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Challenges

When I reflect on the information I have already provided to my client and looking into the future, I think there will be a few challenges my client will face when implementing my recommendations. The biggest challenge mentioned in the lecture video was that social media has to influence the organization in positive ways that it becomes a social organization and not just an organization that happens to have social media accounts. This will be difficult for my client because I foresee management and advocates not wanting to take the time to post and engage enough to truly make them a social organization. It will take a lot of work, but I am hoping my recommendations and influence over the company will have positive effects and will move the business in the right direction.

The second challenge my client will face will be that the organization lacks the knowledge of the fundamental principles of mass collaboration. To help face and concur this challenge, I will summarize the fundamental principles after reading thoroughly about them in The Social Organization and write them out as a guideline for the company for when I am no longer consulting with them. I also found a mass collaboration cycle, pictured below that I believe is a great way to identify whether social media content is effective. If the results are not lining up with the purpose and goals, a change should be made.

The final challenge I foresee my client going through is management having issues with their willingness to adopt to new practices and technologies. Although I value and have no problems with my client’s main manager, I know in his managerial role he likes being in charge of everything and is old-fashioned. I can see him being reluctant to use technology in a different way. If I can prove to him that it will build his restaurants brand and bring in more customers, I know he will consider!

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Effective Content Development and Sharing

When using social media, the content that you post to your audience is very important in order to promote and send effective messages about your company’s brand. After finishing Hootsuite Module 5, I learned that the two types of content are curation and creation. Curation content is gathered through trusted sources relevant to the industry while created content is produced within the organization. The rule of thumb is said to have content be 60% curated and 40% created. It is also important to make sure the content is bringing value to your audience, this requires evaluating existing and forthcoming brand resources. In order to create content, a content strategy that will help obtain your company’s social media goals should be developed. There are four key components when creating a content strategy. One must research and analyze content reception and strategy, identify the target audience on each platform, create a list of content specific goals/objectives and then map out plans for distribution. A few ways to help would be creating a content calendar that would allow you to map out a publishing schedule, finding posts with the most views and engagement and posting similar content, or retweeting/sharing other accounts content that still aligns with your company values.

When sharing content, a strong headline and visuals will enhance the appeal of the post and grab the reader. Optimize how you present the information and vary the content regularly. A great resource to utilize is your staff, encourage employees to share the content and engage about it. You can also autoschedule messages to be posted. They should be clear and to the point and can be enhanced with hashtags and links. #HashtagAwesome

As discussed in The Social Organization, when becoming a social organization one must develop an organizational vision and strategy for community collaboration. After doing so, then determining what social media sites will reach the target audience the best and have the most engagement. Just like in the principles of effective content development and sharing, the content posted on those chosen social media sites needs to display the organization’s vision and strategy. It should flow naturally with the strategy and support and align with the organizations overall values, draw in the target audience, and allow for engagement and collaboration.

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Building Your Social Media Community

In a continuously advancing technological world, organizations are learning to use social media effectively to employ community collaboration. After reading Chapter 4 and 5 of The Social Organization, there were a few things to remember when building an online community. First you have to identify the right audience and in order to use social media effectively, apply an understanding of organizational goals and culture, know where community collaboration is most likely to deliver value, craft and distribute an organizational vision for community collaboration, and understand when community collaboration is appropriate.

Below is an article published in 2015 that discusses 10 brands that use social media well and why. Of the 10, Netflix was known for understanding its audience and providing content that “resonates with users.”

https://www.adweek.com/digital/michael-patterson-10-brands-amazing-social-media/

After completing the Hootsuite/Podium module 4, I learned that a company should use advocates to help grow their online community. In doing so, the advocacy and community need to be empowered and engaged on the social media pages. One of the first steps is deciding who the right advocates are, these people would be dedicated and aligned with company values. When applying this to the client I am working with on my client project, I think they should use employees and regular customers as advocates.

The reason I suggest employees as advocates is because my client is a family restaurant. Majority of the managers and waitresses there have been there from the beginning and have formed relationships with the regular customers. The employees should promote the business account to customers offline. In the restaurant, talking with regular customers is a great way to mention the accounts. Additionally, on their Facebook page the owner of the restaurant only has access. If a select few employees had access to the accounts, they would be able to post more frequently and engage on them in their free time, let’s say when the restaurant was not busy. These employees could also be administrators of groups on Facebook on their own accounts to guide conversations and provide honest, first-hand information to the customers.

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The Risks With Big Data

After watching the presentation by Doug LaLone on “The Legal Side of Big Data,” it opened my eyes to businesses using big data and how it can have negative effects on the company. The scary thing about big data is that millions of data sets are hacked every day. When you put all of this information out there on the internet, unless you are trying to conceal it, chances are it is no longer private.

When a business uses big data, although it has many positives, it has negatives as well. I would advise businesses to be aware of what information they are storing and where. I would also have the company look into what the results could be if the information was hacked. Will the company owe millions of dollars? Will identities or money be stolen from individuals who were apart of that data? As stated, big data analysts hack for information all of the time. Also, if a company has information they do not want known to the world, like a trade secret, they need to make sure they are making reasonable efforts to maintain it as one or chances are it will not stay that way for long!

