Emerging Technology in Business

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. 

I think you did a great job making your content calendar and I am glad I saw another example of one rather than what was shared in the modules and what i created. Im glad you included going live in there because that type of engagement slipped my mind until writing todays post. Effective content is the best way to reach the audience goals you may have. 

Hello Everyone,

After completing the Hootsuite/Podium modules 3 & 4, I have been able to expand my knowledge on many concepts related to content is displayed. The modules focused on the importance of how effective content is developed and shared. Effective content is developed through different strategies and shared through different social media channels. Each social media channel has specific ways to reach out to certain audiences. Content plays a crucial role in achieving business and social media objectives such as brand recognition, thought leadership, audience engagement, and lead generation.

My biggest takeaway from both modules on Hootsuite is the four key components of a social content strategy. The first two components are research and analysis of current content reception and strategy and your target audience identified by platform. Both of these components are super important when it comes to having a social content strategy. The next two components are a list of content-specific goals and objectives and lastly, plans for the distribution of your content. Both of these components allow organizations to stay organized and have a clear understanding of their goals, how they will meet them, and a timeline for these goals.

Becoming a social organization means you involve your community in the conversation in a meaningful way. Once a business or organization has a clear understanding of how to post effective content then this will eventually lead to them having a larger audience. Developing and sharing content is a form of communication that can be used to speak with individuals. Social media is a great way for businesses to reach out to consumers who are Gen Z and Millennials. Having Effective content will help the organization build long-term relationships with its audience, ultimately leading to an increase in revenue for your organization.

Thank you,

One of my biggest takeaways was also learning the differences in sharing content on each social media forms. They mention that just because your facebook draws one certain audience your instagram might pull in a completely different audience. One of the tips they give is using polls so your audience can react and and you can get the best feedback possible!

Chapters 4 and 5 of the Social Organization helped me to better understand the importance of community collaboration and having purpose also some very key principles that contribute to efficient online community building. Community building will help with a growing businesses overall presence. Building a strong community will help to give people a reason to want to be apart of your online community and be more interactive. A community also has to be aware of the goals that are promised and planned to achieve so something to work FOR is established. This is why the No/go mindset should be adapted in business as explained in chapter 5. My interpretation of this mindset is to keep the bigger picture in mind while also acknowledging where you stand today and how you plan to proceed to grow then actually committing to your project or goals. Change is constant and independent but growth is a process that is dependent on your mindset. Think of a plant, A plant can not grow if you don’t tend to it but it will always change and whittle away if no effort is given to it. Your goals and projects should be seen as a delicate little plant that takes effort to grow.

After finishing Module 4 i have gained a lot of insight that i had not previously had in regards to building a community as well as tips to succeed. These steps can directly apply to my client as they effectively lay out a guide on how to use social media to optimize your community outlook. It is important to pay attention to the engagement that you receive on posts on apps such as twitter and instagram. Also something that stuck with me is finding the right times to post things and how that varies from each social media you decide to use. The time of day matters because you want your post to be seen by as many people as possible and this is helpful to gain more of a presence

Works Cited:

https://www.thecoachingtoolscompany.com/the-grow-model-explained-for-coaches-questions-tips-more/

Bradley, Anthony J., and Mark P. McDonald. The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of Your Customers and Employees, Harvard Business Review, Boston, MA, 2011, pp. 39-76.

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.

References: 

What I learned from "The Internet's Original Sin”, Maciej Ceglowski's talk, is that internet business models influence surveillance and data gathering on the internet. An example that he mentioned in his talk is that “Surveillance as a business model is the only thing that makes a site like Facebook possible.” The internet has come to be just full of advertisements and I think that's due to the business model and data gathering. We are always being watched because we see things on the internet based on an algorithm. Data is being collected on us to find what to show next. Technology has changed the extent of what surveillance can do, and that can be worrisome, the advertisements from businesses are just another reason to hack into our privacy and collect data.

