Social Media Principles Class

Over the course of my final semester at ONU I have learned a lot of different things about social media in general and also how to become an effective and efficient blogger. We read two different books in my social media course starting with Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of Social Media book. This book had highlighted the key aspects of social media and how to use it. The book had talked about how whether you are promoting a business, a product, or yourself, social media is near the top of what determines your success or failure. This book was an essential guide for newbies or experienced professionals in the social media field to give you the most bang for your time, effort and money. This book had come with over 100 practical tips, tricks, and insights to come up with an effective strategy to come up with a strong presence on the most popular social media platforms.

The second book we read was a textbook created by Karen Freberg called Social Media for Strategic Communication. This book had provided us with scholarly research that taught us strategic implementation of social media in both advertising and public relations. This book all taught us the skills needed to use social media in persuasive communication campaigns. It had a broad focus on strategic communication all the way from public relations, advertising, and marketing, to non-profit advocacy.

My favorite assignment during the semester was the podcast assignment. This was my favorite because I always like to listen to podcasts and this was my first time ever trying to recreate what I had heard. This was a fun experience and I feel like I learned a lot from it. The biggest thing I learned was that you need to come prepared when you are going to do a podcast because it is quite easy to run out of things to say.

My favorite part of the class this year was the actual class itself. I never really knew how to effectively use social media and now I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of what it takes to put out good content. I also loved the relaxed environment that we were in when we actually in the classroom. The class was focused more on group discussion rather than straight lecturing and I feel like that made me learn a lot better.

The only area of improvement I would say that this class needs to look into is the workload amount that is given. I feel like two blogs a week instead of three is a better way to get student more engaged with their blogs instead of feeling like they are being forced to blog at a certain time.

Overall, I had a great experience in this class and would recommend anyone to take it if they want to learn the ways of social media.

How I Stay Motivated as a Senior

Your senior year of college is a weird time. All year, you are focused on making the most of your senior year, finally being finished with college, finding a job, and excelling in school. This combination of events can make it really difficult to stay focused on school. Sometimes, you would rather hang out with your friend or apply to jobs than study for a test. If you are experiencing this, it’s normal! After all of these years of school, you are bound to feel restless and want to engage activities that are fun or that will help your future. As a senior, balancing all of these feelings with school is something I have experienced first-hand. As the year ends, I decided to tell you all just how I stayed focus on school this year.

First, I had to remember that school still matters. Even though I am close to being finished, my grades still matter. First, they matter because they determine whether I pass or fail a class, which will affect whether I graduate. This was a really important motivator for me because I would hate to let being a senior distract me from the reason I am at college in the first place: to get my degree. Second, school matters because my grades will appear on my transcripts which could be viewed by potential employers. I would hate for an employer to not hire me simply because I decided to slack off my senior year.

Next, I had to find a balance between downtime, applying for jobs, and doing school work. Staying on a schedule helped me with this. I usually spent my afternoons and early evenings on weekdays working on school work. I would go to the library to make sure I would not get distracted. On nights and weekends, I made time for relaxation and hanging with friends. I spent my breaks between classes, mornings, and random spurts of spare time applying for jobs. This balance has allowed me to make time for all of the things that are important for me.

Staying motivated during your senior year can be difficult. Sometimes, you will prioritize having fun over studying, and that’s okay. After all of these years, you deserve to enjoy yourself. Just make sure to stay well informed on your grades and assignments so that you don’t get yourself into a hole you can’t get out of. Although college is fun, the real reason we are all here is to get a degree. So, stay focused and work hard! Best of luck to my fellow college seniors with the last few weeks of the semester!

