Snapchat Changes Social Media Forever

When Snapchat was created in 2011 it changed the world of social media forever and not long after their launch many of the dominant social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram began adding similar features to their own social media platforms. According to a blog post written by Snapchat CEO, Evan Spiegel, on May 9^th of 2011, Snapchat was created to provide users a place to share awkward selfies and funny photos with their friends rather than providing them a platform to make photos more refined and stylish. The whole point behind Snapchat is to live in the moment and share pictures in the moment without taking the time to worry about the implications of posting a less than perfect picture or who is going to see it because Snapchat provides you with the power to only share photos with your friends that you have accepted and the pictures disappear after a short amount of time.

Although the creation of Snapchat was a breakthrough in its own, the real game changer came in November of 2013 when Snapchat added stories to their set of highly unique features. Stories are different than the typical pictures shared on Snapchat because they remain active for 24 hours compared to the maximum of 10 seconds of direct snaps and stories are automatically shared with everyone in your friend list instead of having to select each friend you want to send them to. This has easily become the most popular feature of the young social media platform because it provides a convenient location for users to share all of the most meaningful moments of the lives with their closest personal friends without worrying about the pictures or videos being permanent and, on the internet, forever for everyone to see. 

Snapchat stories have caused huge popularity among the social media world and both Facebook and Google have made offers to purchase the app but both were rejected. This led practically every prominent social media platform to begin adopting their own version of stories. Instagram was the first social media platform to introduce their own format of story sharing in August of 2016 when they introduced Instagram Stories. Not long after that Facebook was also quick to adopt Facebook Stories in March of 2017. Stories have become one of the most popular formats of photo sharing across all social media platforms and even YouTube and LinkedIn have made their own little twists to the story sharing format. Stories are a narrative style of photo sharing that allows users to document their lives in real-time in a way that allows the users to present themselves in a raw, relatable manner to their followers. This is huge for anyone trying to build a presence on social media because it allows them to connect with their followers in a direct, highly personable fashion that has never been able to be achieved before. Snapchat changed the world forever when it was launched in 2011 and every social media platform today needs to tip their cap to the Snapchat creators and thank them for showing us the future of social media and the opportunities story sharing can bring for social media users. 

Spring Finally Visits Ohio Northern University

Spring has finally arrived at Ohio Northern University and spring fever is in full effect. More and more students are engaging in springtime activities and the spring sports are starting up for the year. Football is in the middle of their spring training camp, the track season is in full swing, the baseball team had its home opener yesterday and I’m sure there are other sports getting started that I am not aware of. Spring is one of my favorite times of the year because it not only marks the end of the dreaded Ada winters but also marks the beginning of beautiful weather and gives a taste of what to expect from the summer. This is also the only time of the year when 50 degrees feels like it’s closer to 80 degrees and I can comfortably wear shorts and a t-shirt for the first time in months. As I’ve mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, I absolutely love wearing short-shorts and cutoff shorts and the spring provides me with the perfect opportunity to break out any new shorts I may have added to my collection. If it was up to me the only two seasons of the year would be spring and summer.

When spring comes around to Ohio Northern you can physically feel everyone’s mood improve drastically. During the winter everyone seems so glum and people become social hermits. They spend a minimal amount of time in the outdoors and never take the time to engage with their fellow students. As soon as spring rolls around this sense of isolation disappears almost immediately and people seem to start genuinely enjoying each other’s company. You can see clusters of hammocks spread all across the tundra, people playing frisbee or catch in large groups, joggers getting their first laps around the green mile of the year and other activities that cannot be enjoyed during the brutal winters we suffer every year. I have also noticed that people are much more willing to stop and talk between their classes and I have been able to catch up with a lot of friends that I haven’t even seen since the first semester.

