mitchbeekman-blog

[mitchbeekman-blog]

Virtual Reality

The world as we know it is constantly changing and evolving.   Each day it gets better and better with new technology constantly entering into our life.  

Virtual reality (VR) is a new trend that has become very popular in the past few years.  The first form of VR was first introduced in 1957.  In recent years it has become a very popular subject.  I got my first taste of a VR head set in the summer between my sophomore and junior year when I was in the Amsterdam airport on my way home from Africa.  The tech shop was having people test out some of the new products that had recently come out.  

This was my first time trying out the product and I thought that it was a great experience.  It was much different than I expected it to be.  With the headset on and the headphones in, it actually felt like it was happening in real life.  

The VR applications are endless.  At the moment I see it being used a lot in the gaming industry.  It opens up the new possibilities when it comes to video games.  In the business world, it allows people to actually see and experience a product before it is made.  

[mitchbeekman-blog]

I personally had no clue that people are able to just buy followers.  How does that even work?  Does it put your profile on the popular and trending page or is there a group that just go around and follow people?  I think that people do see it as if you have more followers, you must be posting goof stuff.  People are more likely to follow someone who already has 10,000 followers verse someone who only has 100 followers.  

The Idea of “Buying Followers”

*“Buy Real Followers Now”, “Get Active Followers”, “Guaranteed Followers”* >>CLICK HERE<<

I imagine the sleazy salesperson’s pitch: “Just when your friends and family following your social accounts aren’t enough, you can now broadcast your life to complete strangers (or maybe even people who really don’t exist)!” Wow! Who even needs to bother going out to make real friends when you can “buy 1000+ for just $10″? Any actual human who then views your profile will surely think you are some high and mighty popular being. Right?

Although I personally have a difficult time understanding why someone would want to “buy followers”, there is clearly a demand for this superficial service with hundreds of apps aimed to help hike that precious follower count up. So who else is there to turn to other than our beloved Hootsuite experts to learn more about the concept of buying followers?

Michael Aynsley, Manager of Inbound Marketing at Hoosuite, shares his expertise on the matter. According to Aynsley, people buy followers to manipulate the perceived value of their social accounts.

“It’s about perception. The number of followers is something that many people look at when sizing up an account to follow and it’s a common metric that brands use to measure their own Instagram efforts.”

Aynsley and his team designed an experiment to test how apps that advertise the whole “Get Followers Now” actually work. To do this, they created a dummy account called “fruitless.strategy”. Funny, right?

From there, the Hootsuite team gave over the control. Accounts began to follow fruitless.strategy, without any action on Hootsuite’s behalf. The team then decided to post a photo of “relevant content”, literally…

Aynsley shared “We didn��t get one Like or comment. We surpassed 1,000 followers by noon the next day, but our post still had no kind of engagement whatsoever.”

Whether Hootsuite supports buying followers or not, is beside the point (Hint: they don’t). Perception is what draws accounts to purchase followers. Does it matter if they are robots or inactive accounts? No. Because the only thing that matters to the majority of people participating in these types of services is the numerical follower count at the top of the screen.

[mitchbeekman-blog]

I think Finstagrams are ridiculous.  I don't understand why someone would want to post some of the stuff that they do.  I have seen posts of people smoking marijuana or doing some other kind of drug.  This could wreck peoples future careers just because they decided to make a fake Instagram where they thought it would be cool to share their pictures with close friends online.  Like you said in you discussion, their will also be a digital footprint.

Real vs. Fake Instagram

Many people are worried about what they post online, but Instagram has allowed people to post more freely, or so they think. Instagram is a popular social media platform that we have all learned about during the Hootsuite modules. Recently, people have been making private accounts, aside from their regular Instagram account, called Finstagrams. People will post pictures, videos, and captions that they would not want the general public viewing. Personally, I have seen people using drugs, alcohol, and type captions about their “crazy” night, or relationship drama. Typically users keep their Finstagram on private and only allow certain people to follow them, such as close friends. As we have all learned, these photos, videos, and captions will still remain in their digital footprint even though their account is private.

