Implementation

It is very important for us as students/business professionals to understand the difference between how to reach success and what will cause failure. There is a lot of grey area in between success and failure, but there is no doubt when something does reach the very top or reaches the very bottom. The biggest key is implementation. 

At this point in the world, there is no excuse for not getting ahold of the information you need to be successful. Whether it is something like investing, a career, or in our case social media, the information is out there... people just have to look for it. With that being said, just because of access to information and sometimes even learning the information, this doesn’t guarantee success with it. Implementing that information is the biggest key there is. 

Another key piece that stuck out to me from the video was the concept of task and threat vs. tool and community. I found this interesting because many times pieces of life get associated as a task to check off the list. It is important to recognize this concept in relation to longevity. Gimmicks or contests may help in the short run, but are not sustainable. I also really enjoyed the comparison of community to communication. I believe this is an excellent piece to end the class on as the importance of an online community is huge. 

Effective Content

Hootsuite modules 3 and 4 go into extensive detail about what makes good content and what will keep people coming back to a company’s social media channels. As a business student who hopes to one day run my own business, I have been soaking in as much of this as I possibly can. I was very impressed with how up to date Hootsuite’s information was and how accurate it all seemed. Some of the social media information was more of a brush up rather than new information regarding the different platforms, but this was even nice to see that Hootsuite stays current with the information. 

Effective content is different from platform to platform. For example, a quality post on Tik Tok varies from a quality post on YouTube, and both vary from a quality post on LinkedIn drastically. But what exactly is it that the different channels need? First and foremost, all content on all channels must convey the same message with the same voice. This is crucial to maintain brand image and trust. Not doing this could result in confusion and an overall poor impression on potential customers. Varying from platform to platform, each has their own requirements. A quality Instagram post will include a well edited picture that conveys the correct message the company is trying to put out.

It is very important to blend the content you are posting as well. The suggested amount of promotional content is less than 30% leaving the other 70% to personalizing the brand. A good example of this is Barstool Sports on Instagram. I linked a couple of examples below.

Fun post: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CSNdQwIH55A/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Promo post: https://www.instagram.com/p/CSCtTPiL348/

Some of the other important tips for sharing content include strong headlines or captions, optimal posting times, limiting amount posted to one network at once, and encouraging employees to post to their own networks. Overall, there are many ways a company can successfully create content, but it is important to know the right strategies so the content can convey the messages about the brand that are hoping to get sent to the public. 

Online Communities

Now that we are in our sixth week of learning about social media, we can take a deeper dive into something called online communities. We learned about this very early on. As early as chapter 2 of our book “The Social Organization” by Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald we learned that communities are collections of individuals who come together to pursue a common purpose. For online communities there is no difference. We are simply just pursuing a common purpose that is online. 

After having some basic knowledge we were able to learn more about these online communities in chapter 4 which was all about forming a vision for community collaboration and chapter 5 that centered around the idea of developing a strategic approach to community collaboration. The common topic here is community collaboration. It was nice to read more about what community collaboration is, why we use it, along with how and when to use it most effectively. Sharing some of the same techniques that successful companies like NASA and MSFC are using can never be a bad thing.

To branch off of the last point of NASA and MSFC, I believe there is true value in analyzing other’s success and implementing our own personalized approach. There is usually more than luck that goes into a successful run, especially one such as NASA. With every move carefully calculated, between rocket science and social media postings, we can definitely learn a thing or two from some of the successful media companies. Some other companies I have enjoyed looking at that have successful social media efforts are Walmart’s Instagram, GoPro’s YouTube, Gartner’s Linked In, and Wendy’s Twitter (links below). Each of these companies utilize the platform they thrive on with millions of followers. By analyzing what these social media giants do right, we can grow our own communities as well.

https://www.instagram.com/walmart/

https://www.youtube.com/user/GoProCamera

https://www.linkedin.com/company/gartner/

https://twitter.com/Wendys

Big Data

Big data is one of the most complex topics of modern times. With everything about the morals, ethics, and especially legality of it all unknown by many people, it has been interesting to take a deeper look into the topic. After watching “The Legal Side of Big Data” and reading “The Internet’s Original Sin” I feel that I am much more knowledge about big data and it’s complex legal structure. 

One of my favorite parts from the video “The Legal Side of Big Data” was when the topic of preparation was discussed. I felt that this was a topic that made a ton of sense overall and should be looked into more carefully. If more preparation was done in consideration of big data failure, more money would be saved, less headaches would be caused, and it would be an overall better situation for everyone involved. I thought this topic went well with our lessons on creating a social media strategy. Part of this strategy includes crisis management, and this is exactly the same idea. For that reason, I believe something with big data that corporations and consumers should be aware of is a lack of preparation. Not only will it help to manage crisis, but it will also help to balance opportunities and threats. 

