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.

Using LinkedIn to Promote Yourself

LinkedIn has become one of the most important social media platforms any business professional can have. It offers numerous opportunities for business professionals to advance their careers by offering them a platform to publish their resume online and apply for jobs through the site. It also offers employers opportunities to search for and screen potential employees. One of the greatest tools LinkedIn provides for business professionals is the ability to network with other professionals in their field or even in completely different areas of business. Building a network is one of the most important things you can do for your career because it allows you to establish relationships with other professionals and employers that can lead to new opportunities throughout your career.

94 percent of recruiters use LinkedIn to vet potential employees and it has become the go-to service for professionals of all ages, from all different backgrounds. Because of this, it is very important that you promote yourself professionally on LinkedIn at all times. Promoting yourself professionally on LinkedIn includes sharing any job changes or career advancements, additions to your education, any big projects you have worked on for your company or anything else that showcases yourself and your career. LinkedIn is not the platform to share pictures from your epic spring break in Mexico. Posts like that are actually the last thing employers want to see and they will immediately pass over your profile if they see posts like this. Your profile not only represents you, but it also represents the company you work for so it is important that the content you create on LinkedIn carries the same values and beliefs as the organization you work for.

Aside from sharing information about your own career, another great way to promote yourself on LinkedIn is to share news and trends about the industry you work in. This shows employers and other professionals that you are knowledgeable and passionate about the industry you work in. Going this extra mile can help separate you from the millions of other professionals on LinkedIn and can be the difference between employers hiring you or just passing over your profile. Your LinkedIn profile is one of, if not, the most important tool you can use to promote yourself and advance your career. The more active you are on your LinkedIn profile, the more it can help you in your career. Never stop promoting yourself on LinkedIn because you never know who is going to view your profile and what job opportunities may present themselves. 

Food Options at ONU

This last week I made the realization that I still have over 200 Polar Points to spend at dining options here at Ohio Northern University before we leave for the summer. Polar Points can only be spent at the McIntosh Dining Hall, Cosi at Northern, WOW Café American Grill and Wingery and Polar Espresso or The Northern Lights Café. Unfortunately, these Polar Points do not roll over from semester to semester so if you do not spend them, you lose them. While it may seem like there are plenty of options to spend these points on, there is only a limited amount of food I can eat here that doesn’t send my stomach into a whirlwind. Right away I have eliminated the McIntosh Dining Hall from my options and I haven’t eaten there since my freshman year. The food really isn’t that bad, but when you eat it every day for an entire school year it gets old really fast. Many students at ONU have even come up with the phrase “Mac Attack” which means exactly what it sounds like. If you eat at the Mac, the food may end up attacking your stomach in the near future.

I am not much of a coffee person, especially at the prices sold at Polar Espresso or Northern Café, so it is very rare that I stop at either of these places. I have nothing against them, I just can’t justify spending $5 to $6 on a cup of coffee. I used to love going to WOW because it offered different options than what was available at the McIntosh Dining Hall and they also have a convenient store where I can load up on junk food and bottled drinks. After a while, the food at WOW began turning on me much like the food at McIntosh and before I knew it I could no longer eat the food at WOW without making a trip to the bathroom very soon after eating the food. I think the main problem my body has with the food at WOW is the amount of grease used to cook the various fried items sold. I haven’t completely cut WOW out of my routine because I still love to head to the convenient store and get armfuls of late-night snacks and bottled pop.

This leaves me Cosi at Northern. Before this year I never really ate at Cosi, but man was I

missing out. The food served at Cosi is comparable to the food you can get at Panera and it appears that food is a much healthier alternative to the food available at WOW or the McIntosh Dining Hall. Cosi has built their restaurant around their flatbread oven, in which they bake fresh flatbread all day, every day. My favorite thing to get at Cosi is their flatbread pizza. I usually just get pepperoni, but every once and a while I treat myself to a BBQ chicken pizza of which I add bacon to. I have never had a bad experience from Cosi since I have started eating there and it has become my go-to choice for dining on campus. Before I know it, these 200 points are going to be gone because I have been eating at Cosi at least once every day this week.

