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This week I read an interesting article on Forbes.com titled, “The Influencer Marketing Trends That Will Explode In 2019” The article was written in December of 2018 by Tom Ward and it contained a lot of interesting facts and predictions.

Here are some pieces of the article that I found most interesting:

1)According to a study from Linqia, 39% of companies are planning on increasing their influencer marketing budget and the majority of companies will spend between $25,000 - 100,000 on their budget for influencer marketing. I found this really interesting because it tells us several things. Firstly, influencer marketing is obviously working because a significant number of companies are planning on spending more money on it and companies are also spending a significant amount of money paying influencers. This also shows that if they develop partnerships with several companies, it is feasible for people to make their livelihood just by being an influencer.

2)Ward believes that “companies will take more risks when selecting the influencers that they partner with”.  He believes that brands may select more controversial influencers because they often have higher engagement rates. This sentiment was also echoed later in the article by Tana Mongeau who is self admittedly a more controversial influencer. Yet, Mongeau said even she was surprised by how many big corporations wanted to work with her despite, or perhaps due to, her wild image. Personally, I wouldn’t be shocked if this prediction comes true but I suspect that there will be limits. It comes back to the age old debate about whether or not all publicity is good publicity.

3)It was also interesting that many of the influencers noted the increasing amount of creativity brands are giving them. Anwar Jiwabi a creator with 10 million followers said, “In my mind, I’m creating a regular video with a product instead of creating an ad.” This shows that there is an increasing trend away from traditional ads and more towards influencers coming up with creative ideas. It will be interesting to see what happens with this trend. I predict that eventually we could see less professional ad agencies and instead influencers and their personal creativity taking over.

Overall, it will be very interesting to see which of these trends come true and which new trends begin to emerge. One thing is for sure, social media is a rapidly growing field with a lot of potential.

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The Power of Social Advertising:

With an estimated 2.77 billion people using social media currently, it has become a very powerful tool for marketers. This week I worked on Chapter 6 of the Hootsuite Social Media training. This chapter focused on social media advertising, discussing what it is as well as strategies to be successful. Here’s the breakdown of some of my biggest takeaways:

1) Identifying a target audience is important: A lot of the value of social ads is that they help get your business and messaging in front of the right people. However, it’s up to you to determine who these ‘right people’ are. This is where the importance of identifying a target audience comes in. Essentially it doesn’t matter how many people see your ads if they aren’t people who would be interested in your product. Due to the financial commitment of many campaigns, you want it to be as effective as possible. Define your ideal target audience by establishing demographics such as gender, age, socio-economic status, geographic location etc. as well as things such as ideal hobbies and beliefs.

2) Different social medias offer different benefits: There are different platforms built for different reasons, Instagram benefits people who want to post pictures and capture real life moments. Twitter is where you can go to post opinions and discuss current topics with millions of people across the globe. Snapchat is a newer form of instant messaging in a sense in the form of pictures and filters. It allows to people to communicate non-verbally.

3) How to market/advertise to a certain market: Once you have established that target market or group you want to market to it is important to determine how you will reach that market. With 2.77 billion already using social there is an ever present force that can be used when marketing with social media. Today’s society is always tweeting or using Instagram, so the most appropriate ways to market depend on the placement of the ads where users will see it most often. It is important to understand the location and age range of your market so you can place the most persuasive and influential ads on the most used social media platform in that region or area.

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FYRE Festival: The Basics

For many people FYRE festival was something we simply experienced through memes and so neon orange Instagram squares. But for a select few, it was a nightmare of being trapped on a hot island with no water or proper beds. And for one Billy McFarland, it was his biggest scam yet. This week I watched the Hulu documentary called Fyre Fraud which detailed the event from start to finish, including interviews from key people involved such as Billy McFarland and marketing team members from Jerry Media. So what can we learn from this story?

