Haley Gincott

CMU I Entrepreneurship I Hospitality I Management

[haleygincott]

Personal Reflection

As the class quickly comes to an end, I realized that I learned a lot of useful information that will surely benefit me in the future. I had no idea what to expect from this class. I thought that I knew the majority there was to know about social media and I quickly figured out that I was wrong. I had no idea that there was such a thing as big data or how hard it was going to be to try to stay off of my phone for as long as I could for a few days. 

I actually enjoyed watching the hootsuite videos and doing the mini quizzes that were in each of the segments. The reason I enjoyed them was because it forced me to learn more about social media and how important it is to understand and utilize social media to its full extent. I had no idea you could create content calendars to send out posts to every social media account you have at one time. Learning that was really cool to me. 

After learning about Big Data, I know that I am more aware of the things I put on the internet more so now than I was before. I didn’t realize that when we put in our personal information into sites, thats the cost of being able to use that site. I found that quite interesting and real eye opening.

Overall, I really enjoyed this class and I learned a lot about social media that I had never known before. I hope others are able to take away as much from this class as I was able to. I will definitely be keeping the professional social media accounts I created for this class for future use when I enter the “real world” and get a job. 

[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]

Hello,

I don’t drink energy drinks, but I found that using Red Bull was very interesting. There is definitely a target market, teens and young adults. They make their product seem like you can do just about anything with their motto “Red Bull gives you wings.” Using Twitter and Facebook to an companies advantage is an extremely good idea to gain business. The more hashtags and the more you post on these social media sites, the more people are going to see it and be interested in your company. These are incredibly effective tools to use in today’s society. 

[bardowskiholly-blog]

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.

[haleygincott]

Hello, I really enjoyed how you incorporated the Wendy’s corporation into your post. I find that it is very important for companies to have a target market and to try to attract people from that target market to their business. I find that the more companys use social media networks to their advantage, such as Twitter and Facebook, the more customers they are going to bring in. I have never thought of wendy’s, but I can see why you chose to use them in your post. 

[haleygincott]

Principles of effective content development and sharing

To be successful in developing and sharing content, it is important to create a content strategy for your social media. You want to look at your target audience, what their interests are, and what kind of content they find valuable. You want to see what information resonates with your customers the best by looking at the things you have already shared. If you find what has the most traffic on your website, it will be easier to see what kinds of posts to make and how often to post. 

This will also see what kind of posts gave the most interactions on social media. You want to connect with your customers as best as you can. You will be able to do this better once you make more social media accounts. The more social media accounts you have, then the more customers you can connect with. You can use tools such as google analytics to be able to measure how often people are looking for your company. This is extremely important so you are aware of how much traffic you are gaining. 

After putting together a content strategy, it is crucial to put together a content calendar. This is important to do because you can keep track of which social media accounts you are going to post to and how often you are going to post. Also by doing this, you can make it organized for your employees to be able to know what to post and when. 

[haleygincott]

How effective content is developed and shared

When I completed Hootsuite’s module’s 5 and 6, I learned that it is very important to have a target market. Having a target market allows the company to better find the kind of customers they want to attract. It is very important to find the right customers for your business. If you find people with similar demographics, then it will be easier to get them to come to your business. 

It is important to develop a content calendar, so that you can organize when and where you are gonna post things. By keeping all of your materials in a single folder, not only does that make things organized, but it makes it easier to find for others that may be using it. This allows employees to post to multiple social networks at one time, instead of going to each separate social media network individually. 

[ricoabro-blog]

Effective Principles on Online Community Building

In “The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers,” the author gives insight as to how to effectively build an online community in social media.

The idea that I found most interesting, from chapters four and five, was the author’s explanation of the “Six F” Models of Attitudes Toward Social Media. This model highlights six basic organizational attitudes about social media: folly, fearful, flippant, formulating, forging and fusing. When walking through the model, the author compares a humanistic attitude to each step of the model. Beginning with folly, an organization that views social media as entertainment only, we move through each successive step until the final attitude, where an organization embodies a social organization.

1. Folly – This attitude centers around an organization that view social media as a platform solely for entertainment purposes. Even though social media is used for this purpose, it can also add great value to an organization or business, and should reflect its added value in the vision.

