Review of the Comm Mixer 2019

Every year the Department of Communication at Georgia College hosts an event that features a panel of alumni to help current students gain insight into the industry and the job process. This year I had the opportunity to plan the Comm Mixer for 2019. We included five alumni that specialized in different fields of communication and there were two panels for the event: Portfolio Readiness and Jobs & Internships.

The alumni, being from different graduating classes and specialties, provided the panel with a variety of opinions to help the current majors. The panelists included Samantha Palm (class of 2015), April Monton Beal (class of 2007), Hampton Pelton (class of 2014), Sara Roberts (class of 2015) and Kristen Gangi (class of 2010).

Students speaking with a student media organization

The first panel for Portfolio Readiness had a lot of great advice packed in. They really encouraged everyone to branch out from the basic routine and to try new student media organizations. Before the event, I knew that writing was an important part to my portfolio but hearing how their writing samples helped them get their job really instilled this into my mind. Being a senior, I have quite a bit of content for my portfolio, but I feel more motivated now to get even more content and to make my portfolio stand out further. I would like to look into freelancing to make additional content.

The second panel was the most beneficial to me because I will be graduating soon. Hearing the alumni talk about their job hunt and interview process helped me know exactly what to expect and what to do. A couple of the alumni spoke about how every year new employees will come in with new skill sets they haven’t seen. I think that is what is very unique about this major. We are constantly adapting and changing because the industry is advancing, and new technology is coming out.

One of my favorite parts about the panel was having two graduate students, Hampton and Kristen. They went into depth about their experience in grad school and the benefit. Because of how grad school helped them and their advice about it, they encouraged me to go to grad school. I was very unsure about grad school at first because it is not as common for GC Communication students go to grad school, but now I believe that is what I should do.

Networking with the alumni after the panels was an extremely beneficial aspect to the mixer. Students can ask the really specific questions they have been needing answers to and they can connect with the panelists on LinkedIn to stay connected for the future.

The diversity of the panel allowed every student to benefit and feel like their time at the mixer was worth it. I definitely gained valuable information for attending and will carry it with me into my career.

Twitter Reflection

Twitter has always been a favorite platform for me, but only for looking at funny trends and memes. I would hardly ever make my own tweets. I would only retweet and like. Ever since tweeting for class I have seen Twitter in a completely different way. Twitter is a great place to connect with anyone, people you know, celebrities, public figures and brands. After this class ends, I will continue to use Twitter, but I will use more to actively talk to brands and share my thoughts.

For me I see Twitter as a platform for someone to just be themselves and really put their personality into their profile and feed. You can talk about almost every topic from politics to memes. In my opinion Facebook is where you show your life updates for your family and friends back home. Instagram is like a highlight reel of your life where you only show your best side. Twitter is a place with a different relaxed feel that is easy to share what you want.

Because you only have 250 characters, I think Twitter challenges people to fit their thoughts into a smaller space, so they get right to the point and the core of what they want to say. It is also a great place for brands to give micro content and really connect with their consumers. It is really easy to send a quick reply to a consumer that is reaching out to you. It can make the consumer feel valued as well. “Jabs” would also be very easy to do on Twitter because of this micro content, and it is easy to add media to a tweet.

When I would tweet the authors of the books we read in class, I got a response from a couple of them which was very cool, and I definitely felt valued. A simple reassuring or encouraging tweet can really help with your brand image. I remember tweeting Canva about how I love my Canva Pro account and they tweeted me back thanking me for choosing their company for my designs. I felt heard by the brand, and it makes me want to use the brand even more.

I enjoy Twitter’s unique features, and how you can retweet someone else’s tweet. I also really enjoy Twitter for live tweeting which I think is very unique to this platform as well. If I ever see new trends or something in the news, I like to search for it on Twitter to see what people are saying on the subject. Twitter makes this easy and even has a trending topics page. A feature that was very new to me was the lists you can make on Twitter. You can add anyone you want to a list and only view the tweets from those people if you want. It creates a pinpointed feed with exactly who you want.

