jacob-wentworth

[jacob-wentworth]

Implementing Recommendations

When this project first started, I was in contact with the business I was going to do it over. Being in contact with them throughout the entire project helped me and the business so that I was able to teach them what I was learning about using social media effectively as I was learning it. The owner of the business was interested in what I had to say and started to do some of the things that I was advising him to do on his social media platforms. Now what he started to do were not very big changes, just post once to twice a day on Facebook, be more active on Instagram, and create accounts on other platforms such as Twitter. I figured that by starting the business out with smaller steps so that they can get a hang of doing some of the everyday things first, I could then later get them to start to do the bigger steps.

The first part that I had the business do was post once to twice a day on their Facebook page so that they are staying up to date with their followers. This was going good at first with the business posting useful information about the business and trying to get customers in the doors, but that changed fast. The business started to post information that was not useful for their followers. They were just trying to follow the recommendation that I gave them to post once to twice a day, but the information in those posts needs to be useful for their business and their customers.

Another piece of advice I gave the business that I learned from this class was for the business to create other social media accounts so that they could reach different groups of people. The owner of the business was not sure about creating other accounts because it was hard for him just to keep track of the two that he had on Facebook and Instagram. I told him that to keep track of his accounts better he should create a social media team so that he was not the only one looking and responding to customers on the accounts. The owner was still not sure about the idea, so I left it alone and figured the business could come back to the idea later when they are more used to using social media effectively.

Overall, I think that the business that I did this project for will eventually get the hang of using social media and using it effectively. The business and owner right now are just not sure about it, and they are trying to get used to the idea of it which will take time, but once they understand how to use social media better, they will be able to create other accounts on other platforms and reach out to other potential customers.

[jacob-wentworth]

Sharing and Developing Effective Content

For a business, it is important to get information out to people on social media. The content that businesses share can be curation content or creating content. Curation content is content that is from a trusted source that is relevant to a business and should be used about 60% of the time in a business's post. Creation content is content that is created from the business itself and should be used about 40% of the time. Both are effective ways of getting content out to a business’s audience on social media, but a business needs to be able to keep their content different and appealing to their audience. Depending on the social media site that a business is using, there are many ways that a business can develop and share effective content.

Sharing and developing content can be effectively shared best by having posts that have a strong headline or captions, use photos and videos, and varying the content posted to keep an audience interested. By using these three things, a business can have effective posts on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Along with having a strong caption, photo, or video, and keeping the content interesting a business should make their posts different on all their different social media platforms. To be more effective on Twitter, a business should share and develop content with a strong message, hashtags, using at most 120 characters, and they should post between the time of 7 AM and 8 PM because this is when most people are on social media. For Facebook, a business should develop and share content by posting 1 to 2 times a day, use short posts, use hashtags sparingly, and keep their posts under 120 characters. Doing this will keep the audience engaged and interested in the content that is being shared. Instagram can be used in many ways to share and develop effective content with a business’s audience. The social media platform Instagram has three different areas where a business can share and develop content for their audience. The first area is the business's main page. This is where a business can post pictures, multiple images at a time, and videos. To have effective content in this area of Instagram, a business should have short descriptive captions, open-ended questions for engagement and relevant hashtags that will make their content discovered easily.  The second area for businesses to share their content is the stories. For a business to develop and share effective content on Instagram stories, a business should share photos, videos, live videos, and they should save anything they put on their story for later use. The final area on the Instagram platform is Instagram TV. In this area, a business can develop and share effective content best by making videos that are up to 10 minutes long, includes hashtags, and draws the audience back to the business’s main social media channel.

The process of becoming a social organization goes from vision, strategy, refine purpose, launch, guide, and adapt to the organization. By becoming a social organization, the principles of effective content development and sharing are very important. Being able to use these principles effectively is important for a business to grow and expand on social platforms. When a social organization follows the principle of effective content development and sharing, the business is able to create an audience that is interested and engaged in the business.

[jacob-wentworth]

Building An Online Community

For a business to have a good social media account, they need to be able to build and grow their online community. In the book “The Social Organization” there are many effective principles for building and growing communities on social media. The two most important principles from the book that I thought was the “Six F’s” model, and the “No, Go, Grow” model. The “Six F’s” model is meant for the attitudes toward social media. These six F’s are folly, fearful, flippant, formulating, forging, and fusing. The “No, Go, Grow” model is meant to empower community collaboration. With these two principles, a business’s online community will be able to build and grow in no time.

