Untitled

[lilluke34]

Client Challenges

I believe that my client would receive an outstanding number of benefits if they decided to take the advice that I have given them regarding social media throughout this course. There are some things that they may find challenging while trying to implement my recommendations though. The first challenge may be they don't have enough employees to monitor the media as much as they would like. Dog Central is a small downtown restaurant, they don't have a marketing team the size on an army to constantly monitor social media and make sure everything goes as planned. They only have a couple employees willing to take on their social media, and with three different platforms being used, these employees could be stretched quite thin at times. As we have seen in the lecture provided to us, as long as you have a strong plan, you really only need a couple of employees to have a strong social media impact. The next thing that Dog Central may have trouble implementing is the collaborations with the athletes. While I do believe that these athletes would enjoy working with Dog Central, their availability may be questionable. These guys and girls are very busy with their training schedules, and on top of this they have classes and other activities that they must attend to. Fitting in Dog Central may be a problem for some of them.

[lilluke34]

Effective Content/Social Organization

When a business is first starting out, you do not want to release meaningless content. This will instantly make the business be taken less seriously and often not trusted when compared to other businesses who are posting much more effective content. Effective content is content than engages your audience and builds a strong connection between your business and them. This will build into trust that will flourish into a long lasting relationship between you and your audience. As mentioned by Hootsuite in module 3, diversity and inclusion are some of the most crucial elements that must be taken into account when producing effective content. Show that your company accepts every person with open arms, no matter your race or background. Companies that fail to do this will not build a strong social organization and they will more than likely not reach their goals, if they don't fail completely. You must get to know your audience as well. Learn what they care about, what's important to them, and what it is that they like about your company. Engaging with them will allow bonding that will take your company long past where you once wished to be. Make the content entertaining for your audience. If the content is flat and it falls short, they will assume your company didn't really try on it and it will be a bad look for you guys. Entertain them, and show them that you care.

To build a strong social organization you need to make effective content and follow the steps that I have already mentioned. A company that posts garbage will never build the community needed to take them to the next level. You can also use Influencers to help build your social organization. Influencers often have hundreds, if not thousands, of people that look up to them and admire them. Their positive words will have a strong impact on your company because they already have the trust of so many people. They will listen to them much quicker than they will listen to a new company they have never heard of previously. Almost every larger company on social media today collaborates with influencers, it is no question that your company should do the same.

[lilluke34]

Growing an Online Community

Chapters 4 and 5 out of the Social Organization were very informative chapters discussing how one can grow their online community in todays fast pace, ever changing media. The first thing that you should do is show your followers or customers how you can provide value to them. Prove that what you bring, is better than what your competitors have to offer. If they don't see the value being added into their life, they are simply going to lose interest, or find that value somewhere else. It is so easy to get your head turned on social media nowadays, if you can't grab your audiences attention quickly, you are going to lose it. You also need to show your audience that you really care about them. Engage with them, ask questions about how to improve, and build trust. Trust will go a long way, and companies with a strong reputation are going to last much longer and be more successful than the companies that don't have a strong reputation.

Module 4 discussed how to build a social media community in great detail. Building a community can be looked at as a two way street. Look at what your audience says about your brand, or even more engaging, ask them what you could do to grow your brand. This will also help humanize your brand and become much easier to connect with. Its also effective to know what works best on which social media platforms. Not every social media app is going to be used the same for your company, just like how your audience doesn't use every app in the same way, you must adjust accordingly. Collaborating with Influencers can also have a massive effect on your community. The right influencers, presenting your company in the right way, can change your company completely, reaching a whole new audience and promoting a ton of engagement. The company I have selected, Dog Central, Could benefit greatly from this. They don't need a huge celebrity influencer, they could just use some students on the football or basketball team, collaborate with them, and next thing you know, students who have never heard of Dog Central previously are now flooding into the place to try it out.

[lilluke34]

The Internet Business Model

With how the world works today, just about everyones information is out on the web somewhere. There is almost no privacy anymore and if you are like me, you have just kind of accepted this fact. Maciej Ceglowski's talk, The Internet with a Face, was an awesome video that discussed how our information is out on the internet and all of these companies have access to our information. I believe that the internet business model used today plays a huge part in this.

Businesses today need to know what their users like and what has the strongest effect on them in order to compete with the others in their market. Sadly, the best way to do this is to use the information that they have on their customers. They know how to advertise to get a reaction and make people more interested. Ceglowski mentioned in his talk that years ago these companies didn't really know how to advertise to customers. Now, they use these ads to gain information on us, and they use the new information on advertisements made later. He also mentioned that when internet companies are sold, the company buying them gets all of the user information these companies had. Why did they need the information? There really are no good answers.

