MadiKrohn Blog

Fashion/Style/&Business

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Implementation

After watching the video on implementation, I came up with some ways that my client might be challenged from my recommendations throughout our time together. My client's social media platform is geared towards off-roading equipment and fabrication. There is surprisingly a large community of off-roaders who love to see what he posts and what he creates. Therefore, my goals were trying to improve what he already does and making it better to increase viewers and likes. One challenge I could see is for him to keep a consistent posting schedule. From what I gathered, he might post once a day for a week straight and then not post for another two weeks. The reason for this is that he is a college student and can't commit all of his time to off-roading and fabrications. I encouraged him to still try to stay active during those off weeks by posting to his story of highlights or related content to the off-road community. Another challenge that I could see him facing is not making all of his posts represent his brand voice. Since he is working on so many different projects at separate times- he might become irrelevant to his viewers because they might not think it is his content. I believe that if he were to keep a consistent posting schedule and maintain the same brand voice throughout all the content he makes, his social media would become more successful.

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Effective Content

How is effective content developed and shared?

Well, from what I gathered in Chapter 6 of The Social Organization, the first thing to do is cultivate a community. This means to prepare, launch, and sustain a successful community. However, the biggest lesson is to create a purpose in the community. "A purpose is a specific and meaningful reason for collaboration that will motivate members of a community to interact and contribute" (pg.80). With a purpose there first needs to come a plan and that where they mention a 'purpose roadmap.' "A purpose roadmap identifies the target community and how it may change over time" (pg. 81). In order to understand and create effective content, a roadmap can be made to show evolution over time and what seemed to work as in content. In addition to a roadmap, elements (right pieces of information to make up a story) can help with creating and developing effective content that will be shared.

To provide an example of what effective content could look like I added this post from the company Spotify. This is a great example for what effective communication could look like that accurately represents their brand voice. The elements that they might've included while creating this content are: customer responsiveness, relationship leverage, transparency, interest cultivation for social benefits and many more.

What does this have to do with becoming a social organization?

The whole idea of a social organization is making relationships between and among individuals and social groups. The principles of effective content and sharing deals with the same aspects when creating a social media community. Not just a quiet community- a community that has purpose and will continue to evolve.

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Building an Online Community

In chapters 4 & 5 in The Social Organization, there were principles on online community building with social media that could be used in an effective manner. Those principles being: goals and culture, delivering value, attitudes, and strategizing. In chapter 4, it talks highly about the goals and culture that tie into community building. For example, it states, "Creating explicit, strong links between community collaboration and organizational goals will immediately transform social media from an inconvenient, technology-hyped distraction to an important tool for enterprise success." The other principles join together in a collective goal to target a community that's in the go stage. In order to determine that, I will have my client ask the questions:

Is the community readily identifiable?

Does the community already exist offline?

Does the community already exist online?

Is there a history of collaboration?Is the culture of the target community already conductive to community collaboration and social media?

After completing Hootsuite module 4, I learned a few things about growing an online community. One huge advantage of having an online community is that it can lead to a huge increase in sales. Without having a physical community and online community sales would never happen. Especially in the world of sales that we will live in today, the online community is where most sales will happen. Another takeaway from module 4 is building an active community. Getting the community engaged in posts in what I am really focusing on with my client. The more comments and dm's are encouragement that builds the online community on his platform. Having an active community will be rewarding with a loyal following that advocates his brand online and off.

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Surveillance & Data Gathering

Surveillance and data gathering play a huge part in internet business models. All companies nowadays use the advantage of data collecting and gathering to a whole new level. They want to get as much data as possible from their customers. With this data collected they will then use it to make specific advisements that they believe their target customer will like and eventually lead to them clicking on it and taking it to the companies website or social media page. The amount of time you look at the ad, the moment you click on the website, the link that takes you to that item are all examples of data that is being gathered for the company and social media platform!

From what I learned after watching Maciej Ceglowski's video, I noticed that the government has not just started keeping track of us. This has been a trend for a long time from the government. From files to surveillance to now data they seem to always want to be in "the know." Maciej called all of this, "radioactive waste...It's incredibly toxic and hard to get rid of." He predicted our data will be around for our lifetime and maybe even our children's lifetime. When he stated this, I just wondered why? Why do they need to keep our data for that long? Won't the data eventually become irrelevant or will it become data of comparison to future times?

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Week 8 Blog Post

The most important qualities that I believe a social media consultant should have are: communication and engagement, being able to listen well, alignment with goals, patience, kindness, and respect. In my view I look at these qualities as something I value in my own life and would want to portray if I was a social media consultant. I list communication first because I think it is the most valuable lesson and most valuable key quality to have for their job and also a way to comprehend what your client wants and sees for their company. The other qualities are equally as important that a social media consultant to possess.

If I were my own social media consultant I would have many plans and strategies to improve my professional social media presence. First, off I would start off with a strategy for my profiles to become more professional. I would make scheduled posts that align with my business. I would also change the layout and what my feed would look like to have a common trend throughout my profile to represent my business. For example, I would plan out certain pictures and posts that would look good next to each other. With this I believe my profiles would look automatically more professional and keeping a similar trend throughout. Also to mention, I would want to post more often than I regularly do. This would keep my clients and prospective clients engaged and interested with what I am posting and what I plan to post.

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Big Data & Algorithms

Social Media is our current reality. The amount of data and information that is shared and analyzed is so powerful and honestly scary. After watching the lecture and the Social Dilemma I learned a lot about the dangers that come with big data and algorithms. The Social Dilemma focuses on how big social media companies manipulate us users by using algorithms that lead us into using their platforms. With already knowing this, I can see the benefits that it offers for companies and brands that need to sell this through ecommerce that can help. With owning my own boutique someday, I will use the same platforms to advance my sales.

