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My Future Social Media Use

Through the course of this class, whether that be in-class learning, Hootsuite modules, or working on the client project, I have learned a lot about what social media means to the professional world. I mentioned it a little in my last post, but social media can be so much more than just sharing thoughts and pictures of vacations. You can really utilize the resources you have to make professional social accounts that will help you in the long run. For example, LinkedIn, which is meant for professionally putting yourself out there into the working world and showcase your different qualifications or talents. Social media can also be utilized differently in this way if you own a business or work with one.

Moving out of this class, my number one goal is to create a LinkedIn account. I have learned about its importance through the Hootsuite modules, and I only hope to effectively implement that learning into my own social accounts to further my own career for the future.

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Necessity of Resourcefulness

Now that the Hootsuite modules and client projects are coming to an end, I believe that I have a great understanding of social media. For me, social media has always been a way of well, being social. But there are a lot more uses that businesses, organizations, and groups can get out of it as well.

In the Implementation lecture video, it gives a quote by Tony Robbins, that reads “The ultimate resource is resourcefulness.” I think this is a great quote because you can have all the resources in the world, but if you do not know how to effectively use them, they are of no value to you. I like to think of the connection of this through social media. Social media quite literally gives you access to a seemingly unlimited amount of resources in one way or another, but you can easily find yourself drowning in them unless you know how to navigate effectively. 

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Spring Break Social Break

For this week’s blog post, I wanted to write about a recent social media experience I had. Last week, over spring break, one of my friends and I went to a few national parks. Since we did a lot of driving and sight-seeing in a short period of time, we were not able to be on our phones a lot. While we did take a lot of pictures, there were days where I didn’t go on social media at all. My thoughts? Honestly I loved it. Social media has this way of totally emerging you in everything about it. Traveling to national parks already has a way of bringing you back to earth, but after so long of not being able to do that, it was 10 times better being away from social media.

This trip did a few things for me, one of which was make me wish I spent more time outside and traveling. The other was make me wish to log off social media often. Hopefully I can do good on those promises. This trip was just another showcase of how immersive and addicting social media can be. I was glad to take a break.

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Collaborative Communities and Their Success

This week we had to read chapters 3-5 of The Social Organization. One of my main takeaways came from chapter 5, developing a strategic approach to community collaboration. In it, there are some key factors listed about determining if a collaborative community is likely to succeed on its own. These include community formation, participation magnetism, investment needs, management involvement, and policy and security.

Another key takeaway I had came from chapter 3, becoming a social organization. This was from a section on developing an organizational vision board for community collaboration. These included understanding when a community collab is appropriate, knowing where community collab is more likely to deliver value, applying an understanding of your organization’s goals and culture, and crafting and organizational vision for community collab.

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Client Project Step 4

I believe I have finally started to get the hang of writing business memos to my client about their social media. Using this week and last week’s Hootsuite steps about social content marketing and social advertising fundamentals really helped me complete step four of the client project.

I mainly used the Hootsuite chapter about social content marketing through creating a content strategy, content creation vs curation, and best practices for sharing across networks to help me with this step. I started off with giving a brief background of the lessons and why they were important in my client’s specific setting.

One of the main things that I advised to do was to create a content calendar. I personally think that a lot of small businesses overlook the importance of social media and its benefits, so creating a content calendar would be beneficial for a small business to stay on top of things.

I then discussed specific practices for sharing across their social media, further applying recommendations from previous memos. Each week seems to build on what we learned last week, so I feel like I made real progress with truly understanding step four. Speaking honestly, the first two steps were kind of like just going through the motion. In step three and four though, I finally feel like I’m learning about the material and how to apply that to a real setting.

I ended the memo with talking making a few recommendations with what they can do personally with their small business, as shortly discussed above. Hopefully I can keep going on this upwards trend for the rest of the client project steps!

