A Chapter Ends and a New One Begins

This semester has been full of reading. Whether it be the lessons from "Real-Time Marketing" or the importance of "Measuring What Matters", the books that I have read for this semester of school have been very informative and easy to read, surprisingly. The books all cover almost the same material, but each book harps on a certain aspect of PR and social media tactics. The reading was never something that I would do on my own, but when I did read for the chapter quizzes, I would find myself noticing instances in the real world and my life that applied to the books teachings.

The book "Measure What Matters" is the book we have just finished and I really liked chapter 10 with measuring employee relationships. This summer for my internship, one thing I noticed about Fox was they never really asked for their employee input or showed concern for the employees relationships in the workplace. I am not saying that Fox is wrong for not keeping in touch with their employees relationship with their job, but if they wanted to make themselves better, that would be one way.

Measuring employees relationships, according to the text is "important because employee morale and sentiment are closely tied with sales and profit."

When a companies executive members and superiors show concern and genuine care for the well-being of their subordinate employees, that really tightens the camaraderie around the office and builds trust between co-workers. Employees are the backbone of the business and without them, the grunt work can't be done. Maintaining the relationship with the employees is when the measurement part comes into play. The better measuring tools we use, such as surveys, are key in coming up with data to measure and better our relationship with our employees.

These books have all taught me something unique about the public relations field and isn't that what we want from a book? To at least be able to take away one thing from each of those books would be three lessons that I didn't know before hand. The books serve as a guide to successful marketing and PR, but it is up to me to execute those guidelines and do so correctly and ethically.

Social Media: Cyber Police?

Social media has many purposes. It can disseminate newsworthy content and information at the press of a button or the tap of a screen. It can be a way to spread our networks across the globe and increase our image. Social can even be a way to start a new business and make yourself a successful entrepreneur.

But, there is one purpose that has not yet been tapped into yet with social media- surveillance of national security. The social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have come together to help "combat online propaganda for recruiting by Islamic militants." according to an article by Yahoo.com. The companies realize that the threats to our nations security are not just coming from the characteristic enemies. In this day of social media and technology, anyone can be a potential target for Isis.

The internet companies described their policies as straightforward and to the point: they ban certain types of content in accordance with their circumstances and they require a court order to remove or block anything.

This court order can be taken care of with one simple step. The social media outlets have always had this feature and it will come in handy sooner or later. The "report/spam" button on posts allows the audience or viewer to report the post as threatening, inappropriate, or vulgar.

I personally believe if we can be a force that stands for justice and freedom for all, then recognizing and doing something about cyber-terrorism can help us become a stronger nation and world. I am not saying we should put restrictions on social media, because that will only upset people and make them wish they they had not done anything to change it.

Measure What Matters Chapter 7

Chapter seven of the book, "Measure What Matters" deals with measuring the impact of events. In social media today, events have become "redefined" according to the book on page 107. 

"'Events' is a term that can now refer to an online fund-raiser or an in-person Twestival organized via Twitter."

As we always seem to point out, there are a multitude of ways that social media has enhanced the marketing world and industry as a whole. When we see how much the social media platform changes things that were capable before, but are easier and quicker now, it is changing the opinions of consumers to use social media and that it is more than just a way for teens to retweet their favorite memes. 

The best part of the chapter in my opinion was the 7 steps process. I like these steps the book lists for the reader because it provides order and strategy. The seven steps in the book to measure sponsorships and events are:

1. Define Your Objectives

2. Determine Your Measurable Criteria of Success

3. Decide Upon Your Benchmarks

4. Select a Measurement Tool 

5. Define Specific Metrics 

6. Choose a Measurement tool

7. Analyze Your Results and Use them to be more effective 

The last step was the one that caught my attention and Dr. Agozzino alluded to it in class last week. The measuring process is not over. The process is never over, because we must constantly be updating, remodeling and improving our content and tactics if we want to thrive. 

Social Media reacts to Paris attacks

When the world goes into a mode of crisis, it is times like those when we see what we are truly made of. On Friday night, Paris, France was under a terrorist attack, led by members of the Islamic radical group, ISIS. The attacks occurred in a shop/market in downtown Paris and left 129 people dead and many more seriously injured. ISIS has been the talk of the world for the last year or so and I wonder why they keep getting more popular. The people who cause the chaos and turmoil amongst us get the most media attention and talk. I understand that in certain situations, it is necessary to have media time for issues such as ISIS and the war on terrorism. On Friday night however, the media was entirely focused on Paris.