Even though I have used Twitter before this semester, this class and the various Twitter assignments have made me look at it in a different light. I will continue to use Twitter and continue to stay vocal on it as well. I think this platform will last a long time and continue to be a source of entertainment and brand-to-consumer conversation.

Individual Technology Exploration: Social Media Analytics

If you’ve ever ran a social media account for an organization, you know that in the behind-the-scenes there are all these numbers to help you know which posts are more popular than others. These are the social media analytics of that account. Buffer defines “social media analytics as the gathering of data from social media platforms to help inform us and guide our marketing strategy.”

Analytics can tell you many different things, and according to Business News Daily you have to know what metrics you are looking for to know if you are reaching your goals. In your social media strategy, you should make these clear, and then find which metrics go along with the objectives to know if you are meeting them.

Here are some native analytics tools you can start incorporating into your business.

Facebook Insights

An example of what your insights page might look like in the overview.
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If you have a business page on Facebook, you can see your page insights. These insights can tell you how your page is doing with its overall activity like visits, actions, audience and clicks. It also includes graphics to help you visual the information.

As well as an overall view, you can also see post by post analytics. I really like this section because it shows you your posts in a list with the date, time, type, target, reach, engagement and an area to promote. If you see a post not doing as well as you’d like, you have the option to boost it to get more impressions.

Viewing on a desktop or laptop you can see a bigger scope and even graphs that Facebook provides for you. On the Facebook app they recently added a “Pages” tab at the bottom, so you can view all of the pages you monitor more easily.

These are the images Facebook for Business gives you on their page as examples.
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Instagram Insights

Instagram also uses insights for only business accounts. I have found that this native analytics tool is my least favorite for an overview, but my favorite for individual posts. When you go to your insights, you can see three tabs: Content, Activity and Audience. Under Content you can see an overview of your page for the last seven days. You can see posts which you can organize by a lot of different analytical metrics and up to two years ago. The next category is stories which you can only see the past 14 days, but you can organize by metric here too. The last section on Content are your promotions.

Under activity you will see more analytical metrics, but only for seven days’ time. I wish they would add the option to increase the period of time shown.

The last tab is for your audience. This page shows Growth, Top Locations, Age Range, Gender and Followers. I think the followers section is the most valuable here because you can see when you should post based on when your followers are online.

An example of Instagram Profile Insights.
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Twitter Analytics

Unlike Facebook Insights and Instagram Insights, Twitter Analytics can be applied to any account. On the Twitter Analytics Home tab, you can see a summary of how your page is doing. It also breaks up your months into sections to see what was most successful for your page. It includes highlights of your Top Tweet, Top mention, Top Follower, and Top media Tweet.

When viewing your Tweet activity, you can see a graph with all of your impressions to see when you had the most activity. This tab gives you metrics on your impressions, engagements, and engagement rate. You can also see likes, retweets, link clicks and replies.

The next tab available is to view your audience analytics. This area is a lot more detailed and has more categories than Facebook by far.

*These two Images are screenshots of the overview of “All Twitter users” under my audience analysis.*

Besides these native analytic tools there are a bunch of companies that can also provide analytics tools, but most of them require payment to use. Some of these companies include Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Google Analytics, Hubspot, Buffer and more.

In order to grow your social media presence, you need to look into your analytics to really know what your audience wants. After knowing your analytics, you won’t be questioning how your content is performing anymore because you will know exactly what your audience likes, and what they don’t.

Team Book Review: Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook

Content creation for social media seems simple and easy, and sometimes it can be, but it is usually a bit more complex and requires a good bit of thought. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk explains how to optimize your social media presence and includes great examples of content. Even though the book is a bit dated compared to where social media stands now, it still provides great insight and can help you improve your organization’s social media.

If you haven’t read the book, you are probably thinking “What the heck does ‘jab’ and ‘right hook’ mean?” A jab is the content you put out that doesn’t sell anything or is a subtle way to promote your company. Jabs don’t necessarily have to do anything with the company, but they need to be relatable and well-liked topics. A right hook is the content that has a call to action and provokes you to do or buy something. In general, you want to use more jabs than right hooks.