The “Six F’s” model is a model of attitudes toward social media that can help a business build and grow their communities on social media. To have a successful collaboration effort, a business must be able to identify and understand the variations of attitude. The first F, folly is people that see social media as a source of entertainment and no business value. A fearful attitude is where people fear social media and they see it as a threat to productivity, intellectual capital, privacy, management authority, or regulatory compliance. A flippant attitude is where people do not fear social media anymore, but they do not take it seriously. Formulating is where people recognize both the value of community collaboration and the need to be more organized and strategic in its use. Forging attitude is where people being to integrate productive community collaboration into their daily work lives. Then finally, the last F is for fusing which is where people treat community collaboration as an integral part of their work, it is ingrained in how they think and behave.

The other effective principle from the book that I thought was good was the “No, Go, Grow” Model. This model was about empowering community collaboration. This model helps determine if and how a community collaboration effort should move forward. The “No” stage is where the question, “Is there a clear desirable purpose for the community?” and “Is mass collaboration appropriate for the purpose and the community?” The “GO” stage is where a potential collaborative community is likely to succeed on its own. If the collaborative community is acceptable, then the organization gives it a Go. If the collaborative community is already underway, then it becomes recognized, approved, and monitored. Then finally the “Grow” stage is where a community collaboration proposal doesn’t get the green light and moves to the “Grow” stage. When a community purpose moves here, this is the stage that could deliver value to both community and organization, but only with more formal support.

Not only were there effective principles in the book, but also in the Hootsuite chapter 4. Some of the things that were learned from the Hootsuite chapter was that to grow an online community, a business needs to be engaged. A business needs to be engaged by not only liking, commenting, and following, but also interacting with people that might not know about the business and other communities that might have things in common with a person's business. Being more engaged could also be things like creating groups, live videos, contests, and other fun things for people in the community and other communities to be involved in. These principles all connect to the client I am working with because the owner needs to be more engaged with his community to grow his social media for the business.

[jacob-wentworth]

Be Aware of Big Data!

I found the presentation of “The Legal Side of Big Data”, to be very informational and interesting to see how the government deals with these things. One of the first things that I thought was interesting was that legally there is not a definition for big data. Big Data is a loose term that is changing to what we want it to be or think it to be. Because big data is a loose term and there is no definition for it, we need to be aware of what it means to people. Businesses and consumers need to be aware of big data and how to balance the opportunities and threats presented by the development of big data.

Both businesses and consumers need to be aware of big data. Businesses need to be aware of when they are using, and consumers need to be aware when they are being used in it. For businesses, they should be aware of when they use big data, that there are others out there that want that information they are storing. The others that want this data are hackers. Hackers will take the data that businesses are storing of their customers and use it for their own reasons. When a business gets hacked and customers information is stolen, that looks bad on the business. Trying to fix the problem after it has already happen does not help the business. To stop hackers, a business needs to be prepared. By being prepared, a business needs to be ahead of the problem and be spending money in the right places. What this means is, a business needs to be ready for if they are hacked. The business needs to have a plan in place so if they do get hacked, they are able to stop the hacker as fast as possible. A business also needs to be putting their money in the right places, by having protection for things like their customers data. What businesses cannot do are thinking and fixing the problem after it happens. By trying to fix the problem of being hacked after it has already happened, the business is reacting to the hacker and by that time the hacker has everything they wanted.

Consumers should also be aware of big data and what is happening. When a customer buys something from a store, the business is most likely keeping that data and storing it for later use. This data can consist of many things from, the customer’s name, social security number, date of birth and more. Consumers need to be aware that the information that businesses are storing can be used a sold to other businesses. But the business must tell you where your information is going.

With big data, comes opportunities and threats. The opportunities for a business are that they have information of their customers and that can help them target those customers with things that they might want. But there is also a threat that someone could hack into a business and take that data of the customers. The best way to balance these opportunities and threats that are presented by the development of big data is to always be prepared. By being prepared you can protect your business and still have the big data. These protections could be from hackers, other companies or even employees. Some ways that a business can protect the data and use it by having contracts in place that confirm confidentiality, ownership and use restrictions. These contracts can be with vendors, employees, or anyone that might have access to things that the business is working on. Overall to balance the opportunities and threats that are presented by the development of big data, a business needs to always be read and police their business.

