The Joys of Raising a Kitten

When I first got my kitten I really didn’t know what to expect in terms of how fast the kitten would grow and what tricks I could teach the kitten to do. Each day that I have the kitten, the more amazed I have become with how fast he is growing up and how much he has already been able to learn. He is currently only about four and a half months old and he already weighs nearly eight pounds and he has already learned more tricks than I ever would have expected a cat to be able to learn over their entire life. The first trick I was able to teach my kitten is to come to me when I shake a bag of treats. He learned this fairly quickly and I was soon able to teach him to come running when I call his name. 

The next trick my kitten was able to learn was to play fetch. This was the last trick I was ever expecting a cat to learn, and the first time I threw a toy and he brought it back to me it really caught me off guard. Ever since I learned that he likes to play fetch I have played fetch with him for almost an hour every day, or as long as he is willing to keep bringing the toy back to me. The only distractions that consistently bring an end to his involvement in the game are when he loses the toy or decides he would rather play with another cat living in our house. Nothing brings me more joy in life than teaching my cat all of these different tricks and I hope to teach him many more over the course of his life.

The Curse of Thanksgiving Break

The three weeks between Thanksgiving break and Christmas break are possibly the hardest three weeks of the school year, with the weeks leading up to summer vacation being the only contender. I just spent a little over a week doing absolutely nothing and now that I am back at school I am finding myself slammed with assignments and presentations and I have absolutely no aspiration to do any of them. This happens every year of college, however, with it being senior year it’s even harder than ever this year to find motivation before Christmas break. If I did not care about my grades, I would highly consider not doing the rest of my school work and just kicking it for the rest of the semester. 

I am not really sure what I am going to do to find motivation for the rest of this semester, but I am really not too worried about it because I always find a way to get everything done when it’s all said and done. For example, I am writing this blog that is due later today during another class I am in because I put off writing it all week long.  Whether it is pulling a couple all-nighters and just grinding my way through all of my assignments or doing a little bit every day and slowly chipping away at the mountain of homework, I will find a way to get everything done and hopefully get a decent grade in the process. 

Burying Myself Alive

Somehow or another I have procrastinated all of the assignments and projects I have due before Thanksgiving break and now we are two days away from the break and I am buried in school work. It is going to have to be a marathon of studying, writing and reading for the next 48 hours and I am the furthest thing from excited about it. I hate when I do this to myself, but it seems to have been a very common occurrence during my college career and has become even more prevalent during my senior year. Every time I find myself buried in school work with deadlines fast approaching I always tell myself, “Pressure makes diamonds." I know this is a pretty cheesy quote, but for some reason, it is often my source of motivation when I’m up at 3 a.m. working on an assignment that is due the next morning. 

I feel like this problem is something I really cannot complain about because it is my own doing, there is no one else to blame but myself. Every time I make it through a hell week I tell myself, “OK, no more procrastinating, it’s time to start keeping up on assignments.” Unfortunately, I am rarely able to motivate myself and I find myself doing the next round of assignments at the last minute just like many of my other assignments that came before. I’m hoping this is something that I will grow out of in the real world, but for now, I am stuck in a paradox of procrastination and senioritis and I do not see myself changing my ways anytime soon. 

Bringing my Kitten Home to Momma

Thanksgiving break is only a week away and I could not be more excited. I have not made the trip back home to New Buffalo, MI since before I moved back down here for the school year. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to go home at some point over this semester, I have just been ridiculously busy and haven’t had the time to set aside a whole weekend just to go home. This year going home is going to be much different than my other trips back home because I will be transporting my kitten with me. This should be an interesting adventure because the kitten has never ridden in the car for this long and my mom is allergic to cats so it should be pretty crazy once my kitten and I make it home. 

I have been telling my mom for months that I was going to get my own cat when I moved back to school this year and she just kept telling me “you better not”. Did she really think I was going to listen to her? Hell no! Within a week of moving back to school I had secured my kitten and the rest was history. However, I think I will have a good chance of winning my mom over because when she saw a picture of my kitten she said it was one of the cutest cats she has ever seen and it reminded her of the one she had when she was a kid. At the end of the day, I think everything is going to be alright and my mom, our dogs and my kitten are going to be one big happy family. 

