*UPDATE - I've made a few changes throughout and finished up the Analysis and Conclusion sections. Take another look and let me know what you think.*
Hey everyone!
A little something different for this week. For my final paper, I created a Storify in order to track how I did in integrating my social media presence throughout the course. I've embedded it below. It is no where near done, of course, but gives a good idea of the format I will go with for my final draft and indications of how the rest of it will look.
On another note, please let me know if anything looks odd or something seems missing. I've been having trouble with my Storify with certain blocks of texts going missing consistently. I've been through it again before I posted and I think everything looks fine but please let me know if there seems to be any areas of confusion. Also, let me know if any one else has also run into this glitch with their Storifys.
Any feedback to how it looks or reads so far is greatly appreciated. I look forward to hearing everyone's comments and thoughts.
Today’s culture is an over-sharing
culture.Between Facebook, Twitter,
Pinterest, Foursquare, and numerous other social media tools at our disposals
and on our personal devices, we are always connected and always sharing.Our social calendar is on our social
media.While this has contributed to a
smaller, more connected world, we must be aware of the new dangers that these sites
and apps pose personally, financially, and professionally.
Hackers can now easily access
personal information that people willingly put out onto the Web.People can put their thoughts out into the
world in the span of a nanosecond.Sensitive information and unpopular opinions can spread at a rapid pace with
little to no control.Social media is a
whole new world and that presents whole new dangers.In order properly practice and work within
social media, you must learn how you can protect yourself and your
organization.
Eight Tips to Keeping Safe
Here are eight major considerations
one must take into account when dealing with social media privacy and policy:
Always
be aware of your privacy settings: Social networking sites
such as Facebook are constantly changing their privacy policies. You must keep
on top of these security changes and track what your privacy and security
settings look like in order to protect the information you share with friends
and family from strangers and potential identity thieves.ZDNet offers a helpful guide on how to
properly lock down your privacy and security settings on Facebook by walking the user
through “a crucial focus area of Facebook's settings, and will run through
every single setting, option and feature available to users, to ensure that
your privacy is as protected as it can be.”(Whittaker, 2011)
Avoid
specificity: Social media is designed to share what
you are doing, where you are doing it, and who you are doing it with.However, this can be cat nip to potential
identity thieves looking for whatever clues they can find about you through your social
media accounts.Avoiding specifics about
your personal information, your daily schedule, and different aspects of your
life can better protect you from those looking to exploit you.
Know
what you are clicking on: Link shortening sites such as
Bit.ly are useful, especially with the rising importance of micro-blogging.However, these tools can often obfuscate the
link’s final destination.Hackers can exploit an innocent click, planting viruses or malware on your
organization’s computer systems.Always
exercise caution and always know where you are clicking to.
Always
pay attention to changes in the social media space:New and exciting social
media tools are being invented and popularized almost every day.The social media user must always be
aware of these emerging technologies and how they can be used against you and
your organization.Always be aware of
how these new tools gather and disseminate your information and act cautiously.
Every
organization is different.What
may have been allowable in one office may not be allowable at your next.Knowing your specific organization’s social
media policy (what is right or wrong, what is considered proper and improper
communication) will help you avoid a lot of headaches and trouble in the future.
Just
because your organization allows it, doesn’t mean you should be doing it:“The NLRB takes the
position that broad policies that substantially limit social media
communications may violate Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act
(NLRA), which protects an employee’s right to engage in concerted activities
for the purpose of mutual aid and protection”(Collins, 2012).Just because the NLRB takes this position
does not mean you should feel free to share whatever you want to the world.Always exercise caution about what you are
saying because it could harshly effect your work environment later on.
Know
who you are speaking to:As
with everything communications: know your audience.But in this specific context, be very aware
of who you are speaking with, how they will take your content, and how that can
affect you personally and professionally.A funny joke to you and your friends may be considered offensive or
disturbing to your co-workers and the public at large.
Post
as if you are speaking in a public square:If it’s not something you would say loudly in
public, it’s probably best not to say it at all.This can often be hard to understand when you
are sitting by yourself in front of your computer or hand held device.Social media presents itself as a bit of
false intimacy, like a small conversation with friends, when it is really a
large megaphone to the world.
What
Privacy?
We are living our entire lives on the social web and
an effect of that is our information and private opinions are up for grabs by
anyone willing to listen.While this can
be a great connective tool, the dangers are too great.It is up to the user what they decide to
share and how they share it.The
responsibility lies with you.
This is an aspect of today’s digital culture that is
going under recognized. That is why it
is vital for an organization to have a strong social media policy that can
enforce and guide what is acceptable.As
an employee, everything we do can reflect on the organization we
represent.It’s not just thieves and
hackers we have to worry about, it’s ourselves.
The story of Justine Sacco is just such a case.The ex-PR exec shared an inappropriate joke about AIDS and Africa
and the company she worked for ‘parted ways’ with her. In the aftermath, they issued the following
statement:
“The offensive comment does
not reflect the views and values of IAC. We take this issue very seriously, and
we have parted ways with the employee in question.There is no excuse for the hateful statements
that have been made and we condemn them unequivocally.We hope, however, that time and action, and
the forgiving human spirit, will not result in the wholesale condemnation of an
individual who we have otherwise known to be a decent person at core."