Hello everyone happy thanksgiving I hope you all had a great feast ..🦃🍁🍃🍂🍽

After I watched “ The Legal Side of the Big Data,” I’ve learned about certain issues I was not aware of and was shocked that the big data to be hacked or compromised is a scary thing. I do believe that it is very important for each company to have their businesses secured but however it does happen more often than we think and it’s hard to stop it if we don’t know where it’s coming from. I do remember when target got hacked they sent me an email luckily I was not affected. But the companies to be ahead of the problem and yes get the most high tech expensive devices to catch all these hackers and prepare themselves for something unexpectedly to happen and have to be well prepare all teams have the full support and knowledge. Us as consumers it is a bit hard to prevent from happening. It is just scary it makes want to think not to have no phone or no devices but even in paper like doctors can get back from patients that’s even more crazy we are not safe that’s how I see it we just have to protect all our personal stuff and don’t open something good to be true because that’s what the hackers do they manipulate you in some way to get you interested to open link. So be careful ! The businesses should be aware of when using big data would be to use big data applications like automation, the big data has the potential to improve internal efficiencies and operations through robotic process automation. Have a faster better decision making, have an experienced big data team, and identifying end goals. So I think consumers should be aware of and what the marketers need to know their customers tastes, social media behavior, browsing behavior search preferences as well as their hobbies so understanding the consumer but at the same time to protect them from data privacy, data security and data discrimination. The best way to balance the opportunities and threats presented by the development of big data would be to manage the risks and rewards like the leverage previously untapped sources of information and organizations needed to quickly adapt to the opportunities and risks represented by these news. How we can overcome the challenges of big data would be to manage big data growth like storage technology to structure the big data. Deduplication technology to get rid of extra data that is wasting space and money. Business intelligence technology to help analyze data to discover patterns and provide insights. After reading “The Internet’s Original Sin” and watching Maciej Ceglowski’s talk, how the internet business models influence surveillance and data gathering on the internet he had listed some interesting and frightening facts about the internet and data he have stated that everything we type or click it doesn’t go away or deleted and how all the information that we created are stored in centralized place and available to access to anyone. It’s crazy to even think that while I am typing this 🤭the information movement is like a spiderweb and eventually it goes to the middle of the web. Such as to bad people and government accessing our information which is crazy how Celglowski mentions how advertisements could reach this information and lure in people. I now understand how much influence the internet business model affects surveillance and data gathering. According to the article Of original sin some points that Zuckerman mentions in the presentation states how the model today. He also mentioned how hard and virtually impossible to find a way to make money without conceding to advertisements. Zuxkerman has mention he will get away from the ad- based business model and work on a better website to build. Great information I learn was very shocked and scary.

Ceglowski, Maciej. “The Internet With a Human Face.” Vimeo, 20 May 2014, https://vimeo.com/102717446

Being a good social media consultant isn’t just about being good at using social media. It also requires an understanding of data analytics, search optimization, and email marketing.

A good tool for data analytics is Google Analytics, which monitors trends and improving results. Data analytic tools also help show conversions between different channels and show which social media channels are most effective and the consultant can make adjustments as needed.

Search optimization is the process of taking steps to help a website or specific content rank higher on Google search results. A good social media consultant would be able to identify which areas your website can improve in order to get better search results.

Lastly, email marketing, which is a direct marketing channel is a skill that is important for any social media consultant. It is a way to engage with your demographic on a direct basis. Email marketing is a great way to get out information about your product/website/channel because people won’t have to search for it–it comes straight to them.

Any good social media consultant is not only good at using social media to engage followers, but also good at backend work like data analytics, search optimization, and email marketing.

When I answered this question I said I would like my social media consultant to be familiar with tools but didn't elaborate. You broke down what I meant perfectly! Having someone who already knows how to track engagement, search optimization, and data analytics would be so beneficial because it would save you so much more time then having to teach them everything. 

Hello Everyone,

The article “Three reasons junk news spread so quickly across social media” by authors Phillip Howard and Samantha Bradshaw was super intriguing and eye-opening for me. While reading the article, I was able to expand my knowledge on many concepts relating to junk news and the effects it has on social media. I was able to take a deeper dive into the tabloidization, false content, conspiracy theories, and political propaganda that we’ve all become too familiar with. My biggest takeaway from this article was that everything we see on our social media feeds is the product of calculations made by powerful algorithms and machine learning models. We as individuals are being analyzed and used as ‘research participants’ to figure out how these huge social media companies can become more profitable.