Successful Content Creation

There are many things to consider when creating content for your blog, social media page, website or any other channels you may use to communicate with audiences. Content creation can be very important for your brand because it allows you to build strong brand awareness among your audiences. It also helps you gain respect and a high reputation in the industry as a trusted source. Content created for your blog or social media page will help with search engine optimization and make it easier for your audience to find you on the internet. Lastly, all of the content you create becomes an asset for any social media campaigns you are engaged in. The key for any form of content creation is producing original content that strongly aligns with the values of your brand and this content should support the overall message of your brand. There is no point in creating content on your brand's social media page or blog page if the messages you are creating having nothing to do with the goals of your company.

The easiest way to ensure that your created content aligns strongly with your brand is to implement a specific and organized content strategy that anyone who creates content for your brand can easily follow. The first step of creating your content strategy should be a thorough content audit that identifies the gaps and opportunities among fellow competitors on social media and evaluate the current needs and expectations of your current audience. This will allow you to gain the essential background information required to create content that is unique from your competitors as well as content that your audience will respond positively to and hopefully increase their engagement with your brand on social media. Once you have conducted your content audit you can begin developing the style guidelines and brand voice you want to be associated with your brand and its social media usage. All of your created content and assets should share the voice of the brand, person and various social media accounts. Consistency is key here, all of your content across the different social media platforms your brand may use needs to follow the same guidelines and brand voice so your audience doesn’t become confused when they view your different social media accounts or blog pages.

Now that you have your style guidelines and brand voice established you can start creating content and deciding which social media platforms you want to post this content to. Where decide to post your content depends on the length and form of the content you have created along with which audience are you trying to reach. For example, Facebook appeals to slightly older audiences such as people in their 30s or 40s. Facebook also allows its users to post longer, more substantial statuses and makes it really easy for these users to add pictures and photo albums to these statuses that enhance and reaffirm the message portrayed in the post. On the other hand, Snapchat is great for reaching younger audiences either in high school or college. Snapchat doesn’t allow users to create long messages in their post, however, places a large emphasis on a picture or video uploaded by the user. Knowing which platforms to use to reach certain audiences is just as important as the content you have created. If you don’t even reach your target audience, there is no point in even creating the content in the first place.

Getting Ready for Summer Vacation

It is an exciting time here at Ohio Northern University. With only five weeks left of classes, the entire campus community is buzzing as everyone looks forward to their summer vacation plans. Whether you getting an internship for the first time, planning a road trip or vacation with friends, relaxing at home for three months or even just working a minimum wage job in your hometown. The point is we are all getting away from Ohio Northern University for a few months for a much-needed break from college life. Before the fun and relaxation can get started, we all have to make it through some of the hardest weeks of college we have faced all year. Now is also the time when many professors try to cram in last minute projects and exams that severely add to the already high-stress levels of a typical college student. These projects and exams are the hardest to work on because the only thing many college students are thinking about is summer vacation and many have already mentally checked out for the year.

One of the only things keeping me motivated through the remainder of this school year is knowing I have secured an internship for the summer. I will be interning at the Robert Bosch Corporation as a Health, Safety and Environmental intern. I am still not quite sure what this position entails, however, I am very excited about the opportunity and the experience I will gain from working in such a prestigious organization. Until I secured this internship I was very stressed out about the entire process and I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to find an internship. As soon as the offer letter appeared in my inbox it was like a ton of bricks had been lifted off my shoulders and I could finally take a deep breath and relax for a second.

Aside from working with Bosch this summer, I plan on spending a substantial amount of time at the beach and hanging out with my buddies from home. I haven’t seen many of them in months because our spring breaks did not line up and we were home at different times. Going to the beach has been a significant part of my life ever since I was old enough to learn how to swim and it is something I could never see myself going without in my future life. It’s almost like going to the beach has become a culture my friends and I have all become a part of and there is nothing else we would rather do in our free time during the summer. It is not uncommon for 20 or more of my friends to meet up at the beach and spend the entire day lounging in the sand, swimming in the water, playing various beach games or even kayaking the rivers that feed into the lake. Going back home for the summer allows me to forget about all the stresses and worries associated with being a college student and it brings back to simpler times when my only worry was getting sunburnt.

Dublin Irish Festival at the Social Media Workshop

A couple of weeks ago I talked about my attendance at the fourth annual Social Media Workshop here at Ohio Northern University. Today I want to take the time to talk about one of my favorite presentations of the workshop. The presentation was delivered by Mary Jo DiSalvo and Sara O’Malley who talked about the Dublin Irish Festival and the various activities they do to promote the event every year. The Dublin Irish Festival is held right here in Dublin, Ohio the first weekend of August every year since 1988. When the festival was first established it only took up a singular tennis court, the festival now spreads across 38 acres of Dublin’s Coffman Park and is home to seven stages, 75 acts and 700 performers. The Dublin Irish Festival has become a great financial resource for the city of Dublin, creating an $8.5 million economic impact for the central Ohio region.