I like how at the end of the talk Ceglowski discussed many ways that these companies can be regulated in regard to the information they keep on users. He mentioned that there should be an amount of time that user data stays in the database. Recent data on user can be helpful, but there is no point on having data from 13 years ago. People should also be able to see what information of there's is out on the internet. If these companies can see all this information on their users, why can't their users see the same information about themselves?

Overall, I believe the internet business model is so flawed because they think they need to know us so well in order to be successful. They track our movements and throw ads in our faces because of something we clicked on two days ago. I do believe that in time these companies will be regulated and things will change, but until then they will have all our information and we will have almost no privacy. Like previously mentioned, I doesn't really effect me anymore knowing they have all of this information, but it would be nice to see a change.

[lilluke34]

Junk News

I think nowadays just about anyone that has ever picked up a phone has dealt with junk news. If we are being realistic, most of the stuff you see on the internet falls into this category. I can say for myself that I have been flooded with this stuff, especially in the past. I am not a real political person but around the time of the last presidential election there was a point where 75% of my feed was post tearing down Joe Biden. I just wanted to watch funny videos or sports highlights, it was ridiculous.

Algorithms are one of the scariest features on social media, at least in my opinion. It is weird to me how they have the ability to predict what I am going to look at in the future, and they are usually correct. I can say that on YouTube and Instagram, the algorithms know me very well. My Instagram feed is essentially just workout stuff, food, sports, my friends and a few celebrities, maybe a couple of memes in there as well. I try very hard to stay off instagram because I often find myself mindlessly scrolling because it is filling my brain with the few things that interest me. Youtube just knows what I am going to watch, recommending me sports and highlight videos in the morning and videos of my favorite fitness YouTubers at night. Why I like watching these videos at these times of the day? We will never know, maybe YouTube has made me that way.

Advertising on social media knows what I like and it is the most annoying thing ever. One time about a year ago now, I bought pre workout off of instagram from an ad that popped up on my feed. Til this day, I get ads for pre workout. It knows how to tempt me even though the purchase was a year ago. At the same time, it is the only thing I have ever bought off Instagram, so this may play a part, but none the less it is very annoying, and tempting. Whenever I click on an ad for a shirt or a piece of clothing, I will get that ad for weeks until they either give up or find something else that I am I treated in.

Exposure is one of the elements on news and social media that I do not often think about, making this article that much better of a read for me. One example of exposure from my own experience is the Joe Biden example that I used at the start of this blog. I am not a huge supporter of either Trump or Biden, but somehow my social media activity made the algorithms think I am a huge Trump supporter . I was being exposed to specifically anti Biden material. Very odd in hindsight. I am just so curious what activity of mine led to those results.

Business's need to be aware of these elements because at the end of the day, it can actually help them. Knowing how people, especially their customers work and think is a crucial element to a successful business. Allowing algorithms to support their material and shove it in peoples faces will ultimately make them much more profitable. If businesses can get their advertisements to work and actually keep people clicking and making purchases, then they need to know what exactly it is in these ads that attract people and pin down on that.

Individuals on the other hand need to be aware of these elements to protect themselves. They need to be aware that every one of their movements on social media is recorded and their information is constantly being logged. They must know that they are being exposed to only the information that they care about, and they are not getting the full story. The information they receive half the time is complete garbage and it is only put out there because they know people will stare at it and fall for it. Social Media can be a fun and useful tool, but it is important to know the dangers of it as well.

[lilluke34]

Social Media Consultant

In my opinion, there are a couple of key qualities that a social media consultant must have in order to really be effective. The first quality is that they should be quite tech savvy. They should be pretty comfortable with software that would be used in order to edit posts to make them more visually attractive. A social media consultant should be up to date with the times as well. They need to know what is in style and what people care about the most at the current time. Trends and the culture constantly change, so it is important to have someone who knows what is going on in a fast changing media world. They need to be interactive with their followers as well. Building these connections is crucial to having a strong media presence and it allows for longer lasting and strong relationships with those who support you. While being interactive, they must also be very active. They must be on social media a lot and keep the posts consistent. Just a couple of weeks off social media can negatively impact your brand or company. If the post arnt consistent, then someone else's post will be popping up on their timeline, taking their attention away from your brand.