Gary really focuses on the use of native content on social media which I think is very important. These are usually more often jabs than right hooks. Native content, which I hadn’t heard of before, is content that blends in with the person’s timeline or stream of content. If it is done correctly, the person looking at the post (or ad) shouldn’t realize it’s coming from a company until they look at the handle or page name.

One of my favorite things about this book is the fact that Gary added so many examples. He wanted to make sure that people know what bad, good, and great content looks like. When given a bad example, he would list what he likes about it, what he doesn’t like, and how he would change it. Sometimes he would even redesign it and put the new post in the book as well. Not only did he give content examples from real life companies, but he had chapters specially for the big platforms at the time. This helped you know the right way to make content specific to each platform.

If I had to rate this book, I would give it 4.5 stars out of 5. The content is great, but I believe some of the points could have been summed up a bit more. I really like that you could see Gary’s personality through his writing. He is a very straight forward, tell you how it is kind of guy. The way he wrote the book made you enjoy what you were reading. The only big problem I saw while reading this book was the outdated information. He included sections talking about Vine and Google+. These sections talked about the fact that they were new, and what we might expect from them. The book also included a whole chapter on Tumblr, but nowadays Tumblr is not as widely used. Also, there were only small sections on LinkedIn and Snapchat because they weren’t as popular yet. Now LinkedIn and Snapchat are major platforms used by a lot of different people.

I would really like an updated version of Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. Gary provides great insight and I learned a lot of information from his book. Overall it is a great tool for creating content and knowing how to make your content be appreciated by a larger number of people. I will keep this book and refer to it when I need some guidance when running a social media account.

Vlog Review: Refinery29’s Try Living with Lucie

Refinery29’s About Page

I have always been a fan of fashion, health, beauty and woman empowerment, so when I first discovered Refinery29, I knew I would love them. They cover all things beauty, wellness, different trends and styles and have a main focus on women and supporting women. As well as their online blog and social accounts, they also have a YouTube channel where they post the videos they have produced.

Refinery29 covers a lot of topics and has a lot of content on its channel, so I chose to just cover a small part of their YouTube in efforts to keep this review to just one blog post and to not make it too long. The series I chose to focus on is Trying Living with Lucie.

One of their biggest video producers, Lucie Fink, does a lot of vlogs for Refinery29. She has a couple of different series including Try Living with Lucie and Lucie For Hire. I have always enjoyed Lucie and her online presence. She is young, creative and has a wide variety of interests. Also, I’m not sure if it is still ongoing, but at one-point Refinery29 had a contract with Delta to have the videos Lucie Fink was producing available to watch on their flights.

Try Living with Lucie is currently on its fourth season and has 93 episodes. In this series, Lucie challenges herself with trying something new for 5 days at a time or as Refinery29 says, “she dives headfirst into social experiments.” Some examples of past episodes include: 5 Days of Living Plastic Free, 5 Days of Meal Prep, 5 Days of Different Makeup, 5 Days of No Cell Phone and 5 Days of Volunteering. Sometimes Refinery29 will partner with brands for the vlogs as well.

Lucie makes the vlogs personal and relatable which is something I look for when I’m looking for new vlogs to watch. She will explain the purpose of why she is doing the vlog and will even relate it back to an article or other resource Refinery29 has put out on the topic. Also, Lucie always has a positive upbeat attitude with whatever the video is. She will also talk through everything she is doing and relate it to herself in some way.

Not only are the vlogs entertaining, but they are also very informative and often go with some trending topics of the time. The vlogs often have multiple layers to the overarching topic and sometimes include a professional to assist Lucie if it needed. Refinery29 makes sure that all the vlogs Lucie does will help you learn about a topic in a fun and lighthearted way. They always have their logo on the top right corner of the vlog and their descriptions are always filled with helpful information and links.

I believe that Refinery29’s vlog series Try Living with Lucie is an excellent way to absorb new information on a topic. The topics can be simple or complex, but they also find a way to dive deeper and give you a full scope. Their company is very in-tune with today’s society, and what content they should create, and how they should be putting it out. In my opinion a lot of women (and some men) would be able to connect with their company in some capacity.