When I say the media, I should say all forms of media. Television reporters swarmed the town, as well as journalists, civilians with cameras and social media users. If you were close to technology on Friday night, odds are that you heard about or saw the tragic events in France.

Social media took off after the reports of the attacks and it was just what social media does best. Gets the information out quickly and gets people talking. The trending hashtag, #Pray4Paris is the tag that has been used all across the world to show support the allied country. Channels such as Facebook, have made an option for users to make a filter of their profile picture by inserting the french flag colors across their image.

Other influential figures in the world took to social media as well to express their sympathy and prayers for Paris.

It is no question that social media has a grasp on our world today, but when it can show how much we care about each other and for those that are in a foreign country, it really opens your eyes to how benevolent the world can be.

The terrorist attacks on Paris are not going to be an easy wound to heal. Although, with the right support, precautionary actions and diplomatic solutions, there will be a brighter day ahead. The city of lights and its people are in a dark place, but as Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that."

New Twitter Feature Gives Fire to Sports

Twitter, as everyone knows, is a place to find newsworthy content and real-time stories going on around the world. But, as every good company does, they have found a way to enhance themselves and critique their flaws to make their product or service even better. The news on Twitter, in my opinion, has always been hard to pinpoint. Either you found it on your timeline or you had to search for it yourself and make a decision on what you wanted to find.


Now, thanks to the innovation by the folks at Twitter, there is a much easier and efficient way to find your news and what is going on in the world. The feature, "moments" has been created to be much more user-friendly to Twitter users."What we're trying to do is get the content directly in-front of you without you having to make decisions," said Madhu Muthukumar, the project manager over seeing the new feature. When you enter the tab for "moments", it categorizes options so you know what you want to look at. The categories are: Today, Sports, News, Fun, Entertainment. When you get to whatever tab you want to look at, it is previewed with a video. I believe involving this media really catches the audience's attention and is a great hook for SEO. 


When I think about how this new feature of Twitter will change sports, I think of how we watch sports. I personally, watch sports live and on television because I am an avid sports fan and like watching the full game. In today's culture however, the way people watch sports is "highlight syndrome" or people only watching the highlights on ESPN or something. In "moments", the highlight's are given and in high quality, which is another overlooked detail. Also, when the highlight is seen, if the user finds an attraction to that post, they can favorite it, retweet it, or comment to it. In the video above, this feature gave wildfire to the MLB postseason and created a whole new animal in terms of fan engagement. The trending ability of Twitter really came into play this post season and how people followed Major League Baseball. 

KIND Bars

Around campus these last two weeks, I have heard time and time again about the new "KIND" bars. Last week I made a post talking about if the goal and mission of KIND was realistic or if it was just a poorly set up idea to make money and sell granola bars. I truly believe that it has a good mission behind it and that it has the potential to make a real difference in the ONU community. After making
the post, I was keeping an eye out to actually see KIND bars people acting on their goals. Sure enough, a day later I was perusing through my Instagram timeline and found a post by Megan Cottongim. Megan is a PR major here on campus and is on the team for KIND bars. In the video, there is a woman standing in front of the entire football team and she is leading them through what appears to be a stretching exercise. All of the big, tough, sweaty football players were following the actions of a thin, petite woman and the funny part was the football players were feeling a workout from the stretching and bending. The caption of the video was:

Teaching Ohio Northern University's football team some #KINDbears exercises to be KIND to their bodies. Thank you, KIND snacks for putting together a national campaign for my team and I to help build awareness among students that KIND snacks are the perfect snack for both health and taste. Want to join our team's mission to bring healthy living into ONU's campus community? Post a selfie or a brief description on Twitter and Instagram about how you live a healthy life, both in exercise and in appetite. Also include the brand's social handle (@KINDSnacks) and hashtag (#KINDbears) Thank you! (@smileitsmegannn/Instagram).

KIND bars: Can they do their job?

