why they higher the consultant in the first place. 

Being good listeners and being flexible are also two very good qualities for a social media consultant to have. If they don’t listen, they won’t know what ideas the company has to incorporate in their accounts, and if they aren’t flexible, it will be hard for the company’s account make changes when things happen quickly. Nice post!

[haleygincott]

Social Media Presence

Taking this class is giving me an advantage to increase my professional social media presence. Right now, the social media I use on a regular basis is not that bad for a college student, but I would like to make it better. This class will definitely give me the advantage to do just that. I do hope to keep up with this Tumblr and the Twitter after this class is over with so I can continue my professional social media presence. 

The only strong social media presence I have at the moment is definitely my LinkedIn account. Although, I don’t have as many connections as others do in this class, I find that it is much more professional than my other social media accounts. But I must say that after I became friends with a lot of family members on Facebook. I do not share or post anything that could be frowned upon. I believe having a strong social media presence is important and I am glad that this class will help me be more professional on social media.

[brockdemo-blog]

I definitely have to agree with everything in your first paragraph. I too don’t have a bad social media account for being in college. There are no post of keg stands and other unprofessional things, but there still isn’t a professional presence in any of my posts. I frankly just use it as a medium to be in contact with my friends. This class will more than help create a professional presence for us. I also think that it will be up to us to continue our research about how to continue a greater presence. 

Before creating the LinkedIn account for this class, I didn’t have one. I have didn’t really view it as necessary for someone like myself. I believe that traveling and making connections through people I know and people I meet can result in stronger and better connections faster than an online presence where millions are already competing against you. There might not be as many connections, but I believe they are more genuine.

It is good however that you don’t post bad things on social media. Everyone always talks about how it can ruin future opportunities. Nice post!

[brockdemo-blog]

My Social Media Presence

My social media presence isn’t that strong so there are definitely things that I could improve on. The social media that I do have isn’t necessarily professional either. So I plan on using the accounts that I have created for this class as a professional social media accounts. I will use things that I have learned and will learn to make the accounts as professional as I can. I will use them to promote myself to companies, so they want to take interest in me.

I have already created the accounts for this class so that’s the first thing that I’ve done. I have also done research about how to make the accounts more professional and appealing to those that I want to appeal to. I follow more professional accounts like news so I am informed on current events that are happening the world.

First off, I plan to make more posts. I make post approximately once or twice a month. A more professional account would keep followers more up-to-date on things that are going on. The next thing that I plan on doing to improve my professional social media presence is to make quality posts. Making more frequent posts is great, but if they are high quality posts then they serve no purpose. I also plan on keeping the profile pictures current and what I would want potential employers to see. I will also do more research in what employers are looking for in accounts, so that I can adapt my account to be visually stimulating to them.

[brockdemo-blog]

Social Media Consultant Qualities

A few of the most important qualities for a social media consultant to have in my opinion would be being able to adapt, being authentic, aware of statistics, understanding technology, and being personable.

The ability to adapt is a huge part of social media. We all slowly adapted from Facebook, to Twitter, and to Instagram, so a business needs to be able to do the same thing. Whether is it is adapting from different trends or all the way to different social media sites, a social media consult needs to be able to do this very well. This will give a business an advantage of staying with or ahead of most.

Next, it is very important to be authentic as well. The customers want to see something different. It seems that when someone is unique they tend to become popular. People want to see things that they haven’t seen before. A social media consultant that is authentic can make your business stand out from others.

A social media consultant obviously needs to be able to understand technology. Although this is a common-sense quality, I believe it to be very important. They need to be able to critically think through what’s going on with the technology if there is a problem. They need to know how to make everything collaborate with each other so all the social media sites work together in unison.

Lastly, I believe they need to be personable. They need to know how to relate to people. This will make the posts more relatable to consumers. Consumers like to be able to relate to things. This will attract people to the business’s pages. When someone is personable, they also know what the people want to see. They can take to the people directly and take in ideas that others may have for the business.

These are just a few of the most important qualities for a social media consultant to have. There are more qualifications that a business should look into, but these are five that I believe can set a good social media consultant apart from a mediocre one.