Second, I'd never kept up with an actual, written blog before this class--or at least, not one that I got to add my own personality to. I think I'd like to continue writing one, actually--it seems kind of an obvious thing to do for someone who'd wants to be an author at some point. Guess I'll be brushing up on Word Press this summer!
Third, I loved the guest speakers this semester. I'm grateful for the opportunity to work with actual clients for our social media proposals... and getting to take a look at Google Glass was pretty awesome.
I've learned a lot in class that I hadn't known anything about before. Klout scores were a new concept. So were the plethora of different analytics and all of the different things companies do with them. You always learn the theories behind advertising and marketing in comm classes, but I hadn't seen it from the side of the people who do the analyzing.
Some of my favorite moments from the semester happened on Twitter. I wasn't as "popular" as some of my classmates, but it was still great seeing people respond to our comments and to our blogs.
Great class, great professor, and a great experience--and I'm definitely going to keep working on making a reputation for myself on social media.
... and I'm not gonna lie. I'm going to be pretty darn pleased being able to say that I'm HootSuite Certified.
... I'll be honest. I probably shouldn't be as amused about hearing about "the Big Brother Department" as I am. (And at the risk of thoughtcrime, that's all I'll say about it. Inside jokes are for cool kids only.)
Anyway. In my opinion, Mr. Murdock was one of the most interesting guest speakers we've had in class. There was no death-by-powerpoint, no technical jargon that went over my head (and considering how easy that is to do before noon...), and it was kiiiind of obvious that he liked his job. Considering the economy and the general funk that seems to fall over graduating seniors, that was pretty heartening.
There was a lot of pretty interesting stuff brought up in class, but the most important thing I took away was that engaging the audience is the way to go for advertising. And social media. And probably life in general. It's one thing to push messages and promos at people, but if you want to engage them, you have to do something meaningful.
To answer the rhetorical question (because that's how I roll), social media can be both a job and a skill. (Trust me on this. I wanna be an author. Skills and work go kind of hand in hand.) You have to acquire the experience and learn a skill set, but you can also make that skill set work for you.
... and if you can be weird and enjoy yourself while you're acquiring your skills and making them work for you, that's even better.
Okay, I'll admit. I'm not quite certified yet (one quiz left!). But I've learned enough from what I've seen to know that HootSuite is very, very cool.
I wasn't particularly social media-savvy at the start of this semester. I still wouldn't call myself an expert--but HootSuite helps a lot with that. Everything is in one place, working in multiple tabs (which is great for me, because I'm known for having twenty Internet tabs up at once trying to keep track of it all), easy to access, and easy to respond to. My favorite part is the ability to schedule Tweets--it's been a big help with keeping up with Tweeting for class.
I'm really looking forward to being able to say that I'm HootSuite Certified. Any business looking to improve its social media presence should definitely consider subscribing. Heck, if any person wants a better grasp of their social media presence, they should consider getting HootSuite Certified through HootSuite University. Not only does it look spiffy on a resume--how fun is it to declare that you're HootSuite Certified and watch people get interested?--but it's fantastic for organization and keeping track of analytics.
I've really grown fond of HootSuite--it's going to be difficult to go back to just TweetDeck after the end of this semester.
I wasn't sure what to write about for my second blog this week until these two gorgeous creatures appeared on my dash:
(Images taken from their respective articles here and here.)
The first is a ground-dwelling parrot native to New Zealand called the kakapo. The second is the State Bird of Hawaii, the Hawaiian goose, or nene.
Two very different birds from two very different parts of the world, both displaced by people and introduced predators, both struggling to make a comeback in their native habitats.
And what's fantastic from a conservationist's point of view (and mine) is that they're both inching back from the brink.
When a non-native species is introduced to a new area, it can sometimes introduce predators that upset the balance of an ecosystem. Sometimes this means that animals that were never preyed upon, and have few defenses against predation, are wiped out by the introduced predators. In the nene goose's case, that was pigs and dogs. In the kakapo's case, it was stoats and cats introduced by European settlers. It happens time and again: an introduced species threatens a native species. (And it happens with plants, too. Look at the kudzu here in the South! It's native to Asia, not the U.S.)
