Taking a Step Back to Introduce Myself

Since I’ve been talking a whole lot about Social Media but haven’t taken the time to introduce myself, I figured now is a perfect time!

Kick-Off To My College Career

After graduating high school after three years at the age of sixteen, I chose to immediately begin my higher education. I am currently a student at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana planning to graduate in August of 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in Media Studies and a certificate in the Professional Pilot Program. The first question I always get is: Media and aviation – how does that work? The Professional Pilot Certification is a two-year program designed to give students an opportunity to attain at least a private pilot’s license as well as an instrument rating alongside basic aviation knowledge while studying a major of their choice. Knowing my passion for media, I chose to study in the four-year Media Studies program. While aviation has a place in my heart, I hope to pursue a career in the Social Media Industry. In preparing for this big step from college to the working-world, I have had the privilege of working alongside Professor Patrick Vargas at the University, studying the topic of Social Media Marketing for Self-Promotion.

The Beginning of My Passion For Media and Marketing

My interest in marketing, media, and social media has grown over the years. It began at the age of sixteen and continues through today as I have been doing independent contracting work as a promotional representative through various agencies working with a variety of companies including Cadillac, Lexu, Axe, Pantene Pro-V, Target, and many other well known organizations. This jumpstarted my passion for marketing and the means of communication that contributed to brand awareness.

At the end of my high school career I was honored with the title of Rose Queen 2006, allowing me to speak publicly at many schools about the D.A.R.E. program, deliver speeches at town events, and serve as a role model to the community. Although public speaking had never been an issue for me, this event helped guide me even further towards a focused study full of communication, demonstrating to me that, to the public, every sentence you speak can have an impact.

Impact of My Corporate Experience

I gained corporate experience, seeing the inter-workings of a large, multinational corporation while interning for three consecutive summers for Bosch Rexroth. As a Human Resources Intern I was given the opportunity to create research compilations, design training programs, spend a summer working abroad in Germany, assist in event planning, and help with other various company tasks.

Putting Social Media Knowledge to the Test

Having set a goal of promoting support for senior citizens during my reign as Miss Roselle, I took the knowledge I had gained thus far on social media and marketing and used it help create, promote, and generate interest for a charity organization I created in honor of my grandmother called Purple Roses. With the help of the members of Kappa Alpha Theta and my family, Purples Roses gained enough publicity for our organization and our 3-on-3 volleyball tournament that we were able to exceed my goal and raise $1000 for Alzheimer’s research, support, and awareness.

A Big Year of Experiences

My Junior Year of college was a big year for me filled with many experiences that solidified my chosen field. It began with my promotion to Brand Manager of Marketing at Illini Media. Although I had already used social media for promoting the University Concert Choir, Purple Roses, and various other activities and organizations, Illini Media was a big step towards learning the full capacity of online media. I was able to incorporate social media platforms, such as Facebook fan pages and youtube, as well as our company website, the217.com, into our marketing efforts alongside the usual promotional events to generate brand awareness.

Later that year I hoped to continue my work on Alzheimer’s awareness and decided to compete in a Miss America Organization Scholarship competition with a platform of Alzheimer’s Awareness. I am blessed to have had the opportunity to serve the community with the title of Miss Champaign Urbana 2009 from which point I continued to use media to leverage my position within the public eye. Through the use internet communications, social media, and basic face-to-face communication I was able to arrange opportunities to volunteer at the local nursing home, assist in raising money for the Make A Wish Foundation, support local philanthropic activities, and aid in many other community events. Although that era of my life ended, I continue to stay enthusiastic about Alzheimer’s Awareness and encourage all to learn more and engage in this worthy cause.

Future Plans

Finishing up my last few classes this summer, I am very excited to enter the world of Social Media in less than a month. I have encountered numerous helpful blogs, a great array of twitters to follow, and wonderful books guiding me in my studies of Social Media. Each of these resources have helped me feel more confident in my abilities, motives, and selection in career path. I have many people to thank for their support and guidance through this important chapter in my life.

The Blog: Offering A Voice

Before the late 1990s, the term “blog” did not even exist. Blogs refer to a website managed by one or more individuals, allowing this owner or these owners to post information. Content can range from commentary and review to even simple day-by-day overview personal journaling of an individual’s activities. Used both in a professional and personal level, this tool has offered a chance for more voices to be heard and has changed the way media operates.

Former Press Offered Public Little Say

Before blogs existed, the news corporations exercised nearly all of the control in determining what news would be delivered to the public. Journalists and news corporation employees regarded only partially what the public expected to hear while confining to industry limitations. Limitations included availability of personnel at events deemed newsworthy, money, space, time, corporate sponsorships, and many other restrictions that affected what was delivered via the news. One of the biggest challenges with the press, prior to such tools as blogging, included the issue of timing. If a story had not been discovered early enough, referring to the notion that after 24 hours news is old news, it wouldn’t be told. The public had little control over content and had to succumb to the news industry’s selection of material. This was the way the news operated prior to the abundant use of blogs.

Blogging at Work: Trent Lott Case

Trent Lott, former Majority Speaker of Congress, was witness to the power of blogs when the news media failed to step in. After making what many considered a racist comment at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party, Lott found himself in a position least expected. News covering the event did not take Lott’s commentary to the press, viewing their coverage as reporting the celebration itself as opposed to seeking out controversial statements. While the press failed to report his comments, the bloggers sought to bring the issue to discussion. Shortly after the celebration, bloggers began creating posts discussing Lott’s speech. National press finally recognized the public’s need for coverage on the story and began publishing the information. This coverage eventually led to Lott’s 2007 resignation as Majority Speaker.

Freedoms Offered To Blogs & Power in Numbers

This is a classic example of how blogs may accomplish what the traditional press may not. While Lott’s story was old news a day after it happened, a time before it was even thought to analyze his comments, the bloggers thought differently. Conveniently, bloggers don’t follow the same restrictions that the press falls under. Blog posts do not operate under a time interval where news becomes old news. Participating in this form of discussion is virtually free and much quicker than in a professional reporting setting. Because of the large discussion that took place via the web following Lott’s commentary, the public became engaged forcing the press to take action. The power of numbers, seen in this case, plays a major role in almost forcing the press to become engaged in a topic the public deems newsworthy.

Blogs As Tools Of Collaboration

Blogs offer collaboration. This is an essential component to creating networks and news that can be reviewed and discussed. Although many may argue the validity of web based content, it is important to recognize that while anyone may post information, in doing so it is up for public scrutiny. To engage in this sort of debate, typical blogs often offer a “comment” option, allowing viewers to publicly post opinions of that particular post. Even while content may arguably not provide the exact truth, keeping in mind that blogs are often based on opinion, it does draw to the public eye topics worthy of discussion. While the news used to be purely in the hand of “professionals,” this tool has offered “nonprofessionals” to take an active role in the distribution of information.

Educational Uses For Blogs

Although offering a means of distributing more news and helping demonstrate what the public views as valuable discussion, other purposes for the use of blogging exist. Another use for blogs has been in the educational department. They offer an interactive portal for learning. Many classes now use or encourage the use of blogs. As Robert Godwin-Jones discussed in his journal article, having students publicly post a journal entry opens up commentary from others to offer praise and constructive criticism. Godwin-Jones also suggests that using this tool may help demonstrate a student’s progression throughout his or her studies by tracking improvement. Aside from these obvious educational benefits, blogs may also be used to provide a link to other educational resources for students to access and serve as a means of communication outside of the classroom.

Corporate Uses For Blogs

With the increasing popularity of this tool for communication, many companies are now looking to blogging as a quick and easy way to communicate with consumers. Many websites for organizations offer a link to a blog that displays information on upcoming products, customer support, and general topics of interest on their products and services. For example, http://googleblog.blogspot.com is Google’s blog providing product and industry information to users. Often times, consumers are first directed to a blog to locate topics relevant to question that may concern them. This demonstrates the growing corporate understanding of the power of using this communication tool to engage with consumers.

Political Uses For Blogs

Political use of blogs seemed to emerge greatly due to the effects of 9/11. From this point, they continued to gain exposure and use. Blogs also gained exposure during the 2004 election. Although the primary user of this service, Howard Dean, saw just as great a fall as he did a rise from blogging and use of internet resources, it is important to see the significance of his online presence in gaining attention.

Many other examples of its use and cases demonstrating its capabilities exist and would take numerous hours to define. Consider this: How often do you type in a search query that doesn’t return with at least one blog article? It is difficult at this point in our society to search the web without coming across this type of journaling. With endless opportunities and the constant growth in use, Blogs have and will continue to gain popularity within the social community.


REFERENCES

Adamic, Lada, and Natalie Glance. The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: Divided They Blog. 4 Mar. 2005. Web. 21 July 2010. .

"Blogs Make the Headlines." Wired News. Web. 21 July 2010. .

Godwin-Jones, Robert. "EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES Blogs and Wikis: Environments for On-line Collaboration." Language Learning & Technology 7.2 (2003): 12-16. May 2003. Web. 21 July 2010. .

Official Google Blog. Web. 21 July 2010. .

Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody the Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York: Penguin, 2009. Print.

"Trent Lott Announces His Resignation - Politics - Msnbc.com." Breaking News, Weather, Business, Health, Entertainment, Sports, Politics, Travel, Science, Technology, Local, US & World News- Msnbc.com. Web. 21 July 2010. .

Changing the Way We Organize

From Hierarchy to Network

The organization of individuals has greatly changed over time from a hierarchal system to a more flat and network style. One definition, according to Webster, for an organization is “an administrative and functional structure.” Meanwhile, Webster refers to a network in one part of its definition as “an interconnected or interrelated chain, group, or system.” Separating these two definitions is the beginning of defining the former main means of communication from the modern. Early organizations represented an organization with a functional structure having a hierarchal set up to help manage its components. New media takes on a network approach opposing this definition by interconnecting its parts to collaborate together as opposed to working through a chain of command. Networks represent a much more complex system when compared to a hierarchy (See diagram below). From the introduction of organizational charts to the creation of the Internet and social media, our society has adapted to the changing styles of organizing. As the way we communicate changes, our society and means of organization also alters. Clay Shirky’s book titled Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations discusses the origins of organization and the impact of new technologies.

Beginning of Hierarchies: The Railroad

The traditional way of organizing can be greatly attributed to the start of railroads. In the 1800s, railroad companies were dealing with the issue of sharing one single set of tracks for traffic flowing both ways. After a collision that killed two and injured several, it became apparent that a better system of organization was needed. This fostered the organizational chart and the presence of hierarchies seen in organizations to come.

In the basic organizational set up of railroads created to overcome previous issues, the route was divided among regions, which were then divided among even smaller sections, each having a designated overseer to report to. A hierarchy determining which person reported to who was developed to ensure the safety and smooth running of the railroad organization. This system accomplished many goals in resolving problems, yet it created one crucial issue: higher costs.

Tradition Organization is Costly

The largest issue with traditional organization is cost. As noted by Shirky, it costs to manage an organization. In this traditional organization, smaller groups may profit over larger groups because the cost of managing the larger system is high enough to drop the profit margin compared to the smaller institutions. In other words, it costs less to manage a smaller group of people and a smaller system. Shirky refers to the “Coasean Ceiling” as the point at which an institution no longer profits because of the cost of managing. For this reason, the book discussed how smaller railroad companies often profited more than the largest institutions.

Formerly: Two Options to Starting An Organization

This is one of many constraints, yet a very important issue, that traditionally organized companies face. Until recently, there were two options: (1) Deal with the costs of managing a group and survive, or (2) don’t create the group. Many clusters of individuals wanted to organize but couldn’t because of costs. This explains how many times institutionalization served as a filter for determining which organizations succeeded or never even saw creation.

A New Means of Congregating

New technology and social media has offered a third dimension to the mix: provide the tool to be used or organizing, but let the users group themselves. New media circumvents the constraints of management and especially costs of doing so that previous organizing suffered from. Shirky’s book did a wonderful job in illustrating how social media steps in to do what former institutions could not.

Example of New Media's Structure: Flickr

Flickr is an online tool for compiling photos by individuals using tags. Shirky’s example using Flickr spoke of a small parade that took place every year. Before the use of Flickr, many photographers, both professional and personal, would come to the parade and take photos. At the time it was too costly for one individual or organization to assemble a way of grouping all of the photos together for others to see. For this reason, many photos taken at this event would go unseen by anyone other than the person taking the photo. Resolving this problem, Flickr came about allowing users ranging from professionals to individuals using phone cameras to post the pictures and link the picture to similar photos with a tag. The tag allows people to search a word bringing about search results with pictures tagged to that word or phrase. Visitors of the parade are now able to organize the photos creating and gaining more views without an institution in place to organize the photos for them. Because of the lack of management needed, the costs were low enough to allow such an organization to exist.

New Means for Global, Open Discussion

Social media has also opened a platform of public discussion and a means to gain support on a global level that didn’t formerly exist. For instance, when a tragic event occurs, social media is a way for individuals across nations to gather for discussion, support, and reflection. Before social media, the news served as the primary source of information, information that often didn’t come as quickly and as abundant as it does now. Think of the power of twitter. Within minutes, more than hundreds may post news, information, and opinions for others to read regardless of that individual’s location. The same may apply to blogs. These tools offer a way to stay informed, engage others, and share in open thought and discussion.

We are only beginning to see the power of social media. It grows so rapidly that it is impossible to know where we will stand in years to come. One certain fact is that social media is changing the way we communicate and operate in our current society.

REFERENCES:

"Organization - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary." Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. Web. 21 July 2010. .

Miller, Katherine. Organizational Communication: Approaches and Processes. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. Print.

"Network - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary." Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. Web. 21 July 2010. .

Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody the Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York: Penguin, 2009. Print.

Social Media Overload?

Since the start of MySpace to the introduction of FourSquare, it has been useful and entertaining to keep up with the various platforms of social networking. It can be noticed that each person’s use of these tools tends to only extend to two to five different types; however, hundreds of platforms, which could be considered social media tools, exist today.

Recognizing Similar Social Media Platforms

I first noticed the difficulty in having one individual tool during my time spent in Germany as an intern for the summer. At the given time, social media users I related to tended to seek out Facebook as their main form of staying connected. Without stepping back and thinking of cultural differences I assumed the same and began searching for all of my newest contacts from Germany on Facebook. This search quickly ended as less than 5% of them could be found, an unusually low number I thought. I soon found out that many of my friends were using a site called StudiVZ.com and MeinVZ, platforms that upon approval could be linked together. Members of StudiVZ had to belong to an already approved school network. All other users could join MeinVZ needing to then request users of StudiVZ to allow the connection between sites to occur. The interfacing of both of these platforms nearly mirrored that of Facebook.com, however it could be described as the “German version of Facebook” in that it mainly attracted German users and was only in the process of reaching out to other nations.

An Abundance of Social Media Tools

In beginning my research on social media it came again to my attention the abundance of available tools that I had yet to take advantage of. I was introduced to FourSquare by a friend a little over six months ago and became an avid twitter user around the beginning of 2009. Slowly, I’ve been adding platform after platform, attempting to use igoogle and TweetDeck to aggregate them all into one to ease the pressures of keeping up with each. Although each tool I used helped a little more in binding these together, it was impossible to accomplish staying updated on all of them constantly.

How Do You Balance A Healthy Variety?

Soon I came to realize: I spend more time keeping up with Social Media then I actually spend enjoying it. This poses my biggest questions: At what point do platforms decline? Will one application ever truly dominate? What is the best way to utilize Social Media and stay current without spending every moment attempting to master it? It’s easy to say that Facebook is at the top, if not the top of the list. Think then about Digg. Digg serves a purpose that Facebook hasn’t grasped full user attention on yet. Further, if a person began using Facebook the way Twitter is to be used, it is easy to say many of his or her friends would get quite aggravated seeing as that isn't the standard form of communication for Facebook . Each social media tool serves its own unique purpose that often is shared with another tool, but is mastered only by one.

Social Media Aggregates

Aggregate tools came about to help solve this problem. From experience, I can note that TweetDeck begins helping with the issues of social media overload; however, this device hinders the full capability of each device as it takes more of a “Twitter” approach to each of the connected platforms, by specializing in "status" type of updates as opposed to the complex inter-workings of sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn

Are There Solutions?

My best solution to this problem is that one day a tool will be created to best connect users to all forms of social media, from even the smallest tools with less than a hundred followers to mega platforms such as Facebook. It is either this or the decline of some of the other platforms that needs to happen before people get too overloaded with networking that they give up. A main purpose of social media is to allow organizing without the need of costly management. It can be quite beneficial in connecting our world. I see the benefits in each platform and agree that diversity is important. I do think that collaboration between platforms or some sort of aggregation can help ensure that users from all different backgrounds can still stay connected without the separation caused by the selection of one platform over another by an individual user. What do you feel needs to happen in the future to ensure it continues to support networking the way it does now?