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Client Project Step 3

For me, Client Project Step 3 was a difficult one to complete. I accidentally got the due dates mixed up for this class, so I turned this in over a week ago. Luckily though, I did complete the correct Hootsuite step before writing step three so with that and the example on blackboard, I think I completed it pretty well... hopefully. What was difficult was how many different things from the Hootsuite modules I had to specifically look into and apply to the business I was working with.

I have never done a deep dive into any social media like this before. It was interesting to look at the specific goals, personas, and strategies of the brand I was working with. No matter how small (my business is a small local one), every business has a vision. I liked looking into the business I was working with more.

I think the thing that helped me most was looking at the example and trying my best to follow that while applying to the business I was working with. Quite a few things in both were similar, which was amazing and helped me a lot.

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Legal Side of Big Data

After watching “The Legal Side of Big Data,” I think that businesses need to be aware of what information they are collecting, how they’re collecting it, where they’re keeping it, and how they are taking action to keep that information safe. There are many people out there who benefit from stolen information, so we need to have safe policies and practices in place to prevent that information from leaking. Some things that LaLone discussed in the lecture to help the situation include strong privacy policies, vendor agreements, ensuring security for where the data is kept, clarifying what happens in events like sale, mergers, or bankruptcy, as well as standing by for legislation.

Consumers need to be aware of what information they are giving to who. Places who are hacked that need your email is a lot less of a threat than places who need your social security number or fingerprint. Consumers should be aware of if they businesses or places they are giving their information to have a background of getting hacked easily and getting people’s information stolen easily. They also need to be aware that while places can do as much as they possibly can to protect your information, there is not a 100% guarantee. Although, there are policies and legislation to support that may help get things passed.

The best way to balance the opportunities and threats presented by the development of big data would probably just be to being aware. You should be aware of what information you give, where it is stored, where it could go if hacked, what policies and legislations are in place, etc. By staying well informed, you are more in control and more knowledgeable on what to do in different scenarios.

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How Much can you Find on the Internet?

This week, we learned a little bit about how much is out on the internet about us. We had an assignment where we would look through the internet for how much we could find about someone based on a few different factors. One of the main things I noticed, is that for what was found about me, there was also some things found out about people I’m close to. For example, friends and family. There’s one thing when your information is on the internet of your own account, but it’s another thing when people find things out about your loved ones through your connection to them. Although the things found weren’t negative in any way, shape, or form, it was just uncomfortable in a way because they knew what school, program, and jobs that my friend worked.

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Social Media is a Full-Time Job

Lately I’ve been thinking about social media a lot.

Recently I found out that the average college student is spending as many hours looking at some type of screen as someone with a full-time job. As a student with 18 credit hours, I often complain about not having a lot of free time for myself. I end up believing that I barely have time to do daily activities like cook, do dishes, do laundry, etc. But is that really the case?

During our social media assignment, I discovered that I spend about 6 hours a day on a screen of some type either phone with social media or computer for homework. That nearly puts me at a full-time job staring at a screen. Don’t get me wrong, the hours spent on computers for homework contribute to this number and are in fact good, but it’s the time on social media that makes me think. At minimum (3 hours a day) for a whole week, I spend 21 hours on my phone. That sounds like a lot of time for dishes and laundry to me.

Another thing I have been thinking about a lot lately is how much information is out there on the internet about me. We did an activity in class that within five minutes (with permission) we found out this one guy’s phone numbers, address, family members names, where he worked, and more. We now are doing an activity where we can see how much we can find online about someone with their permission. This startles me in a way. It’s not necessarily startling with what’s out there about me, but more so that anyone can find anything. What I mean is that even on my private social media accounts, friends of friends of friends can share and upload and do all this stuff, meaning that nothing is truly private from the internet. It’s not that I have anything to hide, it’s more about that anyone in the world could know so much about me within a few minutes. It’s just a weird feeling.

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Plans to Improve my Professional Social Media Presence

In the professional world of social media, I plan on building up my profiles. For example, I do not have a LinkedIn, so I am planning to make an account and start to build that up.

