#Freberg13

The end of a semester is so busy. I hate to think of everything that is on my to-do list because every time I cross something off another thing gets added. It’s a never ending cycle, so I’m definitely looking forward to Thanksgiving next week!It’s definitely always been my favorite holiday because its about spending quality time with people you love. Christmas is always fun too, but so many expectations are put on the gifts. Thanksgiving is about good food with good people.

With the semester wrapping up, I want to take some time to reflect on my social media class. Taking this social media class with Dr. Freberg has taught me so much. I came into this class so eager to learn exactly what social media is, and I completely and definitely did. Because it’s a technology, social media is always changing. However, I know the fundamentals that have me on the right foot. As much trouble and work that I’ve put into the huge social media proposal group project that I have, I’m thankful for it. I learn by doing. Like I really love experiential learning. So by having a real client and creating real possible strategies, it gives me insight like an internship does. It makes me ask myself, is this what I want to do after I graduate? To be 100% honest, not really. However, I never would have realized that although I enjoy doing this, it’s not something I want to pursue. Who knows, I’ll probably change my mind and I’ll have this amazing resume of work to go off of because of Dr. Freberg and this class.

Some of the things that I really enjoyed in this class were the guest speakers and the Hootsuite Certification. I loved how some of our guest speakers were from UofL or did a Skype video call. I love how personable these people were and how they really offered some valid insight. My favorite guest speaker was Lizelle Lauron. I really loved the fact that she took this class last semester, went after what she wanted, and is being so successful!

I also love how I am a Certified Hootsuite Professional. (Patting myself on the back for that) Although it got tedious and kinda boring at times, I now have this awesome accolade to add to my resume. It’s like attaching an employers favorite candy bar to my resume. They’re going to just eat it up!

Also, this is totally off topic, but I thought it was cool. Both of my parents grew up to be programmers. Well, in our I-COMM meeting with UofL’s Digital Media Director Jeff Rushton, he said he was a programmer before he got into social media. How cool that I’m working in social media when my parents used to do programming?! Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. In other words, my parents created a nerd. Haha.

I look forward to seeing what Dr. Freberg does with the class and what social media decides to turn into!

Hootsuite University-Certified Professional!

The opportunity that Hootsuite offers to be a Certified Professional is amazing. The entire program offered a ton of information on not only how to use Hootsuite, and also how to use social media in the most affective way. There were many lessons that I particularly liked and some that I really hated having to learn about because it was really uninteresting.

There were several different lessons that I enjoyed. I feel like most people would look at lessons as work, but for me learning this information was fun. It was easy to pull up the videos and watch them. I was able to stop and start the videos when it was convenient for me, and that made the learning experience so much more pleasant. In one of my earlier blog posts, I mentioned how much I enjoyed the lesson about social media etiquette. It is unbelievably important to know the do’s and don’ts of social media. People do not understand the ramifications of their actions on social media. However, this lesson made it clear and easy to understand. It also was a great lesson to learn before going into the other lessons because it teaches how to communicate effectively. Isn’t this what the over arching objective to what social media really is?

The other lesson I liked the most was the lesson about creating a social media strategy. It was added last minute apparently. Because of our social media proposal project, it was great to get some insight on how my group’s work matches up. However, the most important and most helpful aspect behind the lesson was the reasoning why the objectives, strategies, and analytics. We can create many proposals and strategies, but what is the worth behind everything? The lesson talked about how to measure what was successful in your strategy and what wasn’t.

I wish that this lesson was presented earlier in the lessons, or maybe broken into pieces and scattered throughout all of the exams. From class, it has taken us an entire semester to learn about the topics they covered. So to have all of that pushed into one lesson, it was a bit overwhelming. I definitely had to take my time to learn about it.

