Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Technology

Technology is growing every single day and is constantly changing and bringing more ideas into the equation making technology extremely fast and gives it the ability to do or make anything that we try to figure out how to make. Technology and its growth brings the world to where it’s at and how it operates.  Once a new technology comes out, they are already working on the next better version of whatever they made, that is why technology is always changing and improving, it will also never stop improving as long as we are here on this earth.
The biggest technology that I can think of that is going to change how we use social media and how it is going to change the way that people communicate over the internet. This technology would definitely have to be the Apple watch. There has been so much hype about this product that I am pretty sure that it is going to be the next big thing that everyone wants and will eventually have if they want to keep up with technology and the way that people function and interact. From the Apple watch it is going to make our messages a lot more relevant, getting your point across short and sweet because it is such a small screen that it located on your wrist so that when notifications or messages come through, you don’t have to pull your cellular device out of your pocket but can just simply check your notifications just from looking down at your wrist.
So many cool functions attached through the Apple watch, you can just talk into your watch and it will write a text message for you or even type in a tweet you would like to send out. This watch will not only tell time but will allow you to monitor yourself and control other devices. It allows you to operate your phone using voice control, also to be discretely alerted to incoming calls, it can make credit card payments, get weather forecast, download apps, so pretty much anything you desire to do can be done through a device attached to your wrist. This device will change social media in the future because it will provide a way for everyone to collect and analyze data on both a personal and global level.
Apple has always tried making their products to be extremely user friendly. People now a days are always looking for the easy route where they don’t have to put much effort but receive the response that they want. The Apple watch is just another device that distracts us from face to face interaction with others but allows us to easily interact, connect and communicate with people close or far away. This watch will be really convenient and allow us to communicate in more ways than ever.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Apps

Ever since the smartphones started coming out back in 1992 is where apps all began. Smartphones have come a long way since then in just a short period of time to becoming very popular and affordable is when apps went through the roof! One of my favorite sayings is “there’s an App for that”. Pretty much any game, platform, music, or GPS has some kind of app on the smartphone which can come to good use. From having a cellular device on our person 24/7 has brought our generation to spend more time online than any other media. Which most of that mobile time is spent on apps, which has brought apps to become the most dominant form of digital interaction. The reason apps are so popular and are used by pretty much everyone now a days is because consumers want the simplicity and focus that apps provide, rather than the variety found in websites.
Mobile apps have changed the way we live forever, and will continue to do so. From changing our relationships and how we communicate with one another. People are so attached to their phones and are starting to become socially awkward and are missing what is happening around them by only focusing on a false reality that comes from all of the social media apps that are out there. “Our app-driven life: Smart-phone apps are becoming the north star for millions of Americans who use them to navigate through life – shopping, playing, reading, dating, learning, and more with their fingertips.” Although these apps and technology are extremely incredible by making things so much easier for us, but at the same time it is making us lazy by providing no reason to leave the house because we can do pretty much any daily activity through our smartphones. Some different apps that I use on a daily basis are Instagram, Pandora, Facebook, Gmail, Venmo, Snapchat, and Google Maps just to name a few. This just shows how much apps are used in our daily lives.


Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Viral Videos

I have always wondered how a video can go viral, as well as wondering how money and ads come into play when a video does go viral. A viral video is the process of making a humorous, catchy film that gets over one million views in just a couple of days. It’s a process of internet sharing through different social media platforms, emails, and the big one would definitely be Youtube. Viral videos become popular through quick films that catch the audience’s attention, whether it be funny or an inspirational video that makes someone want to share that or show it to a family member or a friend to let them see what they saw.
There are a ton of different aspects in getting a video to go viral. Most videos that go viral fall into three different categories which are humorous, promotional, and unintentional. I have noticed that the funniest videos are ones that are not planned out but are people that don’t know that they are being filmed and just acting as themselves. “Having a piece of content go viral is like winning the Internet’s version of the lottery.” Videos going viral is not an easy task, here are a few tips in helping your success of getting your videos to go viral:
Be short and sweet – Our generation’s attention span is getting shorter and shorter by the minute. The video must be catchy from the get go in order to get the audience to continue to watch the film. Make the film positive and upbeat, no one is trying to show their friends something that is negative.




Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Social Media Case Reflection 2 - Arab Spring

          Before getting into my research on Arab Spring, I wasn’t too familiar on what I was going to find. As I looked it up I came to know that the Arab spring was an event that happened back in 2010 over in the Arab world and continues to go on till this day in different parts of the country such as in the Middle East and also a continuation in North Africa. Arab spring was a revolutionary wave of different demonstrations and protests, such as riots and civil wars. Some of these protests had no violence involved with them but for the most part it was a mess of violence throughout this time. The reason that these protestors were so mad was because of the unfairness of the security, the ridiculous amount of unemployment, and the rising prices on everything. Although these are hard things to deal with in life, I firmly believe that it could have been handled in a different manner, riots and fighting never is the answer, this matter should be handled by the government through good communication and compromising on an agreement.
            These protestors used social media to their advantage and used it most effectively to communicate to the people as well as organizing them into groups and areas and also by raising awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and internet censorship. Social media and digital technologies allowed citizens in these areas that were affected by the Arab Uprisings for collective activism to avoid the state operated media channels. The amount of social media that was used indicates the kind of people that were powering the Arab Spring. It was young people who fueled these riots by using the new generation’s abilities of social networking to release this information to not only the Arab nations but to nations all over the world.
            I think that some of the pros of the Arab Spring is that there is no more full control by one party or person. Instead of blindly following other leaders or countries we can have our freedom and not be forced to do things that seem un-justice. On the other hand it is never a good idea to start civil wars, riots or to have disagreements or any kind of violence between the government and other countries, but having chaos for a little while is sometimes necessary in order to make things right. These things definitely are going to take some time to overcome but I think it’s something that needs to happen or no one is ever going to change and the horrible leaders will continue in their ways corrupting the world. At this point is the only time I think war is appropriate because it’s the only way to put a stop to it.
            “Chronic instability in countries undergoing political transitions have put additional strain on struggling local economies, and deep divisions have emerged between the Islamists and secular Arabs.” These Arab countries are amongst the poorest countries and have a rapid population growth, slow economy and weak governments. People just expected that things would change just in the blink of an eye if the authoritarian regimes were replaced with stable democratic systems across the region. They thought that the removal of corrupt rulers would instantly improve their living standards. Things just don’t work out like that, first of all it takes time to get those leaders out of their positions and to also change the mindset of the people of the community that were following these leaders. Then a new leader that has good values, and is highly respected and can show people that they can trust in him must come into position and completely turn things around. People need to realize that these things take time and don’t happen without much thought and effort and unity of everyone to be put into this cause.
For almost two generations, waves of democracy had swept over other regions, from southern and eastern Europe to Latin America, from East Asia to Africa. But not the Middle East. Tyrants shut down the political world and became owners of their countries. There was terrible rulers and a terrorist fringe. “Arabs had started to feel they were cursed, doomed to despotism. The region's exceptionalism was becoming not just a human disaster but a moral embarrassment.” In all the Arab spring was something that had to happen in order to make changes in those countries and I understand that it takes time but it should have been resolved already and it needs to be stopped.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

     I wasn’t too sure what SEO meant as I began my research about it, so that we all can be on the same page and understand what it means I am going to give you the definition of what it stand for. SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” SEO is the process of getting traffic from the free, organic, editorial or natural search results onto the search engines. It is also an online marketing for any company that is trying to get recognition to their websites and making their content higher on the search engines. People are more likely to pick the first thing that pops up when they type a certain subject in, so companies try to focus on getting connections with their users, making their website something that is a benefit to their company because people that are interested in their product are noticing and most likely clicking on their website before the click on the competitors website. How SEO works is they pull the title of the website, links that are attached to certain words, title page descriptions and also the reputation that a company has. Search engine optimization is about putting your sites best foot forward so that it is clear and visible in the search engines, but they need to realize that their ultimate consumers are their users, not the search engines.
       “Both Google and Bing have acknowledged that social signals, including link shares and brand mentions on some social network status updates, are currently playing a role in natural SERPs rankings, which means that maintaining a presence on these sites is vitally important for your startup’s SEO.” Make sure to put links to your site all over social media to connect with the social networking to receive more recognition. 
         Some important things to remember when making a website, and having it work best to your advantage by getting it the recognition that you are looking for is first off to create unique, accurate page titles and improve the structure of your URLs making it easier to navigate your webpage. If you are starting up a company and trying to think of how to best begin you website, your marketing goal should be to identify a list of potential keywords to target within the natural search results. These keywords should include phrases that you think your potential customers are going to type into the search engines, make them unique but very applicable to what your site is all about. Think simple and ask others what keywords they would use if they were trying to find information that has to do with your product or site. Search Engine optimization is very beneficial to all those who are looking for recognition and having the highest percent of people clicking on their site because it is easily accessible and simply explains the info of your meta tag description.


Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Management platforms and Tools

Before I began to research about this topic of management platforms and tools I truly didn’t have a clue what I was going to find about this topic and wasn’t sure what it was all about. I quickly realized that I was pretty familiar with the way that platforms are managed such as the way that our cellular companies can track us and know exactly where we are at all times. The way that they can do this and always know where we are is because we always have our phones on us no matter what. From putting the location services on, each app that we use can track our location and help to narrow down our search to places that are close to us. I think that it is extremely helpful to always turn on the location service to get the best most helpful full effect of each app that we are using.
Another tool that is used and is extremely effective is called aggregators. The definition of an aggregator is a website or program that collects related items of content and displays them or provides links to them. For example if you are on amazon looking for books or football cleats or any kind of item, the next time you are on any kind of website, links will pop up on the side that are closely related to previous searches that you have done. This is a great way to bring back these items to your attention and distract you from what you were doing at the moment and display item that are to your own interest. “There are two kinds of content aggregators, those who simply gather material from various sources for their Websites, second is those who gather and distribute content to suit their customer’s needs.” Aggregators are the perfect way for target marketing. Instead of putting links of Barbie dolls and girls lingerie on a page where a male college student athlete is on, there will be links of sports material and school accessories which one is more likely to click on the link and buy the product because it will be something that they are actually looking for and are in need of. Sometimes it is a bad thing having links pop up on any website that you go on for example around Christmas time my mother would look things up to buy for her kids and then we would use the computer and see all of the things that she has been looking up so it wasn’t really a surprise like she wanted it to be. “At the other end of the aggregator spectrum, we have The Huffington Post, one of the smartest digital news machine ever and, at the same time, the mother of all news internet impostures.”

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Organizational Uses

I remember asking my mom a few years back what would we do without technology? You hear this question all the time but the older generation laughs at that question because they lived through college and most of their lives without most things that we have now a days. Technology is incredible and has completely changed how the world functions. We can communicate through multiple different organized programs and platforms. This makes it so much easier for us to be able to communicate in a much easier manner with family members or friends from across the world. This process of using the technology that we have now has made communication quicker, easier and can even provide visual face to face contact with people thousands miles away.
                “Technology innovations change the way customers think and behave. From the time our smartphones wake us in the morning to the last tweet of the night, our brains are wired. Along with this change comes great competitive advantages.” It’s so crazy to think about how much we rely on our smartphones. Technology has gone through the roof in the past five years and you can pretty much do any day to day thing that you need on a device that can fit into your hand. You can work from it, do school work, find restaurants, directions, communicate with anyone. It’s pretty incredible to see how technology will always be on an uphill grind bringing more and more ideas to increase the potential and capacity of the technological uses.
It amazes me how much things have changed throughout the last century. “People used to be valued for knowing a trade. Then came the industrial revolution and those skills became devalued.  Machines took over physical labor and most people either did simple, repetitive tasks or managed those who did.” For how amazing technology is, there definitely is some cons such as diminishing the connection that comes from communicating with people face to face and having machines replace physical labor.




