George's super sweet blog

As the semester starts to come to an end and as we finish Karen Freburg's  text book Social Media for Strategic Communication I think it would be good to recap and look back as some things that I learned and things I found interesting in her book.  Karen's book covered a wide range of different topics all somewhat related to social media, from do's and don't's of content creation to the best ways to pay for your advertisements on social media. The amount of information covered in this book is very impressive, if you have a question about social media any facet of social media you can likely find the answer to that question in this book.  I think what I enjoyed most about the readings we had to do for class were the interviews at the beginning of every chapter. I found it very interesting the different routes and ways social media professionals have gotten into the positions they are currently in. It seems as if most if not all social media professionals did not e...

After the horrible events that transpired in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday there is a temporary block of many social media sites in an effort to stop the spread of fake or inaccurate news. This was first discovered by a group that monitors internet censorship when they came across this new blockage of content. When asked about the block the Sri Lankan government both claims that the social media blackout was their doing and explains  their reasoning behind their doings. The Sri Lankan government blocked social media for what I think is a very good reason. That reason being the attempt to stop the premature spread of fake and or fraudulent news. The issue that is fake news has become a much larger issue than ever before making it very difficult for the readers, listeners, and watchers to know what is accurate and inaccurate.  I think that the Sri Lankan government blocking social media in and out of their country is a very good idea, it limits the possible sources of fake new...

Earlier this year The ONU Mens Lacrosse team suffered a tough loss against the capital crusaders at home, The final score was 11-9 and the polar bears were doing their best to mount a come back but fell short. The bears were riding the momentum from a two goal run as time expired and as a team we really had a desire to play that team again. Luckily the stars aligned and the bears are set to play the crusaders in the first round of the Ohio Athletic Conference playoffs. The crusaders had an impressive stent in conference going 9-0 and getting the first place seed, while the Polar bears went a less than perfect 6-3 but squeaked out the fourth seed in a head to head tie breaker against Otterbein. The first round of the OAC playoffs features capital vs ONU and Baldwin Wallace vs John Carroll, the games will be played in Columbus at Capital and in University Heights at Baldwin Wallace. The Capital vs ONU game will be held on this Tuesday April 30th and the John Carroll Baldwin Wallace ga...

This chapter like all of the others starts off with the story of a social media professional and how they got into the social media market. This week the story of Russ Wilde, Russ works on the marketing team at Thuzio and is also the president of Front Office Sports. Russ got his start in social media when he joined the Front Office Sports team in 2014, when he joined he almost instantly saw some success as he quickly grew the follower base from 200 people to a few thousand people. Russ is an influencer and one that understands very well how social media works, the different specializations, and the people that use these platforms. like mentioned above the social media world is split into many different specializations and for each specialization social media can be utilized in different ways, however the main idea in every specialization is to build hype for the event, person, thing that you're using social media for. The entertainment industry does a good job of applying social...

Last week something that no one could have thought would happen happened, the Notre Dame Cathedral Caught fire and and much of the steeple burned down. The Cathedral that is a national landmark located in Paris France was blanketed across every news program and social media platform. Within minutes of the news breaking and the world seeing what has happened many money raising efforts were formed to help fund the rebuilding of the Notre Dame Cathedral. However these money raising efforts did not get far before sever backlash. With the amount of money being donated to this effort many people have raised the question why do we spend and donate our money towards this effort when we well know that the catholic church is not hurting for money in the slightest, and also where this amount of money would be spent and utilized in a more effective way. I personally have heard a lot of different ideas like using the millions of dollars to help the less fortunate work their way out of poverty, or ...

Growing up Easter along with many other holidays were very big deals in my family, with everyone meeting at the ranch and spending the weekend together enjoying everyone's company, doing Easter egg hunts, and other general ranch activities. As all the cousins got older the activities changed but the general idea stays the same, everyone spending time together at the ranch over Easter weekend. This tradition lives on and from what I saw and what I was told it was another great Easter weekend. However since I have been in school for the past four Easters I haven't been able to attend the family festivities and gotten to spend it in Ada. Some of y'all might be thinking how awful that sounds and others likely think its not bad at all. Well if you ask me it is not bad at all. Lucky for me I live in a house with eight other guys and of those eight 5 of them are from out of state and like me got the spend Easter weekend in Ada as well as some Columbus guys that didn't want ...

Social Media often seems easy and that really anyone could do it and do well at it. Well let me tell you that is not the case. I was reading articles today and found an info-graphic titled 15 Ways to Fail at Social media. The 15 ways are, bragging, being anti social, treating social media as a side project, being inconsistent, ignoring your followers, automation gone wrong, not measuring, talking their ears off, being oblivious to current events, forgetting people buy from people, repeating yourself, winging it, providing useless content, being sloppy, and lastly not taking social media seriously. A lot of these 15 ways can be condensed together as they cover similar topics for example providing useless content, being sloppy and not taking social media seriously are all very interconnected. if you take social media seriously and know your audience you likely will not write or share content that they don't want to see, along the same lines if you take it seriously and take pride in...