But sometimes the efforts people put into saving native species pays off. The Hawaiian geese have returned to an island they were extinct from for decades--and they're raising goslings in a protected area! And that baby kakapo survived to hatch into a (rather chunky, if you watch the video at the bottom of the article) little baby parrot.
We just passed the 100th anniversary of the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon. Conservation is a tough gig, and a lot of the time we don't get a chance to marvel at its successes. So a pair of feel-good stories about endangered bird babies? Heck yes, I wanted to share.
The difference between an issue and a crisis is that an issue doesn't threaten the organization's reputation or bottom line over the long term. A crisis occurs when businesses have to stop operations in order to manage the situation. Because issues can escalate into crises, both should be taken seriously.
She talked with a lot of examples. The Domino's Pizza crisis came up a lot--I hadn't realized until today, but it's true that they are part of the reason why later problems in businesses (KFC, Taco Bell...) didn't cause as much uproar. When Domino's happened, social media was a relatively new thing for businesses and had a shock value for consumers. Now that we're more social media-savvy, the shock value has gone down.
We also know how to handle online crises better than we used to, and Ms. Agnes outlined a few key points that should be followed. A couple that really stood out to me were:
Communication is a two-way street! Communications need to be with an audience and not at an audience. People have a voice and expect to use it. People expect a business to have a voice.
You have 15-60 minutes to respond to a crisis or issue, because otherwise the story gets ahead of you. Real-time responses are paramount!
Don't try to hide the facts. (Duh.) If you can't say something for legal reasons, then tell people that!
People are becoming aware of the power of their voice, and they don't want fluff. They want to connect to the people behind the brand. You have to connect on an emotional level -- be sincere and prove you mean it!
Internal communication is key. Everyone inside an organization needs to be on the same page. (Which seems like common sense, but I can believe that a lot of people would be left out of the loop if no one thought to implement it.)
All in all, it was an extremely interesting and informative class, and I'm grateful I had the chance to listen to such an informative speaker.
... or rather, the interesting trend class discussion drew to my attention.
As a young twenty-something, I am in the cohort that doesn't watch very much television. (College, homework, job. There aren't enough hours in the day for TV, too. Whaddya gonna do?) Besides having very little idea of what the weather is going to be like in the next eight hours, this means that I get very little of my news from an actual news channel. I honestly can say that the last time I watched the news was a month and a half ago. And that was only two hours' worth for a class project.
The fact is that when I hear about crises, it's online. It comes from social media. I learned about the bombing in Boston and the shooting in Aurora through posts here on Tumblr.
The interesting thing (from a crisis comm standpoint), was that this information was coming from direct sources. In the aftermath in Boston, it wasn't news websites being reblogged--it was people I follow here reblogging first person accounts, calls for blood donations, and searches for missing people. There were no PR teams involved.
That's interesting to me. Usually when people think "crisis communication", it's PR--press releases, Twitter apologies, the fatal "no comments" comments. But crisis comm has more to it than just PR, and PR has more to contend with than a mis-scheduled Tweet. Social media is real-time and real-life. It turns average people into reporters, who sometimes have more information that PR does, or more accurate information, or contradictions. For some people (like me), these first-hand social media posts are the first indications I get that something is wrong--no reassuring statements or apologies. It adds a whole new twist on crisis comm.
Or maybe that was because of all of the tests and papers due this week. Ugh.
Anyway. I'm going to do a short linguistics lesson this time, me thinks.
Namely, I'd like to talk about the phenomenon of "Ye" used as "the". As in "Ye Olde Pizza Parlor".
The cool thing about "Ye" is that it is actually an abbreviation for "the" in Early Modern English. Originally, the English language had a character known as "thorn", written as " þ", which was pronounced as a "th" sound. Therefore, "the" could also be written as "þe".
"þe" was commonly abbreviated into a shorthand character my computer apparently can't transcribe, and in this form thorn looked very similar to the character "y". Eventually "y" began being used in thorn's place (which was partly because French printing presses did not have a thorn character, but I don't know enough about that subject to ramble about it), which produced the "Ye" phenomenon. Thorn also fell out of use in favor of the use of the combined "th".
