Social Media and the Power in Business

After completing Hootsuite Modules 3 and 4 I have been able to understand further the importance of creating a content strategy report as we have with our clients. It helps set the tone of what the overall goal is and the strategies laid out to help present that goal in the best manner. One of my biggest takeaway from module 3 was this concept of a social media calendar. I was interested to understand what they meant so I researched into what Hootsuite offers for free and found an excel temple shown below that any user can use on a weekly calendar basis. 

This template offers users to practice using their own calendar planning for their social medias. It has daily tabs that allow you to write in times, the type of post and the overall topic. I think the most important part of becoming an effective organization is simply being organized. Planning out your week in advance will allow you to really curate the content and male sure it matches your goals. It allows you to think of timing as a relevant posting factor and think about how often you should be posting in a week to keep content relevant to the audience.  

After completing modules three and four on Hootsuite, I learned what it takes to develop and share effective content. To my surprise, there is a lot that goes into social media content. Without effective content that will engage your audience, social media is pointless. The first thing an organization should do is create a content strategy. This will make sure that what you are posting is relevant and entertaining to your audience’s interests and goals. It gives your content a purpose and tells a story about your organization. 

After you have a clear strategy, Hootsuite suggests creating a content calendar. This is a weekly/monthly calendar detailing what you will be posting, when you will be posting it, and what time it should be posted. This will keep everything organized, and it will allow you to observe how your content is doing. Here is an example of a weekly calendar I made for my client, Boomerang Backpacks, a non-profit organization geared towards feeding hungry school children.

Another point Hootsuite makes is to know your platform. In the third module is goes through trending social media platforms and describes what effective content looks like on that app specifically. For example, Instagram thrives off visuals, while Twitter is based on shorter statements. 

There are many effective principles on online community building with social media. As a social media consultant, expert, or someone trying to effectively promote on social media, there needs to be collaboration with the target market and steps taken to successfully complete realistic goals.

After reading Chapter 4 of The Social Organization, the “Six F” Model of Attitudes Toward Social Media stood out to me. These include, rolly, fearful, flippant, formulating, forging and fusing (Bradely). More specifically, fearful and formulating. The fearful aspect is where people see social media as a “threat to productivity, intellectual capital, privacy, management authority, or regulatory compliance” (Bradley). I see this fearful aspect becoming more apparent as we learn more about big data. An organization needs to be intentional with their promotions on social media in order to reach these customers. The formulating aspect combines “both the value of community collaboration and the need to be more organized and strategic in its use” (Bradely). I think this stands out because we see so many brands/organizations every day through social media, so the organization and meaning behind the post has to be well thought out to reach the customers.

After reading Chapter 5 of The Social Organization, the beginning of the chapter stood out to me the most with “The Importance of Purpose.” The way that posts are worded and how they look can send a certain message to customers that you may not want. The importance of a well thought out post and a better understanding of how different people perceive it differently is extremely important to online community building with social media.

After completing the Hootsuite module, I better understand how important it is to be organized. Social media is a fast moving industry, and if you are not organized as a consultant. If you can’t keep up it is going to be really hard to stay on top of everything for your clients. Creating a strategy in how you will do this will help you stay organized along with a content calendar.

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After discussing modules 3 and 4, I was able to learn how effective content is developed and shared. One of the more important aspects of developing and sharing content is by having a strategy in place. This strategy should be aligned with the goals of your organization. For example, if your goal is to increase the number of individuals who are ages 30 to 50, then your content should be geared toward individuals in that age range. Having a content strategy in place will allow you to stay on track with your goals and will help you achieve success. Another important aspect to having effective social media content is to have a content calendar. As you could guess, a content calendar is when you plan out the different days that you will post on your social media sites and what will be posted. Details that may be included are the type of post it will which could be a picture, video, livestream, etc., the topic, the post itself, a link, and of course the date and time it will be posted. Having a content calendar and using it effectively will help you stay on track with how often you want to post and will force you to be consistent and attentive. In order to develop effective content, it is important to do your research on what has worked and what hasn’t in the past. You should identify your target audience and keep them in the back of your mind throughout this process. A good way to go about this is to look at your previous posts and see what ones got the most attention and analyze why they did. Once you are able to identify why these posts got more comments or view then you can use this information to shape your strategy and calendar in order to put together a strategy for developing and sharing content.