Social Media has become one of the most powerful tools of this generation: The majority of the Fyre festival fraud was executed by creating a fake perception of the event on social media. They were able to make it seem so, so real that people didn’t feel the need to double check or do any extra research. It has become a tool that people trust so deeply that they often forget to think about the fact that it is all just perception and not necessarily the whole picture. Social media is powerful no doubt, it all depends on whose hands these tools are in. It doesn’t mean to avoid it completely by any means but instead use it with caution.

Exclusivity is enticing: One of the main strategies of this campaign was to create an illusion of exclusiveness. This tied into one of the common features of the social media generation - FOMO or fear of missing out. This was established by hosting the event on a private island so only certain people could go there. Then, they made prices high so only a certain type of clientele could afford the festival. The key however was using celebrity influencers to give off the impression that people who went to this festival would be able to spend time with these people.

Overall, influence is power: One way that Billy McFarland did this was by using his status and authority to maintain his composure and control over everyone. His ability to incite coercion into others allowed him to continue to receive investments and payments to fund his scams. His techniques and strategies used for marketing and persuasion allowed him to directly and indirectly change people’s behavior in a way that benefited his pocket more than their wellbeing.  

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Did you know you could be a paid influencer without thousands of followers?!

This week I am taking the opportunity to share some social media advice from one of my favorite social media experts. I first found Jenna Kutcher through her Goal Digger’s podcast and I soon became a huge fan due to her expert social media advice. I read one of her blogs this week and I found the concept super interesting.

Jenna’s blog was all about the idea of micro-influencers which are people on social media with a smaller amount of followers than your typical influencers but who are still paid to promote products for brands. Surprisingly, some brands actually prefer micro-influencers because many of them tend to have more engaged audiences. I learned that one of the first things many brands look at when they look at someone’s page for a potential collaboration, is the comment section on their page. This is because “Micro-influencers are building engaged followings and (in most cases) are focused and dedicated to fueling their community with genuine comments and interactions.” (Jenna Kutcher)  A lot of comments and interaction generates genuine engagement which is what the brand truly desires. As Jenna puts it, “Brands love to see an influencer who shares what they like and speaks honestly about the products they use…”

So at this point you might be looking at your Instagram page and wondering, “Do I qualify as a micro-influencer?!” The good news is you might! There isn’t necessarily a set number of followers that you need to start getting brand deals. A few good ways to start putting yourself out there is to start growing your influence by engaging with like-minded people and companies on Instagram. Start liking their posts and leaving genuine comments telling them what you enjoy about their photos and brand. It is also a great idea to start using hashtags that work well with your account and the type of brands you want to work with. It might take awhile to find your perfect hashtag combo so don’t be afraid to play around with them!

It is also a great idea to take things a step farther and start posting about some brands you love, for free. This will help brands understand how you will promote their product and add value to them as well as get your name out there more.

Overall, realizing that you don’t need to have half a million followers to start making money on Instagram is a game changer. Shifting your main focus from the amount of followers you have to the level of engagement you get, can change your whole strategy and reap much larger rewards.

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Creating a Purpose Roadmap

This week I read chapters 3-5 in the book The Social Organization by Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald. The chapters focused on how to become a social organization, form a vision for community collaboration and redefine purpose by building purpose roadmaps. These chapters were filled with a lot of great information, but one concept that really stuck out to me was the idea of building a purpose roadmap. I too can relate to the temptation of starting a project with many different features. It can be so tempting to try to bring all of your ideas to life right away. But through my firsthand experience I’ve learned that if you bite off more than you can chew, it’s much less likely that your ideas will become a reality. Luckily, the purpose roadmap provides a great tool for overcoming this obstacle.

A purpose roadmap is defined as “a set of related and sequenced purposes that define how a community’s collaboration can start, grow and evolve”. One important thing to remember when creating your roadmap is that it serves as a plan of possibilities but it is not set in stone. If something doesn’t work out exactly as you had originally envisioned, turn the experience into a positive and keep moving forward.