One of the main reasons that social media has contributed to the spread of fake news is because of Algorithms. Algorithms play a huge part in how these social media companies track everything we do on social media to use as data. Social media platforms rely on algorithms to determine how news and content are disseminated and consumed. The different algorithms used to display certain information on our social media platforms that would have our interests. For example, on TikTok you’re ‘for you page’ is filled with content and influences that interest you. In my life, I always see different things on my social media platforms that are related to cooking videos. I’m a huge fan of cooking videos because I love to admire how tasty different foods look and my social media is usually full of this content. The reason for cooking videos being on my social media is because of the different algorithms these social media companies are using to analyze my social media usage.

The second reason that social media has contributed to the spread of fake news is because of Advertising. Advertising plays a huge part in how these social media companies filter and advertise different content such as influencers, businesses, food, political campaigns, brands, etc. In my life, different advertisements about certain clothing brands come up on my social which makes me want to shop with that brand. This is something that happens often and has the effect to make people bias about a certain brand. The third reason that social media has contributed to the spread of fake news is because of Exposure. Exposure plays a huge part in how these social media companies are taken advantage of individuals. They are filtering the content that diminishes the diversity of information that we are being exposed to. In my life, I’m able to relate to this because during the last election I would see stuff related to my political stance on my social media platforms. Occasionally I would see stuff about the other party I didn’t support, and I would immediately scroll past it. This is a great example of how we are only exposed to certain things that we’re inclined and interested in.

There are so many different things that are involved in the way we use different social media platforms and how junk news is spread in our life. We as individuals should be aware of how these big social media companies operate behind the scenes and can often filter the content, we prefer to see to make us biased about certain things. We need to be careful with what we are putting, sharing, and doing on these apps to ensure the safety of us and our loved ones around us. We need to also make sure that the stuff we’re posting is accurate, credible, and a clear representation of what we believe in.

Thank you,

After watching The Social Dilemma and listening to the instructor’s lecture, these opened my eyes to a lot more “behind the scenes” of social media and left me in shock. It is so mind blowing to me how these algorithms work and how social media truly has a lot of power over us all. During the lecture, privacy was being discussed. I guess I never really thought about how many times a website asks for information that I normally wouldn’t share. Even simply buying something online seems not so safe sometimes, seeing as we’re putting our card information and contact information into a website where a lot of people technically have access to it. On Facebook, in your “about” section, you can have many different things that are displayed such as the city you live in, your phone number, what school you went to, etc. and if you truly sit back and think about it, anyone can get access to your Facebook account and see this information. Sure, there are privacy settings, but if you think about it, you could be friends with someone who let’s someone else look on their Facebook account. This new person now has access to your information, and the chain goes on and on. 

Social media definitely has a way of controlling us, like discussed in the documentary, The Social Dilemma. I really thought of TikTok when I was watching this documentary. TikTok has a “for you” page, where they collect data based on previous videos you’ve liked, or users you’ve followed. They then take that data and find videos similar to these or users with similar content, and put these on your for you page. While it can be nice, it’s also definitely kind of creepy in a sense. The documentary also talked a lot about ads that are found on social media and how this is a big way social media collects money. I knew that this was a big way Youtubers made money, but it’s crazy that this is also how other platforms choose to go about it. The documentary really opened my eyes to how many people are really tracking my engagement on not only social media, but just through my technology in general. 