As for the second part of the question, after watching “The Internet with a Human Face”, and reading “The Internet’s Original Sin”, I found that businesses models do indeed influence surveillance and data gathering on the internet. The reason for this is because no matter what is done on the internet, it is always stored somewhere. If you were to search something on the internet in any browser, that data is stored somewhere and is kept forever. The internet never forgets what you have searched. As for businesses, this is where selling ads come in. Businesses use that data that the internet stores to be able to see what people have searched in the past and then a business can supply an ad for the past search. The more that businesses use this type of model, the more of what people search and do on the internet is being watched.

[jacob-wentworth]

The Spread of Fake News

After reading the article “Three Reasons Junk News Spreads Quickly Across Social Media”, I have come to realize that we are only seeing what the internet wants us to see. The way that this is happening, is through algorithms, advertising, and exposure. Algorithms are what sort through massive amounts of information when we look something up so that we get to an answer that is what we are looking for or an answer that is close to what we are looking for. These algorithms help, but they prioritize certain content so that they chose what someone sees and what they do not. I believe that it is good to have algorithms for finding answers to things, but they should not be able to keep information from people. They should not be able to have filter bubbles that limit information flows and perpetuate bias. An example of this in the political field that I have seen is that when I look something up for a political party, I only get information the relates to one party. As for businesses and individuals, they just need to be aware that everything that you see and read on the internet is not true or is not the only opinion on things. These businesses and individuals could respond to these conditions by looking up different information than what they think and try to get other information from people or places that think in a different direction than the individual or the business.

The next reason why junk news spreads quickly across social media is advertising. Like we had just talked about in the last blog, and from what we watched in the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma”, social media sites are free because they sell our attention to companies through advertising. Social media sites take the information that is given to them through algorithms and they sell that information to large companies so that they can advertise to users that might be interested in things that they are selling. To myself, this should not be done. Being able to sell someone’s attention without them knowing about it should not happen. An example that has happened to me is that I have gone to a store online such as Nike.com and looked at a pair of shoes to buy, but I ended up not buying them. Then the next time I got on a social media site like Facebook, an advertisement popped up and it was for the shoes that I had looked at buying but did not. For businesses and other individuals, they should be aware that social media sites are selling their information to companies and that is why things that you have recently looked up on the internet are advertisements on their social media sites. Businesses and individuals could respond to these conditions by not being online so much so that it takes some of the power away from social media sites. The less that businesses and individuals are on social media the less attention you are giving to the sites and the ability to sell the advertisements.

The final reason for junk news spreading quickly across social media is exposure. Algorithms and advertisements filter and deliver information to us as users, but we also as the user select what we want to see and ignore. An example of this would be that as a user of social media, you pick who you follow and who you do not. This example puts the user in an area that they will only see things that they agree with. Another example is when you click on a link for political news. If a user is republican, they are going to click on links that relate to a Republican candidate more than a link that relates to a Democratic candidate. This tells the internet what type of political information to give the user because they know that the user clicks on more links that have to do with Republicans than Democrats. For business and individuals, they should be aware that when clicking on links on the internet, you are never getting the full story. The user or the business is only getting what the internet thinks you would want to see and read based on the user's or business history.  A way that businesses and individuals could respond to these conditions is to search for information that you might not agree with to get the whole story, or read about both sides of a problem or political party so that they are getting both sides of the story and not just one.

[jacob-wentworth]

Social Media Consultant

Social media is a tool that when understood how to use it the right way, can help someone’s business out and help grow the business. But, when not understood how to be used the right way, can hold the business back. Some of the most important qualities for a social media consultant to have are knowledge of the social media market, the ability to adjust to different problems businesses are having, and the ability to listen to what businesses' goals are for their social media. With these three qualities, a social media consultant can help a business grow on social media and get the business name known.

Being a social media consultant would be no easy job. With being a social media consultant, you would have to always be on different social media staying up to date with things that are happening around the world and in the business that you are working on. If I was to be acting as a social media consultant, some of the plans and strategies I would use to advise to improve my professional social media presence are making sure I post every day on all of the social media sites I am on, making sure that I am up to date with what is happening in the world, and having an area where customers and potential customers of the business could get into contact with me so that I can answer their questions promptly.

As of now, I am staying up to date with current events that are happening around the world. Doing this would help me keep a business up to date also so that the business is in the loop of everything going on. As for what could be done in the future, there are many things that I could improve on and could start doing. An example of improvement could be answering messages and questions faster so that the people that I am in contact with get the information they need faster. As for things that I could start are posting on social media every day. Doing this would keep people looking at my account and help keep people engaged in my social media.

