Rae-diate

I think YouTube is a big deal for my generation. Through our adolescence and early adulthood it as blossomed into a huge web of content where people can now not just be entertained or post a few funny videos, but can use it to help promote their business and even build a successful personal career.  I read about YouTube in more detail in the "Social Media Marketing Workbook" by Jason McDonald. One of the things he discussed which is unique to YouTube is this idea of niches. Maybe your niche is cooking tutorials, emotional videos talking about social justice issues in our world, college humor videos funny animal footage. Yes, YouTube can be much like twitter; “noisey” and so much information at once it can be overwhelming. But through searching and subscribing to certain channels you can narrow “your” YouTube down to make it what you want. This is incredibly useful. Creators or businesses on YouTube work to find their niche and put out content according to their niche. If the

Last week in my social media class we were assigned a video project. We had to create and edit a video, upload it to YouTube and do it based off of a specific topic: Things to do in Ada, Ohio. Right off the bat I knew I was going to have to get creative with this project. I wanted to make this video entertaining so I decided to turn to my friends, who are the most fun, entertaining people I know. I asked them, “What do you like to do in Ada?” or “What is there to do in Ada?” and I got their permission to film their answers. At first, most of what I got were hilarious reactions, which gave me an idea of how to open the video, but as you might be able to guess, the reactions weren’t very positive. I wanted to still be able to fulfill the assignment and give ideas about what fun things there are to do in Ada. I personally have fun here! But I couldn’t figure out how I could tie that idea in with the humor and have a consistent theme. Then I asked another one of my friends what they lik

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a social media workshop hosted here at ONU by the PRSSA (Public Relations Student Society of America) chapter. Yes, the only reason I knew about it was because of my social media class which was my main motivator for signing up, but I left feeling glad I went and like I actually learned some valuable lessons.             The workshop kicked off with the keynote speaker, Brandon Daniels. He is the communications specialist at Marathon Petroleum Corporation and came to talk about the push and pull of social media, its evolution, and what audiences want from it. At first I was wondering how much someone who works at such a huge corporatio n focuses on social media, but I actually got the most out of what he had to say. One of his first points was about how language has evolved through social media. We have gotten creative in the ways we text each other or post a status through emojis, capitalization, punctuation, and how we spell words. But he

            I’ve recently noticed something about my Instagram page. At least one third of my posts are some kind of birthday or anniversary post. I know at least once a day I see a post in my feed about someone’s birthday or the anniversary of something. It made me wonder, where did this unspoken rule come from to post pictures of your friends or family on their birthdays or on other special days like anniversaries? Normally, Instagram posts are supposed to capture a moment that just occurred in your life to share it with others. Posting a picture of your friends reaction to the surprise party you threw them, for example, would follow this logic. But most of the time people make birthday posts for people they won’t be with on their special day. Why do we do this? Personally, I love posting on peoples’ birthdays for a few reasons. I don’t post on social media very often unless I have a very significant moment in my life and a good picture to go with it. But I have a lot of great p

This week in our book, “Social Media Marketing Workbook” by Jason McDonald, he talks about Instagram. Instagram is my favorite form of social media, so I was excited to know his opinion of it. He used many little phrases to describe the photo-driven platform such as “a party with a purpose” and   “a multi-person scrapbook.” But the phrase he kept revisiting to describe Instagram was “fun, family, photos, and fake.” Fake?             I understand why he would label Instagram as fake. He further explains this saying Instagram shows “life as it should be” instead of “life as we know it.” He says Instagram is a place where people embrace the “human desire to show off.” I do understand what he means by this, but I don’t completely agree. I think social media can be misused by individuals who post things to actively try to make people think their life is better than it actually is. They post only the photogenic moments of their life. This isn’t a totally bad thing; I think it is import

My family moved for the first time when I was in second grade. I remember being so young for a second it felt like the end of the world. I would have to say goodbye to my best friend. We wouldn’t be able to see each other at school, go over to each other’s houses or be normal best friends. This was the first time in my life I was determined we wouldn’t just be best friends, we’d be best friends forever. This meant BFF necklaces from Claire’s, planning a bunch of play dates before I left and asking our parents’ permission to talk on the phone a few times a month. We did all these things and managed to stay good friends for a few years after I moved. We naturally grew apart as we grew up, but it ended up being okay.             I would go on to move with my family two more times, the last time being the summer before I went off to college. In some ways, this was easier; everyone was saying goodbye to each other anyway. But in other ways, it made “going home” a lot harder. I was happy

I’ve heard many people tell me how fun Twitter is and encourage me to get one. But I never really saw it as a platform I thought would do anything for me, so I chose for a long time to not be a part of it. Sure I heard about all the funny things people would post and how it is a good way to keep up with the news but the negative things I heard about was enough to choose missing out on the fun. Twitter feuds, sub-tweeting, terrifying posts from public figures and in general the negativity so many people choose to put out on Twitter was something I wanted to stay far away from. So until taking this class, I didn’t have a Twitter; I still almost never post and only follow a select few people. This week the reading from our book, "Social Media Marketing Workbook" by Jason McDonald, was all about Twitter. I wasn’t really looking forward to this chapter because I assumed it was going to talk about how great Twitter is and list situations and tools I couldn’t relate to or use.