#GCWeb17

I decided to break my predictions up based on their area of technology.

Household Life

Looking ahead, parents’ lives will be as fast paced as ever. Appliances for the foreseeable future will focus on saving time and convenience.

Advanced sensors, unseen but powerful, will help to keep the food in your refrigerators fresher for longer. Washing machines will automatically adjust detergent levels and water temperature based on specific stains, fabric types and levels of soilage. Parents will no longer have to worry about the details as they maintain their busy family lifestyles.

What parents can expect is the explosion of mobile technology and connectivity that is permeating every industry, including home appliances. The home of the future will be smarter. It will be connected, efficient and healthier. The family quarters will minimize chores like never before. Imagine nutritious meals created with ingredients inventoried in your refrigerator, text messages that remind you to pick up a water filter as you drive by a home improvement retailer and an energy-saving vacation mode on your hybrid water heater being set from your smartphone while at the beach.

Data Storage

in fewer than three years, about 90% of people will have unlimited and free data storage that will ultimately be ad-supported, according to the Business Insider.

We are already seeing some companies offer cheap or completely free service. For example, Google Photos already offers unlimited storage for photos and Amazon will let you store an unlimited amount of whatever you want for just $60 a year.

A big reason companies are able to do this is because hard drive cost per gigabyte continues to fall. This has spurred more data to be created than ever before. According to the report, it's estimated about 90% of all data has been created in just the last two years.

Still, there are signs this may not be the case. Microsoft recently killed its plan that offered unlimited storage on its cloud service OneDrive.

Clothing

Cars, appliances, and other everyday objects are increasingly becoming more connected to the internet. And not too long from now, even the clothes on our back will get a connection.

By 2022, experts predict that 10% of people will be wearing clothing with embedded chips that connects them to the internet.

This isn’t really too surprising seeing as a number of accessories—including watches and rings— are already becoming connected. According to the research firm Gartner, about 70 million smartwatches and other bands will be sold in 2015 alone.

Medical

I downloaded twitter in high school and never really thought anything of it besides a fun app to see stories about things I am interested in. Advertising, politics and meaningful communication never really occurred to me, but now I clearly see the endless possibilities of Twitter. However, that being said I am still not a big fan of Twitter whatsoever and I can boil it down to 3 personal reasons why. 

1.  Contributors articles are restricted to 140 characters, they can’t edit anything to a tweet after it is published, it is almost impossible for readers to find newsworthy articles and creative gems by mixing them with tens of thousands of cat photos, selfies, and rants.

2.  Musicians cannot share their music on the site, and musicians are a huge reason why I use Twitter. Twitter forces them to send their fans to YouTube or some other place to listen to it. This goes the same for authors writings and politicians campaign speeches.

3.  The fact that users have to sign up as their own content providers and with the idea the their participation on the app is to attract other users to follow them. This make people feel like failures if they don’t find a large audience for their contributions.

WI had never been asked to use Hootsuite before this course. I came into the material not knowing anything and was a little intimidated at first. after a few quick lessons I learned that this tool can be extremely beneficial and has a lot of really cool features to offer. 

The main reason I would recommend Hootsuite to a business would be Hootsuite’s team management facility. Hootsuite allows you to delegate responses to different team members. For example if you receive 20 mentions in one day, the administrator can delegate each one to a different team member. When a team member is logged in, they’ll see which tasks have been allocated to them and not make the mistake of responding to a status that has already been replied to.

Weekly analytical reports are another really cool feature of Hootsuite. If you solely or mainly use Hootsuite to manage your Social networks, then you will find the weekly analytics report very useful. Each week, Hootsuite sends you an email with a pdf attachment of your click summaries. Hootsuite gives you graphs showing: 

1. Number of clicks per day

2.Geographical information on the people clicking through

3.Top referrers

4. Most popular links

For my final project I decided to create a PowerPoint showing how to run a successful marketing campaign on Instagram. I chose this topic because it is something that I am having to do right now in the real world for my Dad’s company. I have learned that successful campaigns start with very solid objectives and end with creative, yet simple ideas. 

Through reading numerous sources, I was able to develop a PowerPoint that should be helpful to any size business owner looking to get the upper hand in the Instagram marketing and advertising field. I started to apply some of the concepts I learned from this project to my father’s account and saw some minor success withing the first week. 

The basic steps I elaborate on within the PowerPoint are:

1. Setting up your account

2. Marketing Strategy

3. Taking your account to the next level

A quick blog about the best to chapters in Bryan Kramer’s book!

Chapter 10: Social Helping

Chapter 10 was all about The Social Selling Process. Social selling is the process of developing relationships as part of the sales process. Today this often takes place via social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, but can take place either online or offline. Examples of social selling techniques include sharing relevant content, interacting directly with potential buyers and customers, personal branding, and social listening. This broad definition is taken and divided up into 5 “pillars” that are explained in depth throughout the chapter. 

