Week 8 Blog Post

After viewing the video lecture on implementation, I think that the firm I chose to work with for the past eight weeks will encounter some minor to moderate level challenges when acting to implement the changes I have offered. I chose to work with the Independent Auto-Owners Insurance Agent Clayton Rouse and his family in Leslie, MI. This is a very small market, small operating business. However, the brand image and name of Auto-Owners Insurance is far from small across the country.  Despite this, the independent agent works as the title depicts: independently. Meaning, little to know outside support is provided from the parent company other than brief training and overview of corporate policies and such. Because of this, one of the key challenges that I believe the independent agency will face when activating my suggestions are lack of continuity. Maybe, each of the staff members won’t be on the same page as each other and the parent company in their social media efforts. Customers and the corporate office may potentially notice the difference in postings as they should be coming frequently and often, therefor leading to further complications and reduced growth. 

Week 5 Blog Post

After viewing “The Legal Side of Big Data” and “The Internet with a Human Face”, the first thing that came to my mind was the security of businesses big and small. Big data is surely something that businesses need to be aware of when in use. Of course, the use of big data has its positives, but included in this are deep and dark negatives as well. Surely, I am referring to stolen information. Not only the businesses but also the consumers tied to these businesses must be aware that there are serious risks to having information stolen from them when big data is in use. Cyber-attacks from hackers can be malicious and crippling to an individual and a large business. From the video(s), key examples of this are shown when the Target database and Home Depot credit cards become exposed and stolen via online attacks. While there may not be a way to 100% balance to the opportunities and threats posed, the businesses can attempt to stay one step ahead of the online attackers to help keep the odds in their favor.

Internet business models influencing surveillance and data gathering on the internet comes as no real shock to me. The use of advertising in today’s day and age can make almost anything possible for businesses. With the ever growing database that the internet is, countless hours of information and data will be logged that will never be erased.

Week 4: Blog Post 2

The three main reasons that junk news spreads so quickly across the various social media platforms is due to algorithms, advertisements, and exposure as described in the article, “Three reasons junk news spreads so quickly across social media”. Although search algorithms are foundational to our experience on the internet today, they also greatly affect the personalized content that we view daily. Essentially, the dangerous algorithms that have grown throughout the years introduce great bias in the content displayed to you via filter bubbles that limit information flows. As popularity of the internet has vastly expanded in the previous years, the speed and scale at which content can surface has grown greatly regardless of if the information is true or not. This is where the bias plays a key role and effectively disinterests me in the extensive use of social media.

As the article continued and began to cover advertising, I personally became nervous when reading about social media platforms essentially being a business by selling our data to other larger companies. I can remember a key example of this when I was searching to buy a plane ticket online. After surrendering my search for the night, upon waking up I had found that my email had received more than several plane ticket offers from my current location to the location I was contemplating visiting. This is why I became worried after reading the article’s section on advertising as I fear they are completely correct with their statements.

Moving on to exposure in the article, I simply wasn’t surprised with what they had covered. As the peak political seasons roll around, I have seemed to pick up on the fact that I have only noticed certain positive stories about one party and negative stories about another. How it was put through though, I was unaware until reading the article at hand. I did not enjoy reading that junk news is potentially sent through to my social media feeds based on my friends and their beliefs come election time. This introduces such heavy bias and creates much difficulty in determining the truth behind stories.

I know for myself going forward, I am going to be even more skeptical of a lot of the news I see and read on social media outlets. Unfortunately, this might cause me to not believe a true story due to the heavy and consistent bias implemented over time. For businesses, they can look to respond to these conditions by implementing certain codes of ethics. Surely someone at some point must’ve felt bad for spying on, stealing, recording and selling an innocent individuals personal data.

Week 4: Blog Post 1

In my eyes, one of the most important qualities to a good social media consultant would be creativity or uniqueness. A key aspect to social media marketing is described as creating buzz through content to attract attention. If the consultant at hand has a form of creativity that is unmatched or brings a unique skill set in some way, that is a well-qualified consultant. Along with this, well above-average communication skills are an essential quality for any effective social media consultant. To show the importance of this, another key aspect to social media marketing is the ability to develop two-way online conversations with other users. These are some of the most important factors or skills that I would search for in a social media consultant. Their job would be to come in from the outside and address any problems along with teaching the firm how to deal with them. Their role as an educator cannot be overstated as they constantly provide help and learning experiences. 