I think back to the story that Jerry shared with us all in class about the student who lost a job opportunity because of a digital photo recognition scan. Individuals who use Finstagram inappropriately are putting themselves up at risk for future employment opportunities. Finstagram is most popular with teens and young adults. It would be sad if a photo you posted online during your freshman year of high school, came back to haunt you when you are graduating college looking for a job. With technology improving every day, this will be a sad reality for many individuals. 

The whole concept of Finstagram is quite confusing to me. I understand that people want a way to share certain content with certain people, but if that is the real them, in their most authentic state, wouldn’t that be posted on their regular Instagram account? Many people use their regular Instagram accounts to portray the best possible version of themselves to the world. It makes me question who is real, and who is not online. 

[mitchbeekman-blog]

This is a great post!  I agree with you in that news and big events travel much faster on social media than they do on TV on in the news papers.  Social media is the only place that ever see the news or new big events.  I don't even watch the news on the TV anymore because I can get all of the important things that are going on in the world right from my social media accounts.  Snapchat is the main place that I go to in order to see whats going on in the world.  But, some of the side effects of this is that you do get some fake news and it gets twisted around a lot.  I do agree with you in that people should have the same persona across all of their social media accounts and stop being fake. 

Social Media Effects

For week 10, we had the option to post about our progress on the client project or anything related to social media. I am picking the option to write about something related to social media, which will be the effects and implications that I believe social media has had on my generation. One major effect of social media is that news reaches the world and spreads across it much faster, when any big event happens social media is the first place information can be found relating to it. You will often see news affiliates responding to tweets related to a developing story, asking permission to use the content on air. However this can sometime create one sided stories that aren’t true and start panic in the public. Another implication that social media has had is making people develop different personas for different social media outlets. For example, Facebook is known as an area for family, so posts should be censored and family friendly. Twitter on the other hand, is known as a place to post your thoughts, and should not be censored. I do not support Trump at all, but I do admire his honestly on Twitter. Unlike other politicians, he does not censor his posts to be politically correct or even for swearing at times. I admire this because when politicians purposefully censor their own tweets to make them seem like they are supporting a certain group or idea or that the politician is “professional”, I see this as a form of being fake. I think politicians should treat Twitter the same way normal people do, if every politician actually tweeted their beliefs instead of posts that were “approved” by a cabinet of people, I would definitely feel better about going out to vote for my favorite candidate and having faith that he/she would actually preform in office. The same idea works for all social media, I think you should be consistent to you across all platforms, instead of changing up “who you are” for every different app.

[mitchbeekman-blog]

I think that this is a great post.  I think that this happens to everyone in some type of way.  Theres been plenty of nights when I’m sitting at home doing homework or just hanging out and I take a look at my social media accounts just to see other people going out and having fun.  Then I think to myself why can't I be out right now with friends having a good time.  When I went to military training this past summer for a month in Fort Knox, we weren't allowed to use our phones.  So really there was no way to see all of the other people having fun while I was stuck out in the woods.  I thought that it was great after a few days.  Less things to distract me and less things to worry about.  Then when I did finally get my phone back, I rarely ever went on social media.  

FOMO can be a MOFO

FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out. This idea is highly prevalent in social media. It is so strong, that it has been scientifically linked to mental health problems such as depression, loneliness and anxiety. A study conducted by the United Kingdom’s Royal Society for Public Health titled “#StatusOfMind” yields concerning results:

Previous studies have suggested that young people who spend more than two hours a day on social networking sites are more likely to report psychological distress. “Seeing friends constantly on holiday or enjoying nights out can make young people feel like they are missing out while others enjoy life,” the #StatusOfMind report states. “These feelings can promote a ‘compare and despair’ attitude.”

Social media posts can also set unrealistic expectations and create feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem. Instagram easily makes girls and women feel as if their bodies aren’t good enough as people add filters and edit their pictures in order for them to look ‘perfect’.

Other research has found that the more social networks a young adult uses, the more likely he or she is to report depression and anxiety. Trying to navigate between different norms and friend networks on various platforms could be to blame, study authors say—although it’s also possible that people with poor mental health are drawn to multiple social-media platforms in the first place.

Let’s get real about FOMO. You do not have to publicly confess whether or not you have experienced FOMO. But, ask yourself: Does seeing someone’s post make you want to change your life (even if it doesn’t align with who you are)? Do posts make you feel inadequate? Do you compare your Saturday night to another’s Saturday night? Perhaps it may not even be an accurate representation of someone’s Saturday night, but rather what someone wanted to show the world.

