K. Orcino's Happily Humble CSIT 155 Social Media Blog
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Friday, December 14, 2018
Week 16, Part B Blog Post: Commenting on Other Students' Work
For the Week 16 assignment, I responded to blog posts by Jesus Farias, Chade Montgomery, Cassandra Quinn, and Eva Whitburn.
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Week 16, Part A Blog Post
Out
of all the social media platforms that we have explored, I have probably
enjoyed using Facebook the most. Since my fictional business, Codex Alexandria,
is an educational software company that would focus on selling reputable,
seriously academic software to children who have an interested in learning more
in a variety of academic fields outside of a school environment, I especially
like the way that Facebook is structured. Since Facebook allows users the
ability to publish posts featuring an unlimited amount of words, it has the
greatest potential for me to communicate my points about Codex Alexandria in
depth, compared to social media websites like Twitter and Instagram that would
limit the amount of space that I would have to write whatever I like. Since I
am a writer, I believe that I communicate the most effectively when I can paint
images into people’s heads with words, and I feel like words would clearly
often explain whatever I would be trying to convey about Codex Alexandria
better than any social media platform that is heavily image based (like
Pinterest, Snapchat, or Instagram) could ever do. However, I also did enjoy using
Twitter, although perhaps not as much as Facebook. Even though I prefer the
option of being able to write as much as I want with a given space, I did
appreciate the fact that Twitter provided the right infrastructure for me to be
able to write fun, creative tweets that did not necessarily have to be directly
related to selling Codex Alexandria products. I enjoyed the fact that I could hypothetically
connect with my potential customers in a fun, social manner without
aggressively pressuring them into buying any Codex Alexandria software, a
tactic which I think could have backfired on me had I attempted to make the
subjects of my Twitter posts all about communicating news about upcoming sales
on Codex Alexandria software. In addition, I also appreciated the fact that
compared to Facebook, it is easy to follow and be associated with other related
educational companies (similar enough to Codex Alexandria). Unlike Twitter,
which allows anyone with a Twitter account to follow and associate with any
other users or companies that they want to, Facebook and LinkedIn, two other
social media sites that I think would be used effectively for promoting Codex
Alexandria, require that users who seek friends/connections on those websites
have their friend requests approve before being allowed to associate with other
users. I basically like the fact that it is a lot quicker and easy to for Codex
Alexandria to socially network with similar computer-based education companies on
Twitter compared other social media sites.
In my personal
opinion, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn would most effectively complement
Codex Alexandria for a few key reasons. Of course, Codex Alexandria would
greatly benefit from Facebook because its profile would probably be accessed by
many more users because Facebook has millions upon millions more registered
users than other social media websites that I have listed here. On Facebook, a
social media manager for Codex Alexandria would be able to write posts of any
length and engage with other users in the comment section. Twitter would
obviously work well for Codex Alexandria, because, as an educational software
company, Codex Alexandria’s tweets can be a variety of subjects, including everything
about upcoming sales, links to articles about the future of e-learning, and
interesting, random facts about academic topics that might delight codex
Alexandria’s followers. It would also benefit Codex Alexandria to maintain a
LinkedIn profile because having one would announce Codex Alexandria’s status as
a legitimate business with a reputable record of manufacturing high-quality
software that actually works for students that use it. Out of all the tools we
studied this semester, I would be most inclined to implement Google Analytics
and SEO in my online marketing strategy. Google Analytics would benefit Codex Alexandria
because this tool would show me crucial information such as the demographics of
users who visit Codex Alexandria social media websites, and at what hours of
the day and days of the week that people are most likely to visit these profile
pages. Being about to look at these statistics would help me more effectively
gage when I should post new social media posts so that they are more likely to
be read immediately after they are posted. These are also the reasons why I
also believe that Codex Alexandria could also benefit from using Facebook
Analytics as a tool. Finally, Codex Alexandria could benefit from using SEO
(Search Engine Optimization) as a tool because implementing SEO would mean that
people searching for phrases “educational companies”, “e-learning”,
“educational companies” would find information about Codex Alexandria faster
than they otherwise would. This is because the implementation of SEO would put
any websites featuring information about codex Alexandria closer to the top of
search engines results in major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Since I have never
actually run my own business before, it is difficult for me to figure out how much
time I would have to spend marketing Codex Alexandria on social media if it
were a real business. Nevertheless, I will attempt to respond reasonably to
this question. I think it would best if Codex Alexandria devoted roughly two
days a week to spend time maintaining and expanding its social media profiles. I
feel this way because the most successful (well-known with a lot of social media
followers) businesses that I researched during the course of this class seemed
to all be posted within a general time span of every 3 to 5 days, or
approximately twice a week. During each session spent updating Codex
Alexandria’s social media profiles and publishing new posts, I would spend
approximately 45 minutes to an 1 hour on performing these tasks. Within this
period of time, I could probably write at least two well-written posts and
spend time going back and forth to previous posts on the Codex Alexandria
social media accounts to respond to my visitors’ questions and comments. Posting
every day would seem excessive and it would appear that the employees at Codex
Alexandria have no other concerns than just trying to bolster company’s presence
on social media, which might make the company look as though it were a shallow
veneer lacking substance. Ultimately, I would not want Codex Alexandria’s
social media presence to overshadow the fact that the company’s ultimate
mission (and how its employees spend the majority of their time) is actually
creating high-quality software products that will help students with access to
a computer at home.