Thursday, March 5, 2015

Class Cloud Assignment

Being a part of the class cloud assignment was extremely interesting and was fun to do and participate in. Everyone that has been through this treacherous journey of having to attend school ever since we were capable of remembering things. The typical classroom setting throughout my adolescent years and rolling into high school and college has always been the same. The professor or teacher is the only person in the classroom that is allowed to use their technology, as you increase in years of school and with time it slowly has come apparent to me that students are using their technological devices to help them receive information on the subject of class that they are in.
                As I attended class on Tuesday it was a completely different atmosphere from your typical day in a classroom. I walked in and every student was on their laptop, I-pad or even their cell phone. I thought that this was bizarre at first and it quickly led me to believe that there was an assignment due before class that everyone including myself forgot to do. I quickly realized that the students weren’t using their devices to follow the class lecture or look up assignments on canvas but they were tweeting each other back and forth.
                All students in my social media class on Tuesday were tweeting out and posting comments asking questions about the importance of social media and how all the different social media platforms are beneficial to us and different companies. It was cool to see that even our professor joined in and starting tweeting out seeing if we could get any responses to our posts. There was no noise coming out of anyone’s mouth in the classroom but every single student and teacher was participating in communicating through social media.
A lot of the communication was non-verbal communication but it was sweet to see that by simply putting the hashtag of #socmeddiscuss in our tweets it was easily seen by others and connected all other posts including that hashtag which is going to help a lot of other people and maybe even larger companies to see these posts because the hashtag brings it all together. Most of the questions asked were answered but a few were left unanswered.
What is the most important thing to do in social media to increase followers and fans? #socmeddiscuss #followers. https://twitter.com/CadeTerris/status/572861046370668544  This was one of my twitter posts and some of the responses that I got back was to post adventurous things that you do in your day to day life, whether that is vacations that you go on, or even cool hikes and pictures of being in nature, snowboarding in the mountains or even funny things that happen around the house. People love seeing bright beautiful things that are uplifting, they also love uplifting quotes and sayings. When people see continuous uplifting posts they will continue to follow you and continue to like your pictures and make comments which leads others to see your posts and have the urge to follow you as well because they like what they see from your social media life.
Social media has a huge impact on us and is extremely important that we make multiple different platforms. https://twitter.com/CadeTerris/status/572877266545328128  From this post I got a lot of likes and retweets because it is an active post and leads people to think and act on what has been said.  https://twitter.com/CadeTerris/status/572895118694346752 My last tweet was saying that social media has improved immensely over the past 5 years and brings better and easier ways of communicating. Just a good fact that shows people how important it is to use all of our tools to communicate in better ways with more people.


Thursday, February 26, 2015

Online Reputation

Daniel J Blakely
                As I began to research about Daniel J. Blakely who is in my social media communications class I realized how hard to was to find all of his different platforms that he uses through social media because his usernames for certain platforms are different for others. For example his face book name is DJ Blakely instead of Daniel Blakely.
https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/t31.0-8/s960x960/10864007_10203843268457891_4297751907394509995_o.jpg                The first big trend that I noticed just from looking through all of the different posts and pictures that he has posted throughout all the different platforms that he uses is that he loves to travel to exotic places, usually somewhere that has a beach or places where he can go out in nature in the mountains and do adventurous things such as going rock climbing or even going to the beach to be involved with the sea animals and get pictures with them. Also through the pictures I noticed that he is motivated from inspiring short quotes, for example: “hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”  From posting inspiring quotes and sayings leads more people to like your posts and more people will start to follow you throughout your platforms because they are uplifted and enjoy when they read or see any of the comments or posts that are being displayed on your platforms. People will continue to follow you if you will post uplifting, and adventurous things instead of posting about challenges that you are facing in your personal life. It was good to see that Daniel stays away from leaking his personal life into social media. I firmly believe that social media isn’t somewhere we should freely be posted about personal problems going on in our lives. As well as an enjoyment to different television shows and also Disney movies. He also had quite a few pictures of space in his collection of sports which tells me that he is interested in the earth’s atmosphere and is astonished by how it was created alongside with the nature of this earth.
Another trend that stood out to me is that he enjoys giving credit and shout outs to different people throughout his profiles. For example he posted a picture and comment for one of his good friends that just barely made a book for children. He does a good job by advertising for his friend’s talent in making children books. He highly recommended this book and even attached a link to where anyone could buy this book which was a link to Amazon. Advertising is huge now a days and Daniel is doing incredibly well with his resources in social media by posting and making comments to help others to be recognized through his social media platforms and it’s a great way to show friends, family, and all acquaintances that you care about what they are doing and wish the best for their success and also letting them know that you are willing and want to be a part of their lives and helping them to succeed.
Some other trends that I found is that he has lived in Utah his whole life and has stayed here for college as he is attending Utah State University, but loves to travel so I perceive that he will move from Utah after his college career so that he can explore the world more. I couldn’t find any information on where he has or is currently working and no high school that he went to, so Daniel Blakely likes to keep himself private from the social media world.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Legal, Policies and Ethics in Social Media