[mitchbeekman-blog]

Social Media Ads

This week in the BIS 315, we had to go through the Hootsuite module 6.  I thought that this was a very helpful tool when it came to my client project.  Lately, the Hootsuite modules have pretty much seemed like common sense on a lot of the information that it was putting out.  This module explained how to use the different forms of social media in greater detail when it comes to the advertising side of things.

When it comes to advertising posts for a business or organization, a post should have the following qualities in order to make it successful.  It should promote a product or service that is provided by our business or organization, guides visitors or our website or blog, and spreads awareness of a time-bound campaign such as a contest or a limited time offer.

Since I have been learning more and more about Instagram and all of its different uses, I have been talking with my client on the possibilities of using this social media platform to better promote our organization.  Since the ROTC program here at CMU is my client, Instagram would be an amazing way to show our audience what the program is all about.  

For the client project, we had to write a memo in which we explain how our client can best make use of social advertising in present time or in the future.  For this, I explained how the use of Facebook ads can better promote our organization in different ways.  On Facebook ads, we can create ads to get more profile views, raise attendence at our events, and even increase conversations on our website.  

[mitchbeekman-blog]

The Implementation Process

When it comes to the social media world, businesses and organizations often fail because of the lack in knowledge for the fundamental principles of mass collaboration.

It is nearly impossible for any organization to implement the principles of effective social media perfectly.  Along with this, each organization has varying levels of willingness to adopt new practices in technologies.  It all depends on how willing that organization is to try our new technologies in the social media world.  The more willing an organization is to try new forms and technologies, the higher the chance is of them being successful. 

Another large part of being successful is having patience and creativity, not just a large budget.  It doesn't take a lot of money in order to have an effective social media presence.  I see this more and more each day in that organizations or companies share the exact same thing on all other forms of social media.  There is nor creativity behind this.  It may turn out to be fantastic for one form of  social media, but it probably won't be nearly as good on the other forms.  The individuals that run the social media accounts for organizations or business have to make each post unique and tailor posts to the desired social media platform.  

[mitchbeekman-blog]

I thought the same way about the Hootsuite module five.  I don't think I really gained that much knowledge on the subject.  Most of it was all common sense. The only thing that I really paid attention to was the video about Facebook content sharing since my client only uses Facebook at the moment.

Module and Client project 5

Hootsuite module five was rather common since to me. I understand that all of the information can be very helpful for companies that may not be as familiar with some social media platforms. When looking at my clients social media, i found that they followed a lot of the tips mentioned in module 5 and much of their media was very eye catching. The one thing that could have been worked on that was mentioned in module five, was the way they operate video. A quick fix to this for them is simply designating one person to operate the camera and one person to speak in front of the camera, instead of one single person doing all of it.

[mitchbeekman-blog]

I completely agree with you on this one.  Social advertising has gone way too far and it is surprising on how much they will do just to be able to track someone.  I had no idea that Facebook has been activating phone microphones even after the app is closed.  This is a huge invasion of peoples privacy like you have said.  I don't agree with this at all and it is making me think about deleting the app completely from my phone.

Has social advertising gone too far?

I believe the answer is quite clear: yes.

Advertisers for as long as they have existed have sought to understand and even anticipate their customers wants so that they could deliver precisely what the customer needs. This was often accomplished through market research and profiling on a broad scale. This profiling tried to aggregate general truths about a certain type of customer and use those generalities to market products to that group in general. While this tactic works, it ultimately cannot take into account how complicated individuals really are and will only ever get close to identifying a customer.

Enter social media, where people publicly express their wants and desires, all of which is tied to that specific persons name. You no longer have to build an advertising profile about a general type of person, they have compiled the profile for you and made it public. That is fine and consensual, but then social media giants take it a huge step further. They read your private conversations to see what you are interested in, and they follow your web browser even after you have left their site. Recently, companies like Facebook have been activating phone microphones even when the facebook app is closed, to listen in on your conversations and see what you are talking about. If what you are talking about contains something that can be marketed, they will do so. This is a huge invasion of privacy! The app is not even open and they are listening to your private conversations so they can make a profit and I am apalled.

