Stewart's World

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Implementation Lecture

The second part for this week was to react to a short lecture on Implementation. As this is one of the last steps (you always have revisions and updates to make), you have to actually make the social media happen. You planned it, but can you execute. The first thing that the presenter discussed was why projects failed. The list included lack of purpose, lack of understanding the type of media trying to be pushed, and execs not putting proper resources to the project.

Next, the presenter mentioned that sometimes, people are simply not willing to make big changes to implement a social media strategy. Change is one of the hardest things to do because humans are hard wired to not like change. It really does have to make a change in perception of social media for the implementation of social media can be a net positive effect. To build a community, there must be strong and proper communication throughout the now connected community. If there is no communication, no one will follow the campaign.

Finally, the presenter mentions that there is always a standard to follow ethical implementation of social media. Not only are there countless legal discussions applicable to social media, but one should also take into consideration how the material is being presented to the target audience.

All combined, this will help make a successful implementation of a social media strategy.

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Hootsuite / Client Project Step 6

For this week, we dove into the implementation of the social media strategy and more importantly, the use of advertisements in social media strategy. When considering social media advertising, it really is important to attempt to determine who the target audience is. Where are they most active? Younger people are increasingly switching over to Instagram and Twitter, while older generations have essentially taken over Facebook. Business professionals have LinkedIn and so on. Realizing who actually wants what you are selling is the first major key. 

Additionally, what is the budget? More popular websites (take Google for example) are going to be expensive to advertise on because they have much higher rates of traffic on their platforms. What is your companies budget for these?

Lastly, what is the style of advertisements that do well on the site? Is it a listed out post for Facebook, or a colorful, eye-popping visual for Instagram? Maybe utilize the hashtag feature that Twitter uses (but then again, so does everyone else). In essences, every site has something that makes it unique, otherwise people wouldn’t use it. Assess what the best platform is to spend our money and make that spending worth it.

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The Social Organization Chp. 3-5

For this week we read Chapters 3-5 of “The Social Organization” and it highlighted a few key topics on how to go about becoming a social organization and how/when to implement a social media platform for the company.

In Chapter 3, the book stresses that it takes a real effort to initiate a social media strategy for a business. There are a lot of steps and explanations of the “vision” that have to go into creating a social media precedence. The book gave a lot of good pints but the main takeaways I got were to set guidelines for how to use social media, who the target audience is, and how it will help the core business.

In Chapter 4, the book details how to create an interactive, collaborative space with social media. My personal favorite thing in this chapter was the suitability chart for mass media. I think it gave a really clean breakdown of when to play to larger or smaller audiences, and what kind of content to do so with. More conservative approaches to media are best for things that only make sense to a smaller group or are only needed by the smaller group, whereas mass media can be used to grow the community you are in.

Chapter 5 wraps up the reading with the “No, Go, and Grow” stages for a social media campaign. It clearly lays out when to “go” “not go”, or to spend more resources on a project. A campaign that can grow by outside forces (Ex. by fans supporting a cause or employees distributing information probably does not need a social campaign. On the other hand, a successful campaign that continues to draw interest could be put into the “grow” stage of social media.

All together, I think the book does a really good job of showing the ways to evaluate a social media campaign before, during, and after starting one.

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Week 10: Social Media News

In the news recently, especially as big data becomes such a growing concern for people, I have decided to post about TikTok. TikTok was essentially the killer of Vine. Vine was a 7 second video that took the internet by storm before TikTok came along and simply made the videos be short but not 7 second short. This is the disrupter that ended Vine. The concern around TikTok is not necessarily the platform, but who owns it. ByteDance is a Chinese company that released TikTok in 2017. The concern was that for a Chinese company definitely taking data from the users, is that there is no way for the United States to monitor what is being taken unless servers for the system are in the geographical United States. This raises concerns as there is no way to monitor what data is exactly taken by ByteDance. This means they can sell user data used to create logins, passwords to phones, fingerprints if biometric login was implemented. These are all reasons why I personally will not use the media site. On a business note, TikTok may damage Instagram more than other social media sites as they have the most similar platforms of being very visually based.

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Hootsuite Module4/Client Project 4

When trying to advance a business’ social media presence, it is important to build a community around the brand. Hootsuite starts with this idea and shows how to advance a community through interactions with fans, and shows that a brand cares about the customer, giving an experience that goes beyond what the actual business does. Making this impact on people outside of the business will give an opportunity to demonstrate the brand outside of operations. As it relates the the client project, I found that my client had a lot of room to grow in this department. My client really does not respond very frequently to comments on posts, and does not have many social media sites where they could grow a community. around their personal brand.

