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

Click here for photo credit.

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:

Click here for photo credit.

 - 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!