If I was my own social media consultant, I would need to improve on basically everything that I have discussed in the previous paragraph. I have some experience with software used for creating advertisements or editing photos, but I am by no means a master. My first step would be to improve on these as quickly as possible. I am not very active on social media either. I am not a ghost or anything, I post on Instagram like once a month, but I am not on these apps constantly, especially with what we have been learning in this class so far haha. I guess I am decently interactive, I comment on my friends post and I respond to those on my own post, but besides that I don't do too much. One thing I am good at is keeping up with the trends. I would consider myself to be "in the loop" and I am good at keeping up with what is current. Much of this is due to my friends informing me, but none the less I am up to date. Besides this, I have to improve on many other aspects before I would be a great social media consultant for myself.

[lilluke34]

The Social Dilemma

The Social Dilemma was an awesome documentary discussing the rise of google and social media and how they have ended up controlling people and making them addicted to their phone. When these platforms were originally made, this was not the goal. They were made to help people and make their life better, but once money was involved and they realized how much money could be made on these programs apps, everything changed.

Algorithms and big data have completely changed these apps and how they effect us. Algorithms have the ability to completely predict what you are going to do and what you enjoy when using these apps. They track what pictures you look at, how long you look at them, if you like them or not, and if you re check them. Once it has all of this data on you, it knows how to play you perfectly. It will show you adds that it knows you will be interested in and it may even start to introduce you to new topics that it thinks you may like do to what you have viewed recently. This is why these apps are so addicting to so many people. When it is constantly showing you topics that you like, it is almost impossible to take your attention away from it, and that is their goal, to keep you on, and keep making money off of you. It is scary how well it works and how genius the whole thing is. It makes you wonder just how far these things will go and how much more of an effect it will have us in years to come.

Social media can be so dangerous because the people that use them cannot control their usage, and these apps end up using them. They become distracted individuals who can't take their eyes off their phone. Every time they put it down, a new notification pops and they are instantly locked in again, it is a vicious cycle that does not stop. On top of this, these apps make people insecure and anxious. People care about others opinion way too much and people put way too much value in their social media presence. They worry about likes and monitor even single comment. If someone says something they don't like, instead of brushing it off, they take it personal and it hurts them. Abusing these apps can literally ruin your self esteem and make you put too much value in things that really don't matter.

I believe that these problems can be dealt with in a number of different ways. People need to start their day off by doing something besides hopping on their phone. When your alarm goes off, get out of bed before you even think about picking up the phone. Whatever is on their can wait an hour while you make breakfast and get your day started. You can also download apps that lock social media during certain times of the day. If you don't have the will power to stay off these apps alone, I think these are good to use and really help you along the way. While doing homework, leave your phone in your backpack and on airplane mode. I don't believe you have to leave it at home if you go anywhere because there are times where you do need your phone, but just try to control your usage. Most people don't even try to contain their usage.

Overall, I thought the Social Dilemma was very interesting and an awesome documentary to watch. The little cut scenes where the people at the app headquarters were sending notifications or adds to that kids phone were entertaining, and I liked how they interviewed people who had tons of experience running social media.

[lilluke34]

Social Media Experiment

For this experiment I decided to take two 12 hour breaks off of social media. For two days in a row, from 9am to 9pm I did not go onto social media at all. The only time I went on my phone really at all was to send texts and answer phone calls. Without social media, I felt like there was no other reason to go on my phone than to communicate with other people, which were why phone were made in the first place. For the first hour I had to remind myself not to go on these apps. Before class I typically always go on snapchat or scroll through instagram to pass the time, but I decided to not do this for the sake of the experiment. The first thing I noticed was how much more social I was. Sometimes when I'm locked into my phone I'm pretty quiet and just stick to myself, but yesterday I wanted to talk to people and actually engage with them more, I had nothing else to do. After class, I was pretty distracted with homework for a couple hours, so this kept my mind off social media completely. When I did take my homework breaks, I noticed they were much shorter, and It was very easy to hop back into my work after. I believe this was due to me not distracting my brain with Instagram or watching other peoples snap stories in the meantime. When I ate my meals, I did not aimlessly scroll through my phone or distract myself with Netflix, I talked to my roommates and I kept my mind occupied with that. By the time 9 o'clock came yesterday, I was hanging out with my friends. I was occupied by having a good time with them, and I wasn't even thinking about my phone.

