This semester has been filled with various ups and downs specifically in this class. I had been extremely excited to take another course by Carol, but soon became to realize it wasn’t going to complete the coursework as easy as I’d hoped. With much reflection I’ve come to realize that the only thing holding me back in this course was myself. I knew all along what to do and how to do it, but I let me hold myself back by second guessing myself. For the purpose of this assignment, we’ll break the Social Media course into before fall break, after fall break, and post presentations. Before fall break I was extremely optimistic. I felt very confident as a journalism student here at Creighton and I was excited for the upcoming assignments; although I knew deep down I was dreading presentations at the end of the semester. I really enjoyed the field trips to the Red Cross and Completely KIDS. I think that helped a lot in understanding our clients. Once we finished out that week I felt extremely confident in my future assignment and wanted to get started right away. I think it might be more beneficial if we could nix out some of the busy work in the beginning of the semester. I don’t know if this would be feasible to just work on the social media campaigns throughout the whole semester, but I think it would have been more beneficial since we are going to be turning them into the clients. I think we could stand to have more brainstorming, creating, reviewing and editing in order to put together the final campaign. After fall break it felt like things we’re going by super-fast; which they were. At this point in time I completely regretted agreeing to do the social media campaign by myself. I felt unprepared and was always second guessing my decisions. I remember thinking that I was going to give this feedback at my end of the semester course evaluation. I really enjoyed the field trip to the Nebraska Humane Society. Elizabeth Hilpipre was a huge help when it came to figuring out certain aspects of my social media campaign. She had very creative and inspiring ideas that motivated me to create original and impactful content for Completely KIDS. This visit was extremely beneficial to our projects as well as our general knowledge when it comes to social media. While this visit was a nice mid-semester break, I think it would have been more beneficial in the beginning of the class. I know we had visits with our clients so the placement of the NHS trip was understandable. After the presentations I realized that I was the only thing holding myself back. It might have been because I wasn’t confident in my work at first, but as Molly said, I really had nothing to worry about. I was in front of my peers who aren’t there to judge me. Once Molly said those words my nerves dissipated, or so I thought. I did something I have never ever done before in a presentation; fidgeted and swayed. How embarrassing! I was completely aware I was doing it the whole time, but I just couldn’t stop. I really liked that we presented our ideas to our peers. It was a no brainer; we got practice with public speaking and we presented our ideas to the class. I think it would have been beneficial if our peers gave us constructive criticism on our ideas – especially for those who aren’t working in pairs. That feedback would not only help the projects themselves, but it would help our peers become more comfortable with providing feedback to future employers and future fellow employees. At this point I came to the realization that it was a wise choice for me to work by myself. Now that I have dialed down my content I know that I can do this, and will feel extremely accomplished once it is turned in.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed my time in this social media class. As a preschool teacher, I enjoyed working specifically with Completely KIDS, and furthermore, enjoyed getting to see different sides of the childcare business. I enjoyed creating a social media campaign, but would have benefited from more in class work time to get feedback from peers and from Carol. Over the course of the semester, I’ve learned how much more there is to social media than liking and sharing posts, and I’ve become extremely interested in that specific part of the business. I can’t wait to continue my journey here at Creighton, and continue to learn more about what could come from having a degree in journalism.
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During class on Tuesday a panel of social media experts visited our classroom. The three women on the panel were Amanda Brandt, Megan Longo, and Ashley Anderson. Brandt serves as the social media and content strategist for Creighton University, Longo serves as the marketing director for Flagship Restaurant Group, and Anderson serves as the marketing strategist for Flywheel. Each expert had interesting tips and advice that will help me and my peers as students and as young professional eager to enter the corporate world. Amanda Brandt, who serves as the social media and content strategist for Creighton University, was closest in age to myself and my peers so her insight was particularly interesting. Brandt pointed out the importance of trying to communicate with prospective and potential students in the admissions process. Megan chimed in and said that it would be interesting to see what that would look like. When viewing content they would potentially be thinking if they could see themselves attending Creighton so Brandt would have to get creative in showing them why Creighton is for them without being too intrusive. Brandt made an interesting point about Instagram and how she views it as a professional. She said that when she is scrolling through her Instagram feed that she doesn’t click on pictures and think about how pretty they are. She looks at pictures and discerns why that certain picture was chosen, why the caption was chosen, and why this content was showing. I found this interesting, because as a journalism student, I am slowly starting to question content I view out in the world. Megan Longo, who serves as the marketing director for Flagship Restaurant Group, definitely inspired me and motivated me as a journalism student. She made interesting points about protecting your reputation as a brand while also being able to tell a story through the content you post on your brands social media sites. Longo also made points about having excellent writing and editing skills as well as writing in the correct voice. She said you have to speak to the point, create a voice, stick to it, and churn out content. It almost seems like a no brainier to stay up on your writing skills, but people make mistakes everyday, even in the corporate world. Longo also spoke on crisis management, or as she likes to call it, reputation management. When she comes across bad experiences from customers on social media she does everything to make it right as she doesn’t want to lose a customer. She does this without being intrusive which I think is extremely important. This is so huge to improve and solidify brand loyalty. I know I feel reassured when I read stories about companies making it right with dissatisfied customers. Ashley Anderson, who serves as the marketing strategist for Flywheel, had specific tips for me and my peers and gave great advice for the rest of our time at Creighton. Ashley talked about interacting with brands to promote brand loyalty. She said that once when she was at Blue Sushi she tweeted to the restaurant. Blue Sushi told her to order a certain dish, and when she replied that she had already ordered, they replied back and gave her a gift card for her next visit to try the dish they had originally suggested. While this was more of a point for Longo, I found it extremely interesting and effective (as described above). Towards the end of the class period, the conversation took a turn as Anderson and Longo started using us students as their guinea pigs. They asked questions about retargeting ads and asked us specific questions about us as student consumers. This shift in the conversation was very interesting and made the conversation more organic. I thought the professionals took a great opportunity to get feedback even if that wasn't the intended purpose of the panel. Overall the panel was extremely interesting and educational. We learned about crisis management, brand loyalty, and retargeting among many other topics. The biggest takeaway that I got that I can act on immediately though was to find a brand crush and figure out what speaks to me and why. This can help me in the future if I ever step into a social media position. As of right now I don't have a brand crush, but I certainly know that Flagship Restaurant Group and Flywheel have a new follower on social media.