Tiger Woods Post Masters Press Conference

On April 14, 2019, golf legend Tiger Woods won his fifth Masters title at the Augusta National tournament. After the big win, Woods partook in a lengthy press conference, which served as a very important opportunity for PR for him. This Masters tournament is the first time he has won since 2005. As you may remember, a few years back Woods’ was involved in a scandal for cheating on his wife, which was seen as his demise on and off the course. This win is being called his comeback and after watching him play, it’s clear that he really is back. However, a win is not enough for Tiger Woods to be seen as the champion he once was. That is why this post-tournament interview is so crucial for him. He needed to charm the world and prove himself once more.

Watching the press conference made me very nostalgic of who Woods’ was about 15 years ago – a champion whose humor and charm rocked an interview. This interview was especially important for Woods’ because he needed to show the world that he is the same man he used to be. He needed to portray himself in the best way possible to regain his fanbase. The interview covered everything from his most recent win to his first Masters' appearance in 1995. Some moments of the interview that stuck out to me are:

-Tiger expressing gratitude to his father who came out to his first Masters' tournament in 1995, despite having serious health problems.

-Tiger talking about his increased involvement in the lives of his children.

-When Tiger said, “You never give up. That’s a given. You always fight. Just giving up’s never in the equation.”

Other parts of the press conference discussed his playing strategies, hopes for the future, and the types of clubs he played with. Overall, the press conference was an opportunity for Tiger Woods to portray himself in a positive light. I believe he did just that. After watching it, I completely forgot that he spent years struggling to get back on top. Watching it also reminded me just how important good press is to a person’s reputation. The combination of his win and a well-done interview confirm that Tiger Woods achieved the ultimate comeback.

Top 10 Things I Will Miss About ONU

With graduation right around the corner, I can’t help but think about all of the things I am going to miss when I am gone. College has been a really memorable experience and I know it will be sad to leave. So, here are the top 10 things I will miss the most at ONU:

10) The professors – ONU has allowed me to meet some pretty cool professors over the years. Thanks to them, I feel ready to graduate and enter the workforce.

9) Being in walking distance to everything – Ada is small which means you can pretty much walk everywhere. Whether you are going to class, the library, or getting something to eat, you can walk everywhere. I will definitely miss this when I have to drive everywhere after college.

8) Ada sunsets – Ada is home to some of the most beautiful sunsets. I will definitely miss walking on the Tundra or hanging out in my back yard with my friends and watching the sunset.

7) King Horn – There are very few times in your life where you get free access to weights and other work out equipment. I will definitely miss the ease of walking over to King Horn with my friends or teammates for a lift.

6) The Regal Beagle – This is one of Ada’s few bars. I have made lots of fun memories here and will definitely miss seeing all of my pals out at the “Beagle” on Saturday nights.

5) Viva Maria – Viva’s is Ada’s Italian restaurant and I love coming here for dinner. On weekends they offer a buffet with different types of pasta, chicken, veggies, pizza, and more. It is absolutely delicious and an especially fun time when they have live bands playing.

4) The ease of college life – Although studying and doing homework gets tiring, college has been fun and easy. I have minimal bills and responsibility, which has been very enjoyable. I know after graduation life will come at me fast, so this will definitely be missed.

3) Living with my best friends – This year I got to live in a house with 9 of my friends and it has been a blast. Between watching Naruto, cooking dinner together, and making vlogs, we have made some pretty great memories.

2) Friends I’ve made – Since ONU is small, I have been able to really get to know and befriend a lot of people. Whether we had a few classes together or spent every day together, each person will be missed and always remembered.

1) My teammates – As a 4-year member of the men’s lacrosse team, my teammates have become my brothers. Through all the practices, team bonding events, games, and more, we have become brothers. Through the wins and the losses, the laughs and the sighs, we have made countless memories.

Chapter 10 Reading

The 10^th chapter of “Social Media for Strategic Communication” was all about measurement, evaluation, budget, and calendar. All of these aspects are vital to effectively make use of your social media.

The first part of the chapter goes into the importance of measurement and evaluation in social media. It had talked about how measurement focuses on designating specific amount that reflects the change in specific objectives, while evaluation focuses on the assessment or value of certain actions in a campaign or strategy. Both work hand in hand with each other because you need to measure something to be able to evaluate it.