My Kitten vs. Devil Cat

I never thought I would say this, but my new mortal enemy is a cat. It’s not my cat though, it is one of my roommates’ cat. His cat’s name is Isabella and she is one of the biggest assholes I have ever met in my entire life. As many of you might know, I recently adopted my own kitten to raise in my image. Unfortunately, ever since my kitten moved into the house Isabella has been a complete jerk to him. She takes massive dumps in his litterbox and eats all of his food every chance she gets. And on top of all of this, she physically bullies my kitten by holding him down and biting his scruff. I know this isn’t really hurting my kitten, but it is just so unnecessary and I hate it. 

Luckily, my kitten is starting to grow more and more every day and he is finally getting to the point where he can defend himself from the devil cat named Isabella. He is just over three months old and he has tripled in size since I got him. Now when Isabella tries to hold him down he just repeatedly kicks her in the head as fast as he can until she lets him go. This always makes me very proud and I reward him with a buffet of treats and mirage of petting. I know one day sooner or later Isabella will start being nicer to my kitten, but until that day comes I will make it my life’s work to train my kitten to kick her ass. 

Getting Ready for Halloween 2019

Happy Halloween everyone! If any of you are like me you might be sitting there thinking, “It’s Halloween and I have absolutely no idea what I am going to dress up as.” It seems like the older I get, the more last-minute my costume idea becomes and I barely find the time to scrape together all of the elements of my costume. When designing my costumes, I always ride a fine line of spending as little as money as possible, while still coming up with something that doesn’t look like complete garbage. Usually, I get lucky enough to design a costume using clothes I already own and the only money I usually have to spend is on face paint or small props that perfect my costume.

This year I decided that I am going to dress up as the devil for Halloween. I know this sounds a little bit out there, but there is a master plan behind this cynical costume. One of my roommates decided that he was going to dress up as Jesus for Halloween, but with a twist. Instead of turning water into wine, my roommate has the ability to turn water into Busch Light. I haven’t decided what my gimmick is going to be as the devil, but I do know that I need to come up with something as clever as my roommate otherwise it is going to be a waste of both of our time. I do know that I will have to spend a maximum of $20 on this year’s costume which means I will have more money to spend on beer this holiday weekend. Once again, Happy Halloween everyone and stay safe out there this weekend!

Unexpected Visits to Our House

When you move into an off-campus housing situation you always forget that you face the possibility of your landlord and a group of strangers walking through your house and looking at all of your different possessions. Last year when my roommates and I were looking for houses to rent we did end up walking through a couple of houses that had people living in them, but when the time came around this year for people to start touring our house we were completely unprepared. As you may infer, living with three other guys and four different animals lead to a rather messy house compared to a house with normal living conditions. That being said, when the landlord texted me on a Thursday afternoon wanting to show the house later that night everyone in the house went into a panic. Luckily, we were able to push the visit off until the following Monday, but there was a substantial amount of cleaning in front of us in order to get the house back up to tip-top standards. 

Over the course of that weekend, we collectively put in about 40 hours of backbreaking cleaning before we finally got the house up to par. For myself, this involved washing the four loads of laundry that have been piled up in my room for the past two weeks and picking up all of the beer caps I have thrown all over the house. There was also a blanket of cat and dog hair that we had to vacuum up from the floor and we went through an absurd amount of air freshener. By 11 p.m. Sunday night the house was finally presentable and we were able to give a tour Monday night. Unfortunately, we did such a good job cleaning the house that the landlord has scheduled two back to back visits for Wednesday night so we are not out of the woods yet, but at least we have a clean house. 

Camping in Hocking Hills

For those of you who read my blog last week, you may recall that I was planning on camping in Hocking Hills, OH over my fall break last week. I must say, it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited in my entire life. I never would have ever thought something so amazing could have existed in Ohio, but man am I glad I took the opportunity to go on this trip with my friends. The only thing that wasn’t all that great was all of the time I had to spend in a car leading up to actually camping at Hocking Hills. The day before we left for Hocking Hills another roommate and I first had to drive an hour and a half away to Mansfield, Ohio in order to meet my roommate’s mom and retrieve some camping supplies. The next day we spent a total of about 4 hours on the road because we had to stop through Columbus on the way to drop off a different roommate’s dog. 