Consumers NEED to be aware of where they are putting their personal, uniquely identifiable information. Millions of data sets are hacked daily. The store credit cards you use, those have been hacked often in the past, so I would advise consumers to limit the amount of credit/debit cards they use and those linked to them. They also need to be more cautious reading terms & conditions because a lot of the times, a website may have in there that they can access some of your personal information because you did not read up on it and just blindly accepted the terms.

The best way to balance the opportunities and threats presented by the development of big data, in my opinion, is to go about using it cautiously, thinking about the effects that could come out of it if the data were to get into the wrong hands. If companies are cautious and aware, they should be able to use the opportunities big data can have on a company. Also knowing where your company or consumer information is being stored and where it is likely going is something that can help determine if threats could possibly arise.

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Don’t Let Social Media Fool You

In the article, “Three reasons junk news spreads so quickly across social media,” it goes into detail about the three claimed reasons it spreads so fast. These reasons are Algorithms, Advertising and Exposure.

According to the article, social media platforms use algorithms to determine how news and content is displayed and consumed. Instead of the free flow and transparent exchange, it is personalized content that creates filter bubbles limiting the information displayed. It also perpetuates bias. I believe this happens on my twitter account with politics. Most of the time when something comes through my feed involving politics, its usually negative comments about President Trump or new laws coming into effect that are all “bad” laws.

Advertising occurs on every social media site. The article discusses how platforms collect user data to better understand the populations of users while it offers companies the opportunity “to craft and deliver micro-targeted messages to those populations.”  I agree with this and have experienced this on my social media accounts too. On Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, I have noticed that after I leave a store website, the things I look at buying or similar items will pop up on my feed advertising to me to buy those products. Recently I was looking at bathing suits online and after exiting the site, a million of bathing suits and beach wear advertised in boxes on my social media accounts.

The exposure that a topic receives depends on the filtering of the content on the site. The example the article uses to illustrate this is that voters do not get a “balanced or accurate selection of news and information during an election, nor is the distribution of important information randomly distributed across a voting population.” I can, yet again, agree with this! I notice this on my social media accounts especially when politics are most relevant.

I would give businesses and individuals the advice to be aware of what sites you go on and where you enter your personal debit/credit card information. I would also tell them to periodically delete cookies and history to help cleanse your computer system of the user data collected in your internet browser.  

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Social Media Consulting

As a social media consultant, it is most important to be communicative, flexible and to be able to problem solve. Someone is paying you to do what they don’t want to do or what they don’t have the skills to do, so it is essential for the consultant to communicate and understand who the client is trying to reach and what their goal is upon using this social media site. The consultant will then have to apply their knowledge, problem solve and be flexible within identifying which social media presence best will achieve the clients goal.

In order to improve my own professional social media presence, I would start by remembering to take a professional picture of myself to put as my profile picture on my professional social media accounts. Then I would increase the amount of social media sites I am on in order to make sure I have an expertise in social media knowledge that I can apply to promote, connect or give an advantage to myself or when applying it to another person, company or small business. So far I have five social media accounts including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and LinkedIn. Although only three of the five are completely professional, on my personal accounts I am aware of what I post and I still keep it appropriate when connecting with other people and when discussing my opinion on various topics.

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Big Data

When we look at the definition of big data, we understand that it is the storage and analysis of large and complex data sets. This data comes from us and what we do online. The sites we visit and the things that we buy gives unique information about us, which ultimately invades our privacy when we don’t know it.

Big Data is so powerful because it collects data about a person that does not meet the eye, its very valuable to some companies and I am sure in other cases it can lead to black mail. The best way to limit being harmed from big data is to 1) be aware of the sites you go on and the things you buy and 2) Be very careful where you put your personal information and what you display to the public.

Another thing to be cautious about is that sometimes you’re not alone on a website. Internet business models can allow third parties to follow your movements through the website. You’ll notice many pop-up ads that have relevancy to what you were just browsing on a website. With The Cloud as well, in Maceij Ceglowski’s “The Internet with a Human Face,” he illustrates it as a huge data center, loads of personal information being brought together into a file just for you.

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Cutting Social Media Out

After tracking my social media and phone use for a 24-hour period in my log two days ago, I decided to challenge myself and cut social media out for two twelve-hour periods. Realistically, I know I am automatically not on social media for eight hours of the day accounting for the time I am sleeping. I decided my duration would be two twelve-hour periods so I would hopefully have a productive weekend.

On Friday, starting at 9:30am I cut social media out of my daily routine. I did send some texts, but did not check my social media accounts like I normally would have. This was actually okay to me because I didn’t wake up with any notifications from those accounts (HAH). I did a little bit of homework and went to the gym around 11:00am when my first real challenge of not using social media hit me… I normally play music while working out. I have been considering Spotify as a form of social media so I refrained from using my music… it wasn’t the best work out either actually.