1.) Building Your Personal Brand - appearing as a thought leader over a “quota crusher” 2.) Using The ABC Principle - always be connecting (connecting > closing) 3.) Using Content as Currency - engage audience and use your voice by sharing non-narcissistic, consumer relevant material 4.) Social Listening for Leads 5.) Measuring What Matters - find the specific metric for you that best measures your social impact.

These 5 pillars all add up to add individual value to your brand, which should be then every companies end goal.

Chapter 14: The Sharing Future: Whats Next?

Sharing isn't new. Sharing is human nature and has been around since the beginning of time. So, what is new about the sharing, or collaborative, economy and why is this an important exponential shift? Today, we have sophisticated platforms that allow for instant sharing, like super-fast mobile devices that allow for sharing from any location and online payment systems that allow for quick, online transactions. The combination of these factors allow for sharing at scale and across boundaries. A global, scalable sharing platform is allowing for the emergence of an unexplored economy. It has been driven by tech startups in its infancy, but is ultimately moving from an emerging model to one that is adopted by the masses. The Collaborative Economy is currently where social media was 10 years ago and this new economic model will no doubt continue to build momentum and disrupt most industries in the years to come, just as social did.

The author offered up a few ideas on where they think social economic sharing will be in the next few years. 

Better E-mail

“Email is one of the most important collaborative applications that people use, and industry leaders at innovative companies, like Jeff Schick of IBM, are working to improve the Email experience.” 

Less clutter, get straight to what is important

Content Marketing 

Number one focus of digital marketers, but still very early in adoption. This will start to blur the lines between native ads, regular ads, and content ads.

Social Platforms

Social platforms are becoming more like broadcast publications, sharing relevant newslike material. 

This could potentially lead to people fleeing social networks because the personal aspect could soon be a thing of the past.

Rising Above the Noise

Simply connecting human to human understand on an empathetic level.

Twitter can be a bit overwhelming. With literally an infinite amount of accounts to follow the average sports fan can easily get lost when trying to find the best pages to follow. Luckily I have made a list to guide these lost souls towards the top 5 best sports related accounts Twitter has to offer.

1. @barstoolsports

        Barstool Sports is a company created for “the average guy.” They are most well known for their popular radio podcast, Pardon My Take, from which their social media presence has exploded. They pride themselves on covering all professional sports while simultaneously covering user submitted sports related videos. They provide the perfect balance between actual sports coverage and humorous material. Another great quality of this account is that they often cover current events as well. If you are looking for an account that is light hearted, all about their followers and on the rise this account is perfect for you.

2. @bleacherreport

        BleacherReport is somewhat similar to Barstool in the fact that they also allow users to submit videos that they will upload. However, they take covering their sports a little more serious. This account is also very well known for being the quickest when posting breaking news. Recently they have also received a lot of publicity from big time sports networks like ESPN and Fox Sports, which has caused them to increase their social media presence. BleacherReport is the most up and coming account on this list and a most follow for the average sports fan.

3. @sportscenter 

       The most classic and professionallyrun account on this list. Sportscenter is in direct relation to ESPN and the golden standard for sports coverage. Any type of sports related news will be displayed on this account and it will be displayed in a very straightforward manner. This account covers literally every single type of sport imaginable and tweets multiple times a day. Many people consider Sportscenter to be the most necessary account to follow on Twitter. One of this accounts best features is the unique interviews they post from professionals in all areas of sports. 

4. @OnionSports

        This account is for the satirical sports fan that enjoys some classic sports humor. The Onion is famous for writing off the wall stories that are completely false, but also completely hilarious. This account offers the comic relief every sports fan needs in their stressful life. From fake news to hilarious comics this account has it all. One of the best parts of this account is seeing how people react to their stories that don’t understand their satirical nature. The Onion has been around forever and cooling off any time soon. 

5. @BeyondTheBets

Reddit.. What is Reddit?

To the uninformed Reddit looks like a mess; text links, comment threads, points, upvotes, downvotes. At best, posts seem contextless and most of the time they just seem totally random.

However, if you spend some quality time with "The Front Page of the Internet," you'll find it's an essential resource, a self-correcting marketplace of ideas that's nearly impervious to marketers.

Simply put, Reddit is a message board where users submit links. What differentiates it from a real-time information network like Twitter is that the stream of content is curated by the community. Items of value are “upvoted,” and those deemed unworthy are "downvoted." This determines a post's position on the site, and items that hit the front page are seen by hundreds of thousands of people, which in turn creates tons of traffic to the linked websites. 

