The importance of the “content” in content marketing

Red Bull was one company that Danny used to describe what content marketing is and what it does. This airplane is an example of this because Red Bull is not an airplane company, but an energy drink company.

I’ll be honest, I’ve never really had much of an interest in advertising. Though I know it is important, it is just an aspect of the journalism and media world that I have never been too interested in.

However, content marketing, as Danny Schreiber talked to us about, was extremely interesting to me. His company, Zapier, works to bring attention to products and services, while also making all of your web apps work together to increase efficiency. Though aspects of content marketing are similar to advertising, I found three aspects, specifically, appealing and different from advertising.

First, the focus on writing was very appealing to me. Danny writes a lot of blogs, each following his own “beat,” per se. I found it interesting that this is how they market to their customers. Even though advertising has some writing, it is all in direct support of the product being sold. Danny brings a real world perspective on products (by reviewing apps, etc.), which may not always be present in direct advertising.

Second, the interaction with and emphasis on social media was interesting to learn about. Danny does a lot of interacting with clients and his blog followers through social media, especially Twitter. Social media does play a factor in advertising, but Danny’s personal Twitter account adds a personal element to all of the work he does on Twitter.

Third, content marketing’s emphasis on non-interrupting advertising of the product was fascinating. An example Danny used, Red Bull, markets their product through focus on things other than energy drinks (including extreme sports, outdoor recreation). By doing this, they aren’t directly telling customers what they should be buying or using, but yet still getting their product out there. They are also not interrupting the regular cycle of the consumers time, throwing them off.

I really enjoyed Danny’s talk, especially because I hadn’t learned about content marketing before. He taught us about something that I think we have experienced in our day to day lives, even if we didn’t know how to identify it as content marketing. Since our discussion on content marketing, I have been on the lookout for it in the public, and online.

 

Social media as a social justice cause

Boomer was a dog at the Nebraska Humane Society that Elizabeth used the power of social media to find a home.

In listening to Elizabeth talking about social media for the Nebraska Humane Society, I learned a lot about social media and how social media can be used effectively in a business. As much as I thought I knew how people used social media, especially Facebook, I didn’t realize what work and planning went into making Facebook work for a specific business.

Elizabeth doesn’t just post on the Nebraska Humane Society Facebook page; she plans pretty much every detail of each post. As someone who is in charge of social media for an internship at a publication, I thought I was utilizing the page, and paying attention to each post. Elizabeth schedules posts, as she has an explicit plan for what time of day and when in the week she wants posts to go out, and that’s what I do at my internship. However, she pays attention to what time of day is best to reach her varied audience. For example, she said she commonly posts when moms are waiting in line to pick their kids up from school, as well as when people wake up and check Facebook in the morning.

Another thing that Elizabeth does that I didn’t consider to be a huge factor was examining and utilizing the Facebook algorithm. I never realized how necessary it was to pay attention to not only the analytics and statistics that Facebook provides, but also this algorithm. In paying attention to it, Elizabeth can see what needs to happen on their Facebook page in order to increase their likes, shares and comments.

Even though Facebook seems to be the shelter’s primary social media, they also have a great presence and method on Twitter. Elizabeth talked a lot about how she tweets the “sad puppy” around the same time every night, and, because her followers expect this, she caters to them. She sends out tweets asking who is excited for the puppy posts, and she gets people talking to her because of this. Twitter functions as a great conversation for the Nebraska Humane Society, and, even though Facebook can function this way too, the posts are often unique, and Twitter is used in different ways. Elizabeth also uses Twitter to retweet adoption stories from the shelter, in a series called #followupfriday. By retweeting photos and sentiments from happy customers, Elizabeth is building a positive presence on Twitter. From the sad stories to the successful ones, Elizabeth provides a great combination of content.

After the visit, I am looking at how corporations can not only use social media, but how they can do so in a positive and effective way. I really liked learning about what a person working full time in social media does, and what they focus on in making social media work for their specific organization.

Great ideas with little expectation

He wrote his idea on a napkin, I write mine on a sticky note.

