Morgan's BIS 315 Blog

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Implementation

Throughout this semester I have been a consultant for a social organization. I have given thoughtful feedback and included some recommendations for improvement. As my time being a consultant for this organization comes to an end, there are a few challenges I think my client may face when implementing my recommendations. 

A content calendar may be one of the challenges my client runs into. I think it is very important to have ideas for posts planned out and ready to go for specific times. This shows consistency and keeps your social media accounts active. It is understandable to be busy and forget, but there are solutions to this problem. I highly suggest having an assistant/crew helping with social media pages. I even suggested having one person assigned to each platform and share a planned content calendar so everyone is on the same page. 

Another challenge might include realizing there is always room for improvement. It’s okay to be content with how your social media pages are running, but you should always strive to do better. I think my client gets caught up in what they are posting and forgets to also check on their competitors to stay up-to-date with new trends and tips to improve. My client needs to be able to adapt to any updates and new platforms. Set goals and reach them!

I enjoyed working with my client and look forward to seeing the changes they make from my recommendations!

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Effective Content

Developing effective content online can be tricky at first. Overall it seems so easy, but once you get going you start to realize it’s a lot more tedious. The first thing you want to make sure you do is to catch the readers eye. Strong headlines are a perfect way to do this. You want to ensure that your headline will draw the audience in and then follow with you important information. 

When sharing the same content on different platforms, you should try to tweak each one with a different approach. Normally when someone follows you on one form of social media, they tend to follow you on your others as well. This is a perfect opportunity to share different sections of the full message so they get snippets on each platform. 

Visual content is also a crucial part of ensuring effective content. Including a text overlay on photos gives a little contrast and helps mix it up from time to time. Videos are also another way to mix up the different forms of visual content. You want to vary your posts to keep the audience entertained and wanting more. With this being said, you also don’t always need to include images in every post. When you don’t include images, keep track of how much engagement you get compared to when you do post images.

Lastly, using a tool like Hootsuite can help you manage times when you’d like to post. You can even use this site to automatically send out your pre-set posts. This can help make sure you don't forget to pst something you wanted to. When picking specific times, pay attention to when you get the most interactions so you know what times are better than others for the future. 

To become a social organization you need to use the principles of effective content development and sharing as talked about above. Determining how successful your platform lies in the hands of your followers and audience. Stay up to date, trendy, unique, and engaged to please your followers. If they like what they see, your content will spread and boost your social organization!

More tricks and tips to follow: https://www.ttec.com/articles/key-becoming-social-organization 

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Online Community

Building an online community can only benefit a business or organization, and they can do that through social media. Social media has become one of the most powerful sources of providing information, attracting an audience, and involving a community. It’s important for a business to know exactly what they plan to do and have a vision of what they are looking for in potential benefits for their organization. The reading advises that when you are preparing for this vision, that you open it with an overall expression of belief in the strategic importance of community collaboration, followed by a list of areas in the organization where collaboration can provide substantial benefits. Hearing from your audience is very effective because they are who is most important. Communicating with them directing through social media is fast, effective, and is a place that will hold all of the collaborating wisdom. Below is an article explaining three great examples of successful online communities: 

https://www.cmnty.com/blog/successful-online-communities/

After completing the Hootsuite module 4 I learned a lot more about growing an online community. Within the client I’ve been working with on the client project, a lot of these principles apply to their social media. Even though their pages are already very good, there are still things that could be worked on. The layouts are welcoming, but they should add a contest or something to get people to interact with their pages more. If they rewarded followers for tagging them in photos or using their hashtag this would spread their pages around and attract more people. This module also made me think that maybe my client should start an online newsletter to keep older alumni in the loop throughout the years. Doing that would spread their online community to other age groups as well.

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Big Data

After watching “The Legal Side of Big Data” Doug LaLone, I wanted to cover three topics I thought were important. What should businesses be aware of when using big data, what should consumers be aware of, and what is the best way to balance the opportunities and threats presented by the development of big data?

