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.

http://middleeast.about.com/od/humanrightsdemocracy/a/Definition-Of-The-Arab-Spring.htm

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137053/fouad-ajami/the-arab-spring-at-one

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.

http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo

http://www.homestead.com/blog/05/2013/7-basic-seo-techniques-all-webmasters-must-know#.VRrnr_nF_hs

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/10-seo-techniques-all-startups-should-be-using/45827/

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.”

http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/definition/content-aggregator

http://www.mondaynote.com/archive/archives.php?t=aggregators-the-good-ones-vs-the-looters

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.

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-BladeSystem-News-Events/How-can-organizations-use-technology-to-adapt-to-changing/ba-p/2383387#.VQh-mPnF_hs

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2013/06/08/how-technology-is-changing-the-way-organizations-learn/

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.