Social Media and Ethics have always had a ton of issues from the beginning but even more so now, we all have to be extremely careful and pay attention and considerably think through it before you decide to post something on any platform of social media. By posting something on the internet over social media immediately insures that you plan on sharing this photo or information with anyone and no longer care if it is private or not. Once we share things on the internet, anyone can access it and do whatever they want with it. I think Its extremely important to keep your personal life to yourself and only post things on social media that is uplifting to those who are going to view it. Also we won’t have to worry about what happens with our posts because we won’t be spreading confidential info on the internet.
Social media can affect the legal profession in a couple different ways by using social media to communicate with others, both personally and professionally. Pretty much everyone is using it as well which makes social media an incredible source of evidence in tons of cases. This article outlines selected ethical and malpractice issues that may arise from how lawyers utilize social media in both the business of law and in representation of clients. “The potential content of social media communications is limitless, and could conceivably affect any type of case. A recent study by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers indicated that 1 in 5 divorces are cause by Facebook.” When I came across this in that article I thought it was very interesting at first but come to realize that it is true because I have seen a couple of examples with acquaintances that I know of Facebook ruining relationships from people sharing information that they shouldn’t have and it turning for the worse.  
“If you think that a social media policy isn’t something which is needed by your clients or firm, you may wish to think again.” This just shows the importance that social media has in our lives. Especially in the business world, a lot of companies are using hundreds of different social media platforms for advertising and for meetings. Firms are using social media to find employees through their blogs as well as people seeing different firms to interest them in working for them.


Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Collaborative and Distance Communication Platforms ad Tools

Collaborative and distant platforms are used to help people come together that live far away and can’t see each other to be able to talk as if they were face to face with them. I never really used any of these platforms and they were of no importance to me until I served a mission for my religion which I was unable to see my family and close ones for a 2 year period of time. Luckily we have the technology and have made platforms such as Skype, or even face time where I could make a phone call over the computer and through the camera and technology I was able to see my family. “You should never underestimate the importance of real-time voice communication for establishing strong ties.” This helped me to have that physical communication with them instead of just reading emails from them or even just talking on the phone. These platforms make a huge difference for people fighting for our country that they are able to see people they love as if they were face to face. The only down fall to skype is that you have to know or expect a phone call from someone whereas with face time someone can call directly to your phone at any time and it will let you know.
            “Skype is a hybrid instant messaging and voice chat application that allows users to connect with one another from any global location with Internet access.”(Bowerman) There are a lot of advantages to using skype for example it is free to use, it allows you to make video and voice calls to both personal and business contacts. Skype, Google Plus Hangouts, and Face Time are the main distance communication platforms to use, they are all free and should be taken advantage of and used more with people we don’t see that often so that we can maintain those strong relationships and develop better ones by communicating basically face to face. “FaceTime is the most restrictive of the three options, only allowing for connections between Apple devices. However, it can also only support one-on-one video services.” There are advantages and disadvantages to them all but overall I am thankful for the technology that we have now a days to be able to communicate in this way.