So far, I have built a few portfolios and websites for myself, through the LAS program or other classes. Being a photojournalism major, I have almost had to create a new blog and website for every class I have been in, which has given me a lot of practice and experience for that part of professional social media. Throughout those courses, I have learned about presenting yourself in a professional manner so that employers might see what you have accomplished, and I hope to continue learning about this moving forward in this class.

In the future, I will make a LinkedIn account and continue to make professional accounts so that I can present myself in the best possible way on social media. I will also learn about engagement and do my best to incorporate that as much as possible. In my last blog post, I said that I believed consultants need good people skills, so I am planning on continuing to build those as well.

I think the most important thing to do is to just keep learning. Just keep looking for what works best for you and keep learning along the way.

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Necessary Qualities for a Social Media Consultant

I would say the most important qualities for a social media consultant based on this week’s lecture would be being able to be creative, adhere to what your client wants, being able to educate and advise, as well as giving them tools that they can use long after you’re gone. Most importantly though, like discussed in the lecture video, you need to be able to find the answer through what you are given. In other words, go with the flow of what the client wants but also make it better.

Further, in my own opinion, I think that consultants need to have good professional relationship and people skills. To be able to work best with people, you have to be able to cooperate with them. For social media especially, I think the creativity aspect really needs to be there, too. Also, many older business owners do not understand social media and its importance, so educating them throughout doing the job is essential.

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How Intrusive are Internet Business Models?

In reading “The Internet’s Original Sin” article by Ethan Zuckerman, there are a few business models discussed with how they gather data. The main point of the article highlights advertising and how it was the “original sin” of the internet. What I think he means is that advertising was the beginning of internet surveillance that was intended for good but used for bad.

An example used is how smaller businesses would have to complete with media giants like Facebook or Google for advertising to fund their own business. In order to do that, they had to promise that their way of advertising would bring the investors more money. The problem though arises in the fact that in order to accomplish that goal, more surveillance on those ads would be needed. This is where data gathering stated to cross the line. The advertising business model was the way that got companies funded on the internet, and sadly that is what still sticks today.

Some downfalls of that business model according to Zuckerman include being hard to have online advertising without surveillance, that ads create incentives to produce and share content with little to no engagements, ad models tend to centralize the web, and attempts to mitigate these ad problems has consequences. “The primary benefit of online advertising is the ability to see who’s looking at an ad,” says Zuckerman. I think this sums up the main point very well.

So, I may have interpreted some of this wrong, but it seems as if the internet business models as they are now care about making money from individuals at the expense of their privacy. These models are setting people up by making it impossible to get money without intruding on users’ private information. In other words, the way to make money is the way to gather data on customers and use that data to keep making more money.

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The Power and Danger of “Big Data”

“Big Data” is essentially the storing and analyzation of large sets of data. The problem with big data arises with the conflict of information privacy. Some of these dangers and issues include the fact that the data collected is permanent and beyond our control. In business models, trust is key. Every aspect of a business depends on understanding the privacy of employees, customers, and clients, because privacy impacts everyone in the business. This is why bid data is such a powerful tool.

Another issue caused by big data is how effective advertising requires surveillance. From the lecture video from class, there is a quote that summarizes this well: “When most of our online activity is free, we become the product.” This can be related to data brokers, who are people and organizations that are “collecting, analyzing, and packaging some of our most sensitive personal information and selling it as a commodity,” according to the 60 Minutes YouTube clip. This is concerning because of the fact that people’s information can be tracked and sold to others who could profit off of that information. One of the companies featured in the video, I think by the name Ellison, had an executive member of their team talk about their tracking and distributing methods. He said that people need to know that the Internet is an “advertising medium.” So, to advertise means to sell information to people who will benefit off advertising to you. Any information you give that company, no matter how miniscule, is up for grabs.

As for my views on how to limit the harm from big data, I think Ceglowki from “The Internet with a Human Face” video summarized it very well. He said the most important thing to do is regulate. Do I find it creepy that my information is out there? Absolutely. But the thing with me is that I have been lucky enough to grow up with technologies and be taught these dangers from a young age, so I have been very careful about what information I put out there. I mention this because others have not been so lucky. In terms of regulating the information, I definitely feel like how long a company or organization can store the information they track should be limited. I also think that people should be able to download and obtain the exact information that is being gathered from them, if they would like. This was a great idea from Ceglowski.