Another great part about spring is the fact that we are that much closer to ending another school year and heading home for the summer. Don’t get me wrong, I love hanging out with all of my friends here at school, but by the end of the year I am ready to head home and completely forget about ONU for three months. Spring is also an exciting time for the admissions department of the university because there is a high number of athletic recruits and prospective students visiting the campus for the first time. This is where they get their first impressions of the campus and can often be the deciding factor in choosing ONU to further their studies or athletic career. You never know when spring is finally going to come to Ohio Northern, but when it does it's accepted with open arms by everyone on campus.

Content Creation vs. Content Curation

Anyone working in the social media industry whether it’s for personal use or professional use needs to know the difference between content creation and content curation. Both of these are extremely important within the social media industry and you must have sufficient understanding of each if you want to be successful within social media. You cannot do one without the other and both are necessary to drive engagement and interaction with your social media posts. Social media users should engage in content curation first and then use content curation to find other content that supports your created content. Both your created content and curated content should align with the goals and objectives of your social media initiative and organization. Aside from the goals of the organization and social media initiative, you also want to make sure that the content is relevant for your key audiences.

Content creation can be defined as the process of generating topics that appeal to your ideal buyer or audience, creating written or visual content around those ideas and making that information available to your ideal audience as a blog, social media post, YouTube video or any other format. Content creation is not specifically used in social media, it can also apply to writing newspaper articles, magazine editorials, movie reviews or anything else that requires the writer to deliver original content to its audience. There are many different goals content creation can be used to achieve, so it is important social media know how to create the right content to achieve their goals. If your goal is to provide a sense of community and create brand awareness you might want to create posts that are integrated with videos, testimonials from current or previous customers and even blog post that promote your brand or the products and services it offers. Providing good, strong content is one of the most important things you can do to build the credibility and popularity of your brand.

Content curation is much different than content creation, however, it is just as important to creating and maintaining a successful social media account, blog site or even personal website. Content curation is the process of gathering information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest. The overall goal of content curation is to provide your audiences with useful information that not only resonates with them but also builds on their perception that your brand online is a valuable resource. The social media users, bloggers or anyone else you decide to curate content from should closely align with the values and beliefs your brand currently possess. You want the content to provide support and validity to the content you have already created for your social media account or blog post. One thing many social media users are unaware of is the fact that you don’t always have to share the content you have curated, you can also use this information to monitor and listen to the social media activities of your competitors.

Fourth Annual ONU Social Media Workshop

Last Friday I had the unique opportunity of attending the fourth annual Social Media Workshop here at Ohio Northern University. Over the course of the day, I had the chance to listen to 11 different professionals in the social media industry about what they do and tips for being successful in certain avenues of social media. The workshop was put on by the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) chapter here at ONU. The event started in the Activities Room of the McIntosh Center with a keynote address from Amanda Todorovich from the Cleveland Clinic. Amanda is the senior director of content and creative services and is responsible for the social media and blog content released by the Cleveland Clinic. Her keynote address was a great icebreaker into what we could expect from the remainder of the workshop. She explained to us the different strategies and tools the Cleveland Clinic implements into their social media usage and why they have been so successful in their social media usage over the last six years.

My favorite presentation from the Social Media Workshop was Daniel Farkas’ presentation

on Making Multimedia Social: Simple Success Strategies for 2019. Farkas delivered five key tips for creating a successful multimedia marketing campaign without breaking the bank. These five tips were as followed: 1.) Don’t fight science, 2.) Don’t overthink video strategy, 3.) Organized hoarding, 4.) It’s time to play the game, 5.) Be lean. Don’t fight science is concerned with creating content that fits the surprisingly short attention span of humans and creating video content that works naturally with the human eye. His next tip about overthinking video strategy contained five subpoints to help simplify your video strategy: remember business goals, understand the sales funnel, actually look at and use an editorial calendar, any article on effective content applies to multimedia content and always measure the success of your multimedia campaign. When Farkas talked about organized hoarding he was just reaffirming that you should save all of your content because odds are, it will be able to be used sometime in the future for other projects. The biggest point discussed with Farkas’ fourth tip was don’t be afraid to utilize user-generated ideas and content. He also discussed using product placement and sales promotions to increase the effectiveness of your multimedia campaign. In his fifth and final tip, Farkas highlighted the importance of efficiency and creating value beyond the video. Farkas also included the importance of using earned, paid, shared and owned media to accomplish the same overall goal for your organization.