Andrew Norman from Hear Nebraska is an entrepreneur that seemed to do things a little differently than everyone else. The main aspect that immediately struck me about his method and organization of his business was that it was never meant to be a thing that made money. In fact, up until this point, he has not paid himself, and has always had other, full-time employment. I found this to be kind of refreshing, since it just meant that his idea was something he implemented into his life because he enjoyed writing and talking to people about music. The fact that it has grown to the size it is now at is a bonus, and the additional fact that he will soon get the opportunity to go full time is also a bonus as well as a testament to his hard work and dedication to Hear Nebraska.What reminded me of my own life was his “idea sketched out on a napkin” thing. When I start something, it usually begins as something on my to do list, or an idea that I write down on a sticky note. Though to this point I have not done something of quite the same magnitude as Norman has, this is a method I have used. Hitchcock Blogs was an idea that Matt pitched to us at Cali Taco, which lead to us camping out in a booth for a couple hours trying to figure out if it was something we could even attempt to do. We wrote a note, not on a napkin, but in my cellphone – a note that became the basic ground rules for our site. Even though many other meetings and discussions helped lay the ground work, our starting point was similar to Norman’s in that it just started with an idea.

I think that the example of the “idea sketched out on a napkin” could also be considered the main lesson that Norman was trying to teach – that it can just start with an idea. I think another important lesson I took away from Norman’s talk was that you do have to allow the pieces to fall into place sometimes. His idea for a college paper topic became something much greater, and he still did many other things in his life before the stars aligned for him to really make Hear Nebraska his number one priority. He had to let the pieces of his life, as well as the pieces of the organization, come together before he knew what it had the potential of becoming.

Twitter as a conversation: Who talks about what?

In the Pew Center’s recent take on the structures of Twitter Conversation networks, the center analyzes how people interact with one another, and what they way they interact means. I found this very interesting because I had never looked at Twitter in this way. Even though I knew it was a conversation, I never thought about how these conversations are structured, and how everyone’s Twitter feed could have a different conversation on it.

The first, most basic network is that of the divided, or polarized crowds. In terms of polarized crowds, one that comes to mind for me is my hometown high school rivalries. We have two high schools, Lakeville North and Lakeville South. When we play each other, in any sport, the rivalries get nasty, in person and online/in social media circles. It always astounded me that even though we were both mid-sized public schools within the same city limits that people are not afraid to openly bash each other on social media. Since I had friends from both, whenever a big game is on or a big competition is coming up, I hear and see the threats coming from both sides.

UNL’s Kappa house

Considering the people I follow, a major unified, tight crowd group that I follow is my sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma. Obviously, I follow many girls from my sorority at Creighton, but I also follow many Kappas who have a social media presence and that I have met in other ways. I also follow our national organizations Twitter handle, as well as some of the other chapter’s Twitter handles. A sorority, to me, seems like a tight crowd on social media because they all gravitate to, love and support the organization, and strive to do so in positive ways on social media. In addition, many sisters get connected with one another via social media, making the group aspect of it very effective.

I found the brand clusters grouping to be very relevant to a situation that happened a few years ago in Minnesota when a local high school hockey player was injured. He was checked into a wall, which put him in a wheelchair, with little hope of him ever walking again. When this happened, the communities around the Twin Cities areas all joined together to offer him and his family kind words and support, which was mostly done through social media. The game and his situation became really well known He gained many followers, a hashtag being commonly used by different people supporting him grew in popularity, and people found his messages of hope and strength on Twitter to be inspirational, so he was, and still is, constantly retweeted by the community. Even though he wasn’t a brand, his injury was an event and memory that became well known and was supported by social media.

Malaysian Airlines

Finally, the more advanced hub & spoke support network has been seen on my timeline lately in discussion of the missing Malaysian airline. I follow many news sources, and because of that, I was seeing the story told and reported on in different ways. Even though they all have the same topic and all have the same goal, to get news of it out to their followers and audiences, they want their story to be the one people choose to click on and pay attention to. Because of this, they have unique takes on it and choose unique aspects of the situation to focus on. The users on these news sources are disconnected from each other in this way, since they are trying to make themselves stand out in the news sphere.

Mapping Twitter conversations helps us understand Twitter and social media because it allows us to really understand why people are using social media. It is clear through all of the ways that the Pew Research Center mapped the conversations that people get way more out of social media than just entertainment and gossip. It is a tool, and exploring it in this way allows us to see the power of the tool.

Power & Lights

When all of the campus lost power for a few short moments on Tuesday, chills ran down my spine.

On Tuesday, I had my Mass Media and Modern Culture class. Let me start by saying, Creighton people, take this class if you can. Do it. Dr. Dornsife spends the class educating us on everything in life and turning us into free thinkers. It is amazing.

In class, we talked about how the absence of something can actually be louder or more pronounced than the presence. For example, if you’re sitting in a room and all of the sudden the air conditioning fan turns off, you will notice it. Often times, you didn’t even know the fan was on to begin with, or if you did, you notice its turning off much more than the normal noise that it emits. All in all, a very interesting and powerful topic that made us all think.