It
is difficult to plan out what kind of content that I can post on social media
for Codex Alexandria’s profiles, but I will attempt to sketch out at least
somewhat of a framework that I could follow. With regard to future LinkedIn
content, I could spend January 1st-5th establishing a presence
on Linked by writing a biography about the company, and then sending friend
requests to other educational companies that I discover on LinkedIn. From
January 6th to 31st, I could write four to six articles
on topics such as the future of online education, the benefits of teaching
computer technology to schoolchildren, and other topics related to Codex Alexandria
software on various academic course subjects. During this time, I would also
continue to try to network with other educational companies and hope that at least
some of them accept my connection requests. As for future Twitter content, I
could spend the whole month gradually revisiting Twitter whenever I come up
with any idea from an interesting, educational tweet that might reflect
positively on the academic integrity of Codex Alexandria. Since it would tacky
and premeditated if I were to release nine tweets on the same day and then post
only one tweet two weeks later, I would use this strategy to make my tweets
appear as if they were organic and freely flowing. With regard to future
Facebook content, my strategy would to post anything (as long as it is related
to marketing Codex Alexandria products or the type of interesting educational
facts that I might post for the company on other social media websites) that
randomly comes into my head within every 3-5 days from the last post was published.
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
Week 17: Wrapping It Up Post
My viewpoint on the
purpose and use of social media has somewhat changed while taking this class,
but not completely. My current opinion
on social media is that it is actually very useful for businesses, particularly
businesses whose customer markets include younger people who are more adept and
familiar with using social media websites like Facebook, Twitter,, Tumblr,
Pinterest, and Instagram. In fact, I
believe that small and large businesses alike, and not social media users that
want to just socialize with their friends, are ones that actually benefit the
most from social media out of all the users and individual entities that have
presences on there. I feel this way because social media has enabled even the
smallest of businesses to communicate with and possibly attract business from
consumers all over the globe, not just in the regions where the businesses were
originally founded. Because smart businesses focus on pleasing customers and
are likely to consciously avoid posting things that offend potential customers,
businesses with social media profiles often enjoy the benefit of not getting
into any comment wars with other users or not suffering the consequences of
posting anything that will cause outrage.
In the past, I thought
businesses having presences on social media websites would not be a
particularly good use of the businesses’ time and money because I believed that
very few customers would be interested in interacting with these business
online on platforms that were originally set up so that people could socialize
more easily with their friends, family members, and subscribers. While researching
various topics for the assignments of this class, though, I realized how very
wrong my assumption turned out to be. My assumption was based on the fact that
I myself, as a consumer (and as a student that does not have a lot money to
spend, anyway), had virtually no interest in spending time on social media
looking up the wares of a company that was probably selling products that I
either could not afford, nor had any use for in the first place. To my
surprise, however, I gradually discovered that my own lack of interest in
looking up businesses on social media is actually a bit unusual when I visited
several random companies’ pages on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest
and discovered that interested potential customers left hundreds or even
thousands (for more well-known, popular companies) comments on these
businesses’ social media pages. After seeing dozens of these heavily
commented-upon business profiles on social media and how customers were
responding to them, I changed my attitude toward social media halfway through
the class and began seeing it as a very valuable tool for businesses to use. In
fact, at this point, I believe that if businesses do not take advantage of
creating profiles on popular media and regularly communicate with customers on
them, they are not truly serious about attracting more customers and expanding
their businesses. Even though I do not own a business myself, I respect
businesses that use social media regularly to communicate with customers
because these companies’ presence on these websites shows that they are at
least willing to work hard and be ambitious about proving that their products
and services are worthy enough for customers to part with their own hard-earned
money for. In addition, it is obvious that we live in a digital age of high
dependence on technology, so it is only natural to expect that businesses will
take advantage of modern technology (such as social media websites) in order to
help themselves make a profit and make themselves appear more relatable to the billions
of people in the world who have Internet access.