As soon as we got off the main highway and started driving towards the campsite the landscape around us quickly began changing. For a majority of the drive we drove through the typical flat Ohio landscape covered by corn, but once we took the exit into Logan, Ohio we were surrounded by mountains, rolling hills and sheer cliff faces. As we were driving through the winding roads I couldn’t take my eyes off of the view and I was mesmerized by the absolutely gorgeous scenery. Over the course of the weekend, we were able to visit many of the caves and caverns that have made the Hocking Hills area famous, and after seeing them for myself I can definitely see why so many people visit this area every year. 

Fall Break Camping Adventure

I can’t believe that fall break is already fast approaching us here at Ohio Northern. Typically, I haven’t done much over fall break in the past, but this year is going to be very different. I have taken the opportunity to go camping somewhere I have never been before, Hocking Hills, Ohio. I am very excited about this camping trip because I have heard how beautiful the Hocking Hills area is and I have and I have been waiting for the chance to see it for myself. I have enjoyed camping my entire life and I have had the opportunity to camp out in some pretty remote places over the years. Every place I have camped over the years has been very different from all of the other places in terms of region, climate, geography and overall experience. 

One of the first places I have ever been camping was the Manistee National Forest located in the northwest area of the lower peninsula of Michigan. Up there you can just drive down a two-track deep into the woods until you find a place where the nearest person or sign of civilization is miles away. I always love going camping up north, especially during the salmon season in the early fall. Another one of my favorite places that I have had the opportunity to camp at was on the side of a mountain in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I have never experienced anything like that before and it is something I will remember for my entire life. On that trip, Air Force jets flew barely 100 feet above our heads and we got to watch a hot air balloon race across Colorado Springs from the top of a mountain overlooking the city. I really hope the experience I get a Hocking Hills will be something I can look back on in the years to come. 

Summer in September

If you read my blog last year, you may have heard me complain about the weather in Ohio quite often. I used to complain about the unrelenting wind and frigid winters, but so far there hasn’t been anything that I can justify complaining about. For the most part, it has been beautiful outside with sunny skies and warm temperatures. Of course, this weather still doesn’t compare to the tropical-like weather of New Buffalo, Michigan, but it might be some of the best weather I have ever experienced in Ada, Ohio. This fantastic weather is definitely having a positive effect on my overall mood and dare I say it, a positive effect on my grades. When the weather is crappy outside I find it very easy to find an excuse not to go to class that day, but when the weather is nice out it is almost impossible to find an excuse to skip class.

Having 80-degree weather all of the way through September has allowed me to continue doing the same activities I enjoyed over the summer. One of my absolute favorite things to do is have a bonfire with all my friends. Almost every weekend since we have been back in Ada I have been able to have a bonfire with all my closest friends. Another one of my favorite things to do outside in this gorgeous weather is playing bags, otherwise known as cornhole, while listening to music and drinking beer. This combination makes for a perfect summer day and if you have a day of playing bags followed by a night around the bonfire it makes for the ULTIMATE summer day.

Early Symptoms of Senioritis

When I first came back to Ohio Northern this year I thought that I would be able to pick up right where I left off last year. Full of motivation and a strong drive to succeed academically in all of my classes. Man was I wrong! I have quickly developed a serious condition of senioritis and it is becoming more powerful every day. Since I was in high school I have heard people talking about senioritis, but I did not think I would catch it this early in the school year. I was at least expecting to make it through the first semester before I started noticing any symptoms, but no, senioritis is in full effect just 4 weeks into the fall semester. I don’t know how I am supposed to make it through the rest of the school year when my body has already been taken over by this debilitating condition.

To make matters worse, many of my friends and roommates have also developed symptoms of senioritis and the results are catastrophic. Before, as soon as one of started slacking off the others would encourage him to refocus and get back to their studies. Now, when one person doesn’t feel like doing anything, the others will experience the same feeling and we all end up watching a Lethal Weapon marathon or something along those lines. 