Big data is such a powerful tool because everything you do online is monitored. What images you look at, for how long you’re engaged with an image, your current moods, your browsing history, your personality traits, gps coordinates, etc. There is an immense amount of information that can be tracked and recorded by the internet. Using this big data, social media platforms are able to predict what you will be doing therefore, they can personalize links and “recommended for you” links to see what will keep you hooked on social media. Something really weird about that has actually happened to me is when I plug my phone in to carplay, it immediately maps me to some place I was previously talking about. It’s scary to think that even though these social media platforms are free to sign up for, you are the product. Your attention is being sold to different advertisers who are competing for your time. We are all lab rats being used in experiment after experiment to try and determine what will be the most optimal for overall engagement. Social media experts purposely try to manipulate your psychological behavior as fast as possible by implementing different experiments to see which method of advertisement or which types of posts/videos will generate the most engagement on their specific platform.

There are three technology goals according to The Social Dilemma. The first goal is engagement, which hopes to drive up usage. The second goal is growth, which will keep you coming back, inviting your friends and getting friends to engage with the platform. Lastly, is the advertising goal, which essentially is the goal of generating as much profit as possible. Each of these goals are powered by different algorithms, whose jobs are to figure out what to show you on each platform to ensure you will remain on the app for as long as possible, and to keep you coming back for more. This is extremely important to the social media world because algorithms are driven by big data. The data that is collected by “monitoring” your social media usage is exported into a computer that can create an algorithm based on what was humanly written.

The danger of the use/abuse of big data, algorithms and social media can vary on multiple different aspects. It scared me a little when I was made aware of how technologists can be compared to magicians, who were among the first to understand a different aspect of people’s minds. The documentary mentioned that magic illusions work because magicians are able to tap into a part of an individual’s mind that they don’t know exists. Having this perspective described to me really showed me how dangerous social media really is.  Technology has to deal with a larger aspect of psychology than I can even comprehend. They also compared phones to slot machines in Vegas because whenever you have your phone laying on your desk or your bed, you just check it to see if there is a notification there. This unconscious behavior is a design technique, just like it is with the slot machines in Vegas to see what you’ll get if you pull the lever one more time.

The discussion about photo tagging was extremely intriguing to me also, and can also be a danger/abuse of algorithms. Social media platforms purposely notify you when you have been tagged in a photo, but don’t include the photo in the notification. Having the photo on the notification pop-up would make it much easier and faster to quickly see what photo it is, however, they purposely don’t include it to make you go on the app to see what photo you were tagged in. This will increase their engagement goal, especially when it is a photo of yourself. This also has to do with the growth goal because tagging in photos allows friends of tagged people to see the post, and engage with it using the comments and/or likes feature. This is known as growth hacking.  

Another danger that really hooked me was the discussion about tools-based technology. The example provided was bicycles are a tool, just sitting there waiting until you need it. Social media on the other hand, is not a tool. It’s demanding things from you and is manipulating you. We’ve moved away from having a tools-based technology to an addictive and manipulative technology because of social media’s idea of using your psychology against you to generate engagement and growth.

Additionally, another danger has to deal with self-worth and identity. It matters to everyone what people in our “tribe” think of us. But we were not supposed to be built to experience what thousands of people think of us. This “fake popularity” on social media with like counts and comment counts forces individuals to think of what is next so they can gain that sense of popularity and that spike in dopamine again. This has increased depression and anxiety amongst teenagers. There was a conducted study of U.S. Hospital admissions for non-fatal self harm per 100,000 girls which concluded to have increased 62% since 2009 in girls ages 15-19, and increased 189% since 2009 in girls ages 10-14. This can be blamed on social media algorithms keeping them addicted to their phones and social media platforms.

I think that the biggest danger also correlates with why algorithms are so important. It is the fact that not very many people working at these social media companies even understand them. Algorithms are opinions written in code written with the goal of their definition of success, which at most times, is profit. Everyday, these computers installed with the written algorithms are getting better and better at picking the next post, or the next video, or the next tweet to keep you on the platform for longer. The scary part about this is that the machine is doing all the work, which means the algorithm is controlling us more than we are controlling it. This can be proven because multiple of the interviewees who have previously worked for a social media platform can also say that even though they see and understand the behind the scenes work of addiction, they too, are addicted to their phones.

Thank you for sharing, your post was very detailed and informative. I had forgotten about the comparison between magicians and big data until I read your post. Hearing it again, it is actually terrifying. It makes me wonder: what else do they know that we don’t?