2 Social Media Trends to Watch For

Social media is an ever-changing medium, which can make it difficult to predict what will be the next big platform and what will be the next big flop. This makes it hard to choose what new platforms you should join immediately and what new platforms you can ignore when it comes to advertising. However, there are two general trends that you can use as a guide to help you predict what will be the next big social media platform.

1. Smaller Social Viewing Sphere: In the past few years, the new social media capabilities that have become popular have focused on limiting the number of people who can see personal messages. When Snapchat provided the option to send stories to only certain people Facebook and Twitter followed behind them by creating Messenger and Twitter direct messaging, both of which are used to create and send private messages to people.

2. Visual: With the rise in capabilities of taking high resolution images on your smart phone came the want to post and view pictures of everything on the internet. The most clicked content on social networks tend to have great photos, GIFs, or videos that convince users to pause their scrolling long enough to read the post. With the rise in popularity of different GIFs and memes, not to mention livestreaming, good visual communication will be a very important aspect to upcoming social networks.

I hope that this post helps you prepare for choosing your next social media platform. Do you have any trends you expect to see on social media in the future? Let me know and I may include them in one of my posts.

3 Tools to Help You Learn Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising has become very popular in the fast few years because of its affordability and its level of reach compared to traditional advertising. It can be a great resource for small businesses who don’t have the budget for traditional media, but correctly navigating the advertising capabilities on different platforms can be difficult to manage. That is why today’s post is on 3 different tools to help you learn social media advertising.

1. Hootsuite University: I’ve discussed the benefits of Hootsuite in one of my previous articles, but I feel the need to emphasize the importance of Hootsuite University. Hootsuite University offers and entire section of tutorials on commerce marketing and optimizing your reach on different social media platforms. They even include a social media performance worksheets to follow along with the tutorials. I will warn you that to have access to Hootsuite University you have to be part of the Hootsuite Pro Plan which is $9.99 a month. 
   
2. Facebook Blueprint: Another good tool to take advantage of is Blueprint, the new advertising school for Facebook. This option is free and includes 50 modules to help you familiarize yourself with Facebook’s advertising section and what best advertising practices you should follow.
   
3. Twitter Flight School: This tool, launched two months ago, is perfect if you are trying to figure out effective Twitter advertising. It’s free and gives you access to good advertising case studies to help you figure out how to project your brand voice on Twitter.

I hope these three tools help you and please be aware that there are many other resources you can use for learning social media advertising. Do you have any social media tools you would recommend? If so please tell us about your favorites in the comments.

3 Resume Tips That Will Help Wow Employers

Hello again, my readers, my fans, and everyone my mom forced to read this blog! Welcome back to the Millennial’s Survival Guide to College. This week’s post is focused on something very important to students looking for internships and jobs after, resume building. Hopefully by now you know the basics of what to include on your resume, because today we are focusing on three tips that will help your resume stand out.

1. Get Creative: Recruiters see anywhere between dozens to hundreds of applications a week, and most of them have one thing in common, they are in black and white. If you want to wow your potential employers with your creativity, put your graphic design skills to work with Canva. Canva lets you create your own twist on a resume by providing you with templates like the one above to help guide your creative juices in a professional manner. You can go the traditional route and use the resume template or if you are feeling really creative you can create your own resume infographic!

2. Include Your Social Media: Many employers are going to scour the internet anyway, so you might as well use social media to your advantage. You should include at least a link to your LinkedIn profile and to your Twitter account, because they are the two main platforms that most people leave available for everyone to access. Having your LinkedIn page available will also allow employers to view projects that you have worked on, which may help you get the job.

3. Include Links to Projects: If you are submitting your resume online and would like to include any projects or writing samples on your resume for them to click through to. This works especially well if you are trying to show off any social media campaigns you led or if you want to show off your writing skills through your blog.

I hope that this advice will help those of you applying for internships and careers. If you have any questions or comments for me, then you can post them in the comments or tweet me, my Twitter handle is @JoieBieger. Stay tuned next week for tips on how to survive the last few weeks of the semester.

3 Reasons You Should Be Using Hootsuite

In the past few years, social media management has gone from another task on the HR departments to do list to something so important that it needs its own team focusing on generating content. Thankfully, because of the rise in importance in social media management, there have been several websites and apps created to make managing all of the social media accounts easier. This evening, I am going to discuss Hootsuite, one of the more notable social media management sites, and why having a Hootsuite account is worth while.

1. Hootsuite teaches you about social media. Yes, you heard right, it teaches you how to use social media. They currently have 6 free social marketing courses that anyone can enroll in and if you become a Hootsuite Pro member you can gain full access to Hootsuite University, which offers courses about social media best practices and how to expand your online reach to more potential customers.