Last year’s festival marked the highest attendance ever with over 94,000 guests and over 1,200 volunteers at the festival. Next year the festival is expecting over 100,000 guests and even more volunteers to assist with the festival. Aside from the $8.5 million economic impact to the central Ohio region, the festival also generated over $2 million in gross revenue for the city of Dublin. Beverage sales were the highest earner for the festival with $908,000 in revenue, admissions were a close second with $627,000 in revenue and sponsorships created $288,000 in revenue. All of this money is used to throw other celebrations throughout the year as well as kickstart the next year’s Dublin Irish Festival. The Dublin Irish Festival is the single largest three-day Irish celebration in the world and is also the single greatest earning event for the city of Dublin. It has become a staple not only for the people of Dublin but for Irishman all around the country and even the world.

Part of the reason the Dublin Irish Festival has become so successful over the years is the implementation of social media into their marketing campaigns for the event. Dublin Irish Festival has over 55,000 followers on Twitter, a 365% increase of Instagram mentions since 2018 and over 42,000 Facebook fans. The festival uses these social media channels to create unique social media marketing campaigns that have earned them awareness all over the world and even a few awards for their creativity. In 2015 the festival started a social media campaign using the hashtag #JimmysJig targeted at the popular late-night TV host. The goal of this campaign was to inspire the Irish TV host to perform an Irish Jig on TV the day of St. Patrick’s Day while also build awareness for the festival and drive engagement with their social media followers. The campaign proved to be a huge success and Jimmy Fallon did end up performing an Irish jig on St. Patty’s Day and led to an increase in the festival’s social media fan base. Dublin Irish Festival was awarded the GOLD IFEA Award for “Most Creative News Stunt” which is a big deal for anyone in the advertising world. The success of #JimmysJig has led the Dublin Irish Festival to remain innovative in their social media marketing efforts and every year they are looking for ways to creatively promote the festival across various social media platforms.

Effective Writing for Social Media

Strong writing skills are essential for anyone looking to build up a presence on social media because our writing is often the only form of communication we have with our audiences on social media. While writing on social media can be much more casual than other situations such as creating financial reports for your organization, it is still very important that your writing on social media is written a professional matter that promotes your personal brand or organizational brand. Successful social media writers create messages that are relevant for their audiences and resonates with them on an emotional or personal level. You also want to ensure that the messages you are writing are aligned with your brand or company’s mission and beliefs. There are six Cs of effective writing for social media that can help you achieve these goals: Content, Community, Culture, Conversation, Creativity and Connection.

Aside from utilizing the six Cs to create effective writing for social media, there are several other skills and tips social media writers can use to create content that positively promotes their brand. One of the easiest things to use, but often gets forgot about, is avoiding grammar and writing mistakes when posting to social media. This can be especially difficult in situations where you are trying to be the first person to post about a topic because you are so worried about being the leader in this topic that you do not take the time to read over your post before sending out for everyone on the internet to read. The easiest way to avoid sending out posts with writing and grammar mistakes is to take an extra 10 seconds to quickly read over your post. I am actually surprised by the number of tweets or Instagram posts I see with very blatant spelling or grammar mistakes that could have easily been avoided. When a post contains these mistakes, it brings the overall image of the entire brand down. This is especially true for organization social media pages and other professional accounts. Many organizations have entire departments devoted to social media, so there is no excuse for the posts to contain spelling or grammar errors.

One of the last things I wanted to touch on concerning the creation of effective writing on social media is always put your audience first and consider their wants and needs as social media users. Your goal should be to create content that they not only like, but want to share with their other friends on and off social media. You should want your audience to feel compelled to share the information on social media and the only way to do this is to create strong, effective content that connects with your audience on a personal level. The content you create on social media should also be entertaining because this will give your audiences more opportunities to remember and share what they felt and saw with others. For example, the funny, sarcastic posts of Wendy’s are much easier to remember for me than the straight forward posts of McDonald's. Not only are these posts easier to remember, but I am also much more likely to share a Wendy’s tweet with my friends than a tweet sent from McDonald's.