Social Saturation

Facebook shares. Twitter retweets. TV commercials. Internet banner ads. Our lives are constantly inundated with these nuggets of media communications for consumption.   At times, it becomes taxing to have to wade our way through the tide pools of content that gets thrown our way; that difficulty, however, does not make the task any less important. Chapter 11 in the Humphreys text about Social Media Marketing brought up topic after topic that shed a light on many realities we experience in current media landscape; choosing one or two to highlight is incredibly challenging. But just like my previous call for  perseverance in the face of tough challenges, I will buckle down and winnow my points of discussion to two concepts that really spoke to me and my observations on how companies use social marketing: customer service as it relates to social media, and the decision journey consumers regularly undergo.

One may wonder why we increasingly hear companies boasting their social media platforms, enthusiastically pushing for supporters and customers to engage with their posts. This illustrates the point made in Humphreys’ chapter on Social Media Marketing–companies need platforms to directly engage with consumers about their concerns. With the role that social media plays in word-of-mouth information sharing, the risk always exist for companies to lose control of their message from online hijackers. To avoid this risk, it becomes wise to create a direct channel for disgruntled customers to voice opinions directly to a channel that the company can control; with this new open channel, instead of the complaint floating in mid-media space, it is placed in the laps of social media managers, a message-spinner’s reputation management dream. Now, with the issue in the hands of the company on their social media page, the company can directly respond to the issue and turn a customer service nightmare into a pleasant reality.

 

 

 

 

The second point made by Humphreys in the chapter on Social Media Marketing that resonated with my personal experience online was the importance of awareness in the first stages of marketing. Like Jared, I too am involved in a student organization that requires incredible amounts of student engagement for success. Student Government Board, the governing body of the undergraduate student population, works to provide a number of services to students. Crisis relief funds, travel grants for conferences, allocated funds for events, and judicial hearings for disputes are only a few of the many services that we can provide for student groups. Lack of knowledge regarding our services, however, cripples our ability to be efficacious , and we move to now find creative ways to get out the word about what we can provide for students. This reality demonstrates the importance of awareness when it comes to the decision journey on which consumers embark from day-to-day.  People need to be aware, whether that be through traditional or non-traditional, paid or earned forms of media, and that is the most important first step when selling a cause, organization, service or company to audiences.

Both of these concepts really stand out as important principles that practitioners of social media marketing must take into consideration. Even if the awareness of your product results in a complaint on the company website, that can be considered a success when navigating the world of social media communications.

 

 

Citation:

“Social Media: Enduring Principles.” Ashlee Humphreys – Oxford University Press. N.p., 12 Feb. 2017. Web. 15 Feb. 2017.

Hash(tag)ing Out the Pros & Cons of Web 2.0

The concept we’ve discussed in class called “Web 2.0,” drives a lot of what we know to be the internet today. When we look closer at what the theory really means, we can see connections between the concept and current trends in media, as well as in the way we engage online with one another. If we step back from the cacophony of information found on our various digital platforms, and look critically at the way we’ve shaped social media interaction, we can gain some insight about the technology that we’re consuming through new mediums everyday.

The internet’s openness has had some significant effects on the way we engage. One thing on which we all can agree, is that this past election cycle, and the social media climate surrounding it, created some significant rifts in our society. Families and friendships were divided over candidates and issues, and those divisions oftentimes were on full display in the comments section of major social networking sites.  The revolution of the internet has allowed us to not only voice our opinions with ease, but it gives us access to large audiences, creating a forum for debate that just increases with the number of sites that we use to connect with one another. In the reading by Alice Marwick, the term “citizen journalism” is described as a result of the new “user-generated content” revolution of the Web 2.0 era. The proliferation of blogs, Twitter, and other sites that allow users to inundate the web with their thoughts have brought us to where we are today: an age where the first thing we think of to solve a problem is getting as many people involved on social media as possible. The best way to do that? A hashtag.

 

 

A perfect example of the power that Web 2.0 can have is in the #NoBanNoWall hashtag  campaign that social media has taken up in response to executive actions by the new president. People immediately took to online platforms to share messages of support for those affected, and criticism of the effects being seen as a result of the ban.

 

This new culture of the hashtag that we’ve created for ourselves provides a sort of common area where user-generated content can live and exist in one place. Someone from California can bond with a person feeling similarly just by a hashtag that brings together their content in a single, digital arena. This new ability enhances connectedness to a new degree, because now our content reaches not only our own respective audiences, but it can now move effortlessly across state lines and international borders.

In troubling times where internet users are angry and want to speak out, these hashtags and spaces for commiserating are helpful in the coping process for some people. Stories from children of immigrants have circled the Facebook forums, and in these posts using the hashtag, people can find solace in knowing that there are people out there going through the same thing, and wanting to see the same things they want to see happen.

Despite the benefits of being able traverse large distances using nothing more that the symbol formerly known as ”pound,” there is, of course, the potential for harm from this new development in digital discourse. The “citizen journalism” that we see in this open online space may have its honorable intentions, but in this media climate, the most important issues we’re facing are the propagation of false information and the strengthening of the echo chamber that our newsfeeds create. The personal blogs and websites with alternative facts that are promoted as fact are a grim downside to the openness of the internet, and the access that all people have to it. People are taking advantage of the internet’s democracy, and we have to start thinking about ways that we can combat that without hindering the positives of the connectedness we experience.

I’m in no way an advocate for a censoring of the internet and a reversal of the openness that we see with the Web 2.0 revolution discussed in class. I believe that beautiful, thoughtful and creative things come from the global community we’ve created with online media channels. I do, however, think that our online spaces have to deal with the problems that these “citizen journalists” create. Whether those problems are dealt with by the masses or the platforms themselves, is something that we’ll have to figure out before Web 3.0 hits the web.

 

 

Works Cited:

Marwick, Alice Emily. Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age. New Haven: Yale UP, 2013. Print.