mppr755spring2019

[mppr755spring2019]

A Success Career Path Leading by LinkedIn

How do you connect with your classmates? Your colleagues? Your previous boss? 

Before LinkedIn was invented, these questions are frequently asked and there was no best way to make a connection with others. The reason LinkedIn was invented is that people need a professional place to be connected. Facebook or Twitter is a social tool, you can be friends with anyone and post whatever pictures you want on them. However, this is not something in a professional manner that people would like to see. Creating a professional profile on LinkedIn is like creating an online resume. People can easily search your name on LinkedIn and know your work experiences and talents, but not Facebook and Twitter.  

When I first started my undergraduate study, I heard from people a lot about getting a personal LinkedIn profile is crucial for searching for jobs. But I never create one because I thought it is the same platform as Facebook. However, people around me who got jobs they actually got it from the LinkedIn connection. This has changed my mind. However, like me, a lot of people did not have a professional LinkedIn profile. We are all missing great opportunity to be recruited for great jobs because there are 94% of recruiters are active on LinkedIn, and only 36% of job seekers are active. 

Michael Milutis, the corporate marketing strategist at CAI and Director and Co-founder of the IT Metrics & Productivity Institute, explains that:  

Any individual who is not on LinkedIn in 2016 is akin to a small business that was not in the yellow pages, circa 1980. It’s suicide. Imagine this: what if you showed up for a job interview in the 1980s or 1990s and refused to produce a resume? That’s how decision makers and employers will feel about you if you are not on LinkedIn in 2016.

People are no longer getting jobs using the old fashion ways. According to a San Francisco Fed paper highlighted at The Wall Street Journal, researchers discovered that 75% of those who get new jobs have not been actively looking or even applying to jobs in the last three months. This means one of two things: they were referred, or they were headhunted. your chances of landing a job the traditional way are getting slim. Instead, pursue alternative methods like LinkedIn.  

As soon as I started my graduate program, I created my LinkedIn profile and had my headshot taken. Now I start updating my profile and reaching out to people that I know. LinkedIn is not a social tool like Facebook, and now I have to treat it professionally as me entering the professional field.

[mppr755spring2019]

Why not switch to Instagram

Instagram is one of the most popular gainings and giving popularity to people. 

It reached 104.7 million active users and expected to reach 130 million in 2022. Due to its popularity, more and more people like to develop their Instagram account as different influencers. People want to share with followers about what they love and what they are passionate about. Besides following celebrities, beauty, fashion and travel bloggers/influencers are the second most popular accounts for users to follow. By following them, users can know about the latest fashion trend, the most popular makeup style, and see the world without traveling. 

On the other hand, many active users did not intend to start their accounts to become popular influencers. People would share outfits that they wear every day, makeup products they like the most, and the most recent place they travel to on their accounts. By posting more and more posts to capture other users’ interest, active users would become influencers and received more followers.  

A college friend of mine named Kai Xu, known as Keezy, now running a personal Instagram account with 51.7K followers. When he first started his accounts, he was not aiming to become a popular influencer; he was just like to share his clothing style and getting fashion feedbacks from other users. Turns out, people love his style and become his loyal followers. 

Besides gaining followers and reputation, Instagram is also great for people who want to start up their own business. Like Kai, after he developed his personal account successfully, he is seizing the opportunity to build up his fashion business. At the beginning of 2019, Kai founded his person clothing brand named “Ecosysla” and launched his first design T-shirts online. Although there are only 1,014 followers for the brand's Instagram account, I believe with his unique fashion style and influential reputation, the brand will do great in the future.  

As for myself, I would like to be a positive influencer for Internation students. On my personal Instagram account, I would post my daily school life and share foreign study experience with followers that I know or don't know. Getting positive feedback from followers and sharing my thoughts and moods with them is the best thing to do on Instagram.  

There are so many different things that people can do with Instagram. Sharing different lifestyles, posting influential pictures, creating dream business and among others are not limited on Instagram. Dream bigger and be consistent will lead you to the path of the future that you always dream about.

[mppr755spring2019]

The Weibo Era Is Here

Weibo still wins my choice of microblogging and it makes harder for Twitter to catch up. 

When Weibo first released by Sina Corporation in 2009, it went viral in China. Last year, Weibo is one of the most popular social media platforms in China and now it has over 445 million active users. Since 2010, I became a Weibo user and have continuedly using Weibo until now. When it first released, people like to refer it as the “Chinese Twitter”, or “combination of Twitter and Facebook”. However, people discover gradually that Weibo is more than Twitter and Facebook. Weibo represents itself and the Weibo era is here.  

Many people like to compare Weibo with Twitter, and of course, both platforms have a lot in common. Both of these platforms are using a microblog format which is a revolution for social media and they are great platforms for companies of any size. Even though Twitter is globally used, now more and more companies are switching the company’s social media platform to Weibo. As a user for both platforms, I have to say Weibo really won my choice and I would definitely stick to it.  