Whenever I see a company or organization try to make a global difference through a campaign, I always try to "dumb down" their mission statement and see if it is believable or not. For example, some people thought that the campaign by McDonald's of "Pay with lovin'" was a good idea, but I can personally rebut that campaign. Every time I went to the McDonald's in Ada, I was never once greeted with "lovin'".  I understand; Ada isn't always the most loving town when it comes to employees at McDonald's, but they still represent the brand of McDonald's and their mission statement. In my opinion, McDonald's missing statement was faulty and was not put into action at all of their locations. Now, on campus here at ONU, there is a new campaign being put into action by some students. It is called "KIND bars". When I first heard about the campaign, I thought I would be going to the Regal Beagle and seeing everyone in there being kind and appreciative of each other. Then after looking into the campaign of the KIND bars, I found out it was granola bar and the bars came in different flavors. According to the team behind KIND bars, "KIND is a brand that not only makes wholesome and  delicious foods, but is focused on making the world a little kinder- one act and one snack at a time." The ingredients in the bars are said to be gluten-free and non GMO (Genetically modified organisms). The healthy and organic image of KIND bars gives me a good notion of their actions and "work behind the scenes" if you will. The only thing that concerns me  with their campaign is how do they plan to get these bars to actually get results. Make the world a little kinder- one act and one snack at a time. The campaign information says there is a foundation named KIND Causes. The program helps people grant their socially impactful ideas to life through $10,000 grants monthly. The KIND bar campaign does have some serious points that make them legitimate, but getting a granola bar to make people happy and spread the kindness just seems a little far fetched. Even still, I see promise in this campaign and just because something is far fetched, doesn't mean it is impossible. 

College Football Podcast

This weekend after going home, I had the chance to sit down with my best friend Brandon Kohl. Although Brandon is not a professional, I chose Brandon to be in my podcast because of how good he is at arguing and proving his point. Also me and Brandon watched college football all weekend long and we've played football along side each other since we were 8 years old, so we have a pretty firm grasp on football in general. In this podcast, Brandon and I were originally going to be doing one topic in college football. Instead, Brandon made a good point to just do a college football segment, and in that segment, cover all of the points that were going to chose from. Attached is the link to the podcast. Making the podcast in itself was pretty easy to us because it is just us talking like normal guys about something we are passionate about. The hard part of editing out all of the long pauses or speech miscues. Luckily my editing class in the past and my experience working with convergent media helped me find my way to the finished product. I also have given a link to my podcast on my Facebook and Twitter pages. The bond me and Brandon share is unique and he is someone who relates to my problems better than anyone else, so when I thought of who could I get to do this podcast with me, BK was the first one to come to mind. Enjoy the podcast and if you like what you heard, come get some "moe".

Can Snapchat take the Crown?

In the timeline of social media apps to come out, none of have been as personal, hot and trending as much as snapchat. The app is owned by a variety of age groups and even some professional organizations have a snapchat profile to show their everyday business and to give the audience a more personal look at what their day-to-day agenda looks like. For example, the Pittsburgh Steelers have a snapchat account and as a fan, I follow the account to see what is always happening in Steeler nation. Whether it be the videos of practice drills, players talking to the camera or just plays captured in action, the account gives its fans and audiences the chance to see content that most other news outlets and journalists couldn't capture. The app also has the ability now to chart and track events all around the globe and bring them to the tips of your fingers. I may not know what is going on in the Presidential campaign right now, but if I look at Snapchat, I can find the Story feed for the Presidential campaign and what the candidates are doing to win our votes. Even other stories are shared, such as a story for Paris or Rome or any city for that matter. Snapchat is starting to take over the social media turf and it's major competitors are still the "big 4", but the little ghost we all love is making its way to the top. When someone snaps me, my first thought almost every time is, "how can I respond?" The app really forces us to carry on a conversation because when we send a snap to someone, we can see when they opened and when they opened it. I also think that because Snapchat is so instantaneous and real-time that we want to send back an immediate reply to carry on the conversation. Although Snapchat is popular, it does have it's downfalls and is a reason why it has yet to take that extra step and separate itself from the other younger and less popular apps. Snapchat has no trending ability for SEO. There are no keywords we can look up to find content, but that is because the content we see in a snapchat is gone after the snap is over. Granted, the story is up for 24 hours, but after that, there is no way to track your click-rate, your content and how long it was viewed. There is a feature on snapchat that allows you to see how many people viewed your snap and who viewed it, but you can't see how long they viewed it and how often they viewed your snap. The room for improvement is there, but the app is progressing at a rapid pace. Snapchat is here for the long run and could spook out the competition in years to come. 

'Lurking' behind closed doors

Today's adolescents are constantly spending time on social media. The Plurals generation has a staggering amount of people that are considered social media "lurkers". According to this CNN story, the term "lurking" means, "reading the never-ending stream of their peers' activities without posting anything themselves." The lurkers of social media are purely checking their peers posts and not posting anything with their own opinion or stance.