Businesses should be aware of how dangerous big data can be if it lands in the wrong hands. Although they use big data to keep track of their customers and to become better than competitors, it can also lead to being harmful. In 2013, Target had 740 million data records exposed because they were hacked. This cost them so much money to recover from. You can read more about the Target hack in the following link: https://money.cnn.com/2013/12/22/news/companies/target-credit-card-hack/index.html. Home Depot also had an incident occur in 2015 with 56 million credit cards being hacked. This also can be read about more on the following link: https://money.cnn.com/2014/09/08/technology/security/home-depot-breach/. Not only is this costly for the company to recover from, but it also makes customers angry and can result in losing them. They should be upfront with customers and let them know what data they are using/looking at. This would build trust and let the customers know what is really going on. 

Like I said above, consumers should be aware of what data of theirs, companies are using and why. It is important to be able to trust the company you’re purchasing from. Consumers need to be extremely careful and understand that there’s always a chance of their data getting into the wrong hands and exposing their personal information. Confidentiality agreements are often not read but should be if you want to make sure your data is secured and know what they are doing with it. Even if a company was to go out of business, not only are their things for sale but so is your data they collected.

The best way to balance the opportunities and threats presented by the development of big data is to know what data is being used and be cautious of what is out there. There are policies that could be used to make sure if anything were to happen that it would be protected. Staying truthful as a company to your customers and letting them know what is going on with their data can also save the companies from getting into a lot of trouble. Be aware when entering in your data to different places because you never know when a hack could happen. 

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Junk News

There are three reasons junk news spreads so quickly across social media: Algorithms, advertising, and exposure. Algorithms are used as a way to sort and filter through content to fit what people like and want. This is how Facebook ads are catered to what you’re interested in because of algorithms. This also helps the advertising aspect of social media. In advertising, they use a thing called quickbait to spread curiosity about other products/companies and introduce the person to new things they may like. Another way social media uses advertising to spread junk news is by almost forcing people to vote for certain things by micro-targeting. Only exposing the people to something specific can help persuade them. Lastly, exposure is used to spread junk news by exposing the people to what they want or prefer making it more narrow.

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Social Media Consultant

There are a lot of important qualities a social media consultant should have, but I think the most important would be consistency and accuracy. You want all of the posts to be consistent and stay on track from day to day. You want to make sure that they don’t miss out on posting about a special event coming up for the company or group. They have to also be reliable and be able to trust that they will post the right things and not anything inappropriate or offensive to others.

When taking a look at my own social media and being a consultant I definitely would make some improvements. I already monitor the pictures I post, making sure there isn’t any alcohol visible or making sure you can’t tell that I’m drunk. I need to work more on not posting my feelings too much because no one needs to know my business or hear me complain about my life. That is more for a diary or journal rather than social media. It could come off that I don’t know how to handle my emotions and thoughts. Swearing is another big one I already monitor because that’s inappropriate and wouldn’t want my future employer seeing that. I think keeping a blog and posting about accomplishments and good things going on in my life will be a good goal for me to set for the future.

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Big Data

While watching a video and reading an article about data, “we've lost control of our most personal information” stuck out to me. Most people do not know that our information is constantly being collected. What we like or dislike, what we buy, our engagements. All of this is gathered to learn more about us and being shared. Whenever I am on Facebook, I see ads pop up of things I’ve recently viewed in other browsers or things I have purchased already. Data brokers try to stay low key about everything they gather, but it is constantly being posted out there whether you know it or not. Like they say in the video “every piece of data about us seems to be something to somebody.” Collecting and selling information is a daily thing that we don’t even realize is happening. The software can track how many people view pages and measuring traffic throughout browsers or mobile devices. I think this is creepy and disturbing because they can track my every move and locate all of my personal information. I don’t think this is fair for this information to be taken from people and there should be some sort of law to restrict this. Overall, be careful about the websites you are using and what you’re sharing!

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Social Media Experiment

After keeping track of my social media and screen usage, I decided to do an experiment where I create a span of social-media-free time and see what happens. I decided to do three 6-hour periods of no social media. This experiment was challenging and hard to resist.