Digital Influencer Danielle Carolan

Whenever I think of the typical digital influencer I think of Danielle Carolan. Danielle is a Junior at the University of Georgia earning a Fashion Merchandising degree and is a member of Kappa Delta Sorority. She has a YouTube channel, podcast, Instagram, and Twitter. Danielle is originally from Tampa, Florida and started YouTube in 2011 at the age of 12. “Gals on the Go,” the podcast she cohosts with fellow influencer, Brooke Miccio, was created a little over a year ago. On YouTube she has 562K followers and on Instagram she has 251K followers.

Her YouTube videos have stayed similar over the years, but the content is a bit different. The main differences now are that she does more vlogs and less sit-down videos and the content is more mature. She does a lot of week in my life videos, shopping hauls, current favorites and routine videos. Within her videos she talks about her college life, her boyfriend, spin class, her sorority, makeup, clothes and more. Sponsorships and brand deals, which most influencers live by, are frequent on her channel. The usual sponsors are HelloFresh, Revolve, Fabletics, thredUP, Casetify, Care/of and Princess Polly. She posts regularly once or twice a week, but sometimes more if there is a lot going on in her life, but she doesn’t have a designated day she uploads.

More consistent than her YouTube, Gals on the Go uploads every Wednesday without fail. Every podcast has the same structure. It starts off with some small chit-chat between Danielle and Brooke, then they go into their “Highlights and Lowlights”, favorites, and then they get into the meat of the podcast. The topics change and guests will make appearances as well. Just like her YouTube channel, her podcast has many sponsorships. Danielle and Brooke extended the podcast community and created a Facebook group where they could interact with their listeners on a daily basis. Gals on the Go even launched its own merch line recently.

A channel Danielle uses to reach her followers daily is Instagram. She is always posting whether it is in a story or on post. The content on her feed is aesthetically pleasing, lighthearted and fun. She uses similar editing styles with each post to make it cohesive. The content showcases her OOTDs, vacations, game days, and festivals. In each post she will tag the other people in the photo and the brand of the clothes she is wearing. Story highlights are also very present on her profile. Personally, I think she uses too many highlights.

Overall, I think that Danielle is a textbook influencer. She is consistently interacting with her followers and posting relatable content. She does brand deals and sponsorships which bring in her income along with AdSense. Danielle always has a positive attitude, and it seems like she never sleeps with all the projects she has going on. She has been an influencer for about eight years, and I don’t see her stopping anytime soon.

Digital Leader Reaction Post

For the past few weeks we have been reading Erik Qualman’s Digital Leader: 5 Simple Keys to Success and Influence. Overall, I have enjoyed the book and learned a lot, but one chapter really stuck with me. Chapter 7: Niche is the New Norm, has really made me think about where I am right now, and what I want to do in the future. As a senior is in college who is unsure about her future this chapter helped bring some light to the situation and has me thinking about what I am passionate about.

After reading this chapter, it has made me come to terms with the fact that as much as I want to find what I am supposed to do right away that might not be the case. I didn’t realize that some successful people were not always doing what they are doing now. James Patterson and Robin Roberts have found their passion and are enjoying it, but they didn’t find it right away. I really like that Qualman put their stories in this chapter as well as Ray Kroc’s story. I think it is important for people to know you must go through certain situations, and even fail to get to where you are supposed to be. Qualman adds great examples throughout the book to help the reader fully grasp the topics he discusses.

Finding your niche or something you are great at seems like an easy concept, but I think in today’s age people think they need to be successful in everything they do, and they need an abundant of skills to be considered great, especially young people. People in my generation are especially this way. I have seen many people close to me try and do many different things and spread themselves too thin. They want to be as well rounded as they can, but then they can’t give their best effort in everything they do. Qualman has done an excellent job in expressing why this is in his book. Qualman said “Being well rounded would be setting a goal of being the best advertising copywriter, advertising account executive, and media buyer. You may become good at all three, but very few would ever become great at all three at the same time.” This also ties into another chapter talking about the negative effects of multitasking. If you want to be well-rounded and great at multiple things you need to focus on them one at a time and not tackling everything at once.