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Hootsuite Module 3/Client Project Step 3

In the hootsuite Module 3, we learned what it means to incorporate strategy into a social media presence for  a company. Additionally, we incorporated said strategy into our client projects. Strategy, no matter what field you are in, is required. Execution of the strategy will provide you the actual benefits, but nothing is is going to be successful is there is no idea on a useful strategy in the first place. Hootsuite shows that each social media has a different purpose behind it, and that each one can be used to this advantage. Facebook is for larger posts, and can incorporate essentially whatever you want, but on the alrget audience where it can be harder to grab what little attention is available, Twitter is very concise and to the point, but could be hard to advertise without paying for it, and Instagram is used to visually depict what makes your company so great. All the platforms have something that the others do not, and have a reach that is seperate from each other based on what they provide. Asa visual person, a company is more likely to find me on Instagram rather than Facebook, and if there are enough people like me in a companies target market, then that company should use Instagram the most per part of their strategy. In my client project, I have a client who does not really utilize social media much at all outside of Facebook. This allowed for a lot of discussion towards growth of the business, as well as how to increase reach to the target markets. One interesting thing about my client is that there are essentially two target markets. One being the market that is already coming to the business, which we want to retain, and the second larger market is the consumer who is not aware of our existence or if they are, has not given much thought to actually doing business with my client. This growth market will provide ample opportunity to grow the current business.

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The Legal Side of Big Data

This weeks question was: what should businesses be aware of when using big data?  What should consumers be aware of?  What is the best way to balance the opportunities and threats presented by the development of big data?  

First, I found it interesting that there is no legal definition of “Big Data”. This leaves so much of how business and the public may see as being the “big data” that they can and cannot control about people. Businesses need to be aware that owning and keeping big data can be dangerous if that data is ever breached. While it may help to keep information on people, and it may help targeted advertising, it should be the ethical thing to take all precautionary measures to protect the consumers data. The speaker said that businesses are often “reactive” to hacks, but need to be more “proactive”. I agree with this fully.

For the consumer, they need to know that there data is being collected, and if they do not want that to occur, then there are steps they should take to avoid being tracked. Pay in cash, don’t shop online, and don’t click on ads online. It is hard for today’s consumer to do this though. I see ads all the time on Instagram, or on Snapchat (”Swipe up to get this product!”). As we become less cash dependent as well, it actually has a psychological impact because we are not physically giving something up in a transaction, we do not feel as reserved about the move. Businesses love this because it keeps us spending and giving them the data they want.

In order to balance the threats and benefits from big data, there needs to be an understanding on both sides that the data is being collected, and an explanation as to what it is being used for. There simply needs to be more transparency about the interactions. This way, the consumer who doesn’t want their data shared can take appropriate steps, and the business can collect on people who are willing to be included in data collection to make their shopping easier with the targeted marketing. 

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LinkedIn

For this week, I decided to talk about my first post on LinkedIn. When I first made my LinkedIn, I used it primarily for job searching and never really posted anything. I had my resume, my cover letter, and academic transcripts posted, but nothing of original content of my own. I never posted when I got my internship, when I got on campus jobs, or even when I hit my one year mark at working for the company I currently work for. I decided to change that because I had the opportunity to be on a panel for prospective students for CMU and we all got a picture with President Davies out of it. I deemed it worthy to post. What I didn’t realize, was just how broad a reach a LinkedIn post can have. LinkedIn gives you analytics on  and I thought I would share some surprising results that I saw. My post on LinkedIn was viewed over 2,200 times, and had 43 likes, and 3 comments. I posted a similar picture from the same event on Instagram and got 91 likes, and no comments. While those statistics are similar, WHO was viewing the post really got me. 20 people from Deloitte and EY viewed the post, and 34 “finance specialist” have viewed it. The potential for my posts to make impact on people who could be on the recruiting trail or future co-workers. I like how LinkedIn can give this analysis, and how it can improve a professional image. I now plan to use LinkedIn a lot more in the future, especially as I move on from the college experience. 

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Week 5 Posts

This week in BIS 315, we completed the second Hootsuite module for how to effectively set-up and manage settings on social media, and gave our “clients” a review of their social media and how they can improve their social media presence. I learned a great deal about how to more effectively use imagery in social media, and how it can really help out my client, which runs a restaurant. Instagram, it turns out, has a huge impact on the food industry as it gives restaurants an opportunity to show off the menu without needing a personal website. Foodies can just find their pictures in social media explore pages. I can even use social media in my personal life better. Especially LinkedIn. As  I search for a full time position, I could use a professional boost to my LinkedIn page. I don’t post anything but I think I do a lot of cool things that I should probably be posting on LinkedIn as they show my more professional side. Interesting things this class is teaching me as we continue into the semester.