It is also important to have a measurement strategy, with a measurement strategy professionals are able to:

            -Be better informed about their key audiences

            -Be able to execute and create effective content

            -Align content, stories, and other social media updates to be executed at the right time

            -Make each post count and be more effective in coordinating a team effort

            -Identify more efficiently with key audiences, influencers, and others

In social media, it is important to always have a game plan or strategy for the actions, steps, and duties because they contribute to your overall goal and program needs.

When you evaluate your social media activities you can build relationships with your key audiences or influencers, it is important to evaluate for many reasons:

-You will have a better understanding of how your social media channels benefit your brand or client

-You will be able to see the overall performance of the content with and without paid support

-You will be able to not only the place of social media channels within the community you are engaged with but how the content spreads and is received by others

For all of these reasons, it is important to make sure that you pay attention to the measurements and evaluations you or your company are making in order to effectively and efficiently use social media.

Why to choose a communications minor

When I entered ONU freshman year, I was not completely sure what I wanted to do. I declared a major in pharmaceutical business and thought that would be it. However, down the road, I decided it would be to my advantage to add a minor in communications. I have come to realize that communication is a huge part of every career, especially in business.

 

I chose to pick up the communication minor because the need for strong communicators in the workforce is great. Although I considered myself a decent communicator before picking up the minor, I knew I needed to grow my skills and focus on improvement. I was especially excited to learn more about written and non-verbal communication because I hadn’t really had the chance to before.

ONU offers a lot of courses in the Communication and Media Studies (CAMS) program, many of which I have taken to fulfill the requirements for my minor. Some of the classes include presentational speaking, communication theory, health communication, public relations, principles of social media, and more. Each of the classes I have taken has been extremely informative in showing me the ins and outs of the communication field.

In addition to offering a diverse course selection, ONU’s CAMS program has some of the best professors I have ever had. Each professor goes above and beyond for their students, always making sure they understand the material and teaching real-life skills. One huge benefit of the professors in the department is that they are all highly qualified to teach. Each of them has

 so much experience in effective communication, so it makes learning from them more enjoyable.

Another cool part of the CAMS program is the organization Public Relations Students Society of America (PRSSA). This organization meets once a week and presents students with guest speakers who provide advice, insight, and encouragement to students in the field. At the national level, this organization holds various competitions, conferences, and other opportunities which ONU students often participate. From my experience, this organization is a hugely beneficial tool in a young professional’s life.

 

Since declaring my communication minor, I feel much more confident in my abilities and skills for entering the workforce. I know that this minor will give me a leg up on my colleagues and I will constantly utilize the information I learned through the program. 

Mac Improvements

With only a few weeks until graduation, I have found myself pondering my college experience. One of the things I have thought about in great detail are the changes that have taken place at ONU since I arrived four years ago. The most impressive change I have seen is the McIntosh renovations.

Freshman year, Mac was a completely different place. The first area to completely change was when White Bear Inn changed to a Wow Café. While they both serve similar types of food (burgers, chicken tenders, fries), they are very different. Wow Café offers a much higher quality option to students than before. Another cool thing in this area of Mac is that they created Klondike’s, which is a student hang out with TVs and pool tables.

Next, Mac created an on-campus coffee shop that serves Starbucks coffee. I think the whole student body would agree with me that this addition was necessary and impressive. Whether you are craving a latté or a muffin, this coffee shop has what you need. Surrounding the coffee shop is a ton of new, comfortable furniture to sit in while you study or just to hang out in between classes.

The final improvement is the dining hall. My freshman year, the dining hall was a sub-par cafeteria that had a few different areas of food and a big dishwashing station in the center. Student’s criticized the dining hall on the daily and it was a very poor representation of all of the greatness ONU has to offer. The new dining hall is state of the art. It offers students new types of food, including a Mongolian-style grille in the middle. The seating options are diverse and much more comfortable than before. Finally, the dishwashing area is tucked away in the back and much more efficient than before.