There are five basic steps to consider when creating your purpose roadmap. The first one is preparation aka picking your community and deciding who in the organization will create the roadmap. The second step is to define the community by identifying subgroups with the same or similar needs and benefits. Next, you will want to brainstorm purposes to identify how community participates can contribute in valuable ways that will help themselves and the company. Fourth, you should evaluate and organize your purposes. Analyze your brainstormed purposes and decide which ones will best fit your organization and goals. Like we discussed earlier it is important to not tackle too much at once. There is always time to add more purposes later on. Lastly, it is time to document the purpose roadmap by creating a flowchart that includes all of the information you’ve brainstormed and analyzed in the previous steps.

Overall, a purpose roadmap is very beneficial to a company because it helps make sure everyone is on the same page. It is also a good chance to double-check the direction your company is heading and make sure it is one that aligns with your core values and goals. Companies of all shapes and sizes can benefit from some version of a roadmap so it is a great tool to learn more about.  

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Developing a Social Media Strategy (Hootsuite Module 4)

This week I worked on Module 4 of the Hootsuite training program. These lessons were all focused around building and fostering community engagement on social media channels. One strategy for building community is to find advocates which can include customers, fans, employees and influencers. The goal is to build relationships between brands and consumers that engage and empower both parties. This is powerful because then both parties are very motivated to make the partnership work for both parties.

One important question that companies should ask themselves as they work to build their community is “How do I engage followers that will derive value from my community?” This is a good question to ask because we want to build a community that benefits both the company and their followers. Although a lot of companies dream of building a large following, the module actually said that it is better to have a small but dedicated audience. Initially I was surprised to hear this but upon further reflection, I have actually heard of this concept before. A podcaster I listen to discusses the concept of micro-influencers. A micro-influencer is defined as someone who has less followers, think 2,000 - 50,000, yet has cultivated a very engaged audience who will readily listen to their suggestions and recommendations.

Module 4 also talked about the importance of monitoring the results of your social media strategy in order to compare results over time and measure your progress. There are three important categories to monitor. First is measuring community growth. This is done by tracking the size of your following and the rate of growth over time, and it’s important because you want to ensure your community is continuing to grow at a steady rate. If at some point the growth rate changes drastically, it’s important to taken note as it might mean that your strategy is either working really well or really badly. The second factor that should be monitored is community engagement. This is done by monitoring the quality and quantity of the comments and mentions that occur on social profiles. This is important as it provides a good insight into how a community is feeling towards your company and how engaged they are. Thirdly, it is important to watch for brand love or in other words, the amount of positive testimonials, brand advocates and positive third party support your brand is receiving. This helps monitor how well your company is doing in the world in general and among other professionals.

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Tips for Developing a Social Media Strategy

For anyone looking to learn more about how to effectively use social media platforms by creating and optimizing strategies, I highly recommend Hootsuite’s training module - Social Marketing Training. This week I focused on Chapter Three of the module which is all about creating a social media strategy. I learned TONS of useful information and I’m just going to focus on a few of the basics here, so if you’re interested in learning more check out the free training at  https://education.hootsuite.com/collections.

One of my first big takeaways is that it is important to start building a strategy by evaluating where your company is currently at. An effective way to do this is by conducting a social media audit. An audit involves analyzing your audience - who are you currently reaching and who are your potential customers? Next, consider taking stock of your social media presence internally. List all of your company’s social accounts and identify your best and worst performing content. Now is also a good time to delete old accounts that aren’t being used. Lastly, conduct competitive audits by looking at your competitor’s accounts and learning from what they’re doing and what appears to be working well for them. A big question to keep in mind throughout these stages is: What value is your social media adding to your audience now vs what value do you want to be adding?