Last year I completed a market research project examining the effect of student housing arrangements on academic performance. I concluded that students that live on-campus tend to have an overall higher GPA than those students living off-campus. I should have taken this into account before moving into an off-campus house, but I was so excited to finally get off campus after three years that I wasn’t going to let anything stop me. So now I’m just going to have to suck it up and get my stuff together before I end up having to take a fifth year of college, otherwise known as a victory lap. 

The Fall Allergy Plague

For the first 18 years of my life, I never experienced seasonal allergies. When I started my freshman year here at Ohio Northern a wave of fall allergies hit me like a ton of bricks for the first time in my entire life. It started with a runny nose that soon leads to severe congestion and dry, itchy eyes. Ever since that very first fall semester at Ohio Northern, my seasonal allergies have flared up every fall and spring since then. I’ve been trying to figure out why my allergies only flare up in Ohio and I think I have it narrowed down to a couple of different sources. I think the leading factor causing my allergies to flare up only in Ohio is the different plants and pollens around me that I am not normally exposed to in Michigan.

Another factor that may be contributing to my allergies is my age. It is also likely that I didn’t have these allergies when I was younger and they are something that I have developed over time. This has been the case for me when it comes to my tree nut allergy. When I was younger I used to eat almonds and pecans all of the time, but one day I decided to eat some chocolate covered cashews and I almost immediately had an allergic reaction to them. I later found out that I was indeed allergic to tree nuts and if I hadn’t had that allergic reaction, I would have never found out about my tree nut allergy. Going back to my seasonal allergies, I can say the same thing about coming to ONU. If I never would have come to ONU, I would have never developed these horrible seasonal allergies.

The Curse of No Internet

One of the biggest things I was excited for when I moved off-campus this year was getting internet that was much more reliable and faster than what has been provided on campus the entire time I have been enrolled at Ohio Northern. Unfortunately, this was only the case for the first week we had our internet. Since then the internet has been very sporadic for when it actually works and the connection speeds have been all over the place. On top of having the worst internet in Ada, my roommates and I decided that we didn’t need to get cable and we would just stream everything. In theory, this was a good idea, but in reality, this actually turned into a terrible idea because it has become impossible to watch anything in our house.

The internet dilemma is forcing my roommates and myself to become a lot more creative in figuring out things to do in our free time. Some of our more conventional ideas have been playing board games and sitting outside by the campfire, but you can only play so many board games and have so many fires before you get bored of these activities. Recently I have taken up the hobby of squirrel watching from my front window and I think it is literally driving me insane. I’ve even tried to name all of the squirrels that hang around our house, but let’s be honest they all look exactly the same and move incredibly fast so it is nearly impossible to name all of the squirrels that hang out by my house. Nevertheless, it helps pass the time and adds excitement into my life every time I see what I think is a new squirrel to the family.

The Ada Petting Zoo

It has been almost three weeks since I officially moved into my house for the year and it is slowly turning into a small zoo. The first animal to move into the house was one of my roommate’s dog. He has had this dog for two years now so this was no surprise to anyone. Not long after the dog moved in another roommate of mine decided to get about 20 fish. No one really understands why he decided to buy all of these fish, but I must admit they are pretty cool to look at and they definitely liven up the living room. The last animal to move into the house was another roommate’s cat. This cat kind of came as a surprise because my roommate found her outside at his work one day over the summer and decided to keep her because she is one of the most regal cats any of us have ever seen.

You might think a dog, a cat and 20 fish would be enough animals for one house, but not for our house. Not long after I moved into the house someone told me they had a litter of kittens and I could have one for free. How could I not pass up on this offer? In about two weeks I will finally be adopting the first cat I can call all my own. For the past two years of college, I have lived with a cat but it was my roommate’s cat so it didn’t feel the same as having my very own cat. I am very excited to adopt this cat and give it a great life.