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My Own Consultant

For this weeks second post, I was tasked to become a consultant to myself. First, I looked into what I am already doing with my personal social media. I currently have an account on every  major platform (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn). I use all source of media for more professional purposes, besides Instagram. I use Instagram to show more of my personal life, while using the others mostly to keep up with the happenings of the world.

Improvements to make would include more professional posts on LinkedIn. I never made posts about my job, I never posted for other items. I would like to build a more professional appearance on Linkedin as I look for a full time job.

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Qualities of a Social Media Consultant

For this week’s blog post, we were tasked with doing an analysis of what we think makes a good social media consultant. I think a good social media consultant should have expertise in two arenas. They should understand the business, and then they should also understand the the clientele that they are attempting to reach out to. On one side, the consultant needs to understand the business that they are serving, from product knowledge to knowing what the goals of the organization are. Second, the consultant should be able to gain a knowledge of the clientele base of the company, The consultant needs to know how they use social media, how they like their messages delivered, and how to respond to their responses.

Take Wendy’s for example, whoever runs their social media is an expert in how to manage a social media account. They connected with a younger audience through use of social media to gain attention for their product through the use of social trends,

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Policies Need Teeth

Maciej Ceglowski stated that policies need teeth. Data is a tool that can pretty much only be used against us as he seems to believe.Maciej mentions that the algorithms are so overloaded with data that you can only do so much with it to actually be useful. It is such a rash system, that Google thought he was a 24 year old middle eastern woman. (Hes a 40 year old Polish guy). There is such a mismanagement of our personal data, that we need to start monitoring how we are monitored. It was interesting to listening to someone who was not originally an American citizen who has so much to say about what is to most of us, a traditionally American topic. Think about it, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, the main social players are all American. America lives off of this idea that it doesn’t matter what gets collected on us because it can’t really harm us. Maybe it can though. Maybe it can’t, it doesnt seem likely that your google search for cats palying the piano will come back to haunt you but what if that site also takes you age, gender, location of the computer and logins on that computer, and sells that to the highest bidder? And that is Maciej’s point. Eventually, we need to have a system that allows us to at least know what and who and where our data resides with.

To watch MAciej’s video: https://vimeo.com/102717446

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Big Money With Big Data

The first topic this week is big data. You have probably heard something about it, but you may not realize just how much, and how readily available it is. This is what 60 minutes tried to explain in a video about data brokers, the companies that take and sell your data. The big lesson on big data is that if a product is free, then the real product is you. Everyone loves a good joke about how no one reads the terms and conditions about anything. Want to confess to a crime? Put it in the terms and conditions, no one will ever know. It’s a sneaky little trick to allow tech companies to take your information. It’s actually insane how much companies probably know about you. My advice, give them crap data. Even companies like Apple, who champion their security, just keep your data from your phone. Just because they don’t sell it doesn’t mean they don’t have it. Eventually we will grapple with the idea, who cares what a company knows about me? If it helps them advertise stuff that I would like more, why not? The ethical battle that will wage over privacy is going to be pretty immense, and will probably end up costing legal teams trillions in the near future. Stay on the lookout, things are going to get messy.

To watch the 60 minutes video for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAT_ina93NY

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Ignoring Social Media at Work

Over the course of the week, I have periods where I am not on my phone for roughly eight hours at a time. This occurs when I am at work and employees are not given access to the internet on their phones. We could, of course, connect to our data and use that, but I tend to not do this as I pay for a by the gig plan and it helps me disconnect and lower my bills for at least a little while. This week, in synchrony with tracking my social media usage on Thursday, I measured the effect staying offline for the hours that I was at work this week. I turned my data on as I walked to my car and updated myself as I got ready to leave. I actually found it quite fun to watch as I got notifications from just about every app on my phone. I would always have about 10 emails to read from either my Gmail or CMICH accounts, I would have somewhere between 3-6 stories from the Wall Street Journal to read, numerous Snapchats from friends as we like to keep streaks (Snapchat’s way to record how many consecutive days you send a person at least one snapchat). One part of me felt bad for not responding to any of these notifications, but the other part of me felt kind of cool that all of these people wanted to interact with me and I was somehow in control of how the conversation would play out. I would take my time to respond to the majority of the snapchats or emails before I actually got on the road home from work and it would take me between 15-20 minutes to respond to everyone. Imagine if I responded during work hours, and then kept the conversations going during my office hours. I would have probably spent at least an hour of each workday socializing instead of working. That adds up in lost productivity in the end! 