What was incredible, though, was how mid discussion on this topic, all of Creighton Hall (the building where my class is) lost power. My whole class gasped and shrieked, to a magnitude I can only imagine being louder because of the conversation we were having. We could hear the computer’s normal hums snap off, could hear the fan screech to a halt in the classroom’s outdated, wall mounted heater. The silence after these noises stopped and after the air had escaped my entire class’s lungs was not only apparent, it was deafening.

The idea that silence is more deafening than sound at times was proved in what happened when the power came back on. Since it was so applicable to our class discussion at the time, we all were shrieking, shaking, and just over all freaking out by what had just happened. My professor even joked that the class should just be over and we should all just go home, since we just experienced our discussion in full. The fact that we all erupted when the lights and therefore the noises came back shows what silence means, and what being in limbo in silence can do to us.

As I found out after class, it was an all campus power outage, that literally only lasted a minute or two. But that meant nothing to me, because this class has made such an impact on how I think of everything. We spend many class periods analyzing language, what words mean, gender roles, higher and lower order signs – anything to do with society we have talked about or will soon – that the fact that the power went off in this class had an extreme affect on me.

I don’t think that the power outage during this exact time and place means anything, per se, but what I did take away from it was the fact that power (sometimes literally) lies in language and how we use it. This, though right now is based in this specific example, can be applied in other areas of language, including writing (and this blog as a whole). Just keep this in mind when going about your business, and in exploring language in your day-to-day life.

Maybe I’ll dream a little more? Or is that rdqlus?

I thought of Steve Grodon’s talk as an indication of what dream catchers d. You throw them into the air with hope, and pray they make it, that you make it. Photo courtesy of Durova.

Steve Gordon was, to me, a very articulate and genuine public speaker. This was the first thing I noticed. Even though he is not making a living on just public speaking, per se, he is incorporating this skill into what he does as a personal brander.

As someone who doesn’t know much about personal branding or how to make a brand for someone else, what really resonated with me was his personality. I think besides having the skills of a designer, his personality is one that can work with people to figure out what they want for their company and therefore their brand. I think that that is an important thing to note when looking into future endeavors, especially in the entrepreneurial world, that your personality and its attributes is important. Making yourself fit a mold for a job could be very hard, but if you find a job that fits you, you could really thrive. I think that that is what Gordon also did, as he worked in a variety of different environments before he found that going out on his own was what he was searching for. This resonated with me because even though I am not a designer, I think this idea works for everyone in our field.

The main thing that I learned from Gordon was that dreaming big was never a bad thing. I hadn’t thought about this mainly because I don’t see myself as much of a dreamer. I plan everything. If something unexpected happens in my life, I pretty much immediately come up with a plan to remedy it or make it better. That being said, as much as I have “dreams” for my future, I don’t count on them coming true without a concrete plan for my life in place. Gordon seemed to function on the idea that dreaming can get you to where you need to be, and that if you are dreaming big to keep doing so. After listening to him, I am trying and will continue to try to adopt some of this into my life, as dreaming has never really been my thing. I am going to try to think more in this way not just for fun, but because I think that doing so could maybe open my mind to different opportunities that I wouldn’t have seen had I just been sticking to my plans. I think that letting in some degree of dreaming could really benefit me – especially the closer we get to graduation.

Finally, I think Gordon was good to hear from because of these attributes (being a dreamer and having a big personality). We are all getting degrees in a creative field, and so hearing from someone who is this way and is successful in the field was very comforting. He did his own thing, followed his dreams and has become successful by doing so. Showing our class an example of someone who has done this was helpful, and I enjoyed the insight he brought to our class.

What the analog cell phone, newspapers and a 1980s box television have taught me

Here’s a photo of our box TV … I mean my brothers at Christmas a few years ago. The thing really did take over everything, even pictures!

The 1980s, though remembered for many glorious fashion trends, television shows and slang terms. These things, though memorable, are the good things. This is when my parents were in high school. Often they’ll talk about how horrible the ‘70s were, and how glorious the ‘80s were in comparison. As much as they acknowledge, looking back, that they had their iffy moments as well, they enjoyed it, to say the least.