The Scares of Senior Year

This year marks a very strange time in my life. I have officially started my senior year at Ohio Northern University and I honestly don’t know what to think. On one hand, I very excited that I am going to graduate from college and enter the real world, but on the other hand I am kind of bummed out because I am not ready to stop hanging out with my friends every day and partying basically whenever I want. While most of my friends and peers in my class will be seeking their first professional employment soon after graduating, I will be running away to graduate school to push off entering the real world as long as possible. While getting a graduate degree will definitely help me further in my professional career, it will also give me time to figure out truly what I want to do as a career. 

Over the course of my internship last summer I worked with many people that had been working at the same company for 30, 40 or even 50 years and that honestly scares the crap out of me. I could not imagine working at the same place for that long doing the same job day after day, year after year. In fact, this sounds like a living hell to me and would drive me insane long before I made it anywhere close to the 30- or 40-year mark. I want the type of career that allows working at one place for 5 to 10 years and then move on to a bigger and better company that can offer me a higher pay and more responsibilities, but most importantly a change of scenery whether it’s on the other side of town as my last job or on the other side of the country. The most important thing to me in my life right now is the ability to live free and happy and go where ever life takes me.

Overview of Social Media Principles (CAMS 1401)

This semester we were required to read two books pertaining to the social media industry. The first book we read was “The Art of Social Media” by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzgerald. The second book we were required to read was “Social Media for Strategic Communication” by Karen Freberg. “The Art of Social Media” was more in the format of a chapter book and we read this book over the course of the first few weeks of class. This book was a compilation of more than 100 tips to treat your social media presence as a business and use a bottom-up approach to get the attention your brand, product or business deserves. “The Art of Social Media” was a great introduction into the industry of social media and gave me a good idea of what I was getting myself into. The only thing I didn’t like about this book was the very strong opinions of Kawasaki and Fitzgerald throughout the text. When I’m reading a book in school I would prefer the text to be more informational and less opinionated. Despite these strong opinions, this book was very interesting and I would recommend it to anyone looking to improve their overall social media presence or interested in entering the social media industry.

Once we finished reading “The Art of Social Media” we immediately moved on to reading “Social Media for Strategic Communication”. This book was in the format of a true textbook and the material we covered from the book spanned the majority of the semester. This book provided an in-depth look at many of the aspects involved with social media as a profession and everything involved to create a powerful social media presence. Because this book was more along the lines of a traditional textbook, it was much more information oriented and had fewer personal opinions from the author. I enjoyed how in-depth this book was, as it provided me with almost all of the information I needed to know about creating effective social media communications. Besides the fact that “Social Media for Strategic Communications” was a lengthy textbook, there wasn’t much I didn’t like about the textbook. The chapters were all a good length and provided all of the important information and nothing more. I also enjoyed the chapter introductions and the brief interviews with professionals in the social media field because they provided me with insights for what to expect in the social media industry.

My favorite assignment this semester was actually the blog assignment we have been working on all semester. This gave me the opportunity to further develop my writing skills while also learning a lot about the various social media platforms and their uses. My least favorite assignment this semester was the social media listening assignment. This assignment not only fried my brain, but it also fried my computer. Literally. Halfway through completing the assignment, my computer screen turned black and no matter what I tried I could not get it to turn back on. A quick trip to the Geek Squad revealed that I needed a new battery for my laptop. Hurray for me. Aside from my computer crashing, I was not prepared for the sheer amount of research I needed to complete before I could write the assignment. My favorite thing about the class was the pace in which we covered material. Most days we only covered half a chapter at a time and when we made it through the material for that day, we were allowed to leave class early. My least favorite thing about this class was the AP quizzes we took every Thursday. These quizzes have kept my grade on the borderline between an A and a B all semester and it was driving me insane. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this class and it solidified my interest in Social Media as a minor.

Twitter's Claim to Fame

Twitter has become one of the most popular social media platforms of today, with over 320 million monthly users worldwide. Like many other social media platforms, Twitter had very humble beginnings and started as just an idea by the co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2006. At the time Dorsey had been working the podcasting company, Odeo. It was at a brainstorming session at Odeo that Dorsey first pitched the idea of an SMS-based communications platform to Odeo’s co-founder Evan Williams. Williams and his partner Biz Stone were intrigued by the idea and gave Dorsey the go-ahead to spend more time developing this revolutionary social media platform. Jack Dorsey sent out the first tweet ever on March 21, 2006, with the simple message, “just setting up my twttr.” Notice that there are no vowels in Dorsey’s original spelling of Twitter. This was not an accident, it was actually a popular trend of the time to drop the vowels in the name of companies and services in an effort to gain a domain name advantage. Twttr was the original name of the infamous social media platform, however, this name didn’t last long and the name was soon changed to its current spelling.