Like every other chapter in this book it starts out with the personal accounts of someone in the social media world and their personal accounts. Chapter ten we talk to Dennis Yu , the Chief Technology Officer at BlitzMetrics but he didn't start out there. He actually got his start at American Airlines and worked closely with the CEO Al Casey who gave Dennis some great advice which was to focus more on his learning curve rather than his salary curve, Dennis took this advice were seriously and turned down what could have been a great career at Goldman Sachs. What Dennis ended up doing is going into social media advertisement, specifically analysis of the metrics given by social media platforms. Like the title of this blog suggests chapter ten is about Measurement, Evaluation, budget, and calendar. The first part of the chapter goes over both measurement and evaluation because those two really go hand and hand with each other however they are not the same. Measurement is the observa...

Just over halfway through their conference schedule the ONU Polar Bears Men's Lacrosse Team is tied for second place within the conference with a record of 5-1 with their only loss coming from the yellow jackets of Baldwin Wallace, will be facing off against the current number one team in the OAC currently sitting at 6-0 in conference, the crusaders of Capital University. The history between the two teams is interesting as there was some controversy stemming from the capital side after last years ONU win when Capital went up 5-0 to start the game to eventually fall to the polar bears 11-10 after what they'd like to call questionable officiating. This year both teams are ready to settle the score and prove weather or not there is any legitimacy in their claims.  The Crusaders are coming into this game riding a twelve game win streak suffering their only loss the Kenyon college in over time in their season opener, the crusaders also have one of the most potent offences in the co...

This week we read and are going over chapter nine of Social Media for Strategic Communication, Chapter nine is all about Creating, Managing, and Curating social media content. Like every other chapter this chapter starts out with the story and an interview about a person in the social media world working and doing what they love. In this  chapter we meet Adam White who is a University of Miami graduate and currently works at Front Office sports a multi platform publication and industry resource that covers the intersection of sports and business. He got his start in social media when he got his first phone in high school and like everyone else used it mainly for the social aspect. Adam talks about the troubles of sticking to your brand and and staying fresh creating new content and not becoming stale. which is a problem I think everyone that creates content realizes and has to deal with. He also talks about how useful it is to know how to use all of the platforms and how to man...

This Wednesday April 10th the Ohio Northern Mens Lacrosse team will travel across Ohio to the greater Cleveland area to face off with in conference rivals Baldwin Wallace . Currently the polar bears are atop the Ohio Athletic conference standings sharing that spot with both Otterbein and Capital all with an impressive 4-0 record in conference play. While Baldwin Wallace is sitting at second with only one loss in conference. This game features the highest scoring offense of BW in the Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC) averaging just under 18 goals a game against the fifth best scoring defense in the country with ONU only allowing an average of 6.36 goals per game. With the short history of the ONU mens lacrosse team there is quite a bit of history between the bears and the yellow jackets, with both teams having big wins over the other. Last year the polar bears went to BW for their regular season match up and absolutely took it to the yellow jackets with a final score of 16-4 shocking...

There is a saying that knowledge is power, the more information you have the more knowledge you are likely to acquire. Almost as important as the information being gathered is how information is presented. Information can be presented in many different way, in text, on slide shows, via audio and many more. However the best way for me to understand and learn is through visuals and info-graphics.  For example I created and info graphic for one of the seminars done at the recent ONU Social Media Workshop, this info-graphic is about coordinating social media with event promotion. As you can see from my graphic there are seven main components to coordinating social media with event promotion and they are all broken down very simply and easily in the info-graphic making it an easy and simple way to both understand new information and also share information with those that may or may not know a whole lot about the subject. Some of the great tributes of info-graphics are the great ey...

Just about two weeks ago I had the pleasure to attend the Fourth Annual ONU Social Media Workshop presented by ONU PRSSA. It was a great conference with excellent speakers that had so much great information to share with us and really knew what they were talking about. Keynoted by Amanda Todorovich who is the Senior Director of Content Marketing for Cleveland clinic. Mrs. Todorovich's presentation was very interesting and offered a lot of great information on how to effectively build a brand, create content, curate content and she also talked for quite a while on the importance of knowing your audience, and also the great importance of knowing your engagement numbers. What I found most interesting about her presentation was how the content for a large hospital like that is geared to the specific time of the year and also how folks are less and less interested these days with the incredible stories and miracles that happen in hospitals every day. Amanda said that that particular...

Last Saturday the polar bear men's lacrosse team traveled across the state to Alliance, Ohio to face off against the purple raiders of Mount Union University. A game that is highly anticipated by both teams each year. This game is almost guaranteed to be a gritty physical game full of hard hits and a lot of talking between players. This year the game was exactly as expected and the weather also reflected what was to come. On a cool, wet day in North East Ohio The polar bears of Ohio Northern Faced off against the Purple Raiders of Mount Union University a series that has a very competitive past and continues to be a very competitive bout. The game started with a lot of up and down action as there were several turnovers in the first few minutes of the game that quickly slowed down and turned into more of a defensive battle as the half ended with a tie at three goals for each team. The second half would be a very interesting one and also an action packed half of lacros...