Major advantages like media-rich format, threaded comments, micro topics, and trends categorization make Weibo outstands itself and harder for Twitter to compete with. Weibo’s media-rich format enhanced user’s experiences through videos, animated emoticons, and music. Threaded comments are an invaluable tool for individual and business because it simplifies the process of getting users feedback. Most importantly, Weibo has a special page for the hottest trends on the platform and this feature can bring users the ultimate victory over their competitors if the content they post turns out to be the hottest trend during any time of the day. The following diagram shows the summary of differences between Twitter and Weibo:

I am an active vlogger and my posts are benefited from the trends categorization feature in Weibo. A video post that I posted on Weibo and Twitter at the same time, I received over a hundred views within an hour on Weibo and only 20 views on Twitter. As long as I tag my posts with the correct trend category, I could always receive a good number of views on Weibo because Weibo users are consistently searching the hottest and newest topics in each trend category. The following snapshot is my Vlog post on Feb 25th and it has 5196 reads and 1684 plays.  

“While both platforms share similar features, such as a 140-character limit on messages, the Beijing-based service has overtaken Twitter in both market influence and user numbers. Weibo, which reported a 30% rise in monthly active users to 340 million in the first quarter of 2017, now has a market capitalization of $16.4 billion. Twitter, which is actually banned in China, has 328 million monthly active users and a $13.5 billion market capitalization.”

The Rise of Weibo, Yue Wang

Chinese social media is starting to dominate the business sector and I think Twitter really needs to upgrade its platform in order to catch up with Weibo. I believe very soon in the future, Weibo will outpace its Western Competitor.

[mppr755spring2019]

Taking a step from WeChat to Facebook Messenger

As an international student from China, I have been using WeChat for almost 8 years now. WeChat is a big part of my life because I use it to communicate with all my families and friends in China. I believe WeChat not only owns a big part of my life but it also does the same thing to other people in China. Many of Tencent's competitors tried to develop similar chatting apps to compete with WeChat, but the results are always the same: WeChat won, they lost. Without going through different platforms, people are able to do so many different things besides chatting through WeChat, such as online banking, purchase movie tickets, book flights or taxi, among others. People in China and even in different Asian countries cannot be separated from WeChat, and this phenomenon will be very hard to change in recent years.   

On the other hand, seven months later after WeChat was invented, Facebook also launched its own chatting app - Messenger. It is a communication tool which similar to WeChat, but also different with WeChat. According to Lazauskas, In 2015, Facebook’s vice president of messaging products David Marcus published the accomplishment for Messenger which I would give out a big “wow” is that, 

“Messenger has grown to 800 million users all around the world, a huge increase from 200 million users less than two years ago.” (Lazauskas, 2016) 

It is very successful for Facebook to launch this app, and Messenger is now the biggest competitor for WeChat because it is very well-known and used internationally.   

Many people may wonder, “what are the differences between these two apps?” Well, a couple of years ago I downloaded the Facebook Messenger, but I did not have many friends on it so I deleted it. For the Switch-Up assignment, I decided to redownload the app and tried to experience it better this time. After a couple days of usage, I found out there is something that Messenger does better than WeChat. Saving GIF images or stickers is always a pain with WeChat. First, you have to download the themes or characters of the stickers, then you can apply them and send them to your friend. But once the memory on your app is full, you cannot download or save any more stickers until you delete some old ones. When you can’t find the perfect sticker to express your feelings or you like the stickers your friend send to you and you cannot download them, it is the worst feeling ever. Messenger is beating WeChat with this little feature.   

After I read an article, it tells me something which made me think Messenger has better feature – the backend to manage customer message. The backend for WeChat was poorly designed and it could not handle customer service messages well. It can only store messages for 5 days and it is very hard for companies to retrieve them. Comparing with WeChat, the backend of Messenger is designed like a chatroom to encourage brands to intuitively respond to the user request (Chen, 2015). As a PR profession, I think this feature in Messenger is a very important tool for companies, and it is definitely the key for companies to build up a better connection with their customers.  

In the end, between WeChat and Messenger, I can’t say which app is better than the other one. In fact, both of them actually have some very cool and useful features that everyone else can’t compete with. With a benign competition, these two apps will be able to adopt better ideas and develop more useful features.  

 - References -

Chen, T. (2015). 5 Reasons Why Facebook Messenger Is Better Than WeChat.  

Retrieved from: https://walkthechat.com/facebook-messenger-vs-wechat-5-reasons/

Lazauskas, J. (2016). The Biggest Internet Phenomenon Since Facebook.