Their attachment to the 80s was seen in my home, growing up. My parents were married in 1988, so our family was technically started in this decade. And when I say growing up, I don’t mean these trends stuck around until I was 9 or 10. I mean they have stayed, until as recently as this past summer. We had a box television set that sat in our family room for my entire life that was used as our primary TV. We still get the daily paper (which, of course, I appreciate, but is something that has gone by the wayside for others) and clip physical coupons. My dad kept his analog cell phone until the cell phone company told him that they were taking down the cell phone towers that allowed him to get service on his phone, forcing him to upgrade to a flip phone.

As humorous as all of this sounds, every single non-technological thing about my family has taught me something, and they are all things that I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn had my parents been different about technology.

1.)   Social media – I think I was 13 when I first asked my dad if I could get AIM. He didn’t get why I would want to sit at our computer and chat online with my friends (using our DSL and phone lie) when I could just call them up. When social media took off further than that and I asked my parents if I could have a MySpace, my dad didn’t get why I needed it. He would not understand Facebook or Twitter if he got an account, and to this day doesn’t understand the point. “Why would I need to create an account to give all of my information away online?” he asks me when he sees me scrolling through my phone. “Why would I want to make it easier for people to find me at all times of the day or night?” I get where he is coming from, but as a girl who loves her social media, I don’t even really attempt to explain its importance to him. But what I have learned from my dad’s questions and curiosities about it is that sometimes, it would be great to be so anonymous. It would be great, too, to not have the feeling of entrapment by social media, feel that nagging need to see what’s going on in the world. SO to an extent, I do get it, and I commend him for being so okay with not being so easily found.

2.)   The importance of physical paper – As is seen by my love and attention to newspapers, I have a real appreciation for reading things in their physical form. I don’t have an eReader, and until recently didn’t have a tablet, so I read physical books, newspapers and magazines. I think this is something I would have lost my love for if it weren’t so common in my household, and I’ve learned I like all of these mediums the way that they are. Unlike on an eReader of tablet, when reading a book, that’s all that’s going on. Screens make leaving the book and looking for something else to do very common and possible, whereas a book in physical form can draw you in.

3.)   Not being too attached to technology – When I am at my house, I try not to be on my cell phone all the time, and that’s because it just isn’t the way my family is. I am the only one out of six that has a smart phone, so staying off the technology for other members of my family is a little easier than it is for me, but I try to put it away. When we sit on the couch in the family room and talk, that’s all we are doing, sitting and talking. No technology distracts them, so I try not to let it distract me. It’s hard, but worth it, as I learn to live in the moment because of them.

4.)   Nothing beats in person interaction – All of these things really do just come down to living in the present, and just enjoying each other’s company. Looking at tablets, phones and laptops, there are a ton of ways to not interact in person, and my family has continuously and endlessly emphasized making this a priority.

5.)   Being frugal can be a very good thing – When I was young, I would get annoyed with the fact that I didn’t have the social media that others did, or that I didn’t have the latest and greatest technology. However, looking back, because of this, I was taught to be pretty frugal at a young age. I learned how to save money and how to focus on what’s important. As much as I wanted the newest cell phone or tablet, I knew that if I really wanted it, I would have to save up for it. I learned this young and now it is engrained in me. I think because of this I have made more responsible monetary decisions.

So, as much as sometimes I complain and feel behind in the world, there are true positives to not focusing all of my time and energy on technology. I find myself thankful for my family and the fact that they force me to slow down and appreciate all that is around me.

Discovering through “Distractions”

Grizzly Bear, one of my favorite bands, was one I discovered by getting distracted from Pandora while studying.

My first thought after reading the piece from Alexis Grant was about the main way I waste my time online – and that is Pandora. Pandora, the wonderful and lovely online playlist website, is a site I used to frequent when I studied. I say “used to” because I realized, one day, that when I listened to Pandora while I studied, I would get easily side tracked. Crazy right? A website that is supposed to be able to control my music for me so I don’t have to go looking for song after song while I study ended up distracting me more. What would happen is I would hear a song I liked, go look up the artist who sang it, and find myself getting fully engulfed in all of the information out there on said group/artist. One song would send me all over the Internet, and would spend too many hours wasting time.

But as much as I stopped doing this because I wasted time online, I think that, in general, that wasting time on the Internet does end up helping me. When it comes to my distraction with Pandora, if I hadn’t let it distract me, and let myself research bands and discover new music, I would have never found the artists I now love. When it comes to social media, and all the platforms we are now on, I feel like I am in the same situation. I will go on social media, to do one thing, and end up clicking on a million different links while on there. I don’t find the amount of platforms overwhelming, since I think I often steer away from social media once I am on the sites just to go explore the Internet.