It has lingered now as a way to infuse a little "Old English" flair into restaurant signs and humor into conversation, but the fact that "Ye Old Pizza Parlor" is still "The Olde Pizza Parlor" (and I think that's really cool).
... to be 100% honest, I'm still not entirely sure where social media ends and social entertainment begins. It's second screening while you watch The Walking Dead (or, even better, while you're watching The Talking Dead and participating in Twitter polls and making #pudding trend) and listening to music videos made by advertisements... but apparently it's also Skyping and gaming and a whole slew of other things that involve social networking and some form of media.
Which makes sense, considering all the Farmville game requests I used to get back in the day, but really. Oi. Can we get some sub-categories going here? You could analyze strategic music videos all by themselves. And gaming. And split screening.
Once you get a basic idea that all of this stuff is used as "social entertainment", then it gets (somewhat) easier to pick it out of the onslaught of information available online. My favorites are usually music videos and memes produced by brands.
One is the (admittedly somewhat creepy) new Old Spice commercial. Granted, it started as a commercial and not online, but the horrified looks my younger sister gives me when we hear someone making fun of it on Facebook (or even in real life) tell me that it has progressed to the level of Internet Meme.
A less creepy example I recently discovered is 6Rounds API split screen program. I looks like it will make split screening, online communication, and gaming and other activities even easier than it was before
Followers. Friends. Likes. Favorites, if you're from the deviantART community.
And like potato chips, we can't just have one or two. No, once we start racking up followers, we crave more and more. We want to share our ideas with people we've never even met to improve a reputation based entirely on content we supply. This is especially important for businesses and brands who want to increase their influence among consumers.
The interesting thing that struck me in class today was the fact that advertisers are having to pay in order to get their brand out into an actual audience nowadays. This struck me for two reasons.
One is the fact that people are buying and paying for followers and likes. It's one thing to buy likes in order to get attention for your brand when it would otherwise be buried by other content. If you have to buy them because you don't, as the video says, "have enough organic content" of your own to attract real followers, then I think you need to rethink your strategy. Lack of followers in a political campaign? I think that's a warning bell ringing, dude. In my opinion, it borders on false advertising.
The other is that, as far as analytics go, the fact that apps for finding fake Twitter followers have sprung up is both disturbing and intriguing. The fact that legitimate business are being bogged down by fake followers and click farms is equally intriguing, and somewhat alarming. While buying followers for a political campaign is one thing, having to buy likes and followers just to get noticed--and then the majority of those being "inactive" accounts anyway? That's disturbing, and it's going to change the way online advertising works on social media sites if it continues.
Because Disney is great and all, but there are a ton of other movies out there that deserve some love.
Some of my "Top 3" favorite non-Disney movies below the cut. (Arranged in no particular order.)
1. Balto
While I wouldn't exactly call it a "true story" (the real Balto was a purebred Siberian husky, more than one team of sled dogs ran the medicine to Nome, and any geese they ran across proooobably wouldn't have "hwonked" at them in a Russian accent), it's still one of my favorite animated movies. While its sentimentality might mirror the same sentimentality that people felt for the real Balto (read: It's slightly sappy) I'm still a sucker for underdogs (in this case, literally), and heroes that use their brains instead of their brawn. It's been years since I've properly sat down and watched Balto, but I can still easily recall the images of Northern Lights and white wolves and paw prints in the snow.
2. Rise of the Guardians
Gorgeous animation, fantastic characters. My favorite is the Aussie Easter Bunny, Bunnymund. (He is so fantastic oh my gosh he is enough to make me want to read the books... not that I don't want to already. Always a supporter of reading the books. No I don't care that they're children's books. Don't judge me I'm an adult.) I love the take on our tales of "make believe" creatures, though I suppose I should be giving props to William Joyce for creating them.
Other DreamWorks films I recommend are Shrek, How To Train Your Dragon, and The Road to El Dorado.
... actually, let's just throw that last one up there.