Now that you have a better idea of where your company is at currently, it’s now time to begin creating SMART goals for your social media accounts. Once you have your goals, you can begin creating tactics that will help you reach your goals. Tactics generally fall into three categories - paid, owned and earned. Owned tactics are based around creating your own content such as sharing pictures of your products. Earned tactics involve gaining customer support and getting your community to talk about your products. Paid tactics are when you put money into gaining more exposure. Some common examples of this are buying ads on social media or paying influencers to advertise your products.

Now that you have analyzed where your social media presence is currently at, developed some SMART goals and created tactics to reach your goals, you are well on your way to creating a complete and effective social media strategy.

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What You Need To Know About Big Data

The concept of big data is so new that there isn’t even a legal definition yet. However, that doesn’t stop big data from being one of the most powerful and controversial things in our modern world. A proposed definition of big data is when volumes of data are being collected and then processed by algorithms. Big data is used by companies and the government to gather information and process it, supposedly to make life much easier for consumers. However, in the few years since it has developed, millions and millions of people have had their information hacked through big data hacks. One big takeaway for businesses and consumers is that anything can be hacked, meaning neither the private sector nor the public sector is safe and hacks do happen on both sides.

It is important for businesses and consumers to be aware of this because one of the best way to balance opportunities and threats is to be proactive. Reacting to a hack that has already happened is not the best way to deal with the situation. One way that organizations can be proactive includes having strong privacy policies as these will generally be honored by the courts. Another way to be proactive is to clarify vendor agreements or basically who can do what with data. In addition, it is important to ensure security where the data is being housed. It is also worth considering clarifying what happens in case of a company merger or bankruptcy to ensure a plan is in place.

Overall, both businesses and consumers should be aware that with the many benefits of data collection, comes a lot of responsibility regarding big data. Consumers are responsible for being mindful of who they share their information with and how much personal information they give out. Businesses are responsible for being honest about what they do with their consumer’s data and to proactively protect their information. My prediction is that big data is going to continue to be more and more popular so it is time for people and businesses to learn how to effectively handle it.

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Yesterday I had the opportunity to go to the CMU ERP SIM Competition as a social media collaborator for the event. This was my first experience live posting about an event and I had a great time and learned a lot! Here are a few tips based on what I learned!

Do your research ahead of time! I made sure to have a basic knowledge about the companies I was assigned to and it helped so much! It made it much easier to start conversations with the mentors and to sound educated.

Make sure to have a few essentials. For me this was a phone charger, a water bottle and the sheet of information about the event. I would suggest bringing anything that will help you be successful at your job and stay focused and fresh throughout the day.

Take advantage of your opportunities. Especially at events like the Sim, there are so many people to network with and build relationships with. I ended up having great conversations with some company mentors and even the CMU President. In addition to these types of opportunities, as a social media representative it’s important to stay on your toes and keep looking for good moments and pictures to post.

Overall, I would highly recommend an event like the SIM. It was a great experience and I made a lot of great connections. It was really fun to get some professional experience with my dream job and helped me learn what I am good at and what I need to work on improving for next time. I’ve included some pictures I took at the Sim to help show what a fun event it was!

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3 Easy Tips to Achieve Social Media Success

Some people may say that social media is accessible for almost anyone to use. While I agree with this in some ways, it is also proven that there are certain actions that will optimize your social media presence and lead to better results. There are a lot of specific ways to improve your presence on certain platforms but this post is going to focus on some general tips to uplevel your social media.

Make your site visually appealing: Having engaging visuals helps to make a great and memorable first impression on your audience. Some ways to ensure that your visuals make a good first impression are to choose bright, vivid colored images that are high resolution. That helps them to capture attention. It is also a good strategy to use header photos to artistically promote new products or deals.

Provide consistency across platforms: Potential customers want to be able to feel that they understand your business and what you do. This provides a sense of understanding and security that will start the business and consumer relationship off on a strong note. Therefore, it is important to be consistent across social media sites so customers feel they know what to expect from your company. You can maintain consistency by using an easily recognizable profile picture (often your logo is a good option) and by using consistent keywords in the business descriptions across all channels.