[mitchbeekman-blog]

Hootsuite Module 5 / Client Project Step 5

This week in BIS 315, I went over Hootsuite module five.  I thought that this module was pretty much common sense.  I felt like it had a lot of the same material from the modules in previous weeks.  It talked about how visual posts are always good because it engages the targeted audience and it went in to details of better ways of posting stuff.  Since my clients only have a Facebook at the moment, the major thing that I payed attention to  is the “Best Practices for Sharing Content on Facebook” module.  The frequency on how often that my client should post is guided my their audience.  My client needs to focus more on posting content that engages with their audience.  In the Client Project step 5, I discussed the different ways that my client could share content online to best reach their audience.  Their main focus is going to be on Facebook as their way of sharing content.

[mitchbeekman-blog]

Hello Zach, 

Much like your organization, the ROTC program is part of CMU.  Their main goal is similar to yours in that the ROTC program wants to create great second lieutenants once cadets graduate from CMU.  The ROTC program also receives lots of help from our alumni.  Every year, thousands of dollars are donated to the program to help cadets succeed.  We also collaborate with our alumni and bring them in as guest speakers to share their knowledge of years of experience as army officers.  This creates an overall better program for all of the cadets.  Community collaboration is one of the most important factors when it comes to success.

-Mitchell

Community Collaboration

Community collaboration is a very valuable tool. Once a community is established, one of the best ways to best utilize them is to guide them towards collaboration. This is going to be hands down the best tool for my client. Being a part of CMU, my client has a main goal of getting its students a degree and a job once they graduate. Also another goal is to get more students into their undergraduate program and their graduate program. In order to do this, the best technique is to utilize our alumni. Our alumni have a great tie to the school, and have executed what all of the students in the program want. Once we build our alumni community, getting them to collaborate will be huge. Whether talking about their current works or experiences with CMU, there will be a lot of room for collaboration. Once we get them to talk, current and prospective students will see the great program the school has which will drive results on its own.

[mitchbeekman-blog]

I too found that the Hootsuite module seems to be mostly common sense.  If I am working for someone, I am most likely going be be a good advocate for that business.  My client project was mainly focused on how my organization can build up their social media presence.  Since the ROTC program here at CMU doesn't use many forms of social media, I put most of my effort in the website that they do have and their Facebook account.  I told them that they need to be posting more stuff about the different events that we are always doing in the community.  This would put out a good representation of the organizations and increase their popularity in the community.  

Hootsuite 4 and Client Project Step 4

Hootsuite Module 4 was all about building your advocate community, I found most of the content to be common sense, such as “employees can be good advocates!”. If someone is working for you, then of course they will be a good advocate. If they aren’t, they will be fired for harming the image of the business. It also talked about how to pick advocate customers based off their promotion of your product and how appropriate their tweets are.

Client Project Step 4 was a memo to my client about how they can build their social media presence. My client, Wild Side Tobacco, has no website. They have social media accounts but rarely use them. I told them that building a website is the first step in expanding your social media community, a website gives you the tools to track your social media effectiveness. After making a website, I told them to post more content and gave them a suggestion of posting all new products that come into the store online. I suggested using the content calendar to schedule posts on all social media platforms. After doing this regularly, I told them to attach a trackable URL to their site to optimize their accounts and track which ones have the most reach. 

[mitchbeekman-blog]

The Social Organization

During week eight of my BIS 315 class, we had to read chapters 3, 4, and 5 of “The Social Organization.”  These chapters contained some important strategies and modules that I think would be very important for any business that is utilizing social media.  

 In chapter 4, it discussed the “Six F” model of attitudes toward social media.  This model contains the six basic organization attitudes of social media which are folly, fearful, flippant, formulating, forging, and fusing.  These six attitudes can play an important role in the success of collaboration efforts in a business. From chapter 5, it described the “No, Go, Grow” decision model which is a way of systematically determining if and how a community collaboration effort should move forward.  It is good to establish a purpose for why the company should even move forward with something in the first place.  One of the more important thing s from the book is to always make sure that the social efforts match up with the overall goals of the company or organization.  

What were your thoughts on the book?