Monday, February 2, 2015

Location-based Platforms

When this topic was assigned and brought up in class I didn’t really know what a location based platform is so I am sure that there are some of you out there that had the same question of what it is. So I quickly pulled up the browser and searched for the definition. “A LBSN does not only mean adding a location to an existing social network so that people in the social structure can share location-embedded information, but also consists of the new social structure made up of individuals connected by the interdependency derived from their locations in the physical world as well as their location-tagged media content, such as photos, video, and texts. Here, the physical location consists of the instant location of an individual at a given timestamp and the location history that an individual has accumulated in a certain period. Further, the interdependency includes not only that two persons co-occur in the same physical location or share similar location histories but also the knowledge, e.g., common interests, behavior, and activities, inferred from an individual’s location (history) and location-tagged data.”
Social Media has changed how we communicate now a days. When the social networks like Myspace, Twitter, and Facebook came about people gradually learned how to use the network in their life to make that part of communication a lot easier and not as much effort to be put into the task of communicating with other people whether it be making a phone call to your mom or a distant relative, or even writing a letter to someone across the country. We can now get onto our cellular devices or computers and quickly type an instant message to someone through these different based platforms. It kind of has destroyed how important it is to have face to face communication because that kind of interaction is key in developing long lasting true connection with another person. Also letters express how much you really do care about that person because you have taken that time to sit down and write a letter and send it off.  
A location based service is a software application for a mobile device that requires knowledge about where the mobile device is located. Foursquare has had a long running perception being a fun mobile app to use when checking in to a physical location. It gives you the ability to unlock badges as check ins occur and the potential to become Mayor of a venue. “The development and ubiquity of location-aware mobile devices gave social media possibility to integrate location with content created users. There are different models that the networks are based on. What most of the networks have in common is ‘checking-in’ – the act of sharing one’s location (verified by positioning system) with social network, public, or individuals and have access to location broadcasted by their friends. Many LBSNs use elements of gamification to engage audiences and create incentives for users. Other ways to attract users are often coupons or discounts used in pull or push way.”

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Social Media Case Reflection 1

Jarrid Tansey is an employee at Palace Pizza and was delivering a pizza to a car dealership. The expense came out to be 42 dollars and the gentlemen paying for the pizza handed Jarrid 50 dollars. Jarrid specifically asked if they wanted to give him all 50 and says that it was confirmed so he thought that the extra 7 dollars was just a tip. Later Jarrid was forced to return back to F&R auto sales, when he arrived he was verbally abused and humiliated by all of the employees that were around at the time. They even called into Palace Pizza and reported what he had done trying to get him fired from his job. They were using very crude language. The manager at the dealership finally issued a statement apologizing for what happened, the dealer received negative comments and their website was disabled as a result, so the manager was just trying to make things right so that there wouldn’t be a bad name for the F&R auto sales company. From what the video showed, even while the dealership employees were treating the pizza delivery man very poorly with a lot of disrespect, Jarrid handled it well and was very respectful to them. That is something that really stood out to me and something that I want to start applying in my personal life, because it is very hard to treat someone with respect and be nice to them when they aren’t doing the same. That is the difference though between a likeable person with self-control rather than acting in a negative way. The more we treat others the way we want to be treated no matter the circumstances, the more likely we can avoid negative confrontation.
The internet then banded together and raised 22,000 for this pizza driver that was stood up, humiliated and in the end was not given a tip at all. “Amanda Marie Rogers was on the internet and came across this video and was so upset about what had happened and felt extremely bad for Jarrid so she decided to set up a campaign to raise some funds for Jarrid. She raised $31,693 in just two days.” The whole reason why Amanda did this for Jarrid was to reward him for having to deal with these horrible people.
I feel that it was a good thing that this video went viral and that it has been talked about throughout the media because this happens too often. Customers are extremely rude to people that deliver different items to them and that needs to stop because they are just doing their job and don’t deserve that kind of treatment. I also thought that it was cool that people were willing to donate money even though they don’t even know Jarrid.
Even though the employees at F&R auto sales were really mean to this young man, I don’t agree with the fact that people are blowing up their website with negative/offensive comments. That is making this company look really bad and could easily push away customers from working with them. The company shouldn’t be punished for the actions of their employees, but then again business’s should really consider doing background checks and making sure that their employees understand that the company they are working for is imprinted on their back and that their actions don’t only have an effect on themselves but as well with the company. Business’s need to teach their employees the importance of treating everyone with respect, (not only customers), but everyone because it helps give a good name to the business and helps to sell your product when you treat people right.
Just from this video, it has shown me how social media can explode and bring different subjects to the attention of others. Social media is a great way to let things go viral but it is very interesting to see why some things get a lot of attention while others don’t.  I think that it is important to engage yourself in social media to see what really is going on in the world and to also participate and truly give your opinion on whatever is happening on the internet.


Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Using Platforms
            There are so many different platforms out there that give a variety of different ways to communicate with others. I feel like platforms have exploded lately, many new ones have been made just recently to help bring all kinds of people and their interests into social media.
These platforms are great for businesses and for marketing. “To some entrepreneurs, social media marketing is the “next big thing,” a temporary yet powerful fad that must be taken advantage of while it’s still in the spotlight. To others, it’s a buzzword with no practical advantages and a steep, complicated learning curve” (Demers). I definitely agree with Jayson Demers that social media marketing really is the next big thing and we must all use these platforms to our advantage to get our ideas out there. I understand that platforms can be really confusing at first from not knowing how they work but with any of these platforms if you will just take some time and play around with it, you are going to understand how it works and see how it can benefit you.
“Most people think of social media as distribution and use the same messaging on every platform. That's not fully exploiting the tools” (Vaynertruk). Every platform should be treated differently, on a platform such as twitter you should be using short phrases to catch the audience attention, whereas Instagram you are going to post cool pictures. The more platforms/accounts that you have and use, the more your material will be seen by different types of people.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Blogging


This is my first blog that I have ever made, so I was a little confused on the purpose of blogging and why people do it. As I started my research on blogging I found four reasons why blogging is important and why I should get into it and start my own. First off it drives traffic to your website, increases your SE0/SERP, it also positions your brand as an industry leader, and develops better customer relationships.
            I learned the importance of making my blog the foundation for all of my social media platforms. By posting different videos, articles and making comments on subjects that interest you, you will attract people or even companies to that have the same interests/ideas as you do.
“A blog is a website with frequently updated content about a specific keyword- or topic-oriented topic.” (blogspot).
             Going into business/communications I have learned that Blogging is an incredible way to benefit yourself in the business field. Through my research I found that “Blogging provides an endless window of opportunity for your business. When you write a blog, and choose the blog’s purpose, you can enlighten your readers to who you are, what your business is about and even talk about the services you provide. Think of your website as a cool breeze moving through the world — every time you write a blog on your website, you are allowing a house or business to open a “window”, allowing your information to be passed into their world around them. Your blog will allow you to reach your target audience, people who need your services or product and allow your world to reach theirs.” (Jackson, Beth)

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/why-business-blogging-works

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Social media is changing how we communicate


How has social media changed communication?

As time goes on social media is becoming more and more apart of all of our lives. In order to communicate most effectively we must use our resources to accomplish that. The era of making a phone call, sending a fax, or writing a letter are out of the picture now. Those are all lost arts of communication, we can now sit in the same room as someone and shoot them a text instead of communicating with them in a normal matter face to face.

There are so many things that have changed in communication through technology and our ability to access so many different kinds of social media. From social media, there is a lot less face to face communication which has made conversations not as exciting because people don’t know how to communicate anymore and feel like they are interacting with people from what they see on social media. Life is all about connecting with people and developing relationships with them and relationships are becoming a lot less meaningful because people are shying away from interacting in person and developing those social skills because it is much easier to carry on a conversation through social media. Other examples are that there are less articulation of thoughts, it is easier to reach people all over the world and it enables the ability to spread messages to more people more quickly.

“Social media has become an integral part of our everyday lives. We find and share our new favorite clothing and food brands on blogs; we meet people with similar interests on Facebook; we get our news in one sentence on Twitter; we share a pictures of that awesome eggs benedict we had for brunch on Instagram and we can even find our future husband or wife on dating sites. We have an amazing ability to be connected, stay in-the-know and share our own interests, ideas and opinions on just about everything.” (PR, Buzz)

http://www.lpollockpr.com/2014/05/17/social-media-changed-way-communicate/