Drive traffic to your website and social media: It may sound obvious but one of the most important factors in creating relationships with consumers is helping them to find your company and information. An early step to take is to convey the most important, enticing info about your company early in the bio, as only the first 140 characters will appear in search results. It is also helpful to add a link to the most relevant part of your website in social media bios and make sure they work well with mobile devices.

There are so many social media tips and tricks that it can sometimes get overwhelming to try to figure out how to implement all of those strategies. However, these are three easy to use tricks that will help you optimize your social media profiles quickly and painlessly.

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Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Social Media Consultant?

In my opinion, there are a few key qualities that someone should have as a social media consultant. To start with an obvious one, as a consultant you must have a lot of knowledge about social media and how to use it effectively and successfully. You need to not only know how to work the different sites but understand what each of them will achieve and in what ways. This is important so you can develop a very comprehensive strategy for your clients. It is not enough to simply throw up a post and call it good. It is also important to be a good critical thinker because every situation is a little bit different so you need to be able to apply what you know to different scenarios. Creativity is also important here because you must be able to get unique and innovative with your solutions and plans. 

You also should be an effective teacher. There is a well known saying, if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day. But if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. I think a lot of consultants shy away from this strategy because they want their clients to continue to feel that they need them. From a business standpoint this need is important, but it can be created while still teaching clients about what you are doing and why. Trust is very important in a client-consultant relationship and teaching your clients about what you are doing and how it will benefit them provides a transparency that will greatly enhance the relationship. Creating this trust and building a strong relationship will help ensure your success over the long term and likely convince your client to give you more freedom with their accounts and your ideas. It is also important to be very collaborative. You will obviously be working with the owners of the company who hired you. You likely also will be collaborating with other team members involved or hired by the business. It is important to maintain effective communication so everyone is on the same team about the social media strategy, the business objectives and things such as a posting schedule and content. 

Overall, I believe one of the most important qualities someone can have in any job is passion and a love for their job and that is true for consulting as well. Having this passion is what will inspire you to be the very best you can be at your job and continue to learn each and every day new strategies and ideas to make yourself even better at your job.

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My Social Media Experience

Since the age of thirteen I have had a personal social media presence just for fun. That has given me a good introduction to the social media sites and I have been decently successful with over 4,000 followers on my personal instagram. Social media for business is a different story however and that is an adventure that I am still trying to figure out. So far I have made business/ professional accounts on Twitter and Instagram as well as LinkedIn but I haven’t done much with the accounts. I am planning on getting more active on these accounts as I believe they will be valuable resources in the future in creating my personal brand and making connections with other professionals. In the past, I have been very active about following professional people that I admire. I pay attention to their accounts and learn from the content that they post. However, I haven’t done a great job of reaching out to them and developing a personal relationship.

One way that I can make better connections with other professionals on social media is by working on creating more of a community by following others and genuinely engaging with their posts through comments, shares and direct messages. I also plan to improve on creating content for business pages. I am not always entirely sure what to share on these pages and I don’t put a lot of time into creating content so I would like to improve on this. I think that LinkedIn would be a great platform for me to start being more active on, as there are a lot of great opportunities to connect with business professionals that I look up to. I am also going to do more research on how to effectively transfer personal social media skills to a business aspect. I feel as though I have a good foundation with social media but I want to improve in every way that I can.

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Mass Collaboration: What you need to know

Mass collaboration is a growing buzzword in the social media community. By definition it is when a large and diverse group of people who may have no pre-existing connections pursue a mutual purpose that creates value. Together, groups of people engaged in mass collaboration create a collaborative community. All together, these components combine to create effective social organizations. The benefits from creating effective social organizations are endless. They make companies stronger and more efficient, lead to more profits and better relationships within organizations as well as with consumers.