I learned a lot of useful information by attending the Social Media Workshop. I have had very limited opportunities to meet and learn from professionals in the social media industry and this workshop provided me with the opportunity to not only meet a significant number of professionals in the field but also to learn a broad range of information that can be used in practices all across the social media industry. I can honestly say the Social Media Workshop is something I plan on attending in the future and would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in improving their use of social media to promote themselves or the organization they are a part of.

Life Without my Laptop

This last week of school I have spent more time in the library than I have in my entire career at Ohio Northern University. I have generally stayed away from the library because I prefer to do my homework from the comfort of my own room where I can watch TV while working. Unfortunately, I had this luxury taken away from me last week when the unthinkable happened. I was typing away at an assignment I had when all of a sudden my laptop just decided to shut down without any warning. When I tried plugging in the charger nothing happened and the screen just remained black. After messing with my computer and its charger for at least half an hour there was still no sign of life from my computer. When this happened, I knew I was in serious trouble because I rely on my laptop for every class that I am in. 

The next day I decided to take my laptop to Best Buy where I could have the Geek Squad take a closer look at what was going on. After removing the rear cover and conducting a thorough inspection of my laptop, the Geek Squad determined that my battery had gone bad and the only thing I could do was have a new one installed. The only downside of having the Geek Squad replace my battery is that it would take two or three days to get the replacement shipped. This means that I would be without my laptop for at least three more days while I wait for the new battery to be shipped and installed. This forced me to become very creative in making sure I was still completing my assignments for my classes.

My first choice was to borrow my roommate’s laptop whenever he wasn’t using it. This option quickly went out the window because my roommate has a big project due at the end of the week that he has been working on every minute he is not in class or sleeping. The only available times I could use his laptop were either really late at night or super early in the morning, and neither of these times was ideal for me. This left me with the option of going to the library to complete all of my assignments. I used to hate going to the library because the computers are considerably older than my laptop and they only work about half of the time. Printing from these computers is like a game of Russian roulette, you never know if it’s going to work or not. Despite the frustrations I have with the campus computers, the library actually provided a very productive environment. I was even able to complete more homework assignments much faster than working in my room because there are very little outside distractions to pull me away from my work. Due to this success, I plan on continuing my trips to the library even after I get my laptop back.

Importance of Social Monitoring and Listening

Social monitoring and social listening are two of the most important areas of focus in terms of research in social media and overall social media measurement. Social monitoring can be defined as the systematic process of understanding, analyzing and reporting insights and conversations on reputation, brand position, community health and opinion of key audience members virtually. Listening on the other hand is about learning, exploring and uncovering emerging trends, opportunities, activities and issues that could impact the company either positively or negatively. There are many benefits that social monitoring and listening can bring to your company such as the ability to identify influencers and top external channels or calculating the overall growth of your community audience and behavior measurements. Social monitoring and social listening are very closely related and both are necessary for a successful social media campaign. 

A major benefit of conducting social monitoring and listening is the ability to gain information from other sources besides the brand’s consumer audience. For example, through social monitoring and listening you can keep tabs on your competitors and see not only what they are doing differently, but also what they are saying about your company. You can also use social monitoring and listening to determine your share of voice in the industry. Are you a leader in the industry or are you just getting your foot in the door? Another important benefit of social monitoring and listening is the ability to identify influencers and top external channels driving traffic to social media platforms. Knowing who your top influencers are is very important because these are the people the public turns to in hopes of hearing the latest news about your company. The opinion of influencers is also very powerful so it is important you can identify these influencers and persuade them to have a good opinion of your company. An example of this would be Apple giving a brand-new iPhone XR and having them review the product. Apple does this in hopes that the influencers will enjoy the new product and share positive reviews with the communities they are a part of.