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Week 2: Social Media Log

Our second task this week was to record our social media usage for one day. I chose Thursday, January 23rd, as it was what I would consider a typical day of social media usage for me. I found that I spend nearly three hours on social media, with the majority of that time being spent between Instagram and Snapchat. I expected these results, but did not expect for the total time to be as close to three hours as it was. My guess was 2.5 hours maximum. I really do not like social media, and I try to avoid it as anything else but news and communication. I of course have some entertainment value in social media, as I view stories and scroll through the Instagram explorer page. All of which are meant to keep us on the platform as long as possible. For more detail, copy and paste the link below for the full report.

file:///C:/Users/Stewart%20Zondlak/Desktop/Year%204%20Semester%202/BIS%20315/Social%20Media%20Log.pdf

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Week 2: Reaction to Sherry Turkle and Louis CK

This week, we were tasked ot watch two interviews. One had Sherry Turkle, professor at MIT and the other was Louis CK,a comedian. Both videos were the individuals takes on social media and how it has impacted people. Louis CK spoke on Conan about how he refuses to give his kids phones because they will not learn how people react to what they say in real life. His example was calling someone fat. In person ,the person will look hurt, and it feels bad to hurt people, so the kids would learn empathy. In text, we don’t see the person’s reaction and therefore don’t care when we hurt people, resulting in no empathy. Sherry Turkle in her interview gives a similar vantage point, but speaks in broader terms about how we create online realities for ourselves which is good, as we get to play with identity. The problem to Turkle, is that we go right back into our other self after  we leave the internet, and that is harming our ability to be our true selves, and limits our desire to take part in the real world.

I think both individuals show great meaning in their talks. Louis CK gives his talk on Conan which to me takes away form some of the seriousness of the talk as late night shows always try to add in funny moments to take away from the seriousness of the situations which to me gives reality to Turkle’s points that we try to avoid a “real” world because it is messy. What I do appreciate is that Sherry Turkle takes a more optimistic approach to social media and the connectivity of the world where as Louis CK takes a very negative view of it all. I think there are a lot of really bad things online, but there is just as much good things too. People like Louis CK need to find the good before they miss out on everything that is happening in the world. Like it or not, we cannot avoid social media/connectivity. It has more with how we use it and what purposes we use it for. 

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How Social Media Can Make History

For my first reaction, we have been tasked to respond to a TED Talk by Clay Shirky. He talks about how the use of social media has changed the way the world and professionals/businesses communicate. He makes excellent points about both the good and the bad sides of social media, from China’s restrictions to social media access for its own people, to Barack Obama not silencing people on his own website who protested his announcement as to how he would vote back when he was a senator. The thing that I find most interesting is that Mr. Shirky covers how social media truly sent us to a new age as not only can we now respond to media that is “sent” to us over the internet, but we can now respond to other people who have also had the media sent to them but everyone the media has been sent to can see it all. Nothing is private anymore with this type of media. The internet is a mass circle of media. If there is media you are looking for, its there.

Now, I do not know anyone who would say that the internet has had no benefit to society, because obviously it has. My problem with the internet and social media is that it is now so easy to get lost in that media.This TED Talk was made back in 2009 and in modern time we are fighting a fight over false information because we now know about it. As big a change as social media has made, it has allowed for the world to do everything quickly without the need to research. Imagine, you see an ad for anything,and you can sign up for just about anything without knowing what you are signing up for. People have become so ready to act without learning, and that, to me is the danger to offset the benefit of the internet and social media.

Overall, the introduction I believe the introduction of social media is a good thing. It allows us to connect and try to make human connections where it was never before possible. We find everything through media, even love (looking at you Tinder). But eventually, if people are not careful, we may be consumed by the very thing that made our lives that much easier. It is a classic case of too much of a good thing being a bad thing. Even more, when do we decide who, if we ever move to this, gets to decide what is allowed on social media? Who gets to say what is good and pure, and what is that which is not to be spoken about? Can we really limit human thought that ends up online? If so, are we really gaining thre freedom of the internet, or would we lose the right to be informed and to make the choices and decisions we used to actually think about before making.

To watch the TED Talk for yourself, see the link below.

Regards,

Stewart

https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_social_media_can_make_history?language=en