There are three basic principles that need to be in place for mass communication to occur. The first is community which forms around a common purpose (the second key component). Communities can often be very diverse and are made up of people who contribute to the collective effort. As I mentioned, the second key component of mass collaboration is purpose. Purpose is important because it draws people together and motivates them to collaborate effectively. Having a strong purpose makes mass collaboration effective and gives it credibility and value. The third key component is social media, which provides a place for collaboration to occur. Social media contains many tools to enhance mass collaboration and is a key piece of what makes it possible.

Social media is making it easier and easier for mass collaboration to occur and more and more people are seeing the value mass collaboration has to offer. I predict that mass collaboration will continue to become more prevelant and powerful as it becomes used more and better tools develop to support it. It will be interesting to see where it goes in the near future. I believe it will soon be the norm in the business world.

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Big Data: How most of America is being stalked without many people realizing

It’s beyond creepy to consider someone stalking you, following your every move, making note of what you buy, who you talk to and where you go. What most people don’t realize is due to the collection of big data, private companies and likely the government too, are tracking us like this each and every day. Creeped out yet? I am. Until recently, I’d never overly considered how so many internet services can be free. Obviously most companies are in it to make money, yet they provide people with many free services. They can do this because in exchange, they turn us and our information into the money making product.

As Ethan Zuckerman discusses in his article “The Internet’s Original Sin”, the creators of the internet had good intentions. Yet, the fast growing internet has quickly turned into something that can’t be contained or controlled. A byproduct of this is the massive amounts of data mining, collection and storage that is done every second. Maciej Ceglowski refers to this invasion of privacy as “a tax we have to pay on innovation”. Our data is used in so many ways but one of the most common purposes is to improve advertising. Online ads have a better success rate when they are targeted to consumer’s intent, so being able to collect and analyze data makes this much easier.

As a business, there are even more things to consider. You need to be aware of ethical, legal and social privacy and their impacts especially on employees, customers and clients. If you don’t there can be legal consequences such as lawsuits. It also has the potential to damage relationships with customers if you lose their trust. It will be interesting to see if big data starts to get more regulated as more and more people become aware that they are the products people are selling. Personally, I predict big data and the companies that collect it are becoming unstoppable and this intense data collection will continue to become more and more the norm.

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A Morning Without Social Media?!! (Post 4)

If you’re anything like me, one of the first things you do in the morning is check your phone. It’s so tempting and tantalizing, all that information and all those notifications right there, just waiting for you. But once you start, it can be hard to stop. 5 minutes turns into 15 turns into 20 and before you know it, all the time for your morning routine is wasted away and you have to rush to have time for everything.

This week I had the opportunity to create and conduct a social media experiment. Based on my bad morning routine, I got the idea to create my social media experiment around the times of day like mornings where technology interfered with my daily activities. After some consideration, those time periods ended up being: in the morning when I first woke up, during meal times, at the beginning of class periods, and at night before I went to bed and in the middle of the night.

This experiment was a challenge, especially at first because I am so used to using my phone throughout the day. It was hard to tell myself no and in ways it was uncomfortable to vary from my normal routine. It was awkward at times, especially at the beginning of my classes as I don’t really know the people around me. It also forced me to have more deep conversations in person instead of over the phone or through texting. However, I’m very grateful that I did this experiment as I felt the quality of my day improved greatly. I was able to spend more time doing things that I really enjoy such as talking to my friends, reading and just relaxing. It was a very different daily experience than normal.

I would highly recommend this experiment to anyone who feels like social media takes up too much time in their day. Just identify a few times throughout the day that would benefit from less screen time and more engagement and shut your phone off during those times. I had several big realizations from this experiment, including the fact that almost nothing is so important that it can’t wait for an hour. I realized that I want to create new habits that limit my technology usage and help me to be more engaged in my everyday life.