What really distinguishes Reddit to this day is the community. The type of content that's valued, the discussion around it, and the diligence with which users expand on  topics is unmatched. As such, the front page is usually populated with things that will make you think, laugh out loud, and motivate you to dig a little deeper.

If you’re still a little confused here is a quick video link and “How To” manual.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlI022aUWQQ

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-best-of-the-web-delivered-the-reddit-manual/

Through my research I have found 4 things to be extremely critical if one is to truly understand Reddit. 

Reddit is extremely self-referential.

If you see something posted that doesn't make sense, it's likely referencing an aspect of Reddit culture (a previous post, a meme, something popular from the site). Often, you'll be able to pin down the reference point in the comments. Other users who want clarification will upvote commenters who explain things, thus bringing the value to the top of the thread.

Comments are key. 

They are arguably the most important and entertaining part of the site. Just because something has been upvoted to the front page does not necessarily mean it is legitimate. If it's been there long enough, there's a good chance the top comment will be a user citing contradictory sources or questioning the merit of the article in question. Thus, the community can self-regulate in ways that Facebook and Twitter cannot. In theory, the most valuable discussion always bubbles to the top.

You won't figure it out on day one. 

If you check back often, you'll start to absorb the culture. You'll begin to see what has value and what is suspicious. And as you drill down into subreddits that interest you, you'll find passionate communities engaged in discussion you won't find elsewhere.

There is zero tolerance of marketers and spammers.

The community is extremely skeptical of marketers and diligent about policing spam. Any such activity is quickly downvoted out of sight. Whereas brands are encouraged to connect with users on Facebook and Twitter, the Reddit community is generally uninterested in marketers intruding on the conversation.

Reddit is one of a kind, to say the least, but serves as an often uninterupted and spam free website where people can go to be informed, laugh, research, and just about anything else their minds can think of.

Below is a link to some of the most creative subreddits the website has to offer. 

I have found reading Groundswell to be very interesting. I really enjoy the book because it helps layout and explain concepts I have always been familiar with and puts them in a way where I can better understand them. This has been relevant since the first chapter when the authors are explaining what “groundswell” actually is. They describe groundswell occurring due to the collision of 3 forces.

 People: people have always depended on each other and drawn strength from each other. The rough balance between the scale economics of institutions and the rebellion of their constituents has shifted because of the advent and spread of social constitutions. 

Technology:  has changed everything as far as people’s social interactions are concerned. 73% of Americans and 64% of Europeans are online. Has led to interactive software, and people-aware.  

Economics: online economics is on the internet, traffic equals money.

I have always known that online communication was increasing, but I could never put a technical term to it or describe exactly how and why it started happening. 

My favorite chapter that we have read so far has been chapter 4. I found the material in this section to not only be interesting, but extremely relevant to my life. This chapter offered different tactics to better engage your audience on social media and presented concrete processes to pursue the groundswell. My two favorite examples of this were the POST method and the 5 objectives companies can pursue to reach the groundswell. 

 P: People – what are your customers ready for? How will they engage, based on what they are already doing.

O: Objectives – what are your goals?

S: Strategy – how do you want relationships with your customers to change?      Plan for the desired changes and figure out how  make them happen. 

T: Technology – what applications should you build?   

1. Listening: use the groundswell for research and better understanding. 

2. Talking: use the groundswell to spread messages about your company. 

3. Energizing: find your most enthusiastic customers, use groundswell to supercharge the power of their word of mouth.

4. Supporting: set up groundswell tools to help your customers support each other. 

5. Embracing: integrate your customers into the way your business works, including using their help to design your products. 

Blogging

I have never thought about, been asked to or entertained the idea of blogging before. I have always been active on social media, but never in terms of a personal blog. One of the main reasons for this is the commitment it takes to run a successful and interesting blog. I like other forms of social media because you can quickly post or comment without having to take a lot of time out of your day. However, I still enjoy reading the blogs of others and when they are done right I think they are a great way to share your stories with the world. This is why I decided to write about what I think are the most important parts of Qualman’s list for good blogging.

Find-ability: If people cannot locate your blog then there is no point in blogging. The best way to go about doing this is to share it on all your social media platforms, especially Facebook. I personally believe this is the hardest about about starting up a blog. Acquiring followers is a long and tedious task. 

Audience: While you are trying to put yourself out there and gain followers it is also important to keep in mind the type of people you want to follow you. Your audience should be relevant and interested in what you are posting. It is impossible to right about every little thing that every single person finds interesting, so make sure you are sharing your blog with people who hold similar interest to the content you will be posting.

Consistency: This goes back to the commitment I was talking about earlier. Posting on a regular basis is tough enough on its own, but posting consistently interesting material is even harder. The best blogs are run by not one committed individual, but many.