I noticed a few things that bothered me with the entire certification. There were little to no clear directions. I had to assume to click and watch different things. I feel like they definitely could have been more thorough about providing clear instructions on the entire program and how to use it. Although I liked some of the videos from the Lecture Series, after I watched some I realized it was not required to watch any of them. This could have been put in the directions, but, as far as I know, it never says it watching those are required.

In conclusion, the HootsuiteUniversity program is amazing. It is hands down very helpful and I learned a great deal. I’m also really exited about being listed as a Hootsuite Certified Professional and being able to add that to my resume. Although there were things that bothered me and were confusing, I learned so much. It has been very helpful in my social media proposal group project. I also know that I’ll be using Hootsuite to manage UofL Career Development Center’s social media because of how easy and awesome it is!

Love Actually

So lately, the topic of love keeps coming up in my conversations with my friends.

Why do we put so much pressure on ourselves to be in a relationship? Why is being loved by someone else SO important at such a young age?

I read an article called, “I’m Not Gonna Tell You You’re Beautiful.” The author talks about how dare we think we are anything like anyone else. Our imperfections and the things that make us weird is what makes us, us. People throw around the word, “beautiful” as though it doesn’t hold any weight or meaning. Why do we tell everyone and anyone that they are beautiful? Yes, everyone is. However, to me, that word is only used when I really feel like what I’m looking at and what I’m looking into is truly beautiful. So another question is, why do we strive for someone else to call us beautiful? Why can’t we look at ourselves and inside ourselves and think we’re beautiful?

For me, in a time where I need to know myself, love is tricky. I love so many people. But I realize that I am not in a place to actively show that love in a romantic way. Right now, it’s so important to me to be self-sufficient and to love myself. Because to me, love is being self-less. I look forward to that one day. But a great deal of people these days do not understand that concept…so they just take and take from the other person. They “love” them, but they keep taking as much as they can.

With that kind of love, you’ll never understand self-beauty. You have to love yourself before you can expect someone else to love you.

Social Media and Crisis Communication

With social media growing larger and larger, companies are being put in a position where they need to learn how to handle a “crisis.” The speed at which a message, that causes the problem, travels at over social media can be astounding. Something can be leaked and within moments a forest fire has ignited.

When Joey Wagner came to our class to speak, he touched on some crisis management his company dealt with for UofL Athletics. He mentioned that with crisis management, have a plan. His entire team had a game plan. They knew at what time the press release would post,they knew their plan of attack, and they handled it. Looks easy, but it took a lot of work!

This article does a great job of going into detail on a step by step method of how a crisis should be managed on social media. It comes down to be being a strategy. You can’t go and make a quick witted response. Everything has to have a purposed and has to be planned. I personally really enjoyed the bit about micro-management. The information being pushed out has to cater each of the outlets. And it has to be a genuine conversation. In crisis situations, engagement in a personable is so important as well.

Problems happen because it’s simply inevitable. However, its how you handle it that will be judged. So plan and engage, then you can move on and give yourself a pat on the back!

Guest Speaker: Lizelle Lauron

Today, in class, we had the awesome pleasure of getting to talk to Lizelle Lauron. She is a VERY recent grad of UofL from the Communications department. She even took this class last semester (that’s how recent we’re talking). Since she graduated, her post-grad career has sky-rocketed.

She took an internship with Nick Stover, UofL’s Director of Social Media and Engagement for UofL Athletics. With this, Lizelle was able to learn the in’s and out’s of how social media works for a sport’s team. After this, she moved back to her home state of Texas and took an internship with the NBA team, the Dallas Mavericks, doing social media. Well, as of November 1, she has been hired as a full time employee as the Social Media Coordinator for the Dallas Mavericks. 

As a student, all I can think is, THAT’S AWESOME! I had never met her until today, but what an amazing way to capitalize on opportunity. If you know what you want, then work for it. 