I think one of the biggest takeaways from this chapter is the need to be yourself. In order to be a true digital leader, you need to be the same offline and online. People are very concerned with holding an unrealistic view of themselves on social media that when I meet people after I have seen their social media, I get confused on who they are sometimes.

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” —Dr. Seuss

I really like this quote Qualman added to this chapter. The quotes he includes through-out the book really add a supporting element to what he is writing. They have been one of the reasons I like the book as much as I do. He pulls information from many places and from many different people. He uses the work of others for support, and it helps the reader absorb the concepts.

“You must have the courage to be true to yourself.” —John Wooden

This chapter has made me think about my future and realize that I need to find my passion. Some takeaways I have gotten are to not spread myself too thin, to build a foundation in what I am doing, to stay true to who I am, and to know I am likely to fail before I become successful. I think this is a great book to help yourself grow and become a better leader online and offline.

How to make your customers feel important

Connecting with your customers and getting them involved with your company is the best way to keep them interested and coming back to buy your products. Dave Kerpen’s Likeable explains why involving your customers is incredibly important to your business. In Chapter 11 Kerpen gives great reasons for why social media is a great place to start making conversation with customers. I think that Kerpen gives great examples and explains the importance of making your customers feel like they have a voice.

Like Kerpen explained, prompting a question on a post rather than a state instantly make the reader think of a responsible. In turn this makes them more likely to respond to whatever you are asking. It is a simple way to involve your customers with a limited space to say what you would like. Instagram stories, which Kerpen Suggests, are a great way to ask questions to your audience, because not only are they getting a question they might actually want to respond to, this gives them an easy way to give their opinion. Because of the convenience of it, your audience is more likely to respond which means you are more likely to get results and actually see what your customers think about something. The important part is that you are having a conversation with your customer. You have to make them feel important and heard.

Another way you can do this is through Facebook and Twitter polls. Like Instagram it makes an easy way for your customers to respond to what you are asking. The polls can stay up for however long you want them to and then results become finalized. This is a fast and easy way to see how the masses your company connects with are feeling.

Besides asking questions, crowdsourcing is another great way to get your customers directing involving in the decision-making process for different products. Many companies are doing crowdsourcing which is using their customers to help create products. This makes the customer feel like their opinion and ideas matter to your company.

When I think of crowdsourcing, I always think of Lay’s because of a campaign they do to find the best new potato chip flavor. Lay’s asked their customers what flavor they wanted to see Lay’s make into an actual product. Lay’s took the contest down to a few suggestions of flavors and then put them on the shelves for people to try. Once they tried the flavors, they went to the website to vote on which is their favorite. Many people were involved in the creation and decision process on which was the best new flavor. According to Huffington Post, in their 2013 campaign Lay’s received about 3.8 million submissions for ideas. This instantly gave Lay’s millions of excited customers that wanted to try their new products because they were a part of the decision-making process. According to Chief Marketer, Lay’s got more than 22.5 million visits on Facebook a week and sales rose by 12%.

I knew making your customers feel involved was important, but I didn’t realize how effective it can be. Kerpen showed me that it can be as simple as a question or it can be a whole campaign. The only disagreement I have with this chapter is that Kerpen does not tell us about any bad examples. Someone can read a million good examples of something, but still mess something up because they don’t know how it could go wrong.

I will definitely take with me a lot of what Likeable and Dave Kerpen have taught me. This particular chapter stuck with me, and I think many businesses big and small can improve their customer involvement in some way.

Vlogger Review: Brooke Miccio

Every day I spend a few hours on YouTube watching many different types of videos. Most commonly I watch YouTubers who are around my age that show their everyday life through vlogs. One YouTuber I have watched regularly for a couple years now is Brooke Miccio. She is a recent graduate from the University of Georgia and now works in tech sales. About a year ago she also started a Podcast called Gals on the Go.

