Fumbling Through College

This week's chapters are all about Facebook and LinkedIn. There is an absolute ton of information in these two classes. Since there is so much stuff to talk about, I'm going to take my favorite tip from each chapter and talk about that. My favorite facebook tip is to be sentimental. Bing sentimental can be posting about puppies, kids, or about a holiday! Let's be honest, who doesn't want to post about puppies. Being sentimental is a great way to engage with customers. The best tip that the LinkedIn chapter has to offer is to treat it like a 24/7 networking event. This is because you are always interacting with professionals. You never know who may like or share your professional articles that could give you a big favor in the future. Are you active on LinkedIn?

This week I live-tweeted about the Ohio Northern homecoming football game. I had a lot of fun with this assignment and thought it went extremely well. It felt very natural to live tweet and make it interesting. I was surprised with the amount of engagement I got from people outside of the class. I even got a reply from someone saying how excited they were to watch the live tweets. I have my Storify linked here which compiles all the tweets with #ONUHomecoming17.

This week was the first week of fall ball lacrosse for the ONU Men's Lacrosse team. We started on Monday and we practice for two hours a day, four days a week. It always seems a little hectic getting back into fall practice because we usually have a month or so first where we just lift and have study hall, so by the time practice comes around, we are used to having a lot of free time. The loss of free time can seem like a lot, but I believe it actually makes my time management much better. I seem to do better in the classroom when we are practicing than when we do not. All summer the team dreams about getting back out onto the field. Playing over the summer is always a blast, but nothing compares to playing with the teammates you've spent countless hours sweating and bleeding for. It is also always a blast to see how the new freshman are looking and to start showing them how we do it at Ohio Northern. I am extremely excited to keep practicing for the next month and get better ...

This weeks reading throws a lot of information at you. I believe the most important parts of this weeks reading is "Party On." Jason McDonald states that in many ways, marketing on social media is like throwing a party. The invitations are the same as a promotion, entertainment is the same as content, and hosting is the same as on-going management. McDonald also suggests monitoring other parties to see what you like and dislike. I think this is a great idea because many people would post what they feel is right instead of actually going out and doing research on what works and what doesn't work for other companies. McDonald goes on to say how a party should seem effortless. In reality there is a ton of work going on in the background to make the whole thing come together. I think that analogy really encompasses social media as a whole. Do you think social media is like a party?

This week I read an article written by Rachel Arthur titled " How Brands Used Instagram Stories During New York Fashion Week." Arthur published this article in Forbes, but she has had pieces published in Wired and The New York Times. She focuses her writing of fashion. The article focuses on the importance of timed reveals, detailed shots, and shoppable influencer content. She uses Ralph Lauren as an example because at the top of every hour they would post "insider" content such as what food was being served at the event and also what celebrities were attending. Marc Jacobs did a great job using Instagram Stories to post up close pictures of their jewelry. Michael Kors had a great Instagram story by letting the viewer buy exactly what they were seeing in the story. I think using Instagram Stories as a way to update your audience in real time is a great idea. It also could show followers exactly what happened at the fashion show if you couldn't make it. What ...

Family weekend was this past weekend at Ohio Northern. It's the moms favorite weekend because they get to see their kids. Parents weekend kicked off with our lacrosse banquet. It's always great to get all the families together, have a good meal, and talk about our accomplishments from the past season. We started off Saturday at a tailgate with all the lacrosse families before watching the football game. After the game, I said goodbye to my mom, dad, and sister before they made the drive back to Columbus. I love when my family visit for many reasons. Number one is that they bring me food. We most likely won't have to get groceries for a couple weeks. All joking aside spending time with my family is my favorite thing to do and I know they love seeing me. What did you all do for family weekend?

Reading for this week was all about tips for individual platforms, and also a case study on a hypothetical book launch. However, the tips for individual platforms were far more helpful than the case study. A couple tips that really stood out to me were to use Facebook Page insights to help promote your posts. Using IFTTT is an extremely useful tool for twitter also. Kawasaki used the example of integrating IFTTT to make your posts on Instagram and Twitter happen at the same time. I also found it interesting how Kawasaki uses Marques Brownlee as an example of how to make intros and outros. I personally watch Marques Brownlee on Youtube and all his videos are beautifully edited. The case study is helpful because it helps you get the idea of a timeline that should be in place during an event. What do you think? What tips from this chapter seem most helpful?

For my podcast, I decided that I should interview an average college student on their social media usage. I used an article titled " How Much Time Do People Spend on Social Media?" which was written by Evan Asano. This article features a great infographic on how much time the average person spends on each social media platform a day, and also their lifetime.  I thought it would be great to interview Charley too see if his usage matched up with the information that Mr. Asano collected. This is because many people believe that a college student would spend most their time on social media, and I wanted to see if this is true or not. How much time do you spend on social media?  I have added the show notes and the podcast to this post. Interview With Charley Hi, I’m Mack Calhoun and you’re listening to fumbling through college. I’m here with Charley Peoples here today hows it going? Go ahead and introduce yourself We are going to be talking today about our socia...

If you go to Ohio Northern or live in Ada, you probably know about the black swans that roam around campus. This week I learned about them too well. As I walked back from class I took the last turn to walk into my room and there they were. I now was face to face with both swans. I could feel their eyes looking into my soul. I panicked and backed away until they walked away. This was not my only encounter with the swans of death this week. Saturday night after dinner we were walking home. The sun had just set. As soon as I let my guard down, the swans came out of the shadows and started hissing at me. They were only a couple feet away and were camouflaged perfectly with the darkness. I barely got away this time, I may not be as lucky in our next encounter.

This week textbook reading provides some great insight on how to socialize events and also how to use Google+ Hangouts on Air. I thought the chapter on how to socialize events could be one of the most helpful chapters so far in the book. The chapter describes how to set up an event to create a huge buzz on all social media.  There are two points I found to be the most informative. The first is to create a short, generic hashtag for the event. The second is to provide a place for guests to take pictures. Creating an easy to know hashtag is essential. If you make it easy and memorable, it will be shared across many outlets across social media. If your hashtag is long and complicated, viewers may ignore the post and less people will share. Having a dedicated place to take pictures is a great way to spread the word about your event. There must be good lighting and a good backdrop that has the logo of the event on it. A backdrop makes guests feel important and gives them their "1...

This week an app called "Polgygram ;)" was launched by clipo inc. Polygram allows you to put real time filters over your face, much like Snapchat. Polygram is unique because it uses Artifical Intelligence and facial recognition to let you see what your friends really think about your post. The app uses facial recognition to pick an emoji based on your reaction, it then sends the emoji to the poster. This app seems like a good idea but there are some flaws. First of all who puts a ";)" in the title of their app? Anyway, it seems like a rip off of Snapchat with the face filters. I could see how this facial technology to send your reactions could be a great idea in apps that are already successful but I don't think the idea is clever enough to have a standalone app.

This weekend a couple friends and I took our long awaited trip to Breakaway Festival in Columbus. This year was the second year of the festival.  As we parked you could already hear the bass booming and hear the voice of performers. The first night started out with Super Duper Kyle, who put on an upbeat and happy set. By the time Travis $cott came on we got pushed all the way to the back of the crowd, but that didn't matter to us.  He gave a great performance that ended with him playing the hit song "Goosebumps" three times. Oddly, it wasn't annoying that he played it more than once. If you went to his show in Cleveland over the summer, you heard him play the same song thirteen times, which set a world record. However, I was more excited for the second day. We managed to get about twenty feet from the stage when Playboi Carti started performing and didn't move until the end of the night after Diplo's set. The feeling that you have at a concert or music fe...