3. The Road to El Dorado
This movie is, without a doubt, one of my favorite animated movies of all time. It was probably one of the most terrifying movies for a small child to watch, what with all the ritual sacrifice and giant stone jaguar monsters, but I still managed to nearly ruin the tape (VHS, gasp!) from repeated rewindings. Tulio and Miguel are still two of my favorite characters of all time (and their song is still really catchy) and the animation and artwork have really lasted throughout the years. This movie easily makes it to my "true" Top Three list.
Possibly vague spoilers about the TV series below the cut.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who liked to watch horror movies. One night, she persuaded her father to let her watch The Night of the Living Dead.
Every night from then on until she was eight years old, she saw zombies staring out at her from her closet.
I hate zombie movies. I love horror movies (I was watching The Blob when I was two). Gore doesn't bother me. But there's something about a reanimated corpse lumbering around salivating for human flesh that makes me triple check the locks on the doors and windows before I go to bed.
So when I say that the only time I turn on the TV during the week is to watch The Walking Dead on Sunday nights, don't take that lightly.
For those who don't know, The Walking Dead (hereafter referred to as "TWD") is an AMC horror series set in Georgia in the months and years after a virus swept the nation and created a plague of "Walkers"--zombies. It's based off of a comic of the same name, written by Robert Kirkman. (Which I have not yet read, but would one day love to.)
What I really love about TWD is that it's about the people and not the zombies. The zombies are a constant, but they become part of the environment, just as much as hazard to the characters as breaking a leg would be in the wilderness. They serve to paint the backdrop for the very realistic interplay of psychology and human nature explored in the show. (Whoa, that got deep.) Seriously, I wrote a psychology paper about this show. PTSD. Chronic anxiety. Antisocial personality disorder. It's all there.
I also love that it's realistic. Yes, yes, Romero-style zombies, I know--but unlike a lot of horror movies, this show has people with asthma. Elderly. Pregnant women. And they're not used as zombie-fodder--they, and the people around them, genuinely have to figure out how to survive. The whole show is about survival--in the world, around other people, and with yourself.
The whole reason I turn on AMC every Sunday night isn't because I want to watch a show about zombies. It's because I want to watch a drama about people.
... and just for posterity's sake, my favorite characters are Daryl (no, not a fangirl), Carol (no, not a shipper), Hershel (rip my heart out, why don't you), Michonne (she wins gunfights by bringing knives swords), and Glen (so glad he hasn't died yet!)
Needless to say, asking around and finding out that my 60 year old father had heard more about it than I had was somewhat embarrassing.
So for my "required" post this week, I thought I'd highlight a few interesting things I've come across while researching Google Glass.
First, though, I have to say: These things look really cool. Very techno-chic, especially with a slick pair of glasses. They're even marketing sunglasses to pair with them! They're not even on the market yet, and Google's already accessorizing.
Second, some of the legislation really interests me. Usually the saying goes that legislation is fifteen years behind technology (or so I've heard professors say), but I think the legislation to ban using Glass while driving was pretty up to speed, even if it's difficult to prove when you are or aren't using glass. With all due respect to the product, I have to agree with upholding this particular law. Technology is fantastic--just not while you need to be watching the road, even if it's just to check a tiny screen. (This has been a PSA about distracted driving.)
And then, as if I didn't feel behind enough on the times, I came across the smart contact lens, which is slightly tangential from the topic of Glass, but almost more fascinating to me. Being able to take pictures and perform functions from a headset is awesome, but being able to monitor someone's health through a contact lens has so many possibilities.
As someone who's family has a propensity toward diabetes, the prospect of being able to monitor glucose levels without finger-pricks, on a minute to minute basis, is especially interesting to me. I don't know about integrating Glass functions into a lens--I can only guess at the legislation that would bring about--but the idea of integrating this kind of wearable technology with medicine is fantastic, and I really hope it goes somewhere in the future.
Actually I'd like to make some interesting observations in this post about visual communication in general, because it's a pretty interesting (and broad) concept.
I mean, who doesn't like looking at funny pictures? People are incredibly visual creatures, and being able to use a promotional picture to grab an audience's attention is worth, literally, thousands of words. If a picture is engaging it will generate a lot more talk than an article or news release could, and it's far more easily shared.