I also enjoyed reading some more about big data in “The Internet’s Original Sin” and listening to “The Internet With a Human Face.” One scary quote from Maciej Ceglowski that stood out to me was when he said (voicing for Google) “Wake up Grandpa, privacy is dead.” I think this embodies the idea of big data pretty much in full. Business models influence data gathering and surveillance on the internet in a creepily well manor. They master it in a way that we know it is happening, but still continue the same way. 

This was some very interesting information to look further into. I enjoyed the material and look forward to reading some of the classes thoughts on big data as well. 

Junk News

We see junk news everyday. Our phones are constantly flooded with information to the point where it can be hard to sort through what is real information, what is fake, and what has some of both sprinkled throughout. For this blog post, I am going to focus more on why this is rather than the problem itself. Many times we cannot address a problem without knowing the roots of it. The article “Three Reasons Junk News Spreads So Quickly Across Social Media” from the Oxford Internet Institute lays out the “why” of junk news quite clear. 

#1 Algorithms

Anyone who creates content or views a consistent amount of content will know about algorithms. This is what posts certain content into certain people’s feeds opposed to another person who might get completely different information. This is all based off of past viewings and other complex factors that are all equated by a computer. The article takes a positive approach to this that I have yet to hear. They say without algorithms we would have to sort through a ton of information. This left me to question if the convenience outweighs the invasion of privacy... I am still thinking on that one.

#2 Advertising

I think we have all had one of those moments by now where we have been talking, or even thinking, about something and the next day there is an ad for the exact or similar product. Things like this are a little freaky and sometimes may be coincidences, but when it comes to advertisements based on search history, it is all part of the plan. This is the same idea that helps to get junk news into our feeds.

#3 Exposure

It has been proven that the information we are exposed to, or expose ourselves to impacts the future information we are provided. For this reason I try to watch a decent amount of both right and left winged videos and form my own opinions accordingly.

Overall, this was an interesting article to look further into. The interest compounded after the information we learned on privacy in week 3. It is interesting to see how privacy invasion and junk news correlate. 

Social Media Consultants

For BIS 315, we were all assigned to become social media consultants. As we learned in our lecture, consulting is helping. To get into a deeper meaning of the word, consulting is the creative application of knowledge to a specific problem or opportunity. I really like how in this definition it says opportunity. I often think of consultants as helping to take advantage of opportunities in the future, or help to smooth out opportunities of improvement. 

There are many important qualities for a social media consultant to have. The most important I believe would be the knowledge of social media. If the consultant is unaware of how social media works and the impact it can have on a business, the results will most likely be sub par. I think a close second would be for the consultant to truly care about his or her work. This passion and drive will be demonstrated in the success of the company he or her is consulting with. There are many other things such as common sense, respect, integrity, grammar, etc. that would be crucial to be a good social media consultant. 

 If I was a social media consultant for my own platforms I would definitely make sure to post more. I post fairly infrequently and one of the biggest keys to social media growth is consistency in posting. I am not trying to grow my social media at the moment, but if I were this would help me tremendously. 

Social media consulting is a very interesting concept. This is a very modern career, but I believe it is one to stay. 

“Privacy” with Big Data

This week’s topic is something I have spent some time looking into in the past: privacy. The biggest takeaway from the lecture video that I think sums up Big Data pretty well is that people are the product. Billion dollar companies like Facebook and Twitter don’t make their money from volunteering free websites, they make their money from advertising and selling our information. This is the advertisement that requires surveillance.

While I can appreciate the three considerations of privacy (legal, trust, and ethics) I do not know how often ethics is truly considered. Legal and trust are considered quite frequently as they both impact revenue, but ethics is all about moral code which many people unfortunately are not too concerned about.

The Social Dilemma is a very eye opening documentary as it shows the real world struggles and issues with social media today. We could even see through the story of the kid who couldn’t go without his phone the true problems this creates. I found this documentary fascinating, yet disturbing. 

Overall, I think there needs to be a change with social media. It seems many people agree, but not many people are willing or have the know how on taking action. I am excited to learn more about the impacts of social media and maybe get to the bottom of how to change social media usage for better in the future.

24 Hours: 0 Social Media

We live in a world where going a singular day without social media seems like a total inconvenience and almost impossible. Of course if we are in an area with no service, or no electricity to charge our phone for an extended period of time, we would get through it. The challenge with this social media experiment is that it takes the will power to not open apps or log in to social media on other devices. I can say I went 24 hours without scrolling, posting, or wasting time on social media. 

The Experiment

I did this experiment on July 1st from 12:00AM - 11:59PM. I chose not to use social media (excluding text and calls which are necessary for my internship). After completing my experiment, I see the results in three different categories: before work, during work, and after work.