The first couple hours weren’t too bad because I was doing homework and it was nice to actually focus with no distractions. It also helped me complete my homework a lot quicker than usual. As the hours went on it started to get a lot harder. I wanted to know where my roommates were and what they were doing or check Snapchat and Instagram stories to see what’s going on in the area. I was also nervous I was going to miss an important phone call or an urgent message. Group chats were the hardest for me to resist because I felt like I was missing out on how everyone’s day was going. Towards the end of the 6 hours I was getting use to not using my phone and it felt good. 

From doing this experiment, I learned how important it is to have face-to-face conversations and just live in the moment. I don’t need a group chat to know how my friends day is going, I can just talk to them in person. This made me more social and talk to them a lot more than normal. I was also a lot more productive and completed many tasks because I didn’t have a constant distraction. This experiment showed me how much I rely on my phone to keep me busy and entertain me. Like I said in my last post, I want to really focus more on living in the moment and not depending on my phone so much. I think this will help increase my relationships with friends and family and help me be more time-efficient. 

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Social Media Log

This week I kept track of how much time I spent on various forms of social media, time spent viewing a screen of some kind, number of posts/texts, and number of times I checked my phone. I knew I spent a lot of time doing all of these things, but not nearly as much as my results were. Within 24 hours, I viewed my laptop a total of about 4 hours. This is due to doing homework, watching Youtube videos, and checking emails. I also viewed my phone around a total of 6 hours throughout the day. On my phone, I spend most of my time texting. I had sent over 300 texts throughout the 24 hours. Over a 2 hour span I checked my phone 36 times. This was shocking to me because I didn’t realize how often I was really looking at my phone. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat were also used heavily. I posted 3 retweets, gave out many likes, and kept up to date with what my friends and family were up to.

It’s surprising when you really pay attention to all of these interactions because you never really realize how often you use social media and technology. It also makes you notice how everyone you are communicating with or keeping track of is losing out on face-to-face interactions as well. I am going to try to spend a lot less time on my phone and live more in the moment. 

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Social Media’s Influence

“Our devices change what we do and who we are.” Not only do we use our phones to communicate with others, but to constantly take videos and pictures as shown in Sherry Turkle’s interview. We even use our phones to play games which takes place of human conversation. This is an example of misuse or overusing like Sherry says. We are so concerned about the next message that we keep checking our phones or trying to finish a message that we don’t pay attention to what’s going on in the moment. We crave the attention of who wants to reach us vs who is right in front of us and living in the present. A phone is such an addiction. Even in class I am so tempted to check my phone every ten minutes and get distracted causing me to miss what the professor said or what’s going on. We really aren’t as strong as technologies pull like Sherry said.

In the article, “Before the Internet” by Emma Rathbone, she makes a very good point about transferring schools or moving to a new place. No one would know anything about you, but now people can easily look you up and find out details about you and judge before even meeting you. Before the internet, you could also go do activities somewhere and no one would even know about it. Nowadays, we constantly update the world on what we’re doing and show proof of each move we make. I find myself taking boomerangs every time I’m out to eat and tagging the location on the video. This has become a habit because everyone does it. I want my followers to know the cool places I go and see my adventures along the way.

Aside from the struggles social media has caused our society, there are also some great advantages. Advertising has been the best ever and will only continue to increase. There are ads popping up everywhere on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Even when you play a game on your phone, there are advertisements in between plays. These force the person to pay attention to what is out there and watch the advertisements. Social Media has also really helped in the hiring process. Applying online on Handshake or LinkedIn keeps you easily connected to the business world and help you figure out your future. 

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Introduction

Hello everyone!

I am a senior at Central Michigan University majoring in Business Administration with a concentration in Applied Busines Communication. I am from Lansing, MI and hope to move to the Detroit area after graduation in May. In my free time, I enjoy traveling and hanging out with family and friends. I like to try new things and am always eager for an adventure. I am looking forward to posting blogs because it will help me lay out my thoughts and share them with everyone. Social media is continuing to become more popular and used frequently by businesses to reach out to recent generations. I think Victoria's Secret does a great job with their social media accounts. https://www.victoriassecret.com/ They keep everyone updated and advertise all of their products equally. There is also a yearly fashion show that has famous models included to show off their merchandise, making people want their clothes even more.