However, on the other hand, this big data and algorithms that social media companies take advantage of can be frustrating at times. For example, I was recently shopping for my friend that just had a baby. I quickly looked at Amazon for some cute things and that was my first mistake. Right after being on Amazon, I switched to Instagram and probably had five adds in the first few swipes of being on the app. At first it wasn't bad seeing some baby things, but after the third day of going on Instagram and seeing baby adds I got pretty irritated. Don't get me wrong, there could be way worse things to have adds for, but I am currently not in that season of life to start shopping for baby clothes lol.

Overall, after learning more everyday about the disadvantages and dangers of having social media, I am starting to become more convinced to stop using social media as much as I do. I have become pretty disgusted of seeing my screen report every Sunday. Social media is our current reality, but it doesn't need to be.

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Social Media Cleanse

For a 24 hour period I tracked my social media usage.... and I observed a lot of alarming routines that I didn't even know I had.

I observed that I spent 5 hours and 23 minutes on my phone in one day. ONE DAY. And 9 of those hours in the 24 hours were spent sleeping lol! I spent 47 minutes on Tiktok, 36 minutes on text messages, 23 minutes on Snapchat, 12 minutes on Instagram and the rest was random. Looking at those numbers are alarming, but at the same time, I know I have done way worse in the past. I questioned why I had spent 36 minutes on messages to then see in my data tracking that had 132 posts and texts for that time period. No wonder why I get so distracted!

To be honest, I knew I had a unhealthy relationship with social media and the usage of my cellphone. However, I just kind of accepted that I did that because so many other people do as well. I enjoy keeping up with friends and family and seeing cool things that everyone does. I also enjoy posting things myself and seeing what people have to say about it. These things are so common that we don't even realize the damage it is doing to our human interactions. Therefore, I wanted to see what it would be like to change that and have better connections with my friends and family, besides just texting them. So for a 24 period of time, I made plans to hang out in-person with friends and to only Facetime friends and family that I aren't close-by.

Over this period of time, I was able to hangout with 2 friends in-person (without going on my phone) and Facetimed 2 family members and 4 friends. This day was probably the most fulfilling and joyful days I've had in awhile. Being able to talk to so many people that I love to talk to and catch up with- I was finally able to do. Instead of just commenting on their latest post or text, I had a meaningful conversation. It wasn't honestly that difficult to stay off my phone when I was with these people and talking to them. I was really living in the moment and enjoying the interactions that I don't normally make priority of doing so. I also noticed that after I got done talking or hanging out I didn't really care to go on social media because I felt so fulfilled with my conversations with everyone that I didn't have the need or want to see what "everyone" else was doing.

Taking this social media "cleanse" was probably different than most cleanses, but it was a cleanse that I saw necessary for what I needed in that 24 hour period. I hope to do this again in the future- will hopefully try and aim for it once a week!

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Social Media's Influence

Social media is doing a lot to our brains. After watching Max Stossel's talk, I learned many facts and studies that have already changed my path in thinking about social media and how it affects us.

In my own personal life I know for a fact that social media influences me daily. I constantly wonder what my friends have said back to my text or wonder if there are new posts on Instagram or what the weather is like or what new fashion trends are happening right now. The list goes on and on with this. I believe the influence that it has on my life has its positives and negatives. There have been many awesome connections that I have made with others through social media that I would have never connected with otherwise. On the other hand, I have also found myself comparing myself to those same connections or a feel to try and keep up with them like it is a chore.

In the same light, I think the ability to always have the availability to social media and technology is also why it so harmful. We as humans abuse that availability and end up using it constantly instead of when we would really need it. For example, there was a week this past summer where I didn't have good cell service while camping. At first I noticed how often I would pick up my phone and realize that I didn't have any notifications or service. This would happen again and again until I eventually just put my phone away so I wouldn't pick it back up. This specific week I had such freedom without having something constantly in my hand.

Max Stossel stated, "Are we really working towards to getting to know ourselves?" With my experience this summer with social media, I want to make a schedule where I can feel that freedom again. I know that I won't be able to shut off everything completely, but my goal for this semester is to try and limit my time on social media. That means with the time period on it, but also when I can be on it during the day. I am someone who picks up her phone as the first thing in the morning. I want to decide to make different choices in the morning and either read or listen to music instead to start my day.

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First Blog Post!

Hi! My name is Madison Krohn. I am a senior at Central Michigan University. I'm majoring in Entrepreneurship and double minoring in Visual Merchandising and Leadership.

I grew up in the thumb of Michigan in the country. Even though there weren't a lot of fashion opportunities in the area, I always loved fashion and the marketing side of it. Coming from a business oriented family, I learned the ins and outs of owning your own business and what it takes to become successful. With this quality- quite literally running in my blood, I soon wanted to aspire to own my own business. Therefore, I decided why not study how to do that! With this being said, my future career goals are to run and operate my own clothing boutique! Why not do something you love and make money while you do it!

During this class (BIS 315), I hope to learn about this new platform and how to use it for my future business and gather useful inspiration while doing it.

Coach (coach) | Official Pinterest account

Coach | Having the #CourageToBeReal since 1941. #CoachNY

This link will take you to the Coach site on Pinterest. From what I gathered in our reading assignment, Coach does a great job at creating new market strategies and channels. They are consistently doing business to show their products value and social organization. It has advanced its defining characteristics with its brands name leading to be one of the best and most high achieving fashion brands.