The Jack Howard Experience

A look into my professional opinions

[howardjack]

Implementation

My recommendations to my client included: creating twitter and linkedin accounts, engaging with followers in comment section, posting more often, and collaborating with a local influencer. I believe my client will run into a few issues when trying to implement my recommendations. First of all, they only have one person who works on the social media accounts part-time. The lack of employees responsible for the social media accounts will most likely leave Carrie Long Interiors understaffed in this department. In regards to engagement with followers, at first this will be challenging due to the fact that they only recieve 1-2 comments on their instagram posts. With hardwork and persistence this challenege will becoming less challenging. Lastly, it will be difficult to collaborate with a local influencer. Carrie Long Interiors has such a small social media presence that most influencers can’t be bothered to colloborate with them. It is also difficult to find a local influencer who can help you and vice versa. These challenges seem insurmountable but with some patience and attention to the social media accounts, they will blossom in my opinion. 

[howardjack]

Development and Spread of Effective Content

Effective content should engage your audience and provide them with entertaining or educational information. Creating effective content requires a strategy that depends on your business and its target market. For example, my client is an interior design business. Therefore, their content on social media is typically visual. Many words don’t need to be said when you can post a picture of a room that your business designed. Effective content for Carrie Long Interiors is different compared to other businesses who might rely more on statistics or words to promote their brand. Effective content has to be exciting, engaging, and hard to forget.

The sharing of effective content can be accomplished effectively by using hashtags, collaborating with other businesses in your community, and establishing loyal customers. Reaching out to influencers in your space is a great way to gain recognition and spread your content. If you communicate and keep your customers happy, they will spread your brand and content better than you could yourself at times. In my opinion, the spread of content can be influenced with certain strategies, but at the end of the day, you need consumers to love your content in order for it to spread. 

Here is a link to Hootsuite Academy  https://education.hootsuite.com/courses/take/social-marketing-education/texts/2540195

[howardjack]

Growing an Online Community

A loyal community that supports and promotes your business goes a long way in growing a successful business. Hootsuite says “it is better to have a small loyal fan base than a large disinterested fan base). One tip for starting a loyal following online is to recruit the offline customers to join the online community. I think this tip would help out my client in our class project. Carrie Long Interiors gets a ton of business but their online presence is somewhat weak compared to the amount of people paying for their services offline. I am going to recommend this to Carrie in our next client assigment. 

In order to have fans that are willingly to engage with you, you must engage with them. The comment section and posting often will help you stay in the conversations. Proactive engagement is contributing to conversations that don’t involve your business directly. This is a great way to spread your brand to new people.  Attention and nurturing of your followers will help build your community which will ultimately build your brand. Posting more often and responding to peoples comments is something that I think my client can improve on. 

[jacoreysullivan11]

Pros and Cons of Big Data

 Pretty much every business in the industry uses Big Data. It describes the volume of dat both structured and unstructured. It doesn’t really mean the amount of data, rather, it analyzes the insights of the company to come up with better strategies and decisions moving forward.

Pros: It Improves customer engagement and loyalty of customers based on strategies used, it helps generate offers based on the buying of customers and you can get better understanding of data driven marketing.

Cons: Additional storage of big data can be costly for some companies, it sometimes violates the principles of privacy, and it isn’t safe because of how vulnerable information is on the internet today. In other words, Hackers can get access to this information which makes it risky.

Number one priority of a business is to make sure its secure. Owners and regulators must ensure that the information of the business is secure at all times to avoid any info leaks.

[howardjack]

I agree that big data storage can violate some principles of privacy. It’s probably a great time to be a hacker with all the information these compnaies have stored. Great post!

[howardjack]

3 Reasons Junk News Spreads Quickly

I could not agree more that algorithms on social media sites create “filter bubbles” and perpetuate bias. I would also be lying if I didnt appreciate the things that these algorithms do. It’s remarkable that we recieve news, fake or not, almost instantly due to the advances in social media. The article briefly mentions how these aren’t humans making these decisions. This scares me for many reasons. Human beings ability to have morals and emotions is something that algorithms on social media sites lack. 

The fact that advertising promotes fake news spreading by rewarding viral content is something that won’t change. Viral content pays the bills and often reality is not as flashy as a lie or “clickbait”. This culture of clickbaiting on youtube videos or other platforms is something that people will continue to abuse until something is done about it. 

The third reason was exposure. In my opinion, I think that most people follow and subscribe others who share the same or similar opinions. This is dangerous for many reasons. Politically, this causes people to become radical at times if they never read the opinion of someone who shares different views. I personally try to follow people who I disagree with completely in order for me to push myself to see things his way or “meet in the middle” if we can. 

