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.