Brooke is a lifestyle vlogger, so most of her videos are just vlogs showing her daily life. Her main content during college was “college week in my life” or “day in my life” videos. I love these kinds of videos because I can relate to them. Now most of her content consists of “work week in my life” or “day in my life” videos. As I am in my senior year it is great to see how a new graduate is living and working. She generally vlogs her whole day except for when she was in class or at work. As she films, she talks through everything she does like what she is eating, drinking, wearing, etc. Vlogs like these are very relatable to many women who are around her same age and are living similar lives. They give incite on how someone else lives, and people can get tips and advice through her vlogs. Personally, I like to see how she balances her job, social life, exercise and travel because that is something that is getting harder as I am getting older.

As most influencers do, she will also occasionally plug products, brands, companies, other influencers, podcasts, apps, etc. Some of the things she suggests are also monetized. This is how vloggers and YouTubers are able to keep making videos regularly. Brooke has a pretty consist upload schedule and posts 1-2 times a week or sometimes more if she has a lot going on in her life. Other videos she does are clothing hauls which are also pretty often a part of her daily vlog videos. Most of the time the clothes were sent to her or were bought with her own affiliate links. This shows that she uses the companies she promotes.

Other content she has on her channel are vlogs from events she goes to or vacations she takes. Most of the time these vlogs/trips happen because she has a partnership with the companies or brands who are sending her. Generally, they are with other influencers to promote the companies’ image. A week ago she went to a Glossier pop-up in Boston where she lives, and she vlogged the experience to show everything the pop-up had to offer and was positively promoting the company.

Another thing that Brooke does well is having a good description in every video including many different links. This makes it so her subscribers and viewers have easy access to all social accounts, affiliate links, codes and products that she talks about in her videos and even a small bio about herself.

Overall Brooke’s vlogs are consistent and entertaining. She has a pretty decent size loyal subscriber base and is constantly reinventing herself. I really enjoy her content and the stylistic choices she makes, and I think she will continue to succeed as a vlogger and gain more viewership as time goes on.

What is social media?

Social media can mean a variety of things depending on the person you are asking. It can be a way for people to connect, engage, network and even meet. In today’s society more and more people are becoming active users of social media and using it for multiple hours a day. For individuals, social media can be a very personal tool for them. It allows them to stay connected to friends and companies. It can also be a way for people to express themselves and talk freely about what they believe in. For an organization or business social media can be a useful marketing tool to connect and engage with their customers and promote their products or services. According to Likeable Social Mediaby Dave Kerpen, from a marketing point of view, word of mouth is very powerful and a very effective marketing tool. Which makes world of mouth on social media an even more effective marketing tool because it reaches a larger number of people. This can either take place between friends (or acquittances), or it can take place between a person of high popularity and their audience. Either way the people receiving the message will more likely listen because for them it is a trustworthy source.

Different platforms can change the way people use social media as well. People using Facebook generally stick to friending people they know and interacting with them in person as well as online. This is especially true because to be friends both parties have to initiate something before they can connect with one another, however, Twitter is a little bit different. While you can still keep your following to friends, many people you don’t know can follow you if you have a public account. This can make your reach a bit wider especially if a lot of people follow you and your tweets get more retweets. Because this platform allows retweets, the amount of people that could see one tweet can be multiplied instantly. Platforms like Twitter tend to be a bit more casual and are often a source for many topics including a lot of humor. In my experience someone can have a tweet or two that reach many people but their account as a whole may not reach many at all. Twitter is also often where we see a lot of celebrities express their thoughts.

Another place we see this expression is Instagram. Instagram is a platform where people post personal photos and videos that they want others to see. In my opinion Instagram is one of the most popular platforms for millennials and generation z users. It is also common to see people called influencers on here. Influencers are people that have a larger voice on a platform. They are usually well liked by a number of people and have some type of influence over them, hence the name influencers. Influencers tend to endorse products either because they like it or because the company is giving them some kind of compensation. Either way when users see this endorsement from this trusted influencer, it usually causes the product or company to be more desirable.

While social media generally means the same thing for most people, everyone has their own interpretation of it. There are even more ways others can use and interpret social media, but this is what comes to mind when I think of social media and how I think of social media being used.

Kerpen, D. (2019). Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, And Be Generally Amazing on All Social Networks That Matter (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Education.

Lexie’s Blog

Web for Mass Communication Fall 2019