[jacob-wentworth]

Your Attention Is Their Profit

After watching both the lecture video on information privacy and the Netflix documentary: The Social Dilemma, I found this information to be disturbing. Both sections that we had to watch for class talked a lot about how we as users are the products being sold. The product isn’t the social media we are on, the product isn’t the ads we see on the social media platform, no, the product is our attention and the time that we give to that social media site. Our attention is what social media sites are selling.

The way that social media sites are selling our attention is by big data and algorithms. These big data and algorithms are such powerful tools because they can collect everything that we look at, like, favorite, search, and anything that someone does on the internet. Have you ever talked about something that you want or was talking to a friend about something they heard about and then next thing you know, you are seeing that topic pop up on a social media site?  This is because of the big data and algorithms. These powerful tools are always collecting data on you without you even realizing it.

With this kind of powerful tool, comes dangers that can be used and/or abused. This type of power makes it feel like someone is always watching you no matter what you do. It makes me feel almost like in the book 1984, where “Big Brother” is always watching you. Not only is it a danger because it is like someone is always watching, but the fact that you and your attention is being sold to companies for ads and things that you might be interested in almost seems illegal without you knowing.

These problems are ones that not a lot of people know about. A lot of people have no idea that they as a person and their attention are being sold to companies through big data and algorithms. I had no idea that things like that could happen until I watched the video and recording. To start to solve these problems, people need to be aware of what is happening. For professionals, we need to start to think of a way that companies cannot take people's data from them without knowing. Then finally, at the societal levels, we need to come together and see that we need to start to put technology to the side and start to return to not being technology dependent.

[jacob-wentworth]

Time Without Social Media

Having to go any amount of time without social media nowadays is difficult. I will be unable to look at posts, snap chats, tweets, texts, and anything to do with social media. For this experiment, I decided to do three, eight-hour periods without social media. I decided to break my time periods into three days. Every morning as soon as I got up for the day, I would start my time without social media. However, occasionally throughout this experiment, I did have to answer a text or call because of health reasons.

The first day that I started this experiment, I woke up and instantly wanted to look at my phone to see my notifications. I made sure I did not look at my phone and proceeded to get ready for the day. Once I was ready, I had about ten minutes before I had to go to work, so I ended up just sitting around and waiting until I had to leave. Normally this is a time when I would look at my phone, but I just sat there and waited without the use of my phone or social media. When I got to work not looking at my phone became easier because I was busy for the first few hours that I was at work. However, after the busy work was finished, I had nothing to do, so I sat around down in the shop. It was at this time that it was the hardest for me to not look at my phone. All the people I work with were sitting there looking at social media while I was not touching my phone. I had several of them look up from their phones and ask if my phone was broken or something, so I had to explain to them what I was doing for this class. After about an hour of sitting around while everyone else was playing on their phones, we ended up getting more work to do. I ended up working the rest of the time of the eight-hour period, which made the time be a lot easier without my phone or social media.

Day two, I knew was going to be harder than the first day, because I did not have to go to work early in the morning. I woke up at my normal time and wanted to instantly look at my phone as always. I got ready for the day and decided that I was going to try to get some homework done before I went to work. During this experiment, I figured this part would help me out with homework because normally, I would procrastinate homework at this time and just play on my phone. However, doing homework made the time go by fast, and once I had a few things of homework done for my other classes, it was time for me to head to work. Once I got to work, I was hoping that there would be things to do so that I would not be sitting around doing anything. But for about the first hour, I once again sat there while everyone else was on their phones and waited for there to be some sort of work to do. I ended up sitting there for only about an hour and then we got work to do. The work ended up taking the rest of my eight-hour period up and I was able to play on my phone after the work was all done.

The third and final day of my three eight-hour periods was the worst day for myself. The eight hours was the longest eight hours of my life, or so it felt like. Because it was a Saturday, I had no work and didn’t know what I was going to do for the eight hours. The past two days, I had work to keep me busy and off my phone, but today was going to be different. I had to keep myself busy so that I did not look at my phone. The first hour was not bad I did as I always do and get ready for the day, without looking at my phone. The next few hours were the problem. I sat in my living room and talked to my roommates, but it was hard for me because I was trying to keep a conversation while they kept looking at their phones and getting on social media. This time took up about another hour of my eight-hour period. Both of my roommates ended up leaving the apartment and left me alone. This was good and bad for me because I did not have to see them on their phones but now, I had nothing to keep me busy. I ended up doing homework for the next two hours and was able to get a lot done. It had only been four hours of my time period and I was only halfway done. I was done with almost all my homework for the week and did not know what else to do. I was so bored, that I decided I would clean the apartment. I did dishes, vacuumed, laundry cleaned my room and the bathroom, but that only ate up about two hours of my time. Only two hours left, and I couldn’t think of anything to do. After sitting around for a little bit, I ended up deciding to go back home and visit my parents. This was perfect because I had not seen them in a while and the drive was about 45 minutes. I was able to get to my parent’s place and talk with them until my eight-hour period was done. I still didn’t get on my phone as much once the time was done because I was with my parents a lot but it was still a nice feeling that I was able to get on my phone if I wanted to.