2. Hootsuite is a Twitter lifesaver. Hootsuite Publisher is a fantastic source to find content that matches your brand voice and serves as a great guide for when you should post to get the most engagement from your audience. My favorite feature on Publisher has to be the content calendar though, it allows you to create a content calendar that can automatically release tweets throughout the day.

3. Hootsuite Streams makes social media monitoring so much easier. The streams function is makes monitoring multiple accounts and multiple platforms a breeze. The tabs option allows you to go back and forth between the live feeds of each platform within seconds. The streams also allow you to monitor trending tweets on specific keywords to see what kind of voice does well for that topic. 

Hootsuite is a great resource to use for your social media platforms and I hope that if you decide to use this site that it helps achieve your social media goals. Please feel free to leave any social media management suggestions in the comments. See you guys next week!

Social Media and PR

Hi people of the internet! Welcome to this week’s social media topic post. This week we are focusing on Social Media and Public Relations. Social media can be a blessing for companies who are looking for affordable brand to consumer to consumer communication. Companies can take advantage of the real time marketing (RTM) capabilities that come with social media platforms like Twitter and Snapchat. However, social media can be a curse for companies whenever there is some sort of company scandal, thanks to RTM. This post is focused on how to use social media to maintain good public relations with your audience during times of crisis and how to take trend jack the companies in crisis.

If you’re worried about social media blowing up about any potential scandals with your company, then you need to acknowledge the crisis to avoid a PR disaster like Chipotle’s. Another important thing to do is to not go quiet on social media. In Fact this part is so important to remember that I have decided to repeat this and put it in bold: Don’t Go Silent on Social Media. A time of crisis is not a time for silence. If your company is in distress due to some scandal, then make sure to post live updates on your company’s social media platforms about what is being done to remedy the situation that is occurring.

If you are fortunate enough that one of your competitor’s is the focus of a major scandal and not your company, then congratulations, you have just been presented with an amazing opportunity, trend jacking. Some of you may hold strong feelings against being trend jackers, but trend jacking allows dissatisfied customers to explore other options to fulfill their needs. There are many ways that you can go about doing this, one example would be, if your competitor just had a scandal involving a breach of security, then now is the time to post what your company does to keep your consumers’ information safe. You should present this information while this topic is trending on social media, because it is important to give out this information while the topic is still relevant.

Sports and Social Media

With athletic events like the Super Bowl and NCAA Football Championship being among the most viewed content across the United States and among the most talked about content, it makes sense that companies try to use social media to advertise their content during sporting events. Social media has also been a great way to gain the attention of fans and potential students for the universities that participate in major sporting events. Social media has never been more important in sports.

It is almost expected of corporations to use real time marketing via social media for advertising since @oreo got the ball rolling during the Super Bowl several years ago. After their quick response to the Super Bowl power outage became a national phenomenon, every major brand decided that they needed to have their social media teams working the Super Bowl. This year, after every major play, companies like KFC would tie in what just happened with their product promotions. Everyone is trying to make sure they don’t get left behind in sporting event advertising via social media.

Corporations aren’t the only ones using social media to their advantage, university teams that are participating in these sporting events have also begun to use real time marketing to promote their schools. One university team who really stands out on social media is Clemson, who use platforms like Vine, Snapchat, and Twitter to gain more interest for their school. During the NCAA Football Championship this past year, Clemson utilized their social media accounts to increase the focus on their game by posting every play that was happening in real time and creating a sense of community with #ALLIN. They also kept their audiences engaged by asking them questions and to tweet support for their team. They have also recognized the fans on social media by thanking them time and again. This helped the University of Clemson capture the attention of prospective students and helped them show how grateful they were to their fan base.

Tying social media campaigns to sporting events can increase audience participation and create unique opportunities to advertise products. If used correctly, it can make your brand a national phenomenon and increase your fandom. I can’t wait to see what innovative posts will be posted during the next major sporting event: NCAA Basketball Finals.

Photo and Content Creation

There are many important aspects that require your focus on social media, but the two I intend to focus on during this post are content creation and the use of photos/other imagery. Content creation is important because it is the creation of the message you are going to send out. The use of images like photos, videos, and GIFs are important because they capture your reader’s attention. This post will focus on tips and tricks to improve your content and image use.

When you are trying to develop content that interests your audience, it is important to do your research. Find out what kind of posts get the most likes, retweets, and comments from your demographic. Check to see what time this posts were published, so you can figure out the ideal time to post your content. Then brainstorm ways to incorporate the blending of your unique digital voice with the tone of the most popular posts for your demographic. It should get you more likes and retweets.

         Image incorporation can be a little trickier because you have to figure out what kind of images will help send your message, as well as how to access or create these images. If you would like to incorporate a GIF into your posts, then I recommend you use a website like Giphy, because you can find free GIFs that range from something like this:

To something like this:

If you would like to include stock images, then one of my favorite sites to use is Free Images, because it gives you access to thousands of images that are free for public use.

If creating your own digital content is more your style, then I recommend downloading an app like VSCO (available on Android and iOS) so that you can improve the image quality that you record with your phone.

         I hope you found these tips helpful. Now go forth and generate your own content. Don’t forget to leave a note in the comments if you have any suggestions about the post or digital content creation.

4 Tips to Help You Start Your Own Blog

When I was assigned to write a blog about blogging this week, I couldn’t help but think how meta this assignment was. What better way to give advice about blogging than through a blog post? I hope that you find the following tips helpful when you are creating your own blog:

  1. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different forms of media: When you first start a blog, you have many fears about how to use photos, gifs, and videos for your posts. Banish those fears, part of making a good blog is experimenting with these things to find out what you really like. If you are afraid of licensing issues you can use websites like Giphy and Pixabay to get photos and gifs that are free and can be used for public viewing.

  2. Get personal with your posts: If you are writing about something you feel strong about say so. Take things you have learned in your life and tell your readers about it so that they don’t have to learn things the hard way. It will show your readers that you are indeed human and will help make your blog posts more relatable.

   3. Ask for feedback: Part of the beauty of having a blog is that it offers a two way form of communication. If you don’t know if your post is resonating with your readers ask for feedback, it can help a whole bunch.

  4. Relax: Remember you are only human and it takes ten thousand good repetitions to master a skill. The posts won’t be flawless in the beginning, but as you learn more, they will become better. If remembering that doesn’t help, then download an app like Pacifica (available in iOS and Android) or drink a cup of tea to help you calm yourself.

I hope that you found this post helpful. Please feel free to leave any comments or feedback you may have in the comments section below. Check back next week for tips on video and photo content creation.

Maintaining Your Online Reputation

         This morning, I am going to talk about something that is very important to keep in mind when you are using social media, your online reputation. Maintaining your online reputation is important because building it takes ages to build a good reputation, but it takes one blunder to destroy it. There are several things to remember when you are managing your online reputation but today we are just going to focus on two: try to keep your online voice consistent and make sure you know how to maintain a healthy influence with your followers.

         Keeping your voice consistent online may be harder than it sounds, but it is necessary because your distinctive online voice is part of your personal brand and can express your personality. I recommend trying to keep your voice genuine, but not offensive, just in case potential employers or clients decide to Google you to figure to learn more about you. One offensive, out of character tweet, like this one:

 can demolish your reputation and ruin your chances of being hired or even get you fired from your current job.

         Maintaining a healthy influence for your followers goes along the lines of maintaining a good voice, you should be consistent and use caution. Sure, you may think it is nice to follow someone who is following you, but if they don’t have use the tone you want to convey, then don’t follow them. You should try to keep an image that is true to your real self. Another way to maintain a healthy influence is to engage your audience, you can ask them questions, learn from them, and create original content for them to view. Your audience will appreciate it.

         I hope you found this advice helpful! If you would like to find out your degree of influence, then check your Klout score for free at https://klout.com . Feel free to comment on this post and on any of my other posts, I’d love to hear your guy’s feedback. 

Social Media and Strategic Planning

        Social media has been a large part of advertising for different companies since the major rise of social media in the early 2000s and with advertising comes the need for strategic planning. Successful strategic planning in social media requires research, careful planning, and great timing. These factors may sound very difficult to achieve, but thankfully there are several different websites and apps that can help your company’s social media posts be effective.

         Research is one of the most important steps in strategic planning because it is the time when you try to answer all of the questions involving the demographics that you are trying to influence, but sometimes finding information on these groups can be hard. I find that the Pew Research Center website is one of the most helpful tools to use when you are trying to find what platforms each demographic uses most, in fact I used this link to help decide where to post different posts on the various platforms of social media: http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/19/the-demographics-of-social-media-users/ . After you figure out where your audience is you need to research what posts get the best positive reaction from your demographic and general members of that social media site.

         Once you have your platform(s) for advertising figured out and what tone to use on the post, next you need to figure out what to say and how to say it. I would recommend that since you most likely know the general information that you are trying to convey, that you should use either the Facebook private message or Twitter private message settings to send a few samples to trustworthy members of the demographic you are trying to target. This gives you the opportunity to get feedback for what your ad appears to convey to them.

         After you have determined exactly what you are going to post, you must figure out the exact time you should post your information. If you post at the wrong time on your chosen social media platform(s), then you can risk being ignored by some of your target audience. Thankfully, there are some apps and internet extensions to help you determine when to post. You can use the Google Analytics extension on Google Chrome to track how many people view your posts at what time and from which country they are from. If you want to guarantee that your information is posted at the optimal time you can use the HootSuite website and app to automatically post your information at the best time for each platform.