Although social monitoring and social listening go hand in hand, there are some key differences between the two that social media users should be aware of. The biggest difference between social monitoring and listening is social monitoring is a much more systematic approach and involves creating a sustainable program to evaluate the success or current state of a brand or person online. Social listening is more worried about observing people’s feedback, comments, questions and inquiries in order to capitalize on emerging and innovative opportunities.  Another key difference between the two is the time frame in which the social media research is being conducted. Social monitoring is much more concerned with the long term and may take place over the course of weeks, months or even years. On the other hand, social listening is much more short term oriented but still keeps long term implications in mind. Understanding the main differences between social listening and monitoring is very important and can be critical in determining the success of a company’s social media usage.

Using Twitter to Find New Music

Twitter has become one of the most popular social media platforms in the entire world. Every day, millions of people use the website for a variety of different reasons. For many, the main reason is to stay connected with friends, others use it as a means to look at funny videos or tweets and some even use it as their primary news source. While all these are valid reasons for using the site, the main reason I use Twitter every day is to discover new music that I have never heard before. Twitter is great for discovering new music because many of my friends will post tweets with new artists or songs that I would have never found on my own. Twitter also allows me to follow my favorite artists to stay up to date on album releases and tour dates. 

There are about 20 different accounts I follow specifically for finding new music. Many of these accounts are owned by people I grew up and have many of the same interests I have. Music is something that we have all bonded over as we grew up and any time one of us heard a new song or artist we made sure to let the others know. Before Twitter came around, many of us were even part of a group text message that was created with the sole purpose of sharing music. Once Twitter became popular, many of my friends started sharing their music recommendations here so people outside of the group chat could also see the new music. A couple of these pages became very popular in the New Buffalo area and became the go-to source for new and popular music. 

Following an artist’s Twitter page is one of the best most direct forms of contact you can

have with them. One of the first artists I ever followed on Twitter was Wiz Khalifa. I started following his Twitter page my freshman year of high school and he continues to be one of my favorite artists today. I believe a substantial amount of Wiz Khalifa’s popularity and acceptance can be attributed to his use of Twitter to promote his music and concert dates. Many aspiring artists do not have the financial means to professionally promote their music, so Twitter offers them a great opportunity to get information out to both current and prospective fans. Artists can also use Twitter to share intimate information that they might not have the opportunity to share over conventional media outlets. This type of information might include pictures of their family, tweets about what’s going on in their life or anything else the artist might want to share. When an artist shares this kind of information it allows their followers to connect with them on a much more personal level.

Difficulties of Junior Year at ONU

I am currently in the second semester of my junior year here at Ohio Northern University and I can easily say that it has been one of the hardest semesters of classes I have ever taken. Back when I was in high school everyone always told me that the junior year of high school was the hardest year I would face and it is definitely coming true for college as well. There isn’t just one factor that makes this school year any harder than previous one, it’s a series of factors that seem to compound on each other making things harder and harder every time a factor is added into the mix. Some of the difficulties I have been facing are a matter of the course material actually being difficult, but others seem to stem from poor time management and lack of motivation. The junior year of college is typically when you start taking classes that actually count towards your major so it is imperative that I overcome the difficulties I have been experiencing and finish out the rest of my time here at Ohio Northern University strong.

There are several contributing aspects that have made my classes considerably harder this year than in previous years. The most obvious one being the workload I have taken on with six classes. This is the most classes I have ever taken in a single semester and it has required a decent amount of adjustment in my day to day life and studying habits. Before I would only take four or five classes a semester, but my advisor told me that if I kept this up I would be stuck here for another semester or possibly an entire extra year. Another reason my classes have been much harder this semester is the number of projects I have had outside of class. It seems like I have some sort of project in every class and it is hard to find time throughout the week to work on all of them. These projects are much more intensive than typical homework assignments and require a large portion of time to complete.