However, I still stand
by my belief that overall, social media websites actually strain or even
destroy personal relationships between people because of my own personal
experience with Facebook and seeing how I have lost at least one friendship
over arguments that I had about politics, religion, and other sensitive topics while
I was conversing with a former friend on Facebook Messenger. Ever since I lost
that friend on Facebook (he unfriended me and never contacted me again), I
became more and more aware of how people I knew (even people that were normally
kind in real life) were using Facebook to personally attack and write demeaning
comments to each other over differing opinions, and my sorrow over seeing how
people have the ability to mistreat each other on social media remained the
same as I took this class. In fact, I have grown even more convinced that
social media use can even be detrimental for individual users because using
social media for several hours a day could also lower their self-esteem and
lead to depression because they might not feel like they “measure up” to more
popular social media users with celebrity status and acclaim. In spite of this
class, I also still feel that social media is often used negatively by
potential employers (and current employers) to search for information that
could lead to people being fired at their jobs or not even getting hired at
all.
I definitely have a better understanding of
how to develop a business than I did before I had taken this class, but I do
not necessarily think that I would be
a good entrepreneur because I am not inclined to risk-taking or a willingness
to financially invest in a business that might not survive within its first
year of inception. Nevertheless, this class has taught me several strategies
about how thriving businesses maintain successful profiles on social media, and
how these businesses interact with current and potential customers in a caring,
attentive manner that shows that they are willing to respond back to customers,
answer their questions, and make amends for mistakes that the companies may
have made while doing business with particular customers. As someone who has
worked in customer service positions in the past, a lot of the advice that the
lectures and class textbook suggested struck me as common sense because I
already know that people respond well when they feel like they are listened to
and that employees sincerely care about solving whatever problems and needs
that they may have. However, the newest lessons that I did learn from this
class was how to set up a business on Facebook and how to use Google Analytics,
even though I did not have the chance to thoroughly explore all the aspects of
Google Analytics. I also gained a better understanding of how to effectively
use different types of ads on social media, even though I did not create any
such ads myself because I cannot really afford to spend money on such ads.
With all honesty, I have rarely used social
media to research businesses, services, or products that I could possibly be
interested in during the course of taking this class. However, I will admit
that in the process of trying to figure how my fictional educational software
businesses, Codex Alexandria, could benefit from engagement with other users, I
stumbled upon Rosetta Stone’s Facebook, Google +, and YouTube profiles. When I
discovered the Rosetta Stone Facebook profile, I was especially impressed with how
Rosetta Stone managed to display several interesting, true testimonies about
how people used their language-learning software to travel the world and
interact with people who spoke the languages that they were learning. From
there, I then discovered Rosetta Stone’s YouTube account, which featured
intriguing videos that either featured Rosetta Stone instructors talking about
interesting language learners that they got to know more personally, or language
learners showing how they able to apply their new language skills in real life.
By visiting Rosetta Stone’s various social media profiles, I became so
impressed with the company’s reputation and language-learning software that it
almost convinced me to buy Rosetta Stone software for learning Russian (a
language that I have long wanted to learn) when it was on sale.
