Vitalii Kryshchuk

You can come here at any time and find a calm and cozy atmosphere

[vkryshchuk]

Current state of social media ethics 

by Vitalii Kryshchuk

The current state of social media ethics: what trends are happening in the industry? What are two current cases related to social media ethics?

I will use an organization that I analyzed earlier as an example. I will not use its name here for the same ethical reasons.

The two main ethical issues I noticed in the social media of this non-profit organization are:

Abandonment. From my analysis of all the social media they present on their website, it is clear that this was created "just to be there." After all, everyone has one. I understand that each social network has its own audience and businesses try to cover everything, but in my opinion, it is better to do business in such a way that users register in your perhaps only social network than to try to cover everything and do nothing.

Monotony. Most likely, this problem was a consequence of the first one. The organization's social networks are still alive, but they are "barely breathing" because of the monotonous and identical posts all over the place. You won't wonder "oh, what's on their Instagram?" because it's the same as LinkedIn, even though the audiences and their interests are completely different.

Brands/professionals with strong social media ethical codes: what brands are utilizing proper social media ethical practices? Are there any professionals that you feel practice strong ethical behavior on social media? Support your choice with evidence. What are some takeaways you can bring forth in your own practices?

I follow Apple on Instagram. I realize that it may be trite to analyze the ethics of one of the most expensive brands, where some of the world's best marketers are working. But on the other hand, this is the best example from which to learn. I don't see any ethical problems with them: their posts are always up-to-date, and most of their recent posts are just photos taken with an iPhone with captions from the owners of the photos. Apple didn't take credit for the photo, but also provided additional advertising to every user who took a quality photo by simply linking to the photographer. This is minimalism, which does not require a lot of words and thus does not raise any ethical issues.

Key concepts and issues: what main concepts do you are necessary to adhere to for your own personal conduct online?

The biggest thing I would personally worry about when running my business account on social media is consistency and creativity. There are many more things to highlight, but consistency is always reminding yourself in the news feed, it's never stopping, it's like a sport - the more consistency, the better the quality. People are impressed when the social networks of people or brands they followed 5-10 years ago are still relevant. They are still relevant, still interesting.

And along with consistency should come creativity that will surprise, delight, and create demand out of curiosity "what will happen next?" and "what else can be here?". For me, the perfect example is the designer's Instagram account https://instagram.com/pablo.rochat

What to do and what not to do: what main concepts do you feel strongly against and want to make sure you avoid on social media?

I strongly oppose the concept of hype in the news. I really dislike political hype and clickbait news. More than once I've seen YouTube videos that have grandiose titles, but in fact are just a piece of news that doesn't solve anything and doesn't affect anything. Unfortunately, I often see this on YouTube news channels from my country, Ukraine. There is a war going on there, and unfortunately, some news channels like to give loud headlines, but in fact just say some ordinary news, but with a lot of views. It's the same with social media channels.

I also don't like it when social media of popular people are used to tune people into a particular manipulated opinion. For example, I have a lot of respect for Elon Musk for his contribution to the development of engineering and all innovations, I dream of seeing him in person, but he often uses it for many purposes: whether it's pumping the cryptocurrency Dodgecoin or posting an interview with Putin with an appeal to everyone to watch (this can also be included in my first point).

Bullet point 5-10 core concepts that you will follow as a practicing social media professional. Include citations that you used for sources/supports for this.

These are the concepts I would use when running social media:

Consistency in posts, in style, in thoughts (If you are not present on the Internet, you do not exist. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft)

Creativity when creating (brainstorming, testing, analyzing ideas) ("Uniqueness in content is the key to recognition in social media. Be someone who does something different." Ekaterina Walter, co-author of The Power of Visual Storytelling)

Creating your community: regular people who will be waiting for a new post ("In a world where content is king, target audience engagement is the crowning glory of social media success." - Mari Smith, author of The New Relationship Marketing)

Be yourself: don't just follow the trends in different directions, but keep your identity in mind. (Social media is not about sales. It's about telling your brand's story. Bernard Kelvin Clive, author of "Your Dreams Will Not Die")

Clarity in strategy: build a strategy, and stick to it by analyzing the downsides and implementing experience. ("In a world where everyone has a voice, strategy determines how that voice sounds." - Brian Solis, author of Engage)

Quality in everything: design, images, text ("Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room." - Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon)

Live account: give feedback by responding to comments and letting followers "touch" the brand. ("Communicate with people as if they were friends. Build relationships, not networks." - David Alston, co-founder of Radian6)

[vkryshchuk]

Why should a serious organization be "on the Internet"?

by Vitalii Kryshchuk

In today's world, developing high-quality communication with clients without setting up social networks is impossible. And it is even more important for non-profit organizations, where communication with people willing to fund it is vital. It is very important to show people outside the organization so-called "reports" in photos, videos, and slides using social media so that they understand the importance of the organization and its need for development and funding.

Given my little experience in the United States, I have only come across a few non-profit organizations. But most of all I had contact with Dorcas International. They help refugees from many countries to start a new life in the United States. So, given that they not only receive funding from donors but also work directly with people, their social networks must be well developed to reach new people who have arrived in the country and have not yet adapted to life here. Moreover, this does not require paying a large amount of money, as social networks are free.

I will start analyzing social networks in the order in which they are covered on the Dorcas website. The first is Facebook. Here they have 6.2k followers. It is also immediately apparent that they are actively maintaining the page, because at the time of writing this blog (on Saturday), the last news was on Friday, and in general, the frequency of posts is 1 in 1-2 days. This is very good because subscribers mustn’t forget about the organization and always see that it is "alive". But for such many subscribers, the latest posts get only 14-15 likes each. This means that few people respond to the information provided by Dorcas. Or the information is not very interesting for readers. And this is not surprising, because all their posts are just photos of the work they have done. I didn't even find a link for donations or quick information for clients right away.

I would recommend working a little more on strategizing and planning your social media activity. There is a good article on Hootsuite about "What should I post on social media for nonprofits". I'm not going to rewrite everything, but I would add some posts that should give feedback to the followers. It can be a poll or a question about some statistics, and in the end, you can write a response with statistics that are impressive or have unusual numbers. I know that from time-to-time Dorcas conducts surveys about the life of refugees in the United States and their adaptation, but I don't see anything like that on their social media. If they want to collect some statistics, social media is the first and easiest way to do it. They should also use video in their posts more often because video generates 1200% more shares than a static image. Just imagine the reach of the video. It is also important to monitor their conversion reach, (advanced metric), their percentage of visits, (behavioral metric), and their action button (channel metric). Because I don't see any response on their posts. Most likely, their strategy for maintaining a Facebook page is to publish reports on their work and events, which is not enough for this level of organization and this number of followers.

As for Instagram, it has 2041 followers. And 1232 posts. A quick look at the page shows that they don't separate each social network, but only publish the same thing without considering the audience or the capabilities of the social network. I agree that social networks are currently losing their identity and it is possible to prepare information of the same size and style for all social networks at once, but then what is the need to keep them all? I think that you could make some unique information for each social network and thus keep the audience interested in subscribing to several different social networks.

It's the same story with X (Twitter) and LinkedIn. It's good that they run these pages, but there's no point in describing them here because they are identical.

In general, each social network still has its specific functionality and features that can be used to warm up the audience. And if you want more, you can even follow the trends of TikTok and Instagram Reels and shoot unusual content for this kind of organization, as Lotus Cars on TikTok does. They use trends to become popular and the kind of videos people expect. When content became more desirable than a product.

So, there are many strategies and options for developing a page on a social network. It's important to see the importance of developing your brand and take your social media development seriously. This will give an appropriate response and result.

[vkryshchuk]

Social Media and my life

Hello everyone, my name is Vitalii Kryshchuk, and this is my first blog in the course of studying Social Media for Strategic Communications.

To understand for myself whether I am a social media person, I need to first understand what it is.

The textbook I am studying defines social media as follows: 

"It can provide a personalized, online networked hub of information, dialogue, and relationship management. These new communication technology tools allow individual users and organizations to engage with, reach, persuade, and target key audiences more effectively across multiple platforms. Industry professionals, scholars, and social media users have contributed a number of different definitions and conceptualizations of the concept of social media. Some emphasize the role of social media as a toolkit that allows users to create and share content. Others focus on how social media extend Web 2.0 technologies to bring communities together."

Although this definition is quite long, I could hardly have written it better. I agree with the way the book presents it. In my opinion, social media is a place where you can share your life, find like-minded people, learn something new, or find clients. This combines Google, Facebook, and even various forums and blogs. Nowadays, social media is both a huge problem where teenagers waste their time and absorb unnecessary information, and a very useful tool for business, for learning, promoting different ideas, and finding like-minded people. Everyone is uniting on social media. 

I have accounts on a lot of social networks: Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, Telegram, Viber, Skype, Twitch, Discord, Reddit, etc. But I don't consider myself an active social media user. Earlier, when I worked as a graphic designer, I used to draw a lot of designs for social media pages for my clients. I even ran a channel on Telegram about graphic design. And even earlier, about 10 years ago, I was active on Instagram.

But now I'm older, different, and have much less time for it. If it's not difficult for me to design a beautiful post, come up with a text or find an idea. But I see less and less purpose for it. I can't be an Instagram or TikTok star, and I don't have a business to promote on social media. This is probably my biggest problem in this regard. But I also don't fully understand how to properly send information to the target audience. How often and what exactly should be published.

To solve this, I chose this class. I want to learn how to set up targeting, choose a target audience, and choose the right strategy for business development. I would not only like to be able to write text and make graphics for a social media page, but also to be able to promote it properly and make it popular. After all, if I want to sell something and I need to find a good targeting specialist, I will at least be able to understand what he does and know how to analyze the results of his work. Or at the very least, I will be able to help my wife, who is a photographer, promote her personal brand on social media.

So, there are a lot of problems that can be solved with the right approach to using social media. And I hope that at the end of this class I will change my approach to managing my page. At the very least, I have already written my first blog.