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What did Louis C.K. and Sherry Turkle have to say? (Post 3)

Firstly, I watched Louis C.K.’s video in which he discusses the ways technology makes it easier for people to become bullies as well as helps make people fear being alone. I thought C.K was correct in the idea that when people can hide behind a screen it takes away some of the human aspect of bullying due to the fact that the bully doesn’t have to look their victim in the face and directly realize that they are hurting another human being. I also really resonated with C.K.’s point that most people have a deep fear of being alone and so they use technology to put that fear at bay. However, it’s just a temporary, false fix and so it actually makes the feeling of being alone much worse when the person actually has to feel them. I’ve noticed times in my own life where I’ve used my phone or social media as a coping mechanism to avoid feelings I didn’t want to face. In the long run it wasn’t helpful because the feelings only got worse the longer they were unresolved. I believe it’s important to manage the influence of technology to ensure it doesn’t begin to infringe on our humanness. 

Secondly, I watched Sherry Turkle’s interview where she brought up a lot of interesting points about technology and the impact it is having on society. One interesting point that Turkle brought up is our brains are being reconditioned to be unable to ignore the notifications from our phones. I’ve seen research that claims the notifications actually give us dopamine hits so they are literally reconditioning our brains to work differently. I think it will be interesting to see how this evolution continues to influence society. I think it could potentially be a problem if it teaches people to be less and less engaged in everyday life. Building off of that, Turkle also talked about the fact that humans aren’t actually made to multitask and yet so many people are convinced that they can, even though science supports the opposite. I predict that this trend will continue and will lead to less efficiency and a decreased ability to work hard for a long period of time. I believe phones are already training people to have shorter attention spans. 

  Overall both C.K. and Turkle had mainly cynical views of technology. I agree with some of their points but I also believe that there is a lot of value in technology that they didn’t necessarily recognize. I feel that technology has an increasingly important influence in my daily life in regards to connecting me with others and providing a break from the world.

Like most things, technological advancements have a lot of pros and cons, therefore it is important to find a way to utilize the benefits of technology while still responsibly managing its influence.

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Response to Clay Shirky’s TED Talk “How Social Media Can Make History” (Post 2)

Shirky’s Ted Talk brought up some very interesting points and provided a unique perspective on the evolution of social media and technology, as well as the role it plays in society today. 

One point that Shirky made that really resonated with me is the fact that media is continuing to change patterns as it evolves. Especially considering the fact that we are currently living through the largest media increase in expressive capability in human history, it is impossible to predict exactly how social media will evolve and what the next “big thing” will be. Social media has already evolved in ways that people likely couldn’t have imagined 100 years ago, or even 50 years.

Based on the information Shirky provided, I predict that social media is going to continue to follow the pattern of becoming increasingly consumer based and therefore the line between producer and consumer will become increasingly blurred. From personal experience, I know how tempting it can be to become a social media producer when you see the success others are having and you know that you have all of the same tools as them, right in your hand. This quality also gives consumers a really unique power because if they believe that they can make a better product or idea than the existing producer, they now have the means to do so.

Another one of Shirky’s points that stood out to me is the idea that social capital is what matters, not technical capital. In other words, Shirky is arguing that social media’s real power occurs when the platform develops to the point that it has a large following and audience to interact, not so much when it is so new that only the most tech-savvy people are using it. I agree with this point to a degree but not completely. I would agree that the majority of social media’s power occurs when the platform is widely known and has a large audience because then creators and content can reach many more people and have the potential to create a much larger following. However, I also believe that it is important to note that there is value in being on the cutting edge of technology, instead of simply participating in those that have gathered the largest crowd. One benefit of this, is it gives you the potential to become a leading influencer on the site by becoming established well before the masses of people swarm the site. It will also allow you to use whatever benefits the site provides, to enhance your business in fresh, unique ways, that will impress consumers. Once a social media or technology becomes popular, it is almost expected that a company will use it and offer those benefits. However, by being a pioneer on the site or with the technology, you have the chance to offer benefits that your competitors won’t be.

Overall, Shirky made a lot of good points about the use of social media, it’s history and the direction it is likely heading.