Before Work

I start work at 10:30AM and usually wake up around 9:00AM. This gives me about an hour of time that I need to avoid using social media. The hardest part of this was when I was just waking up. Normally I use my phone to help me to become less tired. I check for sports updates, interesting news, SnapChat stories, etc. On this day, I didn’t get to do that. With some extra motivation, I eventually got out of bed and got ready for work. I found that I was ready almost 30 minutes earlier than I needed to be. This tells me that I waste about 1/3 of my morning before work on my phone. I could either utilize this time for productive habits like reading, or just get an extra half hour of sleep. Moving forward I am going to make a conscious effort to ensure checking my phone isn’t the first step of my morning routine. 

During Work

Most days during work I don’t spend much time on social media as it is. I generally only use my phone for work related things such as communication with coworkers, calculations, Google, etc. The one difference I did notice was the occasional urge to go from doing a work activity to “quickly checking” a notification. We know from our class video that the notification is just the beginning to app usage. That is simply how they reel us in to spend ample time on the app. I was able to avoid the urge due to this assignment and will continue to try to do so in the future. 

After Work

I got off from work at 10:30PM, so this again left me with about an hour and a half of social media free time. I typically go to the gym for a workout after work rather than before (I am not a morning person), so that was on the agenda for this night as well. Typically when I get home from work, I get home, get changed, sit down and check my phone for a little bit, then head to the gym. Without social media, the phone checking part of this routine was cut down significantly. I basically went straight from my house to the gym. I didn’t get home until after midnight, so my social media experiment was over. I was pretty tired and didn’t especially care to check my social media when I got home.

Reflection

Turns out you can survive 24 hours without social media! In all reality, my average social media use is pretty minimal, so this experiment might have been a little easier for myself than it will be/would be for others. The main benefits I saw from the experience was time saved and increased focus. By avoiding social media before and after work, I was able to get through my routines more efficiently providing the opportunity for more sleep or healthier habits. I was also able to focus slightly better at work by not getting temporarily distracted from time to time.

While I can see the potential benefits from avoiding social media like this everyday, I think I use it in healthy moderation and can continue to stay course for the most part. I do plan to reduce my time spent on social media in the morning to buy more time. This could help me to have a slower paced morning with less stress. Overall, this was a fun experience and I think everyone should give it a shot!

My Social Media Journey

This week we had to take in the information from both Max Stossel’s talk “We’ve Been Sneaking Into Your Brains” and Emma Rathbone’s “Before the Internet.” These were both very interesting as they took on two different perspectives of the issues technology and social media create. Stossel’s being the issue of tech taking over and Rathbone’s being the idea of certain pieces of humanity vanishing. 

Prior to this class, I became aware of the negative effects social media and technology can have. I have learned that technology can be a very powerful tool, but an even more powerful distraction. When we were still on campus, some friends and I watched a documentary on Netflix called “The Social Dilemma.” This had a lot of similar information as Stossel, but in a different presentation. This made me become very aware of my social media use and helped me to cut back a lot. I do believe social media can have both positive and negative effects on life. At it’s core, I believe social media is a good thing, but just like all good things, too much can become a problem. Keeping up with family and friends from all over the world is excellent, obsessing over what strangers from all over the world think is an issue. To combat this I took a week long break from a lot of social media excluding YouTube and Snapchat. This helped me to realize how much better I can use my time than scrolling through Tik Tok and Instagram. 

I cannot think of an extended period of time where I haven’t had access to my cell phone, but back home our internet/service is slow enough that it feels that way. Sometimes I feel that slow internet is worse than no internet. With all of this being said, I am pretty happy with how my internet use is now. I average about three hours on my phone per day, but most of this is for intentional activities rather than lost time on mindless scrolling. In the future I wish to even out the amount of time I use my phone for social media with education.

Introductory Post

Hello everyone,

My name is Will Ciske and I am a Junior at Central Michigan University. I am in the business school at Central and plan to utilize the knowledge I obtain at CMU in my career post college. 

I was born and raised in northern Michigan, so moving to Mount Pleasant was not too much of an adjustment. I am currently living in Traverse City, but I plan to move back to CMU for the fall semester. I am a very big sports fan. In high school I played varsity sports all four years in baseball, football, and wrestling. I enjoy spending my free time outdoors. Whether it is skiing, golfing, kayaking, etc. as long as it is outside I am happy. 

I am hoping to gain more knowledge about social media and effective digital communication. I have thought about starting a blog in the past, so this will be a great way to gain experience if I ever decide to do so. 

One company that has a solid social media presence is Wendy’s. I say this because their Twitter page is notorious for having witty, funny, and interactive tweets to other users. This creates a more personable approach to social media than most corporations use. 

I look forward to BIS 315 and all of the future blog posts I will get the chance to make.