Throughout most of my life, my social media presence has been overwhelmingly low. If I were acting as a social media consultant to myself, I would absolutely look to hold a one-on-one meeting with myself to ensure we were on the same page. I would have to address specific goals that we are wanting to reach and problems that need to be solved. What we do know is that what we have been doing hasn’t been working (low activity). Using this problem, I would look to educate myself on how to effectively post more and reach out to the social media world. The major importance of the educating and advising over time is to allow myself to understand the problems we are facing and how to address them going forward, even after I am long gone and done consulting.

The Social Dilemma

Companies essentially use data about me to try and get me more addicted. I also saw a fellow classmate post about something within the film that I also wanted to make sure made its way into my post. The film asked a question along the lines of, “Do you get on your phone before or during going to the bathroom”? It really got me thinking about other questions along this nature and just how powerful the big data algorithmic tools can be to generate interest in social media. An example from the video of such a tool being used is one in which they collect data on how long a person spends on a post so they can generate ads to present to that same person later along the line. I did not enjoy that these algorithms can entertain when I am near some of my social media friends or followers. Overall, the video was slightly a scary experience but more importantly an eye-opening one.

Social Media Experiment

I chose to alter my social media use significantly by completely cutting myself off from it for 24 hours. As for what happened or the result of the experiment: I was simply bored. I did not feel any sort of urge or need to use social media of any kind, but I felt very bored not being able to use any of the applications. I personally do not depend on or use social media of any kind heavily, so I wasn’t greatly affected when I chose to go without it for a while. With that being said, I am not sure what else to say to expand on in this post.

I do work with computers each day, so I found it challenging to be away from technology for 24 hours, but again the social media aspect was not an issue for me. Usually in my free time during this work on the computer I tend to visit the different social media sites and entertain myself for a short period of time. Instead, during this time I chose to do homework for classes instead of using it as leisure time.

Social Media’s Influence on Life

For me personally, social media does not have a huge influence on my everyday life. I do not care to consistently post or update others on my life or about my daily activities. However, I do use social media platforms each day for news and entertainment. Generally, I will check up on the trending news around the world each day and check on many different sports clips and highlights. Having the internet constantly available in my life has been critical to I can only imagine. I try to fathom living without it sometimes. Always being able to find the answer to almost any question being asked is huge.  I found the ‘Before the Internet’ article by Emma Rathbone to be very interesting at the least. The article obviously focuses on what many would do before the internet came around, however I grew up with the internet as did many of my peers. Reading the article, I did not relate to it much but rather learned from it. There is a line in the article that mentions something along the lines of “if you wanted to see an old friend again you’d send a letter and hope they get it”. To this day it still baffles me that communication was once like this. What happened with urgent messages to ensure that they were delivered and received properly and timely?  The video of Max Stossel speaking caught my attention in a few different ways. While it was interesting to hear about how social media can be distracting and addicting, I think of it much like fast food in that the consumer has just as much responsibility as the creator. If you uncontrollably eat fast food, you will gain much weight. If you let social media consume your day, social media will consume your life and thoughts. To go more in depth on this, within the video Max mentioned a quote that Kyrie Irving had received a lot of criticism for. Being a sports fan, I was interested in what Max had to say about this quote given by Irving, but instead he focused more on how people received Irving’s message and their response to it. Irving had claimed that the world is in fact flat, and Max focused on the response that the supporters of the flat world idea gave. They mentioned that the internet had allowed the “round earthers” to crack Irving. To me, Irving did this to himself in that he let the comments of social media users around the world get to his head. This is a key reason why I do not care for social media. 

Introductory Post

Hello! My name is Ryan and I am from Lansing Michigan. I have lived there my entire life. I am currently a senior at Central Michigan University set to graduate in May although I will be continuing my education at CMU in August as I recently got accepted to the graduate program at CMU. I will be graduating with an Accounting major and an IS minor, then I will pursue an MBA with a concentration in Finance. As for my overall career goals, I would love to eventually be an executive of a high ranking firm. Although, for the near future I would love to get my foot in the door with some Financial and Audit work to see if I have key strengths in either field. With this blog, I wish to accomplish the skills necessary to maintain and run a blog with ease. I am not too familiar and fluent with many social media sites. 

A company that I believe imposes a great presence on social media is Nike. With how large the brand name has grown they already have a large presence with the media outlets, but are also known for unique ways of advertising. Through the use of professional athletes leaking new products to training clips being released on Youtube showing great reviews of new and soon to come products, Nike clearly shows effective use of their social media accounts.