Aside from my classes physically being harder than any other ones I have taken in the past, there are several personal dilemmas I have been facing this semester. The first being my severe lack of motivation to keep working on homework assignments and projects. The closest thing I could compare this lack of motivation to is the feeling of senioritis many high school and college seniors experience. Senioritis can simply be defined as a total lack of motivation during your senior year of school and is caused by anticipation of graduation and moving on to the next phase in your life. The only difference in the feeling I am experiencing and senioritis is I am not anticipating graduation, I am anticipating summer vacation. I actually enjoy my time in college quite a bit, but I am definitely ready for a long break away from Ohio Northern and the town of Ada. 

Returning from Spring Break

It’s the Monday following spring break and campus activities are returning to normal. As I went to my classes today I noticed that there were still quite a few people missing from class today. I can only assume these people are squeezing in some last-minute spring break activities before returning to the stressful life of a college student. Due to my spring break plans, or lack of plans, I was easily able to make a timely return to campus before classes resumed. Last week I talked about returning to campus with enough money to buy Apple Airpods. Although these expectations were very achievable, I returned to campus with nowhere near enough money to purchase Airpods. In fact, I returned to campus with less money than when I left. There are two factors that directly contributed to not having money for Airpods when I returned to campus.

My first waste of money over spring break was four consecutive visits to the casino in my hometown. The streak started off last Wednesday when one of my lifelong buddies called me and asked if I wanted to go to the casino. At this point, I was still saving up for Airpods so I decided that I would go, but only spend $20. This plan worked out fine until I ran out of money in less than an hour. Rather than getting more money out that night, I decided to leave the casino before it took all of my money. The next day was another friend of mine’s birthday. Fittingly, we headed to the casino to celebrate the occasion. I still had Airpods in the back of my mind, but since it was my buddy’s birthday I decided to ball out and spend a little bit more money at the casino. After celebrating my buddy’s birthday I no longer had enough money saved up to buy Airpods. From here I decided to just say screw it and went to the casino the following two nights. Although it was a lot of fun, I lost every dime I gambled over the course of the four days and lost all hopes of getting Airpods anytime soon.

Another leading factor in my depleted checking account was the amount of food I ate over spring break. It seemed like I went out to eat at least two times a day, never eating at the same restaurant twice. Because New Buffalo is a very small town with only a handful of restaurants, I was often required to make a 20-minute drive to the next town over if I wanted more options. So not only was I spending money on the food I was eating, but also on the gas I used driving around to all these different restaurants. These expenses added up very quickly and depleted whatever money I had left after my casino benders. Even though I will not be buying Airpods in the near future, I consider all the money I spent over spring break to be well spent. I was able to unwind and have fun with my friends for a week straight. 

The Importance of Research in Social Media

Research is something no one thinks about when it comes to posting on social media or viewing what others have posted on social media. However, researching before and after posting to social media is very important and can lead to a lot of valuable insights about the effectiveness of your post. Through research, you can determine which social media platforms are used most by your target audience, the best times to post to receive the highest exposure and the types of posts your target audience is more likely to engage with. For example, a younger target audience will be more drawn to a video they see on Twitter while an older target audience might respond better to a lengthy Facebook post with a lot of information and detail. It’s very important that you fully understand your target audience and their social media habits before you can successfully reach them over social media.

Another area research is highly important in is advertising. More specifically “pay to play” advertising meaning that the more money you are willing to pay, the more your advertisement will run and the more people will be exposed to your advertisement. Before you go all in on a social media advertising campaign there are few things you should consider. First, you need to determine whether or not the benefits of running social media advertisements are going to outweigh the costs. Luckily, advertising through social media is actually quite affordable and is something that can be done by individual users, small businesses and even multinational organizations. Once an organization or user decides to launch an advertising campaign over social media they can track insights of the post such as how many views it has, how many people actually clicked on the ad, what kind of people are viewing the ad, what times people are viewing the ad and other valuable insights that you can use to determine the effectiveness of the advertising campaign.