Becoming effective in content development and sharing leads an organization to become a social organization. Through effective development and sharing of content, an organization is able to capture and engage their audience and get the attention they are seeking. By doing this, they will also build their audience. This does not come easy and planning and having a strategy are keys to making this process effective. Below, you can see pictures from Carhartt’s Instagram page. I wanted to point out how their content aligns with their audience-hardworking people. This is a must in order to get the engagement you are looking for.

When I think of a social media consultant there are many factors that make up a good consultant to ensure a client is getting the best possible aid. The first of many requirements to properly consult a specific client would have to be the discipline to make yourself well informed and knowledgeable on the business/service you are trying to endorse. Your knowledge on your client’s service/product will help you better understand how to go about relaying information, also where and whom your strategies will be publicized to. The next qualities that are without a doubt a requirement are creativity and optimism. In the world of social media today creativity means more than it ever has. The new theme of all social media platforms is captivation. Without a creative and optimistic mind, a consultant may find it hard to capture the attention of their audience.

Social media is a phrase that has been so huge for at least the past 15 years so it’s a little bit challenging to think of qualities that are the most important. If I could narrow it down to a few, I would have to say coachability, being a quick learner and being proactive are most important. One has to be coachable when consulting for whatever industry because who knows what the client may want to change or do differently based off the consultant’s suggestions. This may even require doing more search or deploying new tactics. Directly relating to the next quality, being a quick learner is necessary if and when one needs to learn something new or maybe collaborate with an outside source to get the job done. Lastly, proactivity is just as important as the previous two. As a consultant, you’re hired to come in and add value to complete an organization’s desired results so getting at it and tackling the day is vital. The earlier and harder a consultant works to meet the needs of their client, the better the result would be.

I’m sure there are other important qualities a consultant would need but these three stood out the most because they’re universal for every industry. There are probably more specific qualities for social media professionals but I think the ones I mentioned provide just as much value.

The only true social media platform that I use is LinkedIn. If I were a consultant for myself, I would try to post content daily to improve and build on my personal brand. During my previous internships, I’ve had numerous workshops that preach the importance of developing a personal brand since that carries a significant amount of weight about one’s professional work style. For me, I would post content related to things that were interesting to me such as motivation, certain books and maybe some spiritual guidance. I would deviate from the professional side of LinkedIn to be more personal. Also, I would try and have more authentic connections with people and try and do WebEx meeting’s to actually learn from them.

All I really do on LinkedIn right now is mindlessly scroll and save certain posts that I like or resonate with me. It’s not very fruitful or productive at all. I give myself some grace since I’m in my last semester and have other things to prioritize. Post-graduation, I’m looking forward to developing my presence even more without a doubt.

I find big data and algorithms to be such powerful of tools because of their effects on our society. Algorithms use big data in order to get to get to know you in a way that the algorithms will continually show you advertisements and notifications that will get you to stay on their sites. A combination of big data, algorithms, tech companies, social media, etc. can be very dangerous because they are continually fighting for your time in order to sell your attention in the form of advertisements. Another scary thing about these is social media sits that use big data and algorithms can steer you in certain directions politically and get you to believe certain things. While there are dangers that go along with using these kinds of social media platforms, I do believe there are ways that we can deal with these. I think that it is important to take a step back and see what role these platforms play in our life. Last week was a good example of this. It was a good way for me to assess my use of social media and to get me to realize that it is more of a waste of my time than I thought. I also think that laws need to be put into place in order to makes these social media companies more accountable for their actions.

I have watched this movie within the past year and found it to be very eye opening. There were a couple of things that I noticed this time around that I didn’t catch the first time I watched, and I found to be dangerous. One of those is that if you are not paying for a product, then you are the product. This means that if you are using a service for free, then the way that service is being paid for is through advertisements that you are seeing. An example would be when you are checking your Gmail account. Gmail is a free service, but you will see advertisements on the screen. The same can be said for YouTube. YouTube is a free service, but before you see a lot of the videos, you will have to see an Ad. With this being said, the tech companies are always fighting for more and more of your time. They are continually trying to get you to stay on their platform for longer and longer in order for you to see more advertisements. This translates to more money for the tech companies. The problem that I see with this is that if these companies are fighting for more of your time, then you are going to spend less and less time doing the things that are important to you. This is a huge problem because there already isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done. Social media doesn’t help because from my perspective for the most part it is a waste of time. Is sitting down on Tik Tok every day really going to help you achieve much in life? One thing that I have been thinking about lately is at the end of my life am I really going to wish that I spent more time on Facebook or Instagram? The answer is no and what I feel like I’m really going to wish is that I spent less time on them.