Overall, I think that in a world where technology keeps growing and the line between information privacy and advertising is getting blurred, I think that regulations for that line needs to grow just as rapidly. I have personally been lucky enough to know these dangers from a young age, being extra careful about what I put on the Internet, but others have not been so lucky. I think that everyone deserves the same right to privacy as everyone else, and that means going to extreme lengths with regulations that reflect just that.

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Social Media Experiment: Does Time Away Help Productivity?

For class we had to do an assignment where we logged our social media use for 24 hours, and then did an experiment where we altered that use. The experiment I chose was to do four 6-hour social media free periods over the next day and a half. This took place January 19th and 20th.

If I’m being honest, I was quite worried about this assignment. I don’t necessarily think I am one who is addicted to social media because of the natural stereotypes, but rather I use social media in a somewhat different way than others. In my case I pretty much just use social media to communicate and stay up to date. I do not post a lot. For example, I use snapchat as others use texting. This is my way of communicating with people whose phone numbers I do not have. So, when I cannot use social media, I tend to feel out of the loop and uninformed, which is a feeling I do not enjoy.

Something I liked about this assignment is that it gave me a reason to get away from social media. Like I said, I hate feeling uninformed and out of loop. Over the past two years starting with the COVID quarantine and going up until now, I have found myself less and less interested in my social media. I have wanted to get away from it so many times before, because as much as it can save you at certain times, it can destroy you at others. I honestly think I would have gone into a very dark place if social media wasn’t a thing during quarantine. During that extremely difficult time in my life, as I’m sure it was for many others, social media gave me something to look forward to. It helped me to see past the disparity of the moment and look forward to whatever was coming next.

One of the main things I noticed from this assignment was how much of an effect my phone and social media has on me. It is like muscle memory to open my phone and go to snapchat, instagram, twitter, tiktok, etc. The number of times during this experiment where I would open my phone and go to one of those apps without realizing it was alarming. It’s not even that I wanted to go to those apps, it more came out of pure habit.

Now, the main question: Did this have an impact on my productivity? Yes, a little bit anyway. I wanted to challenge myself and put the time away from social media and my phone during the times I am most inclined to use it. For me that was late at night, early in the morning, and when I would take breaks while studying or doing homework. I found that when I take breaks from homework that don’t include using my phone, I got a lot more done. It’s like when I would study before, the whole time I would be thinking “okay, 10 more minutes and then I can use my phone,” which meant my mind was on the wrong thing. During this experiment though, when I knew I wasn’t going to use my phone, for some reason I was a lot more present and focused on what I was doing. I hate to admit it, but in terms of homework productivity, time away from social media helped me a lot. At other times though, I didn’t see much of a difference. I think that I have learned a decent amount about what works for me and what doesn’t when it comes to phone usage at different times of the day.

That being said, I still do not see social media in an all-negative light. If you know how to navigate it correctly, it can have a positive and non-invasive impact on your life.

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Cell Phones and Social Media: Should we Hate or Love Them?

Being a 20-year-old college student in 2022, I cannot remember a time without cell phones and social media. From the earliest point I can remember, my parents had some type of screen on their phone. I got my first phone in 6th grade at the age of 12. I was allowed to have social media the following year when I entered middle school. So, as you can image, social media has always been the normal for me, as I’m sure it has been to most people reading this.

Watching the video on Louis C.K. speaking about how he hates cell phones was a conversation I have heard many times. The interview with Sherry Turkle was also familiar to me in terms of overall concept, although she went a lot deeper into the meaning behind the harm cell phones can cause. Naturally, I disagree with some things they said, but I am also biased in never knowing a world without them.