Growth of Twitter remained fairly slow for the first year of its existence, but in 2007 the South by Southwest interactive conference saw a huge explosion of Twitter usage. Each day there was more than 60,000 sent out from the conference, creating an enormous sense of popularity for the social media platform practically overnight. After the 2007 SXSW conference, Twitter gained even more popularity and before long, the young social media platform began competing with the already established Facebook. This rise in popularity didn’t come with a fair share of growing pains. Because Twitter membership was growing at exponential rates, the service would quite frequently experience overcapacity. When this happened, the servers would become overloaded and cause the social platform to crash. Rather than doing nothing at all or providing a boring error message, the Twitter team used an illustration of a whale being lifted out of the water to safety by eight birds. The reasoning behind having this image appear on the screen in the event of a crash was to symbolize the acknowledgment of the problem and that the Twitter team was working to solve the problem. This error image quickly went viral within the Twitter community and was even dubbed the “Fail Whale.” 

It’s because of this level of creativity and innovation that Twitter has become the social media giant it is today. Twitter has always been a user-oriented social media platform and many of the changes Twitter has experienced over the years are a direct result of users taking matters into their own hands. Users were the first to include an @ symbol in tweets to reply to others on Twitter. This became such a popular trend on Twitter that Twitter team eventually added this feature permanently. A similar trend happened with hashtags and retweets. Users began adding “RT” before their message, signaling to their followers that the tweet was a report of someone else’s tweet. Adding these user-generated functions only increased the popularity of the platform because users felt that the Twitter team truly understood the wants and needs of the users.

Seeing Endgame at the Ada Movie Theater

We could not have returned to Ohio Northern University at a more perfect time. As I’ve talked about before, ONU is located in Ada, Ohio, a very small town in northwest Ohio. One of the only things to do in Ada is to go to the local movie theater on Main Street. This movie theater is a hidden gem because tickets are only $5 a person and the snacks and refreshments are very reasonably priced. The Ada movie theater only has one screening room and typically only has two showtimes per night. Some people might see this as a disadvantage, but last night the movie theater was playing the only movie in America worth seeing, Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame. This has been the most anticipated movie of the entire year and will most likely set the box office record of the highest grossing movie within the first week of its release. It felt like half the population of Ada was in attendance for the 6:30 p.m. screening and every seat in the theater was filled. This provided me with a very unique experience that I have never had before at a movie theater. I have never gone to a movie that was completely sold out and it completely changed the way I viewed the movie. Multiple times throughout the movie the patrons around me erupted in applause and cheers and it was incredible to see that many people fully engaged in the same movie.

As for the movie, it was one of the most memorizing movies I have ever seen in my entire life. Without saying too much, I will say that it was the perfect ending for the 22 movies that make up the Avengers story. There was a perfect mix of humor and seriousness that made the movie impossible to look away from. I don’t think there was one person in that entire theater that was disappointed with the film. I enjoyed the movie so much that I plan on seeing it again this Saturday with a couple of my buddies that could not attend the movie last night. Endgame was one of those movies that I could watch over and over again without it getting old. There was so much to the storyline that it is almost impossible to see the movie once and get a full appreciation for it. I would recommend this movie to anyone that is remotely interested in superhero movies because it was honestly one of the best superhero movies I have ever seen.  That being said, make sure you are caught up on all of your Avengers movies so you can have a full understanding and appreciation of the events that take place during Endgame. 

Resources to Improve Your Social Media Presence

When conducting your measurement and evaluation of your social media content, it is important to the key areas to invest money if you have the means and resources to do so. There are six key areas to invest in if you want to get the most out of your measurement and evaluation of your created and curated content. These six areas to consider consist of tools, people, consulting fees, research, education and promotion and sponsored content. The use of one or all of these six resources can drastically improve your ability to measure and evaluate the content on your social media page. Any professionally run social media page uses a combination of these resources and this is a leading reason for why these pages have become much more popular and renown that social media pages created by normal, everyday users.