When I first saw this article, I had to ask myself, "Are you a lurker?" I am an avid social media user, but I often catch myself lurking and simply roaming through the social media feed just to like things and explore others posts with no intent to post anything myself. The lurking method to social media is more apparent and popular than we may think. A lot of my friends are terrible Twitter junkies and will do whatever they can to find the newest trend on their timelines. Even when they get on Instagram or Snapchat, they are opening the app and looking at the activity with no intent to post something themselves and start a new conversation on their own.

Lurkers are a new breed to the technological audience. Does that mean because they are new, that they are unimportant? In some peoples opinions, yes. Social media can be used for multiple reasons, and in my opinion, just surfing the web for the newest meme or the funniest vine, is pointless. I hate seeing guys, especially guys my age, go nuts about being on Twitter and talking about their timeline. Don't get me wrong, Twitter is an amazing tool for networking, communicating and PR, as well as to socialize, but when all you do is get on Twitter and waste your data on retweeting videos of cats using GoPro's and 30 second fight vines, it is a waste of resources and just a desperate attempt to entertain yourself.

Share This With All Your Friends

Reading is never fun as a hobby, but it is important for a good grade. When I pick up a book for class, there is a pivotal point in the beginning of the reading. If it is boring and I cannot relate to it, I might as well return the book because there is no way I will be able to read the whole thing. On the other hand, if it it is interesting and it resonates with me in some fashion, then I might not be able to put the book down. The book in class that we are reading is the book, "Share This" which is a handbook for public relations and social media. The books first chapter talked about how PR and media are changing due to the social media realm and how its impact is affecting the overall job market. The effects of social media, as from my other posts, are so large it is unbelievable. A simple tweet, something with 140 characters or less, could transcend something like an entire industry. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, the list goes on. All of these social media outlets are all ways for us to create, maintain and continue relationships with people. Sharing memories, moments, achievements, or just information is the way of the world now and according the book, that is the way it should be. I agree with the book, because when we share moments and network with one another, that is making the world a better and more efficient place. Social media was the only way I could stay in contact with my parents, family and friends while I was gone all summer in California. When my dad found out I was going away, he gave me the old "Well back in my day.." spiel and how fortunate I was to be able to use the resources in my time. "Share This" is a book that catches my interest and can be related to our everyday lives because most of us have some sort of social media. In this article, the data given says 67 percent of people between 18-29 have social media as of 2013. That number has probably drastically increased due to the rise of Snapchat, YikYak and Twitter. We as a generation and people will find out news through social media before we can get home to see it on TV or in the newspaper the next morning. 

Social Media Bringing Out the Best

                               
This week in my community back home has been a tough one. In the early hours of the evening last Sunday, a young man named Jon Andrews decided to take his own life. Jon was a senior at my alma mater and was 1 of the 4 captains on the soccer team. He was a young man who knew nothing but how to make everyone else feel good. In the short time after people found out about his suicide, social media and other media outlets were buzzing. The way the people in the area, and even other schools, showed support for each other and Jon's loved ones was unremarkable. If only Jon could see how many lives he touched. Social media brought out the best in the people that Jon touched and for a good cause. His love, memory and life were all shown through multiple posts on multiple channels. I remember the first time I ever met Jon, he was doing what he did best. Make people laugh. He was a bright young man and a hell of an athlete. I still can't believe I am talking about this in past tense. "He was" is such a hard concept to grasp for not only myself and the community, but his family. His older sister, in the picture above, and his brother and his parents. All of them are going through a pain I can't even comprehend. In the scheme of things, this post is to show that social media really did make this coping process a little easier and it helped celebrate the life of Jon with all of the goofy pictures of him and the funny videos taken of him doing his signature dance. The social media aspect also helped spread the awareness of teen suicide, depression and most importantly, the strength of Shawnee and its community suffering from this tragedy.

Dislike the Dislike

It has been in the works for a while now, but Facebook is finally coming out with a "dislike" button. In an article on Gizmodo, the pros and cons of the dislike button are explained and it makes me wonder what the reason was for Facebook to change their mind about adding the feature. Facebook has always said they don't want a dislike button because it promotes too much of a negative image. "You don't want to go through the process of sharing a moment that's important to you.. and then have someone down-vote it. That isn't what we're here to build in the world" said Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. I agree with Zuckerberg here because adding in that "like/dislike" element sort of copies the app, YikYak. YikYak is an app with anonymous posts and when you post something, people that see will either up-voted on it and promote that post to other users, or it can be down-voted and be less popular among the media. Facebook pretty much invented the "like" button and with it, its popularity took off. The Gizmodo article credits the changing age demographic for the acceptance of the dislike button. The majority of the traffic and audience on Facebook today are adults. The chart below is a from the article on Gizmodo. It shows a large portion of the adults online use Facebook, as opposed to the other mediums such as Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn. So even though all these old people are using Facebook, what does this have to do with the dislike button. Zuckerberg notes that times are changing for Facebook and the general audience and users of Facebook are parents and grandparents, not vulnerable teens talking about high school gossip. I would agree, more news related posts and current events is what I see on my Facebook Timeline than the social media content I find on Twitter, Snapchat or Instagram.