2. Fearful – Organizations who fear that social media is risky and may cause problems for the business take this attitude. To combat this, the organization should focus on collaboration activities that do not have a high risk of negative implications.

3. Flippant -  Unfortunately, organizations that have this attitude do not view social media as a serious business tool, but a popular trend that they must “hop on the bandwagon.” Though they generally have a social media presence, the organization is less likely to use social media to its full potential as a collaborative tool. Organizations with a flippant attitude should recognize this and change their direction on social media.

4. Formulating – In this attitude, we see a higher success in social media. Organizations are employing strategic practices because they understand how social media can be used to engage customers and interact with their audience through collaborating.

5. Forging – Forging involves individuals implementing daily collaboration efforts. This attitude is one more step toward becoming a social organization, which the organization should highlight to encourage success.

6. Fusing – Fusing embodies a social organization. Though not common, this attitude reflects organizations who have made collaboration efforts a part of their business model. They strive for collaboration in everything that they do and communities are a key component to their success.

[haleygincott]

Hello,

I really enjoyed how you broke down each of the “six f’s” to make it easier to read and understand each one of them a lot better. I think it is important to find those in our online communities that can provide a fusing attitude, even though this can be difficult and rare to obtain. It is best for us as individuals to try to reach the fusing attitude as best we can because striving for collaboration in everything and being a part of some type of community can be very important. 

[ardentambition-blog1]

Building a Community

After reading the assigned chapters on online community building, it seems to me that those strategies are very similar to in-person community building. However, they are just executed in different ways online. 

The definition of a community is, “a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.”

The definition of an online community is, “a group of people with common interests who use the Internet (web sites, email, instant messaging, etc) to communicate, work together and pursue their interests over time.”

As we can see, the definitions are incredibly similar; the ends are the same, but the means are different. Because the means are different, there are some specific strategies that can be beneficial when building an online community.

1. Give it some time.

Like any sort of relationship, it can take time to build and develop effectively. Something that many online contributors lack is patience: you need to let your users have a chance to get to know you online, and find those niches that the community has in common. The online community definition includes the words, “pursue…interests over time.” Nothing great is built overnight. 

2. Don’t be afraid to invite.

Many campaigns remain internal, and basically hidden from users that would fit very well into a community. Never be afraid to send out an email, advertise a little bit, and reach your market in an efficient way. Part of building community is the building part, and to do that, you can’t stray away from different methods of recruiting.

3. Decide and Commit.

If you decide to start building a community you need to commit to it. It takes a routine effort to create a community that users can depend on and look forward to checking out. The facilitator needs to use consistent posting strategies, integrating photos and other media to keep users engaged. If you’re going to decide to do it, decide to do it right.

[haleygincott]

Hello,

I enjoyed reading your post about online communities. I liked how you incorporated the different definitions for communities. It is interesting to see how they're very similar definitions, but the meaning of them is different. I find it extremely important to build a strong online community to attract and keep customers. I think these three strategies in growing an online community is very important. You need to be able to wait until your online community grows and remember that its not going to happen over night. 

[haleygincott]

Online Community

There are a lot of things that are required when first starting to build an online community. You must first know your industry, target audience, source of business value, business use, and the type of mass collaboration. Your business will be more successful if you know these objectives to deliver value to your company. It is important to set goals for your company as well. Even if you don’t have any set goals, according to the book “it is important to develop a shared understanding of what’s important to the future success of the company” (The Social Organization, 47). 

There is a  “Six F” model of attitudes towards social media talked about in the book. These are folly, fearful, flippant, formulating, forging, and fusing. Those with a folly attitude consider social media as a source of entertainment with no business value. Fearful is where the fear of social media predominates and people see it mainly as a threat. Flippant attitudes are where people no longer fear social media but don’t take it seriously. These three attitudes are typically the ones you want to avoid. Formulating is the organizational leadership that recognizes both the value of community collaboration and the need to be organized. Forging is where people are beginning to integrate productive community collaboration into every day work lives. Fusing is the most advanced attitude and it is also the most rare, as they treat community collaboration as a part of their work and it is incorporated in how they think. You want people to have the last three attitudes if possible. 