Proper social media training on the core principles
and policies for the company could have avoided such a situation.As the NLRB has clarified “individual
employee rants…are not protected under the [National Labor Relations Act]…employees
may be disciplined or terminated for engaging in such public rants”(Halpern &
Gardner, 2012). We are putting too much of our lives on the
web and each of the points I’ve listed above can help in stemming that tide,
protecting ourselves from digital thieves, hackers, and even
ourselves.
Do you think we as a culture are over-sharing or is
it just certain groups and people that are guilty of it?How can we lessen what we put of ourselves
online or is already too late?
Former Saturday Night Live star and Late Night host Jimmy
Fallon entered broadcast history this week beginning his tenure as the sixth
host of The Tonight Show, NBC’s venerable late night institution.Surrounding the departure of Jay Leno and the
arrival of the younger, more tech-savvy Jimmy Fallon, has been a lot of hype over
how the younger-leaning Fallon will do against the well-established competition
on CBS and ABC.David Letterman is the
old guard on the late night scene and the last standing ‘warrior’ of the so
called ‘late night wars’ now that Leno has left the airwaves.It's Jimmy Kimmel, however, who has been making waves at 11:30
ever since he was moved up from his midnight time slot just last year.Ever since Kimmel started competing with the ‘big
boys’ directly, he’s been making large strides building on the younger
demos.This is the reason behind
NBC’s decision to put Leno out to pasture (again): despite the fact that he was
still the ‘leader in late night’ in the ratings, his younger demos continued to
shrink and that was leading to decreasing profits for the late night
institution.
The key to Jimmy Kimmel’s success is no secret and it’s a large
part of why Jimmy Fallon was chosen to succeed the older-skewing Leno on The
Tonight Show perch.Kimmel and Fallon share
a great talent for creating great viral content and really pushing the limits
of what social media can do for their respective shows.Ratings all across the broadcast spectrum
have been trending downwards but Kimmel has shown surprising growth ever since
he was promoted to his earlier time slot. If anything, Kimmel is demonstrating night after night that in order to succeed in late night today, you have to go viral.
As marketers, we must find a way to capitalize on the
opportunity that social media provides.It’s not enough to just communicate with potential consumers and hope
they happen to click to your brand, like it, and interact with it.We sometimes look at social media as
something that is connecting people around the world to our brand but we have
to look deeper than that.Social media
is connecting consumers with people in their own communities and personal
spheres.It is through interacting with
other individuals talking about your company that consumers will engage,
search, and find the specific brands and products that will be the best fit for
them.
The New Marketer
Traditional avenues of communications and advertising are
important in attracting attention and brand resonance but social media has
added a new wrinkle to the communication mix.Powerful tools of communication are in the hands of the public now and
they can at once hurt and help your brand in an instant, depending on their own
personal experiences with it.The power
of word-of-mouth is hundred times more potent and powerful in this digital
age.“Social media has evolved from a
mere post it-answer it model…to instantaneous publish-subscribe models,”
providing an instantaneous call and response to an individual’s followers
regarding what to purchase and where to purchase.An excellent example of this kind of
connection between consumers is when an individual “stands in front of a
refrigerator in a store and check out reviews of that model; the consumer can
Twitter his network to get advice on all models, this brand, and this store
instantaneously…buying hesitancy is removed and the purchase takes place.”(Qualman, 2013, p. 83)
This is an extreme example but illustrates a great
opportunity for marketers and companies to track how people are discussing the
brand and allows them the ability to interject and take part in that
conversation.Word-of-mouth has always
been an important tool that marketers were never able to take full advantage of
until now.Word-of-mouth now exists in
the digital realm and happens in an instant.Marketers can now physically watch and interact as it happens and
spreads. This video shows one small company,
without the resources of a major corporation, finding great success in
connecting with the word-of-mouth conversation already happening around the
subject of wine.
Jared & Subway
So how can marketers take advantage of these conversations occurring
without them?Like the people at the
Wine Library, they can jump into that conversation, searching for where people
are talking about their product and comment and interact with consumers.Subway is a major example of a company that
nearly missed the boat on an opportunity where people were already talking
about their sandwiches.
Jared’s Subway weight loss story was a major marketing win
for the company.His story presents the
sandwich maker and its low-fat sandwiches in a positive light.Since Jared started as a Subway spokesman,
sales have grown at an incredible rate.However, when the Jared idea was first introduced to the company, Subway
rejected the entire idea behind it.Jared was someone who “was an avid user of [Subway’s] product and
service” that the company dismissed out of hand.However, once they turned around on the idea,
the company found unprecedented success.
Subway’s Jared experience, though not taking place through
social media, demonstrates a great overall lesson that is vital we learn as
marketers in this new digital age.Essentially, companies “need to be comfortable in knowing that not
everything related to the brand will be owned by them; their customers will
take ownership.”(Qualman, 2013, p. 85)Conversations about their products and brands
are already happening on the Web and will continue to happen with or without
their input.Marketers need to watch
this conversation happen and help guide it towards a positive view of the company
and/or brand in order to achieve success.
How can businesses use social media to steer the
conversation?Great, immediate customer
service over Twitter and commenting on blogs is a great way to increase their
own interaction with consumers talking about their brand. But how else can companies interject
themselves into conversations already happening in regards to their company/brand?
Works Cited
Qualman, E. (2013). Socialnomics: How Social Media
Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &
Sons, Inc.