Social Media: Perfect or Poison?

Social Media seems to be a controversial topic today. Some people see the good in it and how it has to potential to revolutionize communication and networking. Others see social media as being sleazy with your resources and that it is not a professional way to network. In David Meerman Scott's book, "Real-Time Marketing & PR", chapter 13 covers the topic of companies social media policies. In the forum this week, I posted two companies social media policies; Adidas' and the Los Angeles Times. Those two companies are pretty successful and have been towards the top of the food chain in their respective fields. One reason could be they have adapted to the world we live in and have advanced their marketing, public relations, and publicity. The book states,"engage your marketplace right now, free your people to communicate in real-time." This made me think of the "United Breaks Guitars" incident and how they're social media policy came into play with the YouTube storm swirling around them. The social media policy in play was obviously not a strong or sensible policy because United did not react in real-time. In that situation, social media and a real-time reaction would have been so greta for United. I feel as though social media gives us an opportunity as an organization or company to try and level with our audience. When people see a large corporation or someone with a large platform make an effort to connect with them, it has more magnitude than just 140 characters. It creates a good image, it builds trust and allows the audience to have a closer connection with the said organization or company. I do admit social media can be abused, but that is why the policies are made. To prevent people from abusing it or using it inappropriately. I personally believe social media will do nothing but improve the nature of business, PR, and almost any aspect of the business professional world.

Social Media: When is enough, enough?

This week in social media, a line was crossed. A photo of a boy who was a refugee from Syria, was found dead on the shores of Turkey this past week, according to an article by guardian.com. The boy and his mother and siblings had drowned and washed on shore and a photo was taken when the bodies were found. The most famous picture was this photo (shown right), that shows the boy being taken off the shores where his body was found. The boy was wearing a red children's t-shirt and some denim shorts. That description right there is enough for me. To know that a child, who was only trying to survive and stay with his family, had to pay the ultimate price because he was not allowed to be free, unlike us who are free everyday. To make things even worse, the photo was shown and went viral on social media, especially Twitter. In my opinion, there is a line in the "social media world", that shouldn't be crossed and when that picture went viral, it was crossed. I can understand the argument that social media can be used as a news outlet to relay the news to the general public, but when the picture that has gone viral is a picture of a dead boy being carried away, that is more than news being shared. Unfortunately in our world today, those kinds of things are being accepted and the photo that is being shown here is actually not the worst of the photos. The worst is a close up shot of the boy laying on the sand as his body just lays there. There is one potentially good thing that I can think of coming out of this; The leaders of the world and the leaders of the middle east and in countries like Syria, Hungary and Turkey will see the disasters like this that happen and will see that the people  that use social media won't stand for it and will voice their opinions until a change is made. I hate when all we hear in the news today is just stories about evil, tragedy or strife, but I couldn't believe that social media actually made this photo go viral.

Twitter chirping a different pitch with new managment

In the latest social media news, Twitter has parted ways with it's former CEO Dick Costolo. According to this forbes article, the social media powerhouse has said goodbye to it's chief communications officer, Gabriel Stricker as well. The changes are said to be part of a "shift" in communications strategy. Most people have been noticing the design change in Twitter and I wonder if this is why they are noticing differences. The departure was a mutual agreement as both Stricker and his former coworkers are both happy with the end result of their long tenure together. I am interested to see if Twitter changes anything drastically in the near future. Twitter is one the largest apps in the world now and with this new management coming in, some changes and design changes could be in store. As our generation is credited with the social media age, we are continuously spreading information across the web and the globe in general. This "shift" that Twitter is claiming will most likely be something that changes or improves their image to the public and how it is perceived is something I would really be interested to seeing. If this new Twitter is not as good of an idea as the people at Twitter think it will be, then the company could suffer. On the flip side of the coin, there is also the chance that the app reaches new heights and limits and opens a whole new target market.