Overall, I did not think that this experiment would be very hard, but I was wrong. For myself, the problem was not that I am always on my phone when I have stuff to do, but I am on my phone when there is nothing to do. Throughout this experiment, I found myself always looking for something to keep me busy so that I was not bored and was not trying to get on my phone. I think that this experiment really opened my eyes and helped me figure out that I do not need social media to stay busy, but it is nice to have.

[jacob-wentworth]

Social Media and Me

In my daily life, I would like to think that social media does not influence it. However, I know that it does have a big influence on it. About every day I check my phone when I wake up to see if I have any messages or anything to update me on things going on. Most of the time I do not do this intentionally, it has just become part of my routine to check my phone every morning. I have also noticed that throughout the day I will check my phone even though I know I have no message or updates. Always checking my phone and social media has just become a part of things I do throughout the day.

I am not only always checking my phone for just messages throughout the day, but also to look at things on social media. With always being able to look at social media because of having the internet constantly available, this has made me into someone that is always on their phone when there is nothing to do at work, or when I am bored. There are some positive ways that it affects me by helping me have something to do when I am waiting in a line or when I am bored and there is nothing to do. But it also affects me negatively by causing me to procrastinate things such as homework.

There are times when I go up north and the internet is not good or there is no internet at all. During these times I always find myself looking at my phone but unable to get on it. This ends up driving me insane because I am constantly doing it. I know that I cannot use my phone, but I just have the habit of checking my phone constantly. When up north I normally use my phone a lot of the time for directions to see where I am going. Not having internet or directions when going places up north you have never been is very frustrating to me.

With technology and the amount, I use it, I would like to be more intentional with the amount that I am on my phone. The reason I say this is because I always find myself on my phone when I should be doing other things such as homework. My phone is one of the biggest reasons that I procrastinate doing homework. On my phone, I can get on almost anything that I want to get on or I need to get on. If I was to monitor the amount of time I was on my phone, I think that it would help me not procrastinate. An example that I could do to help me with not being on my phone as much, is to set a timer of only getting on my phone for about 5 minutes each hour throughout the day. This would help me by keeping me off my phone and making sure that I do my homework.

[jacob-wentworth]

Me and my blog!

Hello everyone, my name is Jacob Wentworth, and I am a Senior here at Central Michigan. This is my final semester here for my under grad and hope to continue my education at a grad school, that is undetermined right now. Central Michigan was the third college that I had gone to for my under grad. I started out at Delta community college which is located in Bay City Michigan, then made my way to Trine University which is down in Angola Indiana, and then I decided to come to CMU and finish out my degree here. Throughout my time going to college I have had many different ideas of what I wanted to do for my life. I started out wanting to be an engineer but then quickly realized that I do not like math that much and switched my idea to sports management. However, I also ended up changing that because I was just unsure about it. Finally, I made my decision to major in Exercise Science and minor in Entrepreneurship, with my end goal of becoming a Physical Therapist.

In my blog I hope to learn how businesses interact on social media to improve their business. I also hope to make connections through my blogs with others in this class to help my understanding of social media and businesses.

A business that I believe uses social media to improve their company is Uber. For people that do not know, Uber is a company that provides the service of giving rides to people to anywhere they want to go for a small fee. Uber uses social media to benefit their business by staying up to date with things that are going on. For example, if you need a ride to the election polls come November 3rd, they are offering a discounted rate for people that request a ride.

For Uber and their social media, they have the three key components of mass collaboration which are social media, community, and purpose. For community, this is the people who are the Uber drivers and the people that request the rides. The social media part is where the people that request rides use the app in-order to get the rides to their desired places. Then the purpose is that each person that uses the app has the desire to get from one place to another.

https://twitter.com/Uber