Retrieved from: https://contently.com/2016/01/08/800-million-users-could-messenger-become-bigger-facebook/

[mppr755spring2019]

Media Switch Up - YouTube

This week’s media switch up I’m going to talk about YouTube as my new media platform. I used to think about YouTube as a video platform where people only watch TV shows or music videos. However, last year, when I was trying to produce a short film for my homework and I did not know where to start so that I asked my friend for help. During the phone call, he just briefly taught me how to shoot and edit a film, but I still did not understand the whole process. Then he told me “you should just YouTube it”, and I was confused. Did YouTube start teaching people to film or edit a film? With this question in my mind, I started to type in the YouTube search engine: “how to edit a film?” Then boom! Thousands of videos pop-up in my page and all of the videos have a detailed description of how to edit a film using different software.

I was shocked. Before my friend told me about this, I did not know I can use YouTube like that and learn from it by just watching other people' videos. From then on, I would search everything I want to learn on YouTube, and it would definitely have somebody already posted videos related to my topic. For example, last week when I want to create my Tumblr account, I just searched in YouTube and hundreds of video showed up. It is a very convenient tool to use and a quicker way to learn different things like how to set up my computer, how to create a Facebook account, and how to cook spaghetti, etc. People can YouTube everything and the chances for them to find the result are very high.

Beside searching different type of videos on YouTube, people can also create their own channels and share something they would like to share with others. For example, beauty bloggers would share new makeup products and skin care products they purchased, or teach people different skincare routines and makeup skills. Without these people sharing their videos, there is no way we can learn from YouTube as well. One interesting thing I found when I’m using YouTube video is that people from different ages and demographics are all using YouTube. Not only younger people would share videos, but elders would also post videos or at least watch videos then learn from YouTube. I think YouTube is definitely the most interactive social media comparing with other media platforms because the majority of people would use YouTube in their daily life.

Another factor I found is that YouTube is not a platform where companies and organization would create an official page and promote themselves. Even though some small businesses would create their own channels, not every bigger brand would have a channel to promote themselves. Since some YouTuber would have more followers and higher reviews on their videos, it is easier to promote advertisements on their channels then have more views on the ads. With the higher view videos or YouTuber, before their videos start or during their videos, different companies have to ability to pay the person and promote their advertisement on their videos. In this way, when people watching a video from a specific person, they will also watch the advertisement together. In addition, some companies would also give out products for YouTuber to record a review of the product and advertise it. Without the need of creating its own YouTube channel, many companies can easily promote their brands and advertise their products on YouTube. Overall I think YouTube is a very successful social media and I would keep using it as my day to day tool.

[mppr755spring2019]

Because I have never used Tumblr before, in this week's media switch up I decided to explore Tumblr as my switch up social media platform. I know Tumblr is a blog media where people can share long writings, photos, and videos, etc., but I have never actually used it. Therefore, I want to use this opportunity to start using this platform and explore more with it. 

I have been using Facebook and Instagram as my primary social media, and I think Tumblr is the combination of these two platforms. Since many of my friends on social media are the same group of people, I would usually post longer writings or stories on Facebook and post pictures and short text (usually around one sentence) on Instagram. On Tumblr, now I can post various things on my page and there is no limitation about the content. Either select over 10 pictures to upload at a time or share a video or audio directly on my wall. It is very convenient and direct. 

The Tumblr users are cross ages, among the users, teenagers and young adults tend to share more pictures or videos, and elder tends to write more text and use it as a personal diary. On the explore section where I can meet new people and see their posts. The majority of people would post funny pictures or videos as their content. Also, some people would share professional photography with different contents like scenery, animals, and portraits of people, etc.

Besides sharing pictures and videos, Tumblr can also share audios and quotes, and I think this is definitely something new compared with other social media platforms. However, there are not many people would use these features and people are still focusing more on post pictures and videos.

With organization usage, I found that some brands which are more trendy and popular among younger people would have an official Tumblr page. Their design of the blog is more professional and well-developed, and it can catch people's attention better with its design. On the other hand, when I looked for the official pages for some other brands, even though they have a Tumblr page, but it does not show the page is official. The blog page for some brands is probably made up by the public or fans. Many brands would have an official Facebook page or an Instagram account, but not all of them would have a Tumblr page. Like these brands, many public would have different social media accounts but not Tumblr, and I think Tumblr definitely needs to increase its public usage.

Something I found interesting is that on Tumblr post, people can actually share GIF pictures directly and I love this feature so much! None of the other social media platforms offer this feature. I think this would be very trendy and funny,  and it can be a great advantage for Tumblr. On the other hand, people would hashtag more topics compared with other platforms whenever they create a new post on Tumblr. This method can help people get more views of their posts.

Overall I think Tumblr is a fun social media platform to use because people can design their own page the way they want it, and use it as their own "official page" to identify themselves. I would try to learn more about Tumblr and utilize it better.