It's also more easily promoted, and it opens up a lot of venues for further advertisement. There are numerous photo contests out there that not only encourage viewers to actively participate in their brand's following, but act as a form of advertisement all their own.
Sometimes they'll even turn into memes and go viral--though the mileage on that may vary, as many memes tend to only be funny in context. Nevertheless, they open up the possibility of product endorsement, marking, and the creators of those memes sometimes go on to benefit from the popularity of their memes. My personal favorite is Grumpy Cat.
Other brands that I know for a fact have turned into a memes are Old Spice and Dos Equis' "Most Interesting Man in the World". While not pictures, the tone and theatrical choices made in their videos still catches the audience's attention. They are extremely quotable, and spread beyond the brand's original message until the brand itself becomes synonymous with the meme--which might not always be a good thing, depending on the content, but I think these two brands benefited from the exposure.
There's a joke I like to make when friends ask me what I'm going to college for.
It usually nets me some weird looks and some uneasy smiles (again, gonna be a great teacher, guys.) and I have to gently explain, in the most un-geeky way possible, that I'm kidding.
... well, mostly kidding. But you don't get nicknamed "Legolass" without good reason. (Yes I know it's corny. I didn't come up with it.)
See, back in the day I used to be pretty decent with a bow. No, not one of these. One of these. That, dear readers, is a Mathews Genesis. It's the official competition bow for NASP archery tournaments.
No, it's not a fancy compound with hunting arrow rests and sights. (Sights are for wimps anyway.) But they're used in high school tournaments, so they don't really need to be.
Recently, Atherton High hosted the Regional archery tournament for the Jefferson County area (they came in third and qualified for the State tourney in March, btw. This is only their second time competing in regionals.) Basically, kids in elementary, middle, and high schools hauled their bows and arrows to Atherton last Saturday and shot it out from 8 in the morning until 8 at night.
I don't shoot competitively anymore, but I like to help officiate tournaments, so I was at Atherton all day last Saturday. I once swore to myself, loudly and boldly, that I would never, ever announce for any kind of sporting event.
Guess who ended up with the microphone all day? Yep. And in between I was walking the scoring line helping call points and making kids sign their scorecards.
Twelve hours of that. That's eight flights of five arrows being shot at a target ten and fifteen meters away (one practice and three scoring flights, or "rounds", for each distance.) That's forty arrows per hour, per child. Multiply forty arrows by the number of students that attended (26 or so per flight on my side of the school), times twelve hours and you get...
12,480 arrows being shot. Not including ones we had to replace. If my math is right.
There is a very distinct, throaty "pop" when an aluminum arrow hits a target, and there's nothing quite like the rumbling wave of noise that rolls over a gym when thirty kids are all letting them fly at once. I'm still hearing it in my sleep a week later.
I like to listen to myself gripe, but archery is actually a great sport. I recommend trying it for fun to anyone, not just school-age kids. It helps coordination, improves concentration, and it's a major self-esteem booster. The regulation Genesis bow is the same no matter which age group you shoot with, and it's a really great beginner bow with an easy draw weight. Literally anyone could pick one up and start shooting--and it's a great alternative for wimpy high school kids like me who shy away from "traditional" sports. For comparison's sake, the best male shooter overall for that tournament was a tall, gangly high schooler. The best female overall was a tiny sixth grade girl who was hardly taller than her bow was long, and her score was only a few points below his.
And no. Despite the fact that the kids are using bows and arrows, it's not a dangerous sport at all. It's so carefully executed that playing ping pong is more risky than shooting a bow in NASP.
... or, more specifically, some of the Tweets that went on during it.
Oreo did it in the 2013 Super Bowl. The Tweet they sent out during the blackout was one of the most successful Tweets of the season. It was so popular that the company had everyone speculating about this year's campaign, which turned out to be... nothing.
365 days to plan, and they came up with nothing. I'm not being sarcastic when I say that doing "nothing" was a brilliant move. The hype in the meantime, and the incredulity afterward--it generated enough talk to last into the next Super Bowl! Three year's worth of advertising, all at the cost of 140 characters or less.