In just four years, one building experienced a 180-degree transformation. I am really happy that I got to experience this because it showed me just how much ONU is on the come-up. It also makes me excited to see all of the changes that will take place after I graduate. I look forward to coming back to campus in the next few years and seeing all of the improvements to come, such as the new engineering building.

Infographic

The other day I worked on my first ever infographic to show what I learned during the 2019 Social Media Workshop here at Ohio Northern University. This was a fun process because I had known little about how to make an infographic and I had no idea where to even start. The first thing you must know when getting started is to use the website Canva because it can satisfy all of your needs if you are ever in the business of making infographics. The website can be used by strangers to making infographics as well as experts because it displays everything you may need in an easy to use manner.

The speaker I chose to do an infographic about was Shana Tachikawa. I found her presentation very interesting during the Workshop and thought it would be beneficial to take a deeper dive into her thoughts and make an infographic about it. The main topics Shana had covered were the 7 Social Media Tips to Maximize Event Coordination. I felt this was important to pay attention to because of the research Shana had done that proved how important social media actually is to big events or conferences. After looking into what Shana had described and explained to us I made up an infographic about the presentation which will be shown later.

I faced a few different challenges when creating the infographic that I feel should be explained here. The first problem I faced was my inexperience in the subject of infographics, I have never made one before so I did not exactly know what the assignment was looking for until I took a deeper look into the rubric. Another problem that I had faced was making the infographic look good, I had a vision in my head of what I wanted to do but it was hard to actually put these ideas into the infographic. Now that I am a little bit more familiar with what a proper infographic should look like I feel like I have a better understanding of what needs to be done. I think infographics are a very important tool in the public relations field because it shows a quick and easy way to understand what is being presented to you.

Benefits of Blogging

Many people have never started a blog or consistently kept up with it and they do not realize how beneficial having a blog can actually be. You may think that blogging is not worth your time and effort but it really is. If you work for a business or just have a personal blog it can be very beneficial to your brand.

Having a blog is a great way to express yourself and share your passions, you can share your thoughts and feeling and connect with people that have similar passions or interests as you and build your network. Another reason to have a blog is you can share your knowledge you have acquired on specific subjects, if you are proficient in a topic then you can share your knowledge to other people and educate them with what you know.

Having a blog is also a great way to improve your writing skills when you are writing more you become better at it from having constant exposure to it. Having better writing skills can correlate to your life in many ways. For example, if you need to send a professional email to an industry professional then you want to have more experience in writing so you do not look like you are uneducated.

Having a blog can also help you build your professional network, whether you are blogging with either a personal account or a professional account. One way to do this is by blogging on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a feature in which you can create and publish your own articles. In doing this, you may spark attention from prospective employers and other new professional connections. If you decide to blog for professional reasons, be sure to triple check your article for typos and grammatical errors. Additionally, make sure that the topics you choose to blog about are appropriate and ones in which you are well informed.

Whatever your reason may be for blogging, I know you can find the same joy in it that I have found. No matter your blogging intentions, I am sure that your blog will serve as a necessary outlet in your life to speak about things that matter to you. Finally, always keep in mind that your blog is memorabilia to your life. Years down the road you can come back to them and remember the things that were important to you at the time of writing them. 

Reading Chapter 8

For this week’s reading, we dove into the first part of the 8^th chapter of Social Media for Strategic Communication. This chapter was all about audience segmentation and analysis. The chapter starts out by talking about what audience segmentation is, which refers to the process of categorizing people into a certain group based on specific criteria. This is useful when trying to implement content to a targeted market because when people are grouped together you know exactly who you are trying to show content to. The different audience segments relevant to social media campaigns consist of demographics, psychographics, platform specifics, type of social media user, and social metrics. All of these different audience segments contribute to finding your specific audience.