One of the things that I found the most helpful from her guest lecture was how to make social media valuable: analytics. By looking at how a tweet or a Facebook giveaway actually affected your brand, you can tell how valuable it is. Fans are always wanting tickets or recognition by a team that they love and follow. What a better way to reach out to them then social media which is used so heavily?! And you track this using programs like Topsy or Bottlenose. Lizelle gave major credit to Dr. Freberg for this understanding because without this class she would have never even known about them. 

To me, knowing that someone was able to take an internship into a full-time position is wonderful. Its not just about the need for the position for the company. She was able to prove her worth to the cause. 

I hope when I graduate that I can become that successful and bring that much praise to such a wonderful department! 

Have a great weekend, y’all! 

Event Planning

This week, we had Joey Wagner from J Wagner Group come to class and talk to us. Y’all. This guy is awesome.

Not only is he a Louisville native, but he started this company from the ground up. J Wagner Group is an event planning, marketing, and promotions company. He is working with groups like Grey Goose Vodka, Maxim, Woodford Reserve, and SOO many more. His presentation is class really impressed me. I can tell he has his act together. He works hard and there is no denying that. I hope, one day, that I have as much passion for my work as he does. To me, passion for what you do is the ultimate dream.

But what my main point about this blog post is event planning. Such an interesting field of work. It isn’t just about putting together a party anymore! It’s marketing, promoting, social media, and a ton of things. It takes a great deal of work. Joey highlighted some of the events that he thought of himself like Pink Prom and  Glow Go 5K. These ideas were like his baby that he grew. Also, they were promoting a cause that was worth something. Pink Prom puts all of the money made from ticket sales back into Susan G. Komen for breast cancer awareness. Pink Prom has been so successfully promoted and attended in Louisville that it now has branched to Lexington and Cincinnati.  He mentioned that one of his ideas, “Jocktails,” has been such a fantastic hit that he decided to trademark it as a future precaution. See what I mean that event planning is more than just throwing together a party?!

My cousin works in London for the event planning company, G and D Events. She currently interns but when I got a chance for Hanna to explain to me some of what she does it was really interesting. The UK do things a little differently than here in the states, but they still rely pretty heavily on spreading the word of how fabulous they are on social media! To get your product out there you need to know how to promote successfully. Not just what your company is, but also what your client is trying to do. They have specific clients just like the J Wagner Group, and its a group effort to get something to be successful. Overall, its really interesting to me to see that no matter what you end up doing in the field of communcation, it comes back to marketing, promoting, and social media.

Halloween: Creativity and Candy

So..technically yesterday was Halloween. However, to the average college student, we all know thats not all. Halloween to college kids means a lot of things and its definitely not over.

1. Wait to buy the candy. You know you don’t have money to buy it BEFORE Halloween. However, the key word to recognize here is before. As soon as Halloween is over, you better get your butt to the closest Kroger or Walmart to get that on sale Halloween Candy. Because, lets be honest, you’re not buying that candy to hand out to trick or treaters. You for one don’t live in a place that has a ton of kids coming up to your front door. You either live in an apartment building or in a dorm. Just wait to buy that candy so you can eat your weight in it at a discounted prince.

2. If you’re a girl, be prepared for a little bit of a jaw dropper. Girls like to lose their clothes on this holiday. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about coming up with the cutest costume. However I know I’m going to find something that flatters me. Girls take this a little too far. Last night, I saw so much cleavage. It kind of blows my mind. To each her own right? Just understand that on Halloween…anything goes.

3. That bring me to my next point. Halloween, to me, is so creative! Seeing all of the costumes people came up with or even made fascinates me!! Last night, I saw so many foxes, a Mr. Clean, Rosie the Riveter, and Colonel Sanders from KFC! It makes me so happy to see how people’s creative juices flow and how hilarious some people can be.

4. Finally, Halloween is not just one day. It’s the whole freakin’ weekend. So there is multiple parties. You know what that means? You better have different costumes ready! You can’t repeat one on the same weekend!

 

Anyway. Have a great weekend y’all!

All I want is curly hair!