I believe that one community that does a good job at an online community building is Nike. Even though they don’t post to twitter everyday, they promote ads often and are always encouraging people to “Just do it”. They use the hashtag #justdoit after every post to get a following of people to do the same. They also have celebrities and endorse major brands to gain awareness of their brand. Every post they do, is empowering and encouraging to live and fit and healthy lifestyle. To me, I find that this is appropriate given that they are a fit apparel company. For a clothing and shoe brand, they have gained more than 6 million followers on twitter, so I think their social media community is pretty high. 

[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. 

[katelyndetwiler-blog]

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.

[haleygincott]

Katelyn,

I agree that McDonald’s is very successful in their social media strategy. I am always seeing commercials on television about their new products, especially recently with their different sizes of Big Mac’s that are now available. And when I am not watching television, I see billboards for McDonald’s quite often on the highways. Not only are there billboards, but there are so many McDonald’s restaurants all over the world, it is hard to not find a McDonalds when you get off at an exit. It looks like McDonalds does a very good job keeping up on their social media accounts and I am sure the more they post, the more customers they will bring in. 

[bradl1ct-blog]

Successful Social Media Strategy

hen it comes to successful social media strategies, one company really came to mind. The company that immediately came to mind was Nike. Nike has impeccable social media strategies that it has utilized over the years. Nike has used different methods of advertising their brand over the years but one thing that is certain is that each method they have utilized has been successful.

Nike relies heavily on celebrity endorsements. Nike has a tendency to be one of the top utilized brands by today’s top athletes. Athletes such as LeBron James (basketball), Allyson Felix (track & field), Roger Federer (tennis), Neymar Jr (soccer), and Rory McIlroy (golf) are some of their top named athletes, and as you can see, they do not specialize in just one sport. They are represented widely across a large number of sports by many of the greatest athletes within the sport. These athletes not only wear Nike apparel at almost all times, but also do their share in advertising for the company. On the company twitter and Instagram, there are many video and images that are posted regularly about the company and their athletes. Below are just a few examples of advertisements that some of these athletes did for Nike.

Another aspect that makes Nike’s social media practices so strong is how frequently they respond to posts about their brand. Nike seems to do a very good job about responding to posts about their product. Whether the posts be good or bad, Nike seems to do their part in reaching out to the individuals and communicating. This is very cool to see especially from such a massively recognized brand. They do not respond to all posts about their product due to the number of posts about Nike each day being more than would be possible to respond to, but they do push their brand as much as they can. Below is an example that occurred on February 11th.

A customer purchased a new pair of shoes and tagged Nike in their tweet and Nike responded shortly after the initial tweet. This shows a very strong social media presence from Nike, and also shows that they are pushing for us to get out and show off their brand.

Overall, I feel that Nike exhibits a very strong social media presence. Thanks in part to the athletes, the amount of influence they have on social media marketing is huge. Athletes are able to rep the company and talk about what new is to come from Nike, as well as the company does a good job of staying in contact with their customers through social media.

[haleygincott]

Brad, 

I really enjoyed your post about Nike. I believe that they do a great job of marketing their brand and have great social media strategies. Not only are their shoes super cute, have great colors, but they are also really comfortable. I have multiple pairs of Nike shoes and I wear them quite often, especially when I am working out. Nike has been extremely successful in endorsing celebrities and athletes to wear the brand on a day by day basis. I am a loyal Nike customer and they are the first brand of shoe I go to when I want a new pair. They’re my favorite kind, so I was pleased when someone chose this brand. Nice job!

[haleygincott]

Starbucks on Social Media

I follow Starbucks on Twitter and they are always interacting with their customers, promoting new products in tweets, and they have been in the news lately towards their increase of hiring veterans and refugees. Starbucks is always retweeting and talking with their customers over twitter. They are always responding with encouraging feedback. They advertise and put pictures up of their new and upcoming products. They pledged to hire 10,000 veterans and military spouses by 2018 and so far they have hired over 8,800. Starbucks recently pledged to hire 10,000 refugees over the next five years. 