Later the chapter goes into what an influencer is, and influence is defined as the capacity of power of persons or things to be a compelling for on or produce effects on actions, behavior, opinions, etc. of others. This is huge in the social media world because if you can get an effective influencer more people will want to look into or buy whatever you are selling. It is important to remember that brands and influencers have to disclose their relationship or they could be in some serious trouble. When talking about influencers you must know that influencers have built their connections over time, not with endorsements, but rather through constant social connections. This means that influencers really do have a lot of pull in the social media world because they have been working on their connections and building relationships for a very long time, this shows the trust that people have in influencers. As a social media correspondent be sure to cautious when evaluating influencers. Some influencers may not present true information about who they really are. Some people may change who they really are online in order to look better or more influential so it is important to be wary about authenticity in the engagements with audiences.

April Fools Day

A lot of people love to play pranks of April Fools jokes on their friends and family but have no idea where the origins of these jokes came from. If you didn’t know April Fools is the first day of April where people celebrate by playing practical jokes or spreading hoaxes, the joke is often followed by the perpetrator yelling April Fools! Many companies today have started to commemorate April Fools jokes in their marketing schemes by showing that they are going to come out with a crazy new product or get rid of one of their beloved products. An example of this was yesterday when McDonald's announced that they were implementing a new all pickle burger, this had some mixed reactions where some fans thought this was a hilarious joke while others were outraged with even the thought of a McPickle. This is a key problem with doing an April Fool’s joke because you never know how people are going to react. People can be all about the joke and laugh at it or they can be annoyed and you could receive some backlash for it.

There are many disputed stories of the true origins of April Fool’s day but the most commonly cited one comes from France in 1582. This all started when France had switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. The people who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the New Year had moved to January 1^st, still celebrated New Year’s during the last week of March through April 1^st, this cause the people that did not know the calendar had switched to become the butt of peoples jokes. People that were pranked or were the butt of the joke were often said to have a paper fish placed on their backs which symbolized a gullible person. Thus, creating what is commonly known today as April Fools day. 

Ferrero Rocher

This week in the world of public relations lots of big things happened, one of the biggest may be that the Italian candy company, Ferrero, most commonly known for Nutella and Tic Tac. Has acquired many different iconic American brands from Kellogg for $1.3 billion. This acquisition consists of Kellogg’s cookie, fruit snack, ice cream cone, and pie crust business. These combined areas generated a combined $900 million in 2018. The Ferrero group has been on a spending spree since early 2015 from an aggressive new approach by the CEO in order to expand and get more business. The CEO Giovanni Ferrero had said that his goal is to double revenue every 10 years meaning more acquisitions are to come. The Kellogg group that is very well known for the elves making Keebler cookies, actually wanted to get rid of its cookie brand since November 2018, this is due largely to the fact that Kellogg wants to keep its attention towards its main brands of cereals because it is said that the cookie industry is already a very crowded industry.

With Ferrero making so many strong acquisitions you start to wonder if the company is becoming a Monopoly and who are if any, the competitors for this billion dollar company. Some competitors consist of Hershey, Mars, Lindt, Nestle, and Godiva. When you look at all these companies you start to think that they are huge competitors because their brand is so well known. But, Ferrero’s aggressive acquisition style has led it to be in many different industries including cookies, chocolates, candies, and breath-savers. This is a huge competitive advantage for Ferrero because they have dipped their toes in so many different industries while their competitors tend to only be in one or two big industries.

The backstory of how Ferrero created its first top seller is actually very interesting. The company started as a modest coffee and pastry shop during WW2. Back then the shop had to make some tough decisions because cocoa was so scarce during the war, this caused Ferrero to start implementing hazelnuts, cocoa butter, and vegetable oil which was turned into a paste. This paste became very popular among the people coming to the pastry shop and was later named Nutella. It is interesting to look at where the company started and how they were so scarce on materials that they had to switch to other cheaper materials which inevitably lead to an amazing new product.