Will Oremus’ article on how the new Facebook algorithm works is interesting, exciting, and confusing all in the same time. The article on Slate’s website describes how the new algorithm works and gives a behind the scenes look at the engineers who work on this algorithm every day. The new Facebook algorithm is tricky for me because the negative aspects of it outweigh the positives. For example, I spend a lot of time on the local buy/sell/trade pages because, with our recent move, I have been looking to get rid of a lot of unnecessary items. I check the pages often so I would then assume that Facebook thinks I want to see what’s for sale. This morning I opened my newsfeed and the first four posts I saw were for sale ads for a kid’s fishing pole, children’s Halloween costumes, toddler shoes, and board games. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t buy any of this and was so frustrated that this would be at the top of my newsfeed that I clicked out of my Facebook app and opened Snapchat instead. I wish there would be some sort of way to easily filter what you see on Facebook. For me, I would want to see posts and pictures from the people I care most about, interesting news articles, and a few memes. I don’t enjoy opening up my newsfeed to ten memes followed by tons of posts on the buy/sell/trade pages because, for the most part, I am on Facebook to connect with the people on my friends list. I will say that on good days, when the people in my life have posted a lot, I do see those posts higher up on my newsfeed; which I appreciate. On the other hand, I don’t know how effective this algorithm is because whenever I open my newsfeed on the Facebook app I always click on the “most recent” tab. This will show me posts in the order that they have been posted, and I appreciate this so I am not viewing older posts, which can be frustrating. For example, sometimes when I open Facebook and don’t click on the “most recent” tab see posts that were posted three to four days ago mixed in with posts from the current day. This is awkward for me sometimes because I often comment on the posts if they are new to me. Recently I commented on a post of my mom’s that was from a few days ago and she asked if I was “stalking” her page. This would be fine for my mom to make a joke like this, but I wouldn’t want an ex or someone of the sort to see me commenting on posts from days ago as if I had purposely gone to their page and were scrolling through their page. There wasn’t anything in particular that surprised me in the article, but more of things that I found true in my experiences on Facebook. Oremus wrote that, “People are too complex for any algorithm to model.” This rings true in my experience on Facebook as described above. While I completely appreciate when I open my newsfeed and see pictures of my mom’s hike, my boyfriend’s niece, and an article written by my cousin, I am completely turned off when I do not enjoy the posts so much so that I exit out of the app and click open a different social media tool. I also was struck by this excerpt from the article: “People were liking more things on Facebook than ever. But were they liking Facebook less?” This rang true to me. Most recently I have seen myself “liking” posts that I find funny or interesting, but have also been contemplating deactivating my Facebook as a whole because my use on Facebook has recently become so routine that it’s almost unnecessary. If I am bored enough, I could spent up to thirty minutes at a time on the app, and that is completely unnecessary. Oremus talked about how impractical it would be to ask Facebook users to rank what they found most important on their newsfeed in order to perfect the algorithm. While he said it would be impossible and impractical I would absolutely appreciate the chance to do so before I find myself using other apps where I do have that control like on Snapchat. Oremus also wrote about liking a post before you’ve actually read it. Am I the only one who doesn’t do this? I would never like, comment on, or share a post that I hadn’t read because I wouldn't want to seem ignorant posting views on something I knew nothing about. I also found the idea of “superhiders” extremely interesting, but ridiculous at the same time. Who has time to click “hide” on every single post that they have viewed or read? The most practical use of the “hide” button, I think, would be to hide posts you find offensive or inappropriate. With this being said, superhiders would then hurt the algorithm set up to hide future posts that I would find offensive.
I suppose the only way for me to take control over my newsfeed would be to click on that tiny grey arrow to the right of a post and give Facebook the feedback of how I react to posts, but in the end, I don’t have time for that. It it because I don't have the time? Or because I am too lazy to do so? That is probably the better question, but I know I don’t want to have to click on that grey arrow because I am a spoiled tech user; I want this done for me. While it is a nice addition that I have the option to hide, report, unfollow, and like I think the perfection of the Facebook algorithm will be a long and never ending process. |
PaigeCreighton University Archives
December 2017
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