Social Media Project

Being a Public Relations major, I have worked on several group projects throughout my undergraduate career. Many of them included some form of social media. This group project, however, was different from all of the rest because our group never physically "met" with one another. Nevertheless, the social media group project team I was a part of worked together seamlessly on our client Bacardi.



Photo credit.

The main thing I learned from this project was how present companies can truly be on the web. There are so many ways that a company can represent itself, and our team tried to cover every aspect of Bacardi's social media and web presence. It seemed that when we looked into one arena we found another site that Bacardi was on, and another and another. It was fascinating to learn that Bacardi's social media plan utilized so many different tactics within it's social media campaign.

Our group focused on and critiqued the company's website, Google, Bing, Wikipedia, Twitter, YouTube, Twitrratr, Facebook, Pinterest, Flickr, Instagram, LinkedIn and Tumblr. The brand seems to be everywhere!

We also took a look at Bacardi's social media policy. This was the area that, based off of our lectures, I saw the most room for improvement. It lacked detail and was really more of a mission statement than a company policy. Overall though, Bacardi has a hand in every pot of social media, which made it an exciting company to research for this project.

Click here to view the Bacardi Social Media Project by Group 12.

Week 13: Clear

Social Media and Business

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I was so excited about this week's topic, social media! I am a social media junky - I am constantly keeping in touch with my friends via Facebook, and I love sharing funny tweets. Social media has always been my favorite module of any class I've taken, and I enjoyed learning about how businesses can benefit from joining social networks as well.

Social media is content that is created, shared and commented on by a broad community. Goodwin.com has an informative outline of all social media types and how they can be used. Some examples are as follows: blogs, wikis, social networking sites (Facebook, Linked In, etc.) and microblogging. These are fun personal tools as well as highly beneficial business tools. So how does a company go about getting involved and do the benefits really have good return on investment values? It's easy, and yes.

Click the icon above to get Linked In!
(photo credit here)

When deciding which social media networks are right for your business, it is important to remember that the idea is quality, not quantity. Professor Means offered the folling questions to serve as the foundation for kicking off a social media campaign:
 - Who are you?
 - What is important?
 - What are the characteristics of your business?
 - What do you know?
 - What are the barriers?
 - Who should be talking?
 - What is the value
 - Who is your audience?

Once you have thoughtfully answered these questions, you are ready to take flight on a social media campaign! The answers to these questions will help you make an informed decision on which network your business would benefit from the most.

The next step is to make a Social Media Policy for your business. A thorough list of social media policies can be found at SocialMediaGovernance.com. You can look at templates and get ideas for your own policy, which you MUST have. Professor Means lectured on the following guidelines for developing a Social Media Policy:
 - Describe the purpose of social media in its relation to your business
 - Make sure the writers/people who are in of the social media take responsibility for the content and are authentic
 - Respect copyright and protect confidentiality
 - Bring value and productivity

Now it's time to strategize. Taking what you learned from the answers to the questions previously listed, begin with the end in mind. Knowing where you're going helps learning how to get there with strategy. According to Professor Means, it is important to keep the following in mind:

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 - Establish goals with input from stakeholders
 - Determine your audience
 - Determine you policy and strategy
 - Determine how you will measure success
 - Set your brand and framework for interaction
 - Publish your input
 - Monitor, measure and adjust content as needed
 - Make sure you have a plan
 - Take calculated risks
 - Have fun!

If you're not comfortable with starting your own social media campaign you can opt to outsource the work to companies who special in social media. Banyan Branch is one such an agency. Their entire business revolves around keeping other businesses up to date and relevant in social media so that they can achieve staying power and connect with consumers.

Week 12: Clear

Telecommunication

This week's section on telecommunication really resonated with me as a Public Relations major. As a PR major, I have taken a few telecommunications classes. These classes however, have always been about better communication with people. Never once have I thought about how the mediums themselves communicate whether it be radio, television or internet. Come to find out, we humans cannot communicate very easily if our technology is not communicating. Let's find out how the magic happens...

It will help to start with the definition from Professor Means's lecture. Telecommunication is defined as:
 - Electronic communication: the science and technology of transmitting information electronically by wires or radio signals with integrated  encoding and decoding equipment
 - Simply, information transmission over communications lines

So how does this transmission happen? Lots of wires and/or radio waves as well as some heavy hitting technology. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) starts and ends data sent on the internet. It breaks the data up into little packets that the Internet Protocol (IP) routes through networks.

