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Week 8

For the client project I chose to help my dad’s small business develop a social media strategy. My dad is unfamiliar with social media in general, let alone using to advance his business. I suggested we start small by creating a presence on Facebook and Google business. The main thing is creating brand recognition and awareness. From there we can work on targeting our audience and crafting post to engage with them.

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Week 7

One of the first steps in building your online community is crafting engaging content. This will give you more opportunities to connect with your target audience. You should:

-          Research and analyze current content reception and strategy

-          Identify your target audience by platform

-          Create a list of content-specific goals and objectives

-          Plan for the distribution of your content

You need to find out which content resonates with your audience. Some helpful tools to do this are Facebook’s Audience Insights and Twitter Analytics to help you identify your audience demographics by network. Next, you should analyze which content your audience is engaging with most and why. Next, ask your audience directly what kind of content they want to see by using polls. Good place to look next is at your competitors. What kinds of content are they posting and is it performing well? Maybe you should draw some inspiration from that. Finally, , you should make plans for distribution. Choose what to post, where, when and how often to continue to stay consistent.

For a great read on how to create shareable social media post, check out this blog post written by Rachel Bartee:

https://www.onlinemarketinginstitute.org/blog/2017/10/12-tips-creating-shareable-social-media-content/

Photo credit:  https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fedgy.app%2Fhow-to-be-a-successful-social-media-content-creator&psig=AOvVaw1GOu7TTe9GOh_1gkqJa4HW&ust=1628368344220000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCIDS8YyfnfICFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

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Social Advertising

A company should create an organizational strategy for community collaboration to identify the communities to investigate, sanction and support. This strategy will identify when and how to support the community and desired collaborative behaviors they are expected to display. Building the strategy involves two main activities: establishing the means to intelligently select who you should pursue, and when and where to invest. In order to grow your online community, you need to instill a meaningful purpose. You need to make sure the purpose is suitable for social media and mass collaboration, and can to purpose succeed on its own.

As you can see in the visual above, Facebook reaches the most users globally than any other platform. This creates a large social advertising opportunity.

After completing the Hootsuite training for this week, I learned that there are many different mediums to reach an online communities and each one has their own form of sponsored marketing. Paid marketing allows companies to tap into the vast user data that social media companies have on their users. It is impossible to reach your targeted audience they way that social media companies can. They can target your audience by using data such as: interests, location and age bracket. Basically, paid social advertising allows you to fine tune your way to successfully reaching your target audience.

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When it comes to big data, companies need to be aware of how that data is stored, if it is secure, and if they are legally allowed to store that data. As of right now in the United States, there is no comprehensive federal law that governs data privacy. This is quite concerning because all of that information is a powerful tool and it is all susceptible to being hacked.

There are some regulations that I found from this insightful article on osano.com

https://www.osano.com/articles/data-privacy-laws

The Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act) has broad jurisdiction over commercial entities under its authority to prevent unfair or "deceptive trade practices." While the FTC does not explicitly regulate what information should be included in website privacy policies, it uses its authority to issue regulations, enforces privacy laws, and take enforcement actions to protect consumers. For example, the FTC might take action against organizations that:

 ·         Fail to implement and maintain reasonable data security measures.

·         Fail to abide by any applicable self-regulatory principles of the organization's industry.

·         Fail to follow a published privacy policy.

·         Transfer personal information in a manner not disclosed on the privacy policy.

·         Make inaccurate privacy and security representations (lying) to consumers and in privacy policies.

·         Fail to provide sufficient security for personal data.

·         Violate consumer data privacy rights by collecting, processing or sharing consumer information.

·         Engage in misleading advertising practices.

Other federal laws that govern the collection of information online include:

·         The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which governs the collection of information about minors.

·         The Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act (HIPAA), which governs the collection of health information.

·         The Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), which governs personal information collected by banks and financial institutions.

·         The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which regulates the collection and use of credit information.

As consumers, we need to be aware that everything we do online is stored. We should be cautious of what information we allow give to any site especially until the government can enforce better laws and management.

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Algorithms

1.       Algorithms. They are taking over social media and online presence in general with seemingly no limitations. In theory, having a curated stream of posts and marketing sounds helpful. However, when false news and politics are also being propagated into our daily feed, it’s hard to know what to believe anymore. I believe algorithms are helpful t o a certain extent, however I have found it very annoying and limiting in other cases. For example, I hate the algorithms YouTube uses. It only plays music that I have listen to or searched before, instead of finding me new music. I find it hard to discover new music because the algorithm limits what I am exposed to organically.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/social-media-algorithms-rule-how-we-see-the-world-good-luck-trying-to-stop-them-11610884800

 2.       Advertising. The advertising model surrounding social media is designed to make viewers click on advertisements. In order to get more clicks, advertisers will intentionally provoke emotional responses to increase the likelihood, intensity and duration of their content. This tactic has also been used on voters to influence them with strategic and manipulative messages.