We can’t stop people from posting fake news but we can hinder the spread of fake news. Follow verified accounts and read into everything before you spread it to others. Exposing yourself to differing opiinions is extremely beneficial in my opinion

[howardjack]

Social media consultants need awareness, patience, and a willingness to learn new things. Being able to learn and adapt is crucial in any job. With social media advancing and changing at a rapid pace, a willingness to learn new things is the most important quality that a social media consultant could have. Social media platforms are constantly competing against eachother to provide the best service possible to it’s consumers. This constant competition causes these companies to advance quickly and adapt faster than the competition. A social media consultant has to be able to keep up with the rapid advancement of social media.

In order to maintain a professional media presences there are a handful of ways to do so. By unfollow, unfriending, and carefully anazylizing who I connect with on my social media accounts, I’m able to filter out the content that is not related to my work life. Of course, posting responsibly and professionally is a must at all times. It’s important to follow people who work in a similar field. It’s important to follow people with similar goals and different opinions. If you only connect with people that you share opinions with, then you will become very narrow minded. Being professional on social media platforms requires you to post professionally and act responsibly at all times. 

[howardjack]

The Dangers of Data Collecting Algorithms

Big data collecting algorithms are a relatively new technological advancement that has allowed companies to collect a massive amount of information on its’ consumers. This has helped companies manage their business or product in a more efficient way. This information helps market the product or service to people who they think would be interested. This is an extremely helpful tool that can be abused if used in the wrong way.

In the last five years, the American public was informed by a rogue CIA agent that american citizens were being monitored by the United States government. Edward Snowden was working with the CIA and NSA on projects that basically collected every piece of data it could find on everyone and anyone. Snowden realized the moral dilemma of collecting this data without the permission of these citizens. There is so much to this story, if you want to learn more about Snowden there are podcats and articles everywhere online. There is also a netlifx movie called Snowden. 

Collecting data seems harmless but there is evidence of abuse of power in knowing everything about anyone. Snowden says that these projects of data collecting in our government began as a self-defense strategy. They soon turned into espionage operations where the CIA could look through anyones laptop camera and observe them without their knoweldge. This is extremely dangerous for obvious reasons. If the government is willing to lie and spy on its citizens, imagine what big companies are willing to do to get information on their consumers. Collecting some trivial data has turned into complete data profiles on humans without their knowledge. I fear that this problem will only get worse and anyone who speaks out on it will be banished to a foreign country just like Edward Snowden who now resides in Russia. 

[howardjack]

Social Media Experiment

     I was slightly surprised to find out how much time I was spending on my phone, watching tv, and using social media platforms. I have checked my “screen time” numbers on my iphone in the past, but I had not checked these settings in quite some time. It was startling to see a big increase in the time that I spend on my phone staring at the screen. During a 24 hour period, I spent close to 5 hours on my phone using facebook, twitter, and snapchat. I dont even want to imagine what my time would be if I had an Instagram account. 

     The following day, I decided to go close to 24 hours without using the social media platforms and trying to ignore texts unless they were important. This was harder than dieting or working out regularly. I came into this expirement thinking it wouldn’t be that difficult. I was wrong. A couple hours into the expirement, I found myself coming up with reasons for why I needed to check my phone. I was making excuses for my need to check my phone. I wanted to get an update on the election, I wanted to check fantasy football scores, or I simply wanted to feel connected to the world. These were just excuses and I had to accept the fact that I am addicted to my iphone. 

     I told myself that I would make an honest effort to cut down time spent on my phone. I am a little disappointed to report that today my time spent on my phone rebounded and reflected the numbers presented in my Social Media Log. This experiment opened my eyes to the dangers of too much screen time. I used to consider myself someone who wasn’t addicted to social media due to the fact that the people around me always seemed to be using their phones more than me. Again, this is another excuse. After this experiment, it is safe to say that I am addicted to my phone. I would be curious to see/hear how some of my classmates logs compared to mine. 

[howardjack]

Introduction

Hello everybody! My name is Jack Howard and I am proud to be a Chippewa. I currently live in Royal Oak, Michigan. I have two siblings and two loving parents. I am attaining this education with the hopes of managing my own business one day. I have no idea what business I would like to get involved in at the moment. Throughout this blog, I hope to learn how to use Tumblr in a way that allows me to connect with others. Playstation is an example of a company that uses its social media to keep fans engaged. They will often post game trailers, updates, and video clips of consumers enjoying their product. 

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/?emcid=se-pi-252148