I think Starbucks is a great company to follow on twitter. Starbucks posts to Twitter regularly and is always keeping the customers informed on new items on the menu. They also tweet plenty of photos and videos of their products and of the people that work in their stores. It makes you look at the company differently when you see a video of a veteran they hired and how well he has been doing his job. It’s different and nice to see. I believe these interactions with their customers online, is a positive image to the company and makes me want to buy more cups of coffee from Starbucks.

[haleygincott]

Legal Side of Big Data

Although we have previously talked about Big Data, this is new information about the our data being hacked. I was unaware how many businesses have been hacked in recent years. It’s amazing to see just how easily hackers can get into so many different store and gather our information. When Target got hacked, my sister was one of the 740 Million people that were affected by it. Since the hack, my sister still has the debit and credit card from there. Although, I knew that Target got hacked, I had no idea that it was one of the biggest hacks of all time. I hope that businesses have learned their lessons and made it harder for people to hack into their systems. 

I knew that RadioShack filed for bankruptcy back in 2015, but I did not know that they were going to sell so many people’s data to companies. Luckily, 3rd parties such as Apple, Verizon, and AT&T intervened and made it so RadioShack couldn’t sell big data to companies. Even after selling people’s email addresses to a Hedge Fund, those customers were notified that their email addresses were going to be sold to this company. 

It goes to show that you may think these companies are safe and well protected but it can be very easy for hackers to get in and get your information. We as consumers need to be more aware of the information that can be sold by different companies all over the world, no matter how safe we think our information is. 

[ricoabro-blog]

Professional Social Media Presence

When thinking about my own professional social media presence I can identify two separate entities: my professional presence as a business owner and my presence as a musical artist. Since I am a new business owner, I have done little on social media and do not yet have an active professional account on Linked-In or Facebook. I am currently working on creating my own logo and developing my brand before I begin to publish this content on social media.

One area that I do have an existing professional social media presence is through my music. I produce EDM music and have an established Sound Cloud, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram account. I have been recognized by some of the top-performing Djs and producers, but it took me a long time to get to where I am today.

When I first started my artist accounts I had little content to add and a small amount of followers. As my partner and I began to produce more music and play at more shows/festivals, our followers grew. We knew we needed to improve our social media presence if we wanted to become successful. This is when I decided to hire a graphic designer. In order to make my presence unique, I wanted to create visuals that no one else would have and tie them in with the music my partner and I create. Once we were happy with our content, I next moved on to improving the number of followers. We now have content that I am happy with and the number of followers is continuing to grow, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us.

In the future I plan to create my own website where I will link in all of the social media accounts. I want to create more music to add to our content, but most importantly I want to develop a strong enough presence to get the attention of more top artists and the labels that sign them. I hope to use ideas and techniques from this class to improve my social media presence as both an artist and a business owner.

[haleygincott]

Hello Rico,

I think its cool that you have two different presences on social media and that both of them are professional. I hope that the LinkedIn account you had to make for this class helps you with your future endeavors. Its interesting that you thought about making your accounts for your music more professional to obtain more followers. That was a great idea and I am sure that it definitely contributed to the increase number of followers you obtained. I wish you well in your future with your music and I hope you are able to sign with top artists and their labels. 

[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.

[haleygincott]

Hello Brock, 

I believe my social media presence could be stronger as well and I still plan on using the social media accounts that we made for this class even after the class is over. I tried real hard to make the accounts we created for this class, look as professional as I could. I do feel like it is important to have a professional social media presence and it is never too late to change that. I just wish that I would have started when I was younger in making my social media accounts look more professional. I enjoyed how you said that making more high quality posts are better and that doesn't mean that you have to post all the time. 

[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.

[haleygincott]

Social Media Consultants

Until this class, I had never heard of a social media consultant before. I had no idea that there were jobs out there that were like this or that they were important. It is important for social media consultants to be friendly, has passion, knows the business well, has good communication skills and of course technology skills. It is important for social media consultants to know how each social media platform works. 

Social Media Consultants should be friendly and easy to work with. You want someone you can count on and will be able to answer all the questions you have. If they have passion about the business and what they do, then it will be much easier to work with these people. They need to be able to know how the business works and what are the latest trends when it comes to representing someone or giving them advice. Of course good communication skills are very important because you need to be able to get your opinion across and they need to be able to listen to what you say so they can give the best feedback they can.