 3.       Exposure. It has been found that people selectively expose themselves to political news and information. Once they have expressed a preference for a particular candidate, the feed they are exposed to only strengthens their feelings because the algorithms find news they might like. Also, it’s possible we rely on selective exposure so we don’t face the cognitive dissonance of exposure to radically new and challenging information.

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Social Media Consultant

One of the most important qualities a consultant can have is good listening skills. Great consultants spend time learning exactly what their clients’ troubles and need are. To do this, they must listen to the client and interpret what needs to do be addressed. I believe its also important that consultants have a great deal of creativity and problem-solving skills. If they client could solve the problem themselves, they would.

If I were a consultant for myself, I would set a social media calendar in place. I know you can do this with platform such as Hootsuite. This way I could be consistent with posts, and I could easily track engagement. I would also find it convenient to create posts and schedule them for a time in the future. These features will be very useful when I am running my own business. As of right now, I do not have much of a professional social media presence, and I don’t care to honestly.

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The Social Dilemma

Big data and algorithms are such powerful tools because it allows companies to further understand and target users. On one side, it is useful because it matches companies and buyers better through ads directed towards the companies target market. On the other hand, it raises the question: Is this abuse to customer’s private information? I personally feel that is should be prohibited to collect and store user’s data. Especially when most users are unaware that this is occurring. Of course, it could be argued that this data and algorithms are used to benefit the marketers and users through a mutually beneficially relationship. The user sees ads more suited to their wants and needs, and companies more effectively reach their target market. However, what are the boundaries and restrictions of this use of big data? Obviously, big data is a newer concept that has now previously been dealt with. So before this situation gets out of hand, I think it is important to set restrictions and laws in place that protect the privacy of users.  

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Social Media Experiment

After seeing logging my social media and technology activity for 1 day. I realized I frequently check my phone for no reason. I found myself having a hard time going even 10 minutes without looking at my phone for a notification. The funny thing is, I didn’t even have a reason for checking for notifications. I didn’t post anything, or have any conversations I was engaged in. So, as an experiment, I decided to 24 hours without checking social media and tried to resist checking my phone. I found that it most difficult resisting the urge to check my phone all the time, and even got anxious about it. I honestly can go without social media with no problems, I just tend to scroll through it when I’m bored.

In conclusions, I found that social media is not a weakness for me. I rarely make posts, so it is easy for my to unplug for a while. Technology in general, is another story. I logged several hours watching TV, several more on my laptop doing school work, and couple hours on my phone as well. I didn’t realize just how much time I spent consumed by technology instead of engaging in more productive activities.

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Week 2 Response

I found the Max Stossel video extremely informative and, quite honestly a little sad. I learned that social media is like play slot machines. Because we don’t know exactly what the outcome of posting to social media will be - how many likes, views, new followers - we will continuously spend more and more time on social media and can’t seem to pull ourselves away. I found it interesting that when Stossel asked the audience how many of them had snapchat streaks, and how many people actually liked continuing the streak, almost everyone admitted they disliked it. Stossel then dove into the tactics behind social media and online gaming that makes us spend so much time consumed by it, but we end up feeling bad afterwards. 

In Emma Rathbone’s article, spoke about a time before social media, a simpler time. How we had to be creative to keep ourselves entertained, and how you could make a first impression on someone without them gathering who you are from social media.

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Hi Rio! I love watching baking shows as well! However, I had never thought to follow baking social media pages. I’ll have to give it a try! I love how passionate you are about social media. If you find the secret of creating purpose within social media, let me know lol :)

Who Am I?

Hi! I’m Rio Risbridger, a junior at Central Michigan University. I’m majoring in Accounting with two minors in Management and Business Information Systems. I will join PwC after graduation, Fall of 2022. I am currently employed at Four Leaf Brewing, a microbrewery in Clare, MI and my mother’s small business.

Within this blog, I hope to uncover the secrets of social media. Rather than how to take the perfect picture or what it takes to create a trendy TikTok, I hope to uncover the secret of creating purpose within social media. In addition, creating value within each post. Simply, uncovering skills to create a potential to increasing my professional network using social media.

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Introduction

Hello. I am an entrepreneurship major student at Central Michigan University. I am a former cross-country runner and current marathoner. My greatest running achievement so far is completing the Boston Marathon. I love traveling and exploring new places and cultures. My last great travel adventure was living in Spain for a few months before the Coronavirus hit.

With the skills learned from my entrepreneurship degree, I hope to start my own business in the future. My dream business would be a trendy, brunch spot where people could come together for tasty and beautiful food dishes.

I am using this platform to network with peers and other like-minded people. You never know what new connections could lead to!

One company that I believe is exceling with their social media strategy is Dow Chemical. Not only to do they maintain a presence on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social sites, they have an internal social platform where their employees from sites globally can connect and share ideas. Chapters 1-3 of The Social Organization by Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P McDonald spoke extensively on the importance of shared information within a company to accelerate growth and productivity. Dow recognizes the potential in their employees and created this social platform to promoted shared ideas and deepen comradery.

https://www.facebook.com/dow/