How I learned about social media! Click Here!

COMI 610 Digital Paper

My story of how I started a blog and promoted it using social media

Background

The best way to describe my social media experience during this course is to discuss the way I integrated my blog with social media sites. This particular class showed me how to integrated all of these different types of online media. On my blog (Click here) I have discussed several social media related topics over the course of the last several weeks. Among these are posts about big data, social security issues, and the importance of communication. Through discussions with other students and many different articles I have learned a lot about not only social media, but also about myself. I never saw myself as someone who could be immersed in social media. Now that I have seen all the ways different sites can be integrated with one another I now understand the value both in my personal life and professional life more than ever.
Introduction

My name is Ian Larson and I am a full time student in Marist College’s MA in Integrated Marketing Communications. I expect to graduate this summer. I received my BS in business administration from Marist College as well. I currently work in the buildings department at Mavis Tire. I schedule in house maintenance works and contract outside companies to complete repairs at all of our locations. I spend most of the time at my computer managing different requests, bills and schedules. This course helped me to understand how social media and other online applications can be used to help organize a lot of this information and connect me with more people outside my company. I have learned that often the most simple and easy to understand message is the one that gets across best to people. This has influenced the way I write my blog. I always try to keep the posts easy to read and understand to help encourage conversation. I hope to keep the conversations going after a post make sure that people are engaged by the topics.
Plans and Policies

Strategy

My social media strategy is to spread new ideas and encourage discussion about these ideas. I would like to write about and bring up topics that people will find interesting and want to talk about. I find that we all learn more when we discuss different aspects of a topic. This type of interaction always results in all the parties involved seeing sides of an argument that they may not have thought of themselves. Social media is an important part of people’s lives. Erik Qualman said “As human beings, we have the dichotomous psychological need to be individuals yet feel connected” (Qualman, 2013). This is very relevant because it shows that people have an innate desire to interact with each other. Part of my strategy is to fill this need and encourage conversation about topics that all of us can learn about. My course goal is to better understand how to use all of the different social media strategies I have learned in a professional setting.

·         I would like to better understand how to run a full social media campaign. This will enable me to have a very useful skill in any future career tracks I find myself on

·         Another goal is to learn more about the different types of social media and which mix is best for different demographics.

Objectives/Goals

My goal for my social media interactions is to ensure that I am able to communicate effectively with my readers. My goal is to post content that is easy to read and understand. This is important to be because it encourages conversation. These objectives are there to help guide me when writing my blog posts. When I am writing each posts my goal is to ensure that the reader will feel comfortable commenting on the topic.

·         My goal is to have my blog gain 8-10 unique visitors every week

·         My goal is to have at least 4 comments on my blog each with

·         Encourage people to continue to conversation beyond the first post they make

Site Policy

My blog includes a site policy to ensure that posters understand what is expected of them on the website. This is meant to guide the discussion by encouraging respect among the people posting.

Link  http://ianlarson5.blogspot.com/p/site-policy.html

"This class blog is meant to encourage discussion among class members about the topics that I have posted. This blog is designed to be interactive and comments are included. Comments should stay professional and respectful. I welcome feed back on any of my posts and would love to hear any differing opinions and questions in the form of posts to any of my posts. I will continue to check to ensure that any content that is posted is appropriate and meets the standards of what is expected of us in this course."
Social Media 610 Ian Larson: Site Policy

BLOGSPOT
Activities

Integrating both my pinterest and twitter was important for me. Integrating these two sites allowed me to help drive potential readers and commenters to the site. I tried to keep the posts on these sites interesting and use hashtags that were relevant to the discussion. Posting interesting things on other sites will help drive people to join this conversation on my blog. For example, on my post about big data I post this message on twitter. “Did you know that what YOU post online can predict the#FUTURE? Find out how YOU contribute to big data at Ianlarson5.blogspot.com #marist610” This was meant to be fun because part of what I talked about on the blog post was how big data can be used to predict future trends.

Week 3

Tweets

"Join the conversation about social media as a tool for communication in marketing: http://ianlarson5.blogspot.com/2014/02/communications-is-at-center-of.html …"

"Check out how communications is the key to successful strategic execution! Follow my blog at: ianlarson5.blogspot.com  pic.twitter.com/u6zMG0oySP"

Week 4

Tweets

"Did you know that what YOU post online can predict the #FUTURE? Find out how YOU contribute to big data at Ianlarson5.blogspot.com  #marist610"

"Still snowed in? Now's a great time to brush up on how your contributions to big data can affect marketing decisions! ianlarson5.blogspot.com"

"Learn how #bigdata contributes to predictive #analytics & join the conversation at ianlarson5.blogspot.com  #marist610  pic.twitter.com/owt0E6Dxbh"

Week 6

Tweets

"Are your social media accounts secure? Find out at ianlarson5.blogspot.com !"

Analysis

Week 3

4 Followers

6 visits
6 Unique Visits

All views came from blogger itself

Week 4

4 Followers

22 visits

15 Unique visitors

Views came from combination of twitter, pinterest and blogger

Week 6

17 visits

10 Unique visitors

Most visits came from twitter and pinterest

Conclusion

Thinking back on all of the work I have done over the past few weeks, it was a very good learning experience. Before starting this program I barely knew what a blog was, let alone being able to write one. I was able to meet most of the objectives I set for myself and I learned many new skills along the way. I feel that my social media activity outside of my blog helped drive people to the blog. Overall this helped me learn more about the content because of the conversations I engaged in on my blog.

References

Qualman, E. (2013). Socialnomics: how social media transforms the way we live and do business (Second ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons Inc.

4 comments:

UnknownMarch 5, 2014 at 9:44 PM
Hey Ian,

I enjoyed reading your Storify draft. I think you're off to a solid start, nice job! I see that you stuck to the outline given to us in regard to organizing the content of our storify project. This is great because what you have listed is very easy to follow. I noticed you inserted links which revert back to content you posted during specific weeks. That's great, but one thing you might want to try, instead of inserting a link, is to perhaps use more storify media, and insert screen shots into your paper. A great example of what I am talking about can be found on Damaris's storify draft. By using additional forms of media to tell the story, and illustrate it further, you create a finished product that comes to life and is more pleasing to the eye. Something by which your viewers will feel more engaged with overall, and remain interested and curious throughout the entire piece of writing. One area that could really use this is your analytics section. You have listed all of your data, but I think being able to see the actual graphs of data would help strengthen your work. You might also want to go more in depth on why you feel the blog performed the way it did that week, and what are some of the things you think you could have done differently in order to improve overall user interaction with your blog. Again, solid start!

- Dan
Lindsey RealeMarch 6, 2014 at 8:15 PM
Hi Ian,

Great start! I enjoyed reading your Storify draft and it’s great to hear that this course has taught you so many things about social media that you can use in both your personal and professional life. I have to admit I didn’t know too much about blog writing myself before this course!

I echo Dan’s comments that it’d look great if you could add some more storified media to your post. To integrate my Twitter and Pinterest posts I actually used the link function in Storify and copy/pasted the URL for a specific post into that section. For some reason using the Twitter-specific section didn’t pull up my tweets. Just a hint in case you get stuck!

In your Conclusion, I think it’d be helpful to reflect back on some of the strategy goals you initially set for yourself (like understanding how to run a full social media campaign and what you learned about social media for different demographics). This would be a nice tie-in and wrap-up.

Again, great work this week!
Lindsey

Social Media 610 Ian Larson

Pages

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

COMI 610 Digital Paper

4 comments: