Trust is Key

In Measure What Matters, the author makes a valid point about trust being the key to building and defending your reputation. It affects customer loyalty, word of mouth, employee retention, and reputation. As in life, trust is so important to an individual's reputation on social media and in organizations. The more trustworthy a company is, the more customers and business they will be likely to receive. It helps cultivate relationships with donors, consumers, investors, and legislators. The higher the trust level, the better off an organization will be. This is something that should be obvious, but some companies seem to lose sight of. Trust should be the number one thing that companies establish with their perspective audiences/clients/customers. I felt that this was a very good point that needed to be shared with everyone. Trust is important in ALL aspects of life, including social media and in companies.

#CAMS1301

As I was scrolling through Twitter today, I came across one of my good friend's tweets that he posted this morning. It was a video of him talking to the camera about a quality he would use to describe himself. His caption explained that it was for extra credit for a class at ONU. I was intrigued to see if he was the only one offered this opportunity and wanted to watch more videos like his to see others describe themselves, so I did some research. I typed in the hashtag that he used in his tweet #cams1301 to see what I could find. As I thought, 20 more videos like his came up and I thought it was so cool. I was always aware of this feature of group hashtags, but never experienced it personally. I think this is such a cool thing on Twitter. Anyone who has used the hashtag will pop up on the page when that hashtag is typed in. Soooooo, naturally, I decided to look up other random hashtags to see what came up. I looked up #happybirthday and #gobucks and scrolled through all the tweets related to this hashtag. It was cool to see all the people who may have never met but are all on the same page because of a hashtag they decided to use. Just another cool thing about social media, and Twitter specifically. What is your favorite feature on Twitter?

Thanksgiving

After a week of being home, I realize how much I have to be thankful for. My family is at the top. I spent so much time with them all break and I just realized how much I truly missed them. Also, I saw all of my best friends from high school. Seeing them made me realize how much I missed them. With the chaos of college, I forget how much I miss them and how close we all used to be. I loved being home for a short while to reconnect with my old friends and my forever family. I can’t believe I will be back in 3 weeks to stay for a whole month. Being in college is kind of like living two lives, when I’m home I miss being at school but when I am at school, I miss my friends and family at home. It’s super confusing and I’m still getting used to it but I know I will eventually get used to it.

Coming Home

On Friday, I made my first trip home. I got picked up after my last class, at 12:50, and made the drive home. When we pulled into the driveway, tears fell from my eyes. I was so ecstatic to be back in the comfort of my house with my family. I was greeted by my dog, Sadie, and my younger brother. I got lots of love from my family when I got home and it felt so nice to just sit down, take a deep breath, and relax. I came to the realization that for a whole week, I would have no responsibilities, no stress, no lofted bed, I didn't have to wear shoes in the shower, I could pee in peace, and REAL food was in store for me. Coming to this realization put a big smile on my face and I was content. I am still super happy to be home, I do miss my friends at school a little, but I am so happy that I am in my own room, and surrounded by my family for a bit. I thank God for my blessings every single day, especially this week. So excited to see what this week has in store for me, and to be stress-free, even if it is just for a short while.

Seven Steps: Measure What Matters

In the book, Measure What Matters, there are six steps laid out for measuring relationships with your communities and neighbors. I thought it would be beneficial to go through each one and summarize each one in a few sentences because these seem to be very important to measuring what matters in social media.

Step 1: Agree upon Solid Measurable Goals That Are Tied to the Bottom Line
-This step is like measuring any other business relationship: It is about gauging the strength or weakness of your reputation among your greater community by starting with a clear goal. Choosing a goal that is attainable is very important and is crucial to having relationships with communities.

Step 2: Define Your Publics
-This step is all about defining your community and publics. Who you are trying to reach through your business pitch is super important. Without it, there is no way to isolate your actions or your relationships.

Step 3: Who or What Are Your Benchmarks?
-This step is pretty self-explanatory. Setting benchmarks is an important step as well. It is important to compare the strength of your community relations to something or someone else such as other communities or peer organizations.

Step 4: Set Your Audience Priorities: Who and What Is Most Important to Measure?
-In this step, you should prioritize your audiences and stakeholder groups. For each audience, determine at least one measure of a successful relationship.

Step 5: Choose Your Measurement Tools
-In Step 5, you should select measurement tools (obviously). Start with a relationship survey, or a local media analysis. These two things are crucial to healthy and strong relationships with your communities.

Step 6: Analyze the Data
-The next step is to analyze the media content to determine whether or not your community messages are being communicated. One way you can do this is find residents from your local community to read and code the articles or items, because only they will respond to them as your target audiences would.

These six steps could definitely help when it comes to measuring relationships with your communities and neighbors. Which one do you think is the most important?

Social Media Trends

When I was in middle school, I was a Pinterest fanatic. I pinned all the time about everything. I spent my free time scrolling through Pinterest. It was definitely my ultimate favorite source of social media. I truly thought it was the greatest thing. This continued throughout my freshman year but died down after that. I slowly stopped pinning random things, and eventually stopped going on the app all together. I find it super interesting how social media trends come and go pretty frequently. One week, some people are snapchat crazy, where the next week they may not send a singular snap. For me, my snapchatting habits have been consistent, but I used to hate Twitter and Instagram. Now, I am going through a weird Twitter hype. I love looking at tweets, and Twitter never fails to make me laugh on a bad day. Like I said, I consistently snapchat, but I am rarely on Instagram... We'll see how this changes throughout the rest of my life. What are your favorite social media platforms and have your habits changed throughout your lifetime?

Thanksgiving Break

After being on campus, basically nonstop, for three months, Thanksgiving break couldn't come soon enough. I have been counting down the days for awhile now. I have had a rough couple of weeks with time management and school and softball and socially, so this break is so needed for me. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays behind Christmas. We go to my grandma's for dinner with my whole family and eat and play games and while it sounds basic, it is one of my favorite things to do. I absolutely love and thoroughly enjoy spending time with my family. It's rare that all five of my siblings are in the same place at the same time so I look forward to every holiday. FIVE DAYS UNTIL I AM HOME AGAIN!!!! I can't wait to go Black Friday shopping, meet up with my friends from high school, and just relax for a week. Friday cannot come soon enough.

Surveys

I found Chapter 7 of Measure What Matters very intriguing...
The pages that discuss surveys were very interesting to me, in particular. They discussed the impact and effects of on-site surveys vs post-show surveys. I have participated in several different surveys throughout my life and I have to agree with what they say about the two kinds of surveys. On-site surveys are relatively ineffective. Since, most of the time, there are more than one thing that customers are looking at, these on-site surveys just get repetitive and dishonest. I usually walk around to different booths and all the surveys I get on-site, I tend to put down what I think the interviewer wants to hear just so I can walk away quicker. Not all on-site surveys are ineffective, but in my opinion most of them are. Post-site surveys force the potential buyers to take the time to actually reflect on the product and be completely honest with what they think of the product. It also makes it less awkward if you hate the product to do a post-survey so you don't bash it right in front of the sellers. Overall, I think post-surveys are far more effective and should be used more often for the benefit of the product.

Corn Maze Festivities

On Sunday, my friends and I took a road trip to Suter's Produce which is about 25 minutes away from ONU. We had been planning a fun fall day full of pumpkins, corn mazes, apple cider, doughnuts, and fun with friends since October 1st. We have a friend group of 12 people and every weekend prior to this one, someone couldn't go. We were really striving to make sure every single one of us could make it. This Sunday, my friend Abby and I decided to try to get everyone to go because it was the last weekend that Suter's was open. We looked up hours and prices and activities and texted our group chats to see who all could go. Eventually, we got all 12 of our friends to accept and we all road tripped to see what all the hype was about. We had so much fun while we were there. We got two dozen homemade doughnuts so each of us could have two, ate those while beginning the corn maze and laughing the whole time. We got lost a few times, took a lot of pictures, and just messed around in the corn maze. Eventually, we made it out and decided to get some apple cider slushies because we had heard from upperclassmen that these were delicious... They were 100% right. These slushies were definitely something to remember. After the slushies, we took some more pictures and decided it was time to go. We returned back to ONU with happy hearts and some amazing memories. We all decided that as long as we all stay friends, this would be a yearly tradition. If you get the opportunity to go to Suter's next fall, I highly recommend it. The prices are very reasonable and the memories are priceless. It left me feeling extremely grateful and truly blessed to have these people as my best friends.

Snapchat Memories

If you don't know what Snapchat memories are, I am so sorry.
The feature on Snapchat that has your memories saved is probably one of my favorite things about the app and in social media in general. Every single day at midnight, I get a notification of a memory on my snapchat. It shows me pictures and videos that I took on that particular day years ago. It is so cool and fun to see where I was and what I was doing a year or two years ago today. It also makes me sad sometimes when I see videos of my friends being goofballs when they are now at school 12 hours away from me. It's definitely one of my favorite things to do when I wake up every morning. I love to see my past and see how much I've grown since then. I hope you all get to experience snapchat memories at some point because it is truly one of the best features in social media platforms.