So I have this problem. It’s really annoying for me. It doesn’t come up a lot, but on occasion it’s the biggest inconvenience ever.

I suffer from straight hair. Not just straight hair, but the straightest hair ever. I can take a shower, walk to class, and it will dry like I put 30 minutes of effor in it. Now I realize that isn’t a big deal. It’s actually really nice sometimes. However, for the life of me, if I curl my hair, it goes straight in 30 minutes. And it doesn’t even matter if I’ve put hair spray in it.

I know all of the tricks. Dirty hair holds curl better. Don’t straighten your hair and then try to curl it. Don’t use conditioner when you want to curl it. Use a wand rather than a curling iron because it gets hotter. Blah..blah..blah. None of this works.

I’ve straightened my hair for my entire life because sometimes it get dry and poofs out. My mom always tells me, maybe its because I’ve convinced my hair its only allowed to be straight. Otherwise it gets burned if it misbehaves.

If anything my hair then just decides to have these weird wave looking things and that is just unacceptable.

My hair is getting pretty long too. So I’m really bored with the way that I can style it. However, I don’t want to cut it. It’s such a vicious cycle!

I do love scrolling on Pinterest reading about all of the different hairstyles I can try…except for the ones where you curl your hair because I know it won’t work for me.

I’m just venting, but if anyone has any tips I would love to hear them!

Social Media and Sports

This is almost a week late and I realize that’s really bad. I’ve had some pretty intense computer issues since last week. My dumb self, spilled hot soup on my laptop and it’s currently not working well…at all. But that’s another story.

Sports in social media is blowing up right now. It’s everywhere. People are at the games tweeting and posting about what’s going on. People are at home reading tweets and Facebook and then tweeting and posting themselves about the game. Professional teams and colleges are having campaigns created because they want the biggest fan base possible. 

Coaches are even concerned whether their athletes personal involvement with social media will be a distraction because its such a big deal right now. This article by ESPN talks about Twitter ruling college sports. The coaches never realized how big a deal it was. They even accredited losing seasons to their athletes involvement on Twitter. So they’re not sure if they should allow their players to tweet or not to tweet. However, this is not the problem. According to Syracuse coach Doug Marrone it gives him and his program the opportunity to release news and respond to it directly.

Engagement is the secret to a successful sport oriented social media outlet. Yes, as a team you need to keep the fan base up to date with what the score is and what stats are. However, don’t you want to pump your fans up for the game? Do you want their thoughts on the game? This will cause for more followers, retweets, likes, etc. So many athletic programs, college or professional, seem to miss this point. They will sit there continuing in their ways and pining to be as successful as Oregon and their Twitter page. It takes engagement with your followers when it comes to sports in social media.

Pumpkin Everything!

I love fall because that means I can wear my favorite boots and that pumpkin is a food group of its own!

I just had my first Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks over fall break. I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on this for so long! It was really delicious, and I finally understand the hype.

Then, I had my first slice of pumpkin role at Harvest Homecoming in New Albany, IN. Why am I just now having this in my life? I finally feel like I can enjoy fall because pumpkins are seriously delicious.

And this weekend, I’m going to be making roasted pumpkin seeds! I enjoy baking and being healthy with the way that I cook, so I’m looking forward to the fall favorite of all of my friends!

However, I have a confession.

I hate pumpkin pie. I really only like a small slice of it at Thanksgiving. I load it up with a huge scoop of whipped cream as well. It was a definite struggle to convince my mom to switch to a different recipe for pumpkin pie than the traditional one.  This recipe is what made my mom a believer that sometimes switching it up is for the better. We looked this up as an alternative two Thanksgivings ago. Wow, it was delicious. I think my favorite part about it is the gingersnap crust. SO DELICIOUS!!!  So obviously now, this is recipe is saved in our cookbooks and we use it every year for Thanksgiving! Y’all should definitely try it out!

Enjoy this wonderful fall weather weekend!