Here are my top 10 most important revelations this semester:
1.
Social media offers the ability to exchange in a
give and take with consumers. Social media sites make it easier to instantly
express feelings immediately after something happens on television. Reacting to
television shows have now become something the networks capitalize on. “Take
CNN, for example, it asks its viewers to give them feedback on Twitter,” (2).
It creates more viewer engagement and is an instant sense of what viewers do
and do not like. When TV shows see that viewers do not like a character, they
just write them off the show. Television producers care about what fans think,
even if it does not seem like they do. We can even do that with our social
media 4 social change projects, if something does not get a lot of attention,
we can focus our social media accounts on something else.
2.
Social media creates a more participatory
society. Social media sites are easy enough to use. “A lot of the platforms
that we call social media – Facebook, Twitter, etc.…. employ simple, easy
interfaces that you don’t need any particular programming expertise to take
advantage of,” (3). Anyone can use social media in some form in whichever site
they like, and connect and participate. With this class, we used a lot of the
popular social media networks. They were so easy to create a new account or
create a page. All that was left to do was to follow or like each other or
people with similar likes.
3.
People do not want privacy on social media. As
much as people say there is no privacy, most people do not want to change that.
People use social media daily to talk all about themselves and where they are,
what they are doing, etc. That’s why rich people post pictures of themselves
with their top-notch toys, so everyone can see just how great their lives are.
Overall, people want that attention, yet they say there is no privacy when
things turn negative. “We are in a time when people actually do not want
privacy, at least not as it was understood a generation ago…the concept of
sharing your personal photographs with everyone in the world wouldn’t have been
very appealing 50 or even 20 years ago. But that’s where we are today as a
culture,” (56). Some of us, even for the individual social media 4 social
change project, included our real names. There was a sense of letting everyone
know that this is my page. It is not bad to do this, but it was a separate
page, unless it was the first account someone had on that site.
4.
Social media brings like-minded people together.
I think that social media does create a community of people that talk to each
other on a continual basis, because they know the people they can talk to about
certain topics. Online communities that gravitate towards a certain subject
normally create online friendships that do sometimes become real. Connecting on
common interests naturally does happen. “Whether the community is within a
social network like Facebook, is a group pf readers of a blog, or simply is a
collection of people you communicate with through posts or tweets on a
continual basis,” (74). Communities can be brought together anywhere. This
class is a community, communicating through the hashtag #SHUSocialMedia.
5.
All social media networks are important. Besides
Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, I think other social media platforms should be
used because they are not the only way to reach a mass of people. They should
really use platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and Tumblr. These
platforms can help a marketing campaign use different ways to stretch the
campaign to different audiences. “In the context of the major players in North
America. There are a number of other major networks across the globe that
matter as these,” (89). Any platform has the ability to be just as important as
the popular ones. Even joining these platforms and promoting those different
platforms, people can learn about new platforms by viewing them through brands.
If this class was longer, we could explore other platforms.
6.
Brands can provide useful information without
being too promotional. I think self promotion is always done, and no one cares
about it. Self-promoting your own product makes sense on social media because
beating it over and over again will resonate with people over time. It really
should not matter if it looks too promotional, but there is nothing wrong with
sending out information that may sway someone into buying the product. “Look
again at the NBA example, where they run promotions on their Twitter handle.
These promotions are extremely popular and drive traffic. Or look at Twitter
Moms, or Mom Central, where they provide promotions that are very valuable to
their community base,” (148). Self-promotion is not bad at all. Even in this
class, we self-promoted our social media 4 social change projects on all of our
social media accounts. We even linked our accounts to our blogs, so that is
self-promotion.
7.
Through social media, people should try to
understand where others are coming from, then have productive conversations
with them. A lot of people forget this when posting online. Hearing each other
out, and maybe learn something new from a different perspective is gained from
doing this. “You want to try to understand where the person or people voicing
the material are coming from and try to have a productive conversation with
them. There are almost always opportunities to turn negative conversations into
positive value,” (176). Trolling happens all the time on social media, but the
best way to defeat a troll is by remaining calm and staying in a rational
place. Even in this class, we all have different opinions, but nothing has ever
been to the point of having arguments. We can stay civil here, but not every
online conversation has done that.
8.
A Google search for hashtags is possible. I have
noticed this when doing Google searches, where there is a link to the topic on
Twitter. This is smart to do because if someone sees a hashtag they do not
understand and Google it, they can find information. “If others use this
hashtag, and their friends and followers use this hashtag, you can create a
conversational trend that may catch on in Twitterville. It can even go viral,
with large numbers of people picking up on the hashtag and reviewing all the
content associated with it,” (187). If anyone wanted to know what
#SHUSocialMedia is about, they can search it on Google and see not only the
mentions with the hashtag, but also any written version of it.
9.
Everyone makes mistakes on social media. At the
end of the day, social media posts can never be taken back. When dealing with
the mistake, the company must think first before posting. Not just businesses,
but everyone should follow this, it can save someone a lot of embarrassment. “If
you’re going to post a comment on a blog or message board, opt to receive e-mail
notifications when people respond or comment after you,” (233). With this
class, I feel like it was somewhat hard to make a mistake, since no profile was
really more popular than any of the others. However, mistakes were probably
still made, but they were not as big as if it was a big name corporation who
did it. The same rule applies to everyday people, so everyone should check
themselves before posting.
10. It
is never too late to start social media. If anything, the anticipation
consumers may have in knowing more about the business can only be positive.
Once they start their social media accounts, people who are interested are
going to jump at the chance to know more. Whenever celebrities who never had
social media accounts create one, there is a mass follow spree from their fans.
“If you enter social media now, yes, you are later than some players, but that
doesn’t mean you are too late. All these technologies are still incredibly new,
and newly relevant ones are appearing all the time,” (243). Since I was pretty
much on all of the networks on my personal accounts, I was already somewhat
familiar. However, it is not that shocking to see other users who only recently
just opened an account. These platforms have remained popular, so it is not
uncommon to see that people are only just getting into it.
Bye,
Lisa
