Let Me Show You

Have you ever heard the phrase “You gotta pay to play?” Well, if you haven’t, essentially what it means is you have to literally pay in order to play a game- think an arcade. Well, the phrase is also used as a metaphor for competition that isn’t in the form of a game, but business. Meaning, it is commonly used in social media, especially as it refers to advertising.  Karen Freberg, author of  “Social Media for Strategic Communication,” lists four types of content media. You may have heard of them, but without the technical term. They are: paid, earned, shared and owned media.  Paid media tends to be paid advertising. This could be a post, video or campaign that a brand paid for you to see in your social media feed or on YouTube.  Earned media on the other hand is the reach you obtain through people (customers or influencers) talking about your brand with their audience. This can be integrated with paid media through use of influencers. Shared media is just that- medi...

  I feel like the six C’s of effective writing for social media listed in Karen Freberg’s “Social Media for Strategic Communication” are extraordinarily obvious. That is, if you know anything or have read anything about social media. Maybe if this was the first information on social media for someone with no experience using any platform who suddenly wants to gain a following. The six C’s are content, community, culture, conversation, creativity and connection. Content is about making sure what you are sharing is relevant and that people will care about the information you're sharing. But it is also about the writing.  Community is developed when people share common interests with the content you are creating. Which can create loyalty to you and maintain your image.  Culture is created by this community to develop standards of how people behave. This often leads to your community defending you from non-community member hate.  Conversation is ensuring that you aren’t ...

  The funny thing about the textbook and my life as a current multimedia student specialist is that social media is a large part of what we do. Meaning a lot of the items the textbook states my reaction is “wait I do that now! I didn’t know that was a textbook element of social media.”  An example of this is in chapter 4 of Karen Freberg’s “Social Media for Strategic Communication” she mentions several definitions of key social media roles. A few examples being a social media strategist, content creator, multimedia/video producer and writer/editor which all happen to be aspects of my job. Oftentimes in the creation process for a person who wants to use our services, they will come to us either with an example video in hand or a general idea of the tone and goal of the video. Personally, my favorite is when they give us the general idea and tone as this allows us to be a little more creative.  For example, every year the Greek life sororities are required to create a video...

Last week’s Principles of What I’m Reading blog touched on the Top 15 Social Media Tips from Guy Kawasaki’s “The Art of Social Media” . This week is a different path as the new reading is “Social Media for Strategic Communication” by Karen Freberg- meaning this is the strategy and brand development aspect of social media. So let’s call social media a game of chess- funny because the front cover depicts the social media logos as chess pieces. It is, in fact, a competition all about strategy. A competition between users to gain the most followers and likes, and a competition between platforms for who can gain the most users and daily interaction. Everyone wants to be seen and more importantly- liked. Fortunately for you as a user trying to gain a following, each social media platform has a slightly different demographic, meaning you can find your truest audience and you may dominate on one platform, but not quite as much on another. This is good, it builds loyalty to you across all platf...