Knowing what kind of audience is on each social media platform is almost just as important as knowing what to post on each form of social media. Let’s say you’re developing a dating app to be used by college students. You want to advertise the new app over social media, but you have a small marketing budget so you will only be able to pay for one marketing campaign on one social media platform. Due to your target audience being college students, you probably wouldn’t want to use Facebook to promote your new app. Facebook has become more popular with those in older generations such as parents or grandparents and far less popular with high school or college aged kids. If you are trying to reach audiences in these younger generations you are better off using Instagram or Snapchat to run your promotion. Facebook has become obsolete for these younger generations, yet Snapchat and Instagram have become widely adopted by members of younger audiences. These platforms will provide the highest probability of advertisements being seen by high school or college aged kids. 

Research is perhaps the most important part of posting to social media and can be the difference between a successful marketing campaign and a disastrous one. Research provides users with valuable insights about their different target audiences and the different platforms available. Conducting thorough research before posting to social media will allow you to determine who your target audience is, what the best way to reach them is and the overall cost of running the social media advertising campaign. 

The Rise and Fall of Myspace

From 2005 to 2009, Myspace was the most used social networking site in the entire world. In 2006 Myspace even surpassed Google as the most visited site in the United States. More recently things have been much different for Myspace with the advent of social media sites that are popular worldwide such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Nowadays, Myspace does not even come close to competing with any of these sites on the basis of market share or number of users. In 2011 Myspace was facing especially hard times and the company was forced to lay off 47 percent of its workers, which was about 500 employees. News Corp., the parent company of Myspace, has even announced an interest in selling Myspace to an outside party but received very little interest in the dying network. Myspace was finally sold in 2011 to Specific Media for $35 million, a fraction of what News Corp. had originally acquired the network for. Kids my age definitely would have heard of Myspace but virtually no one uses it and kids in generations younger than me might not have even heard of Myspace at all and probably never will.

A common misconception is Facebook was the first social media platform to be invented. Myspace actually beat Facebook by a year with its creation and launch taking place on August 1, 2003. Myspace is the brainchild of three friends who were all working together at eUniverse, an internet-based marketing company. These three friends were Tom Anderson, Jon Hart and Chris DeWolf. Anderson served as the first president for Myspace and DeWolf was the first CEO of the network. All three of the original founders of Myspace were avid users of the social gaming site Friendster and saw potential in its social networking features. Within ten days of beginning the project, the first version of Myspace was ready for launch. Not long after its launch, Myspace quickly began gaining popularity among teenagers and young adults across the United States. By 2005 Myspace had become so popular that Anderson was able to sell the social networking platform for $580 million to the media giant News Corp. In 2008 Myspace reached its peak with attracting 75.9 million users to the site in one month.

Shortly after reaching its 75.9 million user peak in 2008, Myspace was surpassed by
Facebook as the most popular social media platform on April 19, 2008. Ever since this date, Myspace has seen a continuous decline in membership. A $900 million advertising deal with Google actually may have hurt Myspace more than it actually helped it. This deal required Myspace to run even more advertisements on its already heavily advertised platform. This caused the site to run much slower, increased difficulty for users and made the website much less flexible for changes. While Myspace was becoming cluttered and less user-friendly, Facebook had created a streamlined, easy-to-use social media platform that was centered around the user experience. Facebook also made it possible for outside developers to build new applications for the site and Myspace was deadest on keeping all development in house. This allowed for Facebook to make changes to the platform based on what users actually want and the site began growing at a pace Myspace could no longer keep up with. While Myspace is still around today, it's market share has dwindled away to almost nothing and has been overshadowed by social media powerhouses like Facebook and Twitter. Today Myspace’s biggest accomplishment is igniting the spark that led to the widespread social media use of today.