One of the main points Louis CK made was the thought that people need to build an ability to be yourself while not doing anything. He said that phones are taking this skill away from the younger generation because they always need to be on it. I can see where he is coming from, but in my own personal experience, I disagree. While I do agree people these days have a hard time logging off their phones, I do not think it is because they are scared to be alone. I am certainly not like that, but that could just be how my parents raised me. Although I spend a lot of time on my phone, I know when to put my phone down and when not to. I am perfectly fine with spending an afternoon off my phone, or even away from technology in general.

Being that Sherry Turkle’s Interview video was a longer length than Louis CK’s, there was a lot more information that I got out of it. Actually, one of the most interesting quotes I got from that video came from the man who was interviewing Turkle. He said, “Our devices change not only what we do, but who we are.” I think I somewhat agree with that, but again, I do not think the issue is that simple. Turkle mentioned three promises that people get from cell phones and social media, which are 1. we can always be heard, 2. we can be wherever we want to be, and 3. we never have to be alone. While these promises may all be true in some cases, there are a lot of cases in which they are not. Also, I believe that if you use phones the right way, or at least what I think the right way is, these promises are not always bad things. In my case, I know the dangers of social media thanks to my parents and figures in my life that have taught me along the way. With that though, I also know the wonders it can bring. Everyone just has to find their own way to weave out the bad and navigate the good.

As for what I think social media’s influence on my daily life is, I would say it has a decent amount of influence. I do tend to go on social media in between class or during homework breaks or walking to and from class, which may not be the best, but it gives me something to do. I love and hate social media because I believe it has a weird way of making you feel the most connected to the world you’ve ever been, but also the most distant at the same time. It really depends on how you use it. If you use it to avoid making eye contact to those walking towards you, that’s one thing. But if you use it to keep in touch with your family that lives on another continent or follow up with a celebrity or public figure that you admire or even check to see what your friends are up to, it can be a very good thing. My first instinct is to go on social media. I usually open snapchat, respond to people then watch stories, then go to Instagram and catch up on posts and stories, then go to twitter and look at what’s on my feed, then go to tiktok to see who has posted, then go to facebook, and then I would do other things on my phone. If you asked me why I go straight to these five different social media apps, I honestly wouldn’t have a simple answer for you.

Long story short, social media has a huge impact on my daily life, but if you know how to navigate it correctly, you can get a lot more out of it that what it takes out of you.

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How Social Media Can Make History: TED Talk Review

In the TED talk by Clay Shirky, How Social Media Can Make History, I believe he makes some interesting points. The three main ideas he talks about are how 1) internet is the first medium in history that has native support for groups and conversations at the same time, 2) as all media gets digitized, the Internet also becomes the mode of carriage for all other media, and 3) member of the former audience can now also be producers and not consumers.

Growing up in the age of social media, the internet is really all I’ve ever known. Through school we have learned of all the other forms of media revolutions and when they happened: printing press, telegraphs and telephones, recorded sound and movies, radio and tv. With majoring in Photojournalism in a time where print media is struggling, social media and how news is broadcasted throughout the internet has interested me because being able to navigate this well is what my future career depends on.

The question of the TED talk that Shirky ended with goes something like this: the question now is how can we make best us of this media even when that means changing the way we’ve always done it? I am really hoping to find some answers to this question throughout this BIS315 class. At the moment, I do not know the answer, and there may not be one right one.

If this TED talk did anything for me, it is it made me see social media in a different light as a tool of communication and connection. It is innovation that is happening everywhere, as Shirky puts it, which means that we aren’t just consumers of the media; everything we put out makes us producers too.

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Getting Started

Hey! My name is Paige Hassen and I am a sophomore at Central Michigan University. I actually grew up in Mount Pleasant, so I know CMU like the back of my hand. I’m majoring in Photojournalism with minors in Entrepreneurship, Environmental Sciences, and Leadership.

Some career goals I have are to do something like work at National Geographic or start my own business.

In this blog I am hoping to accomplish getting better knowledge of the world of social media and everything that BIS315 entails.

Looking forward to the rest of the semester! See you soon.