Not so fast! A TCP is not the only way to send and receive data. There is also what is called a UDP, or User Datagram Protocol. The UDP is ideal to use when delivery speed is of the utmost importance and quality can be sacrificed. As  Professor Means's lecture so eloquently put it, "get it fast" instead of "get it perfect."

Now that I understand the How of telecommunication, I appreciate the medium even more. It is no longer a simple broadcast medium that I have learned about throughout my college career. It is an intricate network of technology communicating simultaneously to deliver my information.

I will leave you with this YouTube video. It is a video of one of my favorite bands A Flock of Seagulls with "Telecommunication." Flock of Seagulls was one of the first bands to experiment with synthesizers and new age music technology. So it is quite fitting!

Week 11: Clear

Data is information, right? Wrong. I know, your mind is blown. In this week's lesson we learned about data assets. Along with it, we learned how to properly categorize data and information. There are a few things that distinguish the two from each other.

First, let's lay a few ground rules:

Data is...
  - Raw facts and figures

Information is...
  - Data in context
  - Answer questions
  - Support decision making
  - The finished good

A good analogy to illustrate the relationship between data and information is the one between crude oil and refined gasoline. It's nice to know that you have crude oil, but what can you do with it? Once you refine it and make it useful, you can do a lot! It works the same way with data and information. Data is a just a bunch of numbers that aren't very useful until you apply them to your firm to help you make decisions such as smart marketing strategies.

The Youtube video below gives more examples of the relationship between data and information. It eloquently explains their differences and how they can be useful in your business through information technology.

Week 10: Clear

This week we learned how to use the basics in Microsoft Access. I found that the most usable asset in the program for me is the ability to make effective, engaging and clear forms. The layout of Access forms is intuitive, which is a major plus for not-so-tech-savvy people like me.

As a public relations major, I am constantly executing surveys and focus groups so this program would be extremely helpful. It would make it very easy to build a database of people who were surveyed. Through Access, it is easy to go into the database and add or edit people and things so that your database can always be up to date. Data was made to be used, and with the easy operation of Access, you have no reason not to use and update your information.

The Microsoft website provides a list of examples of when forms can come in handy in an array of professional settings:
- Note students' grades
- Track inventory items
- Enter new employees' names
- Review weekly output numbers
- Update customers' addresses
- Create sales or service orders
- Open other forms or print database reports

Additionally, this youtube video from SimonSezIT.com provides straight-to-the-point instructions on how to use forms.

Week 9: Clear

Moore's Law

This week's lesson on Moore's Law initially blew my mind. However, Gordon Moore's discovery and subsequent law that bears his name makes a lot of sense and has a profound impact on the technology that we use every day, have been using for years and will come to use in the future.

Moore's Law is all about making technology faster and cheaper. It states that computer chip speeds double every 18 months. The chips available for purchase 18 months from now should be twice as fast or be able to store twice as much information. As a result, the chip you have today should cost half as much as the new chip.

Can this go on forever? No. Even exponential things can't last forever, but the man himself, Gordon Moore, suggests that we can delay 'forever.' The way techies are delaying forever is through multicore processors and 3-D transistors.  This video highlights the ways Moore's Law continues to "stay alive."

If you're still having a tough time wrapping your head around this genius revelation take a look at the video below. This light-hearted video, which features Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage from the Discovery Channel show MythBusters, explains and demonstrates Moore's Law.

Excel Project

Completing the Excel Project this week was enlightening as well as confusing. I mastered many of the skills, but the pivot tables were not my strong point. However, the skills I have acquired I feel are extremely applicable to working in a corporate setting.

The number one skill I retained from this lesson is how to make formulas. I can't believe how easy it is! I wish I had known before how to use them and apply them to whole rows or columns so that I could have made past school projects less time consuming as well as more attractive.

While formulas were my strong point, pivot tables were my downfall. I rewatched the videos several times, but still could not grasp that concepts that you need to master to be able to generate this useful tool. I see the benefit of them, which makes not being able to use them even more frustrating. As a result, I was not able to complete that part of the project.

Overall, this was a wonderfully thought-out lesson that I will continue to use in the future when generating reports and analyzing data for my classes and business.