[mitchbeekman-blog]

Hootsuite Module 4 / Client project step 4

This weeks class was pretty simple compared to a few of the classes in the past.  The Hootsuite module four was mainly focused on your businesses community.  After fully completing module four, I feel like I had gained a lot of knowledge about online communities and how they properly work.  Having a good online community is an important part of having a successful business.  Yes, I do know that some business do just fine with not social media or online community at all.  But in todays world, those online communities are becoming more and more important for business success.

During the module, most of my focus was one the Facebook section due to the fact that the only social media that my client currently uses is Facebook.  As we all know, Facebooks main use is to connect with friend awn to share content with people.  One of the things that I want my client to doing is to use comment threads in order to get more people involved.  The other thing that I'm going to tell my client to start using is the Events feature. ROTC is always having different events.  This would be a great way for people in the community to find out about them and then have the ability to participate in it.  

[mitchbeekman-blog]

I thought that the Hootsuite Module 3 was very informative and relatable at the same time.  At the end of my internship this summer, my supervisor walked me through the steps of how to revoke peoples access to certain things of the company after they have been fired or quite.  I then used this to revoke my own access to the companies website and personal data on my last day of the internship.

The ROTC program here at CMU is my client and they barely ever use social media.  We do have our own website but it is not up to date to where it should be.  I am trying to work with them to get their website updated.

Hootsuite Module 3/Client Project Step 3

In class this week, we were assigned homework to complete Hootsuite Module 3 and Client Project step 3.

Hootsuite was informative, it showed how anyone can effectively set up a team to manage their company’s social media accounts. It gave very detailed instructions about how to make employees “Super Admins” to monitor projects and groups of employees. It also showed how to revoke access if people are fired. It detailed how to monitor projects and assign them to employees. It explained how to assign messages and threads to employees.

Client Project Step 3 was a social media audit. My local business, Wild Side Tobacco, rarely uses social media at all. Due to this, there was no content for me to fill in to the audit in most parts, but I can tell their Instagram is their most popular social media account. Wild Side does not even have a website, I told them in the memo that they should do this as soon as possible. This will allot the store to promote the site on various social media sites and see how their customers engage with them using tracking of the website and what platforms were used to access it via link. I outlaid the benefits of having a strong social media presence, and the larger benefits of using this strong presence for marketing. Social media makes marketing very easy for companies, since the content spreads so fast.

[mitchbeekman-blog]

I think your post is very accurate.  Almost every ad is personalized to the person who is actually looking at the ad. Whenever I go to a website that has ads on it, the ads are always about some thing that I had been researching or something that I was looking to buy on Amazon.   Big data is always being collected at a an unbelievable rate like you had stated in your post.  

When it comes to the legal side of this topic, that is where everything gets fuzzy.  It is hard to tell who exactly owns all of this data that is being collected. It won't be long before the laws will be fully developed.

The Legal side of big data

There is a plethora of big data being gathered every second in the digital age, so much information that companies are able to use this information to target people with the most relevant information/ ads for each individual person. done are the days of having a generic  ad for the masses, everything is personalized these days to make the ad fit like a glove. However, the legal side of big data has a lot of people arguing who all this information belongs to. is it the information of the person that it comes from, is it the companies that collect it. Or is suddenly just general information that anyone can use to whatever purpose that they want. The digital age is still new compared to the rest of history. lines and laws are still being developed to help make the guiding rules crystal clear. 

[mitchbeekman-blog]

Hootsuite Module 3 / Client Project step 3

After completing the Hootsuite Module 3, I found that it was very beneficial.  It discussed various topics that covered the best tactical practices, operational considerations, and evaluating your success, using campaigns, and using analytics.  These modules allowed me to figure out what exactly my client should be posting in order to have more success in the social media world.  Another thing that my client has to work on is balancing their social media posts.  They shouldn’t be posting so much that it is overwhelming, but they also shouldn’t be posting so little that it does not engage their audience. 

Moving on from the Hootsuite modules, I started to work on step 3 of the client project.  In doing this, I took all of the knowledge that I had gained and put it toward helping my client in the social media world.  We discussed all of the great things that the modules covered in the videos,  My client now has a much better understanding of how to be successful.  The actual work to be completed in step three took much longer than I had expected it to take.