But my favorite Tweets for this year came from JC Penney. The garbled mess of letters and hashtags had many speculating that Penny's was Tweeting drunk--and oh, the newsjacking that went on!
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the ethics involved in newsjacking. (On one hand, it was a resourceful move. On the other, it was like someone jumping into the middle of someone else's conversation. Kind of annoying.) but it was funny, at least, to see Snickers and Coors jump at the chance to throw their wit and catchphrases into the mix.
Turns out it was all a marketing strategy--no interns were fired in this scenario. It was... cute. An odd choice in merchandise, in my opinion (mittens instead of, say, coats or boots?) but attention-getting, though I wonder how it's going to affect the brand's reputation down the line if people don't catch the "mittens merchandising" part of the story. It definitely generated talk, though, and I don't think anyone is going to be forgetting their name by the next Super Bowl.
Warning: This is not going to be a rant about where this movie fell short. There are enough of those out there. This is going to be a short ramble about someone enjoying a movie for what it is.
Spoilers beyond the cut.
1. The animation. Was gorgeous. I held my breath whenever Elsa used her ice powers. The concept art was gorgeous. If Disney released an artbook for Frozen, I would buy it in a heartbeat just for the character sheets and the concept art. I mean, look at how beautiful this is!
2. The music. Was fantastic. Idina Menzel absolutely owned "Let It Go". "Vuelie" is beautiful. "Vuelie" gave me chills every time it played. I fully intend to hunt up more yoiking because it is a beautiful style of singing.
3. I really love that they twisted the "classic" Disney trope of "princess falls in love and marries her prince in the same day". I love that it isn't romantic love that saves Elsa and Anna in the end. I love that Kristoff and Anna don't automatically fall in love at the end and get to know each other first.
(I know that other Disney movies have done that, too, hush. Mulan and Lilo and Stitch are still favorites for a reason.)
4. If I had more time, I'd write an entire blog post dedicated to Elsa and anxiety and depression and fear and self-discovery. For now I'll just say All Hail the Queen.
5. Anna isn't your stereotypical naive princess. She's naive, sure, because she's been stuck alone in a castle for most of her life, but she's also athletic. She's determined. She's capable. She uses her royal blood to do what needs be done. She's not afraid to get her hands dirty and she's not afraid to fight wolves with musical instruments.
6. I was pleasantly surprised by Kristoff. From what I'd heard before seeing the movie, I was expecting a grumpy, anti-social "orphan character"--one whose entire personality hinges upon the fact that they lost their parents. I was so, so glad when I was wrong! He didn't fit into the cookie-cutter "blonde guy" mold at all, and I loved his dynamic with Sven. As a pet-owner, it validates my own sanity to know that I'm not the only one who talks to their pets.
Online personas are some of the most interesting side-effect I've seen coming from blogs. They also, in a business sense, possess the ability to connect with customers in ways that plain text ads cannot.
Then there are Internet "personalities". Take Toby Turner, aka Tobuscus; Internet comedian, actor, and Shorty Award winner. His success and popularity came from his YouTube "Let's Plays" of games and his vlogs where he directly addresses the audiences and holds competitions.
There is Night Vale Radio, the delightfully creepy podcast and Twitter presence. (Which I need to research more because oh dear gods I've never found this website before that is fantastic.)
And then there are the business personas, like Social Media London and Qannik and Oreos that do their best to respond to their followers and strike up "personal" relationships with their customers. They spend a great deal of time developing and maintaining their personas.
Myself? I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing as far as cultivating a persona goes. Why am I referring to myself as "the Twit", when I'm neither English nor particularly dense? (Though I am a bit dorky.) I have no idea. Why am I effectively making a fool of myself where thousands of people, potential future employers included, might see it? I spend more time wondering about that than I probably should. (Hello, any and all future employers. I'm actually a very serious, hardworking, and private individual, and I can provide references to back up that claim.)
I doubt I'd ever be as popular are Tobuscus or the Oreo cookie ads--not sure I'd want to be?--but people remember online personas. They base their opinions of the people and companies they represent upon the way they act and the way they treat their fans, and for that reason they are an extremely important component of social media.