Tools you can invest in cover everything from content creation, content monitoring, social media measurement, staff time and much more. Many of these tools are free for users such as Canva, Adobe Spark and Hootsuite and provide many valuable resources for content creation and monitoring. These free tools may have limited abilities or functions, so if you want to collect more detailed and specific information you can use paid programs such as Adobe Creative Suite to get a more in-depth analysis and more features for your content creation. People are the next thing you should consider investing in if you want to improve your social media presence and monitoring abilities. You shouldn’t just rely on interns running your social media pages because they are young, you should invest in social media professionals that know all of the ins and outs of the various social media platforms. If you do not want to take on a full-time social media team, you could always choose to hire consultants to improve your social media capabilities. These consultants are skilled in all aspects of social media and can be very useful for helping you with a specific project or social media campaign.

Research is something that often goes overlooked in social media, however, it is one of the most important aspects of social media and content creation. Research will allow you to identify and better understand your key audiences, while also allowing you to create effective and efficient social media content that will be highly appealing for the key audiences you have identified through your research. Education doesn’t necessarily mean taking traditional classes in a school setting, but investing in workshops or webinars to become certified in various social media tools and resources such as Microsoft, Brandwatch, Hootsuite, Meltwater and HubSpot. Becoming certified in any of these tools can significantly improve your knowledge and understanding of the social media world. Promotion and sponsored content are the last things to consider investing in to improve your social media accounts. Much of the promoted content is considered pay-to-play, meaning that the more money you pay, the more your content will be promoted across the social media platforms. This is something social media managers need to take into consideration and the must evaluate the goals and objectives of your social media campaign before you can decide how much you are willing and able to spend on these promotions. If you can develop an understanding of each of these tools you can use them to significantly improve both your social media presence and monitoring abilities for your social media accounts.

The Evolution of Barstool Sports

By now I’m sure everyone has heard of Barstool Sports. In case you haven’t heard, Barstool is a sports and pop culture blog that was founded by Dave Portnoy all the way back in 2003. Barstool was originally founded in Milton, Massachusetts and started with humble beginnings as a print publication distributed around the Boston metropolitan area. In these early days, Barstool offered online gambling advertisements and fantasy sports projections and eventually moved into more topics across a broader spectrum. Barstool did not reach the internet until 2007, but when it did, it took the world by storm. Barstool’s popularity gained the attention of The Chernin Group and in 2016 The Chernin Group purchased 51 percent of Barstool’s stock, making them the majority owner of the company. Today the website contains a mixture of podcasts, blogs and video series featuring Barstool staff. The topics covered by Barstool are now ranging from a variety of content, offering almost anyone on the internet something interesting or funny to view. 

Barstool has since moved into many of the popular social media platforms. Barstool has an Instagram page, Twitter page, Facebook page, Snapchat page and YouTube channel. Through these platforms, they offer much of the same content as their main website, but in a manner that is more accessible for their users and easier to use on mobile devices. Since their push into social media, Barstool has become even more popular, especially with high school and college-aged viewers. Barstool has become a staple of social media for almost anyone in college and they have become the go-to source for discovering popular trends and movements among the younger generations. Despite its raging popularity in recent years, Barstool has faced several controversies over the years, with their biggest one being in regards to the various comments made towards rape. Following these comments, Dave Portnoy released a statement that included, “...It’s not our intent, with jokes, to poke fun at rape victims” and then went on to point out the satirical nature of the site’s content. While this does not excuse Barstool from their actions, they have since stopped creating content with jokes of this manner because they realized how offensive and demeaning these jokes could be.

 

In this last year, ONU has adopted not one, but two Barstool social media pages that create content unique to the ONU campus community. The first page they created was a Barstool ONU Twitter page. This page gained some popularity among the campus community and now has 512 followers. The second Barstool page created for ONU was the Barstool Northern Instagram page. This page was created only a couple of weeks ago and it already has 863 followers. If Barstool Northern continues this trend, it will easily become the most popular social media page that is directly associated with the ONU campus community.