Week 13, Part B Post
There are certain types of ads on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram that Codex Alexandria
could use to garner more attention and attract more potential customers. With
regard to Twitter ads, I would only post new Codex Alexandria ads once every
month to remind people that Codex Alexandria exists and offers great products, but
I would notice more frequently than within that same period of time because I
would not want the company too appear too aggressive about pushing its products
because this pushy aggressive might actually disgust customers and turn them
off from wanting to buy Codex Alexandria products. I would specifically uses gallery
card ads, website card ads, and product card ads to drive curious customers to
the Codex Alexandria website to learn about the computer’s history, mission,
products, and current sales specials. If I were to use advertising to attract
potential customers on Instagram, though, I would post new advertisements there
every two weeks because of the very nature of Instagram itself. Whenever people
visit Instagram, they go there for the purpose of clicking on and looking at
lots of images of depicting ideas or advertisements for products that they may
not even have known existed, so my guess is that many people who visit Instagram
would be more comfortable with seeing more frequent, bimonthly advertisements
by a company like Codex Alexandria because many users visit Instagram to become
more acquainted with things that they had not known about before, anyway.
Meanwhile, I would also post new Codex Alexandria banner ads on Facebook every
two weeks in order to catch Facebook users’ attention with fun, colorful image
advertising and then have the promises of Codex Alexandria software remain
their mind after they click on these banner ads to discover more about the company
and its products. I would not post Facebook banner ads more frequently than
that, though, because I understand that the majority of people primarily visit
Facebook for the express purpose of chatting with their friends and family
first, not seek out businesses that will heavily market ads and products to
them on Facebook.
Additionally,
there are several other types of advertising that Codex Alexandria can use to
promote its products. For example, I would use advertising to create a sense of
urgency by using ads that limited-time sales/deals that are only available for
a certain amount of time before they return to the regular price. This
advertising would appear once a month in order give customers the idea that
Codex Alexandria has educational software sales fairly regularly, but often
enough to give customers the impression that company is overly desperate and
practically coercing customers to buy its software at lower prices than the
software would ordinarily be worth in the retail market. Since I believe that
offering deals on normally expensive software would be excellent way of
extracting more customers (especially during economic hard times when many
people might not have as much money to spend on non-essential products, I would
spend around $100.00 on this type of advertising. Another advertising tactic
that would serve me well would be for me identify and target my audience so I
would not needlessly waste money marketing Codex Alexandria educational
software to people who fall outside of the demographic groups that would be
interested in it. This method would essentially help me focus on targeting K-12
public school students, homeschoolers, and parents who are raising children in
this wide age range. I would use this advertising method once a month, and
spend approximately $75.00 every month that I used this technique if I were a
small business owner.
If
Codex Alexandria were to grow to become a large company like Rosetta Stone, I
could also see how incorporating user-generated content-post pictures of real
student customers enjoying Codex Alexandria software might also generate its
interest from potential customers and persuade them to click on advertisements
that feature these user-generated pictures. For example, the pictures could feature
students doing things like smiling and giving “thumbs up” signs of approval next to
empty Codex Alexandria software containers while using their computers. Because
most Codex Alexandria customers
would probably realistically have no interest in mailing in photographs of
themselves (or their children) enjoying the educational software, it would best
to only use this type of advertising once or twice every six months, and not to
spend more than $50.00 on this type of adverting during this period of time.
Although it would be wonderful to show real customers enjoying Codex Alexandria,
many customers who gaze upon these photos might come to the conclusion that they
were staged and created using hired actors, so this particular advertising move
might be rendered pointless. Meanwhile, I might also rely on the advertising
tactic of using images that resonate with my audience. These images would be
those that pictorially depict situations where students met their academic
goals through using Codex Alexandria software, like one example image advertisement
that shows a smiling student in graduation cap and gown graduating from
college. With this type of image advertising, I would attempt to use it at least
once a week because I think that people tend to be more motivated to buy things
(especially expensive items like software that involve a significant amount of
time that people need to devote to using them) if they are constantly reminded
of the rewards of using these products. Since I would use this type of advertising
quite often, I would devote approximately $150.00 on these ads per week. Finally,
the last type of advertising that I could imagine Codex Alexandria using
effectively would be the tactic of making attractive offers to customers. This would
essentially mean creating and projecting ads that offer sales/deals on Codex
Alexandria, especially deals that are anywhere from 25% to 50% off. Since these
deals would offer quite a bit off the original prices of the advertised software,
I would offer these attractive deals every three to four months so that customers
do not spend paying attention to Codex Alexandria and or take for granted that they
may have missed Codex Alexandria sales where they could have saved a lot of
money on new educational software. Since I would not be advertising these attractive
offers as often as I would be using the other advertising strategies that I
listed, I would probably not spend any more than $50.00 on sales offers every
three to four months.
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