By 12:30pm I was home and had to get ready for work. Although I did do some texting during this time period, I still did not go on my social media accounts. I did get some notifications of Snapchats I received but was not really tempted to look at them. By 3:00pm I had been at work for an hour and was getting kind of bored and ready to check my phone. I held back the urge to go on my phone by making myself busy at work. By 4:00pm I actually had to leave work to go to a CPR/AID review class to renew my certification. I put my phone in my purse on silent and did not look at it for two hours. At 6:00 during our last little break I checked my phone, sent a couple texts and then finished the class by 7:00.

With two-and-a-half hours to go, I went out to dinner with my friends for one of their birthdays. This actually kind of sucked for me because they went on social media. I pretty much just looked around and people watched, in a non-creepy way, to keep from going on my phone. With one hour left, I got ready to go out. It was the perfect distraction to keep me off social media. I successfully kept off my social media for the twelve hours!

The twelve-hour period I did the next day on Saturday did not go as smooth. Starting at 10:30am, I had a very relaxing day and I found it was hard not to want to check social media. I was also very tempted to watch my friends snapchats they sent me over the time. With the constant battle all day, by 10:00pm (right after finishing my homework), I couldn’t take it any longer and went on my phone and social media accounts. It was right around the 11.75 hour mark.

Over all, I believe this helped me have a more productive last couple of days. It helped me learn that I am actually not as attached to social media as I thought. Although I was tempted to check my accounts, I did not cave in until the final 15 minutes of the last twelve-hour period. Due to conducting this social media experiment, I may intentionally put down my phone for longer time periods to take a break from the screen time, or to have a productive day!

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Sherry Turkle’s Interview & “Before the Internet“ article

After watching the Sherry Turkle Interview, I believe I agree with every one of her key points. Turkle was the first to study the impact of computers on culture and society. She has authored books about it that are backed up with a lot of research. In the interview, she primarily talks about how misusing technology and overusing it can really threaten things we care about. She expresses the internet as a neurological hit of constant connection. Society is vulnerable to this seduction and the curiosity of who is trying to reach us. What really reached me from her interview was when she explained how our attention is divided by the real world and the phone. When people are on their phones in front of others and they’re supposed to be engaged in the conversation, it changes the conversation and what will be talked about. The emotional content will drop. Ive experienced this feeling and have even stopped sharing information I was saying out loud because they weren’t even listening.

I can relate to Emma Rathbone’s article “Before the Internet,” I remember what life was like for me before I was 13 years old and received my first flip phone. It was primarily used for emergencies.. but maybe a little bit of texting too. Before I had a phone or the internet, I would run over to my friends house, knock on the door, and ask if they could come out and play. Obviously older now, it’s a simple text or phone call.

In my daily life, social media probably takes up a couple hours of my time. I check facebook, twitter, Instagram, maybe two-three times a day. Having the internet constantly available to me definitely helps when I need to find an answer to something. One of the nice things about the internet, is when I find myself coming across a word I don’t know, I will pull up my dictionary app and type in the word to find the definition. I think it affects my life still in a positive way because it isn’t taking up too much of my time. The last time I did not have access to the internet was when I was up north for the Fourth of July. My weekend was filled with the beach, bon fires, and late night walks, I was care free and didn’t care about the world behind my phone.

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Introduction

Hi there! My name is Alexandra-- but you can call me Alex. I am a full time student at Central Michigan University pursuing my bachelors degree in Human Resources with a minor in Information Systems. After graduating in December of 2019, I hope to obtain an HR position with a company preferably in training and development, where there is also opportunities for internal growth. My dream job would be to obtain a leadership role such as an HR Manager or Executive.

When I am not at CMU attending school, I am in my hometown Sterling Heights, Michigan. Ideally after graduating, I will move back home with my parents and my sister and (hopefully) will have found myself a good job in Detroit, Troy or Auburn Hills.

With this blog, I am excited to let my voice be heard and hope to provide a viewpoint on a number of different topics to my followers. I would like to provide thorough, intellectual answers to the social media topics we post and discuss.

A company I believe uses social media well is Spotify. Spotify is a digital music service provider that gives you access to millions of songs and even music videos. They advertise their best deals on social media, right now they have a student deal which is Spotify Premium for $4.99 a month plus access to an additional free account such as Hulu. This deal is what got me to sign up over a year ago, it is hard to beat.

When looking into the principles of mass collaboration, Spotify evokes participation by posting questions for interaction with customers on their social media accounts such as Twitter and Facebook. Spotify is collective in the way that it has a unifying purpose to give customers the best music service and allow them to search and download as many songs and new releases as Spotify can continue to add and provide. Spotify is transparent with its content and contributions. They post many of their new releases on their social media accounts and allow people to critique or rate the song/video. The way that Twitter is styled, it is a good way for people to comment on the videos and give their opinions in a tweet, it makes it not as likely for the Artist who created it to see. With Spotify, it does not matter what time of the day it is, users can post anytime, anyplace and any member can do so. This means that the contribution is completely independent of the other. Spotify’s persistence is determined by the material. Posts are kept on their accounts and are typically not deleted unless their is a real reason. This allows others to view, share and augment. The last principle, emergence is illustrated by Spotify in the way that they encourage everyone to have a voice. The contributions by users are not controlled or designed a certain way like traditional systems. This emergence happens over time as interactions occur more and more.

Thanks for reading!