Home Sweet Home

Finally, home sweet home. I’ve been stuck at Ohio Northern University since returning from spring break and I couldn’t be happier to be back home. I have been going insane this past month or so working on assignments for all of my classes and taking exam after exam. Although Easter break is only four days long, it is a much-needed break from the stresses of being at college. I was also starting to get homesick for the first time ever and I have really been missing my family and friends from back home. Whenever I come back home I get to just live the simple life and I don’t have to worry about anything. Coming back home also provides a drastic change of scenery than we get at Ohio Northern. When I left school on Thursday the only thing that was green was the grass, when I came back home to Michigan all of the trees already had leaves on them, the flowers were blossoming and the smell of

spring is in the air.

I must say the two things I missed the most are my two dogs, Molly and Lucy. I have had Molly since I was in fourth grade and she is my best friend. Every morning when I wake up and open my bedroom door for the first time Molly is laying right outside the door waiting for me. I spend about five to ten minutes petting her before I can do anything else which is honestly the best way to start your day. Lucy is my mom’s little white lap dog that we have had for about four years now. Let me just say she definitely has that “small dog syndrome” and she likes to think she runs the house. As soon as I sit down in the living room she is already running across my lap and demanding that I play fetch with her. If you try to ignore her she sits there and chirps like a bird until I finally break down and play fetch with her.

Another great part about coming home is all of my favorite local restaurants that I can only have when I come back home. Unfortunately, a lot of them are still closed for the winter so I only have about half of the options that I would have during the summer. The one restaurant I was able to go to today is called Redamak’s. Redamak’s has been open since 1975 and they are known as “the hamburger that made New Buffalo, Mich. Famous!” This is a bit of an exaggeration, but the food is still really good. I always get a double Velveeta cheeseburger and eat it in about 30 seconds flat. Luckily since today was Friday I was able to get a “working-man special” which just means fries come free with your burger. Now that I’m home I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to come back to college, I love my life at home and the people that surround me.

Measurement and Evaluation of Social Media

Measurement and evaluation are two of the most important things to consider when building your brand’s reputation on social media. Measurement focuses on designating specific amounts that reflect a change in specific objectives. These objectives need to be considered SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bond. If your objectives cannot be considered SMART, there is no real way to determine if you have met your objectives for your brand on social media. Evaluation, on the other hand, focuses on the assessment or value of certain actions in a campaign or strategy. Together, measurement and evaluation are the final steps anyone in social media must take before they provide any recommendations or changes to their social media plan, program or campaign. There is a specific framework for key areas to measure and evaluate in social media: objectives, inputs, activities, outputs, outtakes, outcomes and impact. These are some of the most important areas to consider in social media usage to determine whether or not your social media presence is accomplishing the goals of your brand. 

Just like any other area in social media, it is very important to develop a strategy for your measurement and evaluation of your social media usage. Having a specific to measure and evaluate social media can help social media professionals determine a variety of insights for their brand on social media. The first thing it does is help social media professionals become better informed about their key audiences. Once they understand their key audiences, social media professionals can better execute and create more effective content for these key audiences. A strong strategy for measurement and evaluation will also allow social media professionals to align content, stories and other social media updates to be executed at the right time, place and platform. Another key benefit of creating a strategy for measurement and evaluation is you will be able to make sure that your brand identifies more efficiently with key audiences, influencers, micro-influencers and discover new audiences to create relationships with. This is one of the most important benefits you can gain from a measurement and evaluation strategy because it helps you get the right information in front of the right groups of people, which in turn, will increase the reputation and prestige of your brand on social media.

 

Using metrics and key insights for the various social media platforms in one of the easiest and most effective way to measure and evaluate your content on social media. Through these insights and metrics, you can determine valuable statistics such as the cost per click (CPC), cost per impression (CPI), cost per action (CPA), cost per conversation (CPC) and cost per engagement (CPE). These are all paid metrics that you can take advantage of when deciding how you want to advertise your social media page. Utilizing these paid metrics can drastically increase your search engine optimization (SEO), which means more people will have a higher chance of discovering your brand on social media.