Big data and algorithms are such powerful tools because it, as the documentary, says it erodes the social fabric of how society works. It’s so powerful because it knows every detail of everything you do. It also helps businesses harness all of their data in one place. We own the data that is big data collecting, It taps into the personalities just for their benefit. Algorithms are powerful because they worry about what they need to show you in order to keep scrolling.

It’s dangerous because we are literally the ones being sold, it uses our psychology against us. With it watching our every move it knows everything about us. There is more information about us than there has ever been and it makes us vulnerable. Another danger is that they can affect real-world behaviors and emotions and we have no idea this is happening. It is crazy to think that a simple post causes us to be manipulated. So much time goes into our technology and controls us in a way because it’s making us addicted.

Why is it that we are so compelled by the internet?

Up until recently, I did not personally realize the intense grasp the internet has on my conscience. I say that the internet rules our conscience in a sense that we think about technology from the moment we wake up until we go to sleep at night. I have come to this realization through self-evaluation over my own internet usage. With the internet being the biggest service in the world there is no running from the reality that we all are addicted to it.

The efficiency of the internet is at its peak when it is in its most accessible form which is something that we all always have in at least a five-foot radius from us. Personally, I sleep right next to my phone which is a bad habit because it keeps me up at night as a distraction. When I wake up in the morning, I do not waste any time and immediately pick up my phone and get sucked into something on social media, and it is the most loyal routine my mind knows.  

The most impactful effect the Internet has had on my daily life has been the experience of online learning due to the pandemic. During the pandemic, I and as well as many other college students began to feel burnout from online schooling. Although I had to adapt some students like myself being a stem major were losing crucial parts of learning that I needed to succeed. I also still have effects on my mental health, attention span, as well as absorption of the material.

In Middle School, I used to go out on little camping excursions with my family and friends at a local campground. My mom would insist on me and all my friends that i brought along go without our phone until it was nighttime. This was my mom’s way of saying go be a kid and have fun now that I realize. This is when I would do some of the fun things in Emma Rathborne’s article such as drawing, painting, and any creative idea that came to mind. In Emma Rathborne’s article, she goes in-depth inside the mind of a child before the internet. Max Stossels expresses how we have everything we desire in the palms of our hands, makes me wonder are we missing out on aspects of life by being distracted by the internet?

Some things I will like to start intentionally doing regarding technology is first to limit my use of technology at night because of the toxic effects on my health and sleep schedule. I would also like to have purpose when I use technology if its a means to make money or to network. 

My name is Dajuan Young and I am a senior at CMU, studying Information Systems. I currently work at the OIT Help Desk in the Park Library on campus every weekday to help troubleshoot a variety of issues related to technology with students, faculty and staff. In terms of prior history professionally, I have interned with AbbVie and General Motors the past two summers in a Business Analyst role. I have also had the opportunity to intern oversees with a startup public relations firm in London, England called MUNCH. The experiences that I’ve had during my time at CMU have been more then what I could ever imagine and have really opened my eyes to who I am and how I can impact the world.

With graduation quickly approaching and having been in college for about four and a half years, my career goals have became more clearer then before. I would like to eventually work in a Data Science role one day which would require me to become well versed in coding, data manipulation and visualization, data transformation and increased business acumen. Some of those skills are present already but I definitely have a long way to go in order to become as proficient as I’d like. Switching over to my blog forum, I would like to learn the basic techniques to be influential with social media in order to persuade or inform people on whatever the target goal is.

A company that does a nice job with it’s use of social media is Taco Bell. When I think of Taco Bell I think about all their commercials where they have certain deals and customers can enter to win through their social media platforms. They contests and the way Taco Bell presents their brand is always very cutting edge it seems like and attractive. They know how to reach their target audience.

In regards to chapter 3 of this week’s reading “Becoming a Social Organization”, I believe Taco bell does a great job realizing and utilizing how community collaboration can add value to their brand (Bradley & McDonald, p.31). In their advertisements, it’s evident that Taco Bell like to be inclusive of everyone and that’s reflected in their diverse ads that include all different types of people. Especially today, it’s important to be conscious of who may be being left out the media, whether it’s done intentionally or not. I believe many organizations receive some pushback when they don’t include different communities of people.

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