I think that, overall, Grant has a point. It’s similar to if you don’t talk to anyone all day while at work or while working on homework – you are the only one coming up with ideas, and no ideas are being discussed or shared. The Internet helps with this as well, because by exploring the endless corners of the Internet, we can communicate with others, learn about new ideas and topics and think outside of what we are currently working on. Even though the Internet can be distracting, I think that these distractions can also serve us well simply to give us a mental break. Though scheduling Internet time works for some people, I think people also end up spending their time of work and homework thinking about the time they will finally get a break. If you take mini breaks without scheduling them in, your mind naturally takes time to wander, and a wandering mind can be more relaxed.

I also think her points are interesting because they are so relevant to what’s going on in society today. Everyone seems to be on the Internet, so this concept of Grant’s is one I think many can relate to.

Startup culture and my own

I myself would, I think, be much more comfortable working for a startup once it got big, like Facebook. Though these powerhouse companies would be more competitive to work for and harder to be an individual at, I think I would be way more comfortable working in these big environments than the smaller ones.

My takeaway from the speakers last week was that I learned a lot about startups and the startup culture, and what it takes to successfully be apart of it. Before they spoke, I didn’t know that much about startups, so it was really interesting to learn about. I learned that startups are a culture of their own. I also found it interesting that these alums were

I also learned that I could not work for a startup. Don’t get me wrong, I applaud the work these three have done, and how far they have come since they started their careers, but as they described their work environments, I realized it was not something for me. I really do think it takes a special kind of personality to work for a startup. All of the speakers identified that they had to be very flexible in their jobs, and I believe I need a position that would be a little more stable. Even though I know that in any field of journalism you have to have some flexibility, the idea of little to no structure was pretty unappealing to me. Also, the idea that it is a small company is scary to me because of how much pressure is put on each person of the team. Unlike bigger companies, you would be responsible for a big chunk of the company, which is not a kind of pressure I think I could work under.

However, their advice did resonate with my own career plans and goals because of their fear. They all admitted, in one way or another, that despite their excitement and happiness with their soon to be jobs, they were scared to have responsibility placed on their shoulders, and they were nervous about blame being placed equally as much. Despite the fact that I feel prepared to take my journalistic skills into the real world, I am also nervous to have so much responsibility fall on me as an individual. It will take getting used to, and as the speakers said, they were “baptized by fire.” It is this “baptism by fire” that I am most scared for, as I wonder how it will affect my work and my plans for my life.

Overall, I think having these former students come talk to our class was beneficial, especially because it seemed like there are people in our class that were interested. I also think the alums did a good job explaining why they ended up where they are, and were very honest with our class about the goods and bads of working for a startup. I really appreciated their honesty and also that they were willing to try to answer all of our questions even if they didn’t know the exact answer.

Following myself all around the web

I was pretty excited to find out my Klout score. I find this social media tracking tool to be very useful, and I really have enjoyed exploring it over the last week.

I don’t mean to sound vain or full of myself, but I am a person that tends to Google myself at least once a week. I am often curious as to what is showing up, if anything new is there and if what is showing up is anything to be concerned or even excited about. When I Google myself, the first thing, besides images, that show up are my Twitter and Facebook profiles. I think people, from clicking on my Twitter handle, would get a pretty professional vibe from my Twitter account. My Twitter is public, so I am often concerned about what I tweet and how public it’s all going to be. I think I could improve this by driving my Twitter account in a more professional direction, even though I think it is mostly that way anyways. My Facebook profile is private, so when people click on the link to my profile what they get to see is limited.

I found that metrics for my social media reflect pretty well my activity on social media as a whole. As much as I want to determine my overall social media by these metrics, I tend to still look at the big picture when it comes to determining the effectiveness of my brand. I think number of followers on Twitter and overall activity on Facebook can be more important. The same goes for connections on LinkedIn. I think that interacting is the key to all social media. Even if you have every form of social media account, you may not use each of them effectively. I compare the success of myself in social media to involvement in clubs or activities. If you are involved in many activities, but devote little time to each one, it could pan out badly for you overall, whereas if you commit yourself fully to one or two, you may be more successful and have a larger impact on those organizations. I feel the same way about Twitter and Facebook. If you are using them correctly and dedicating yourself fully to them instead of just using every form of social media out there, you could become really good at social media.

Even though I am not sure of how closely metrics really matter, I enjoyed finding my Klout score since it gives a pretty good indication of my social media success. I also think it will be cool to track this as I continue to learn about social media and improving my social media presence. I was also pretty surprised by the number, and am going to work to improve it by learning more about social media.