I woke up this morning and instead of starting my day with scrolling through snap chat first thing when I woke up, I decided to listen to some music and make breakfast. One of my roommates woke up around this time with me, and we talked throughout the whole meal. Sometimes we will both be sitting at the table on our phones, not saying a word, but today was much different. After this I went to the library and did homework for a couple of hours. Same as yesterday, my breaks were much shorter and it was a lot easier hopping into my work after them. I got a lot more work done than I usually do. At the gym, between sets I was not scrolling through my phone. Instead I (not so patiently) would just wait for it to be time for my next set. To pass the time I would talk to other people, or just hop into my set earlier. I noticed that not only did I complete my workout quicker, but I was "in the zone" the whole time, never getting distracted. I am now at the library and have about another half hour until I can use social media again. This experiment has shown me how much more productive and social I am when I decide to not hop on social media throughout the day. I do not believe it is necessary for me to completely stop using the apps, but I do believe controlling my usage and limiting the time I spend on them will have a huge positive impact on my life.

[lilluke34]

The Influence of Social Media

Social media has a huge impact on just about everyones life in todays world. Just about every person you know has, or is on, some form of social media. Many of us are on a number of different apps every single day. I can say that in my own life, I spend a ridiculous amount of time each day on these apps, and I don't even notice it. Once I started logging my screen time I really noticed how much time I waste every single day on these apps. I could spend this time studying, learning a new skill, or just actually interacting with other people, but instead I choose to aimlessly scroll through social media. Don't get me wrong, I have learned a lot of valuable information off of social media, and I do not think it is completely a waste of time, but the majority of the time I am on these apps I am just distracting myself from the real world.

I think having the internet constantly available to us effects our life in a number of different ways. I can say that I constantly get distracted from text or snapchat notifications whenever I am at the library trying to do homework (which is also on the internet lol). But even though it constantly distracts me, I don't think it is all that bad. The internet allows me to see important texts that I need to act on urgently. It allows me to communicate with people from long distances that I wouldn't normally have access to. I can check the weather from anywhere, and it allows me to properly prepare for my day. If I have a question about certain symptoms that I am feeling, I can google it and see what the causes my be, and what I can do to heal myself. Having access to the internet is not a bad thing. It's our inability to control it that makes it so bad (or at least my own inability I should say). There are also so many pointless distractions on social media discussed by Max Stossels that make staying off of our phone so much harder. Videos auto playing, random notifications not from real people, and pretty colors make our phones and social media so addicting. It's all these negatives that make social media and the internet seem like such a bad thing, when the real issue is our inability to control it.

When I go up north there are times where I do not have access to the internet, or the internet I do have is far too weak to really do anything. Honestly, it is not that bad. I enjoy the time. There are so many other things to do that I don't even think about it. Usually I am surrounded by friends and family and it is the summertime, why would I need the internet? We go out on the boat, run around like idiots, and enjoy each others company. I just distract my mind from one thing, with another. But distracting myself with real world activities and with other people is so much more fulfilling and exciting than distracting myself with my phone. My brain will always crave some form of stimulation, I just have to control how I do it.

In the future, I would like to use the internet and social media for more practical and important reasons than just distracting myself. I believe I will always text and use snapchat, because these apps keep me in touch with my friends and people I really care about. I would say 90% of the time I am on instagram, it is a complete waste of time. In the future I hope to really cut down on my Instagram usage, and I already have cut down a lot from the past years. A lot of the YouTube I watch is informational, and I do believe I learn a lot of new things from this app, so I do not believe that this is something I really need to change. I just need to learn how to control my usage, and not allow myself to get distracted so easily when focusing on important tasks and the real world.

[lilluke34]

Week 1 Blog, about me and my company

Hello everyone! My name is Luke and I am a Finance major here at CMU with a minor in information systems, which is why I am taking this class. I love the exercising and the outdoors. I have two dogs (golden doodles) and a brother which I am very close with. During the summer, I spend many of my days on the water or at the beach with my friends. During the winter, I wait for it to be summer. I hope to one day earn my CFA or my CFC depending on where I really decide to take my career, I am not exactly sure as of yet. The company I am going to be using throughout this course is Dog Central. Dog Central is a small hot dog restaurant located downtown, just off campus. The food is very good, and it comes in clutch on the nights that go longer than originally intended because they are open until 2am, Thursday through Saturday. Their website is https://www.dogcentralmp.com. The company actually does a very good job at collaborating and being social with the local college community. The have been on both the Travel channel and the cooking channel. They also do a very good job of posting the customers that come in regularly and they often host events and cater for those who ask. Overall, I am very excited to work with this small company and see who you guys have chosen to cover over the course of this class. Thanks!