Applying my bachelors degree in a social media ran business world

            Communication in the workplace is becoming a necessity rather than plus.  To be successful in today’s society, businesses must learn to utilize current media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Blogs and websites.  To put it simply, the field of business is evolving.  With social media booming, businesses are putting emphasis on flooding media streams with as much information about their company as possible.  College graduates can reap the benefits by seizing job positions companies are creating to stay on top of their social media. 

            In my opinion, communication bachelor degrees such as corporate and organizational communication are prime candidates for newly developed job positions such as Digital Director, Director of Search Engine Marketing, Interactive Media Coordinator, Social Media Analyst, and Social Media Consultant.  Corporate communication is a great fit for these positions because class courses cover all of the basic business principles; marketing, sales, public relations, advertising, economics, finance, human resources, management, training and development.  Corporate communication uses all of these courses to apply business principles in an organizational structure, with an emphasis on how to communicate effectively to the public and within the organization.

Social Media Manager

I have to admit, it has been a while since I have taken the time to read the blogs I follow. I’m sorry! I realized how many I have missed in such a short period of time. With so many interesting blogs and current news and events it is becoming increasingly difficult to remain up to date. Not to mention it is becoming a chore keeping up with Tweets and Facebook updates. That’s not including the blogs, websites, Tweets and Facebook account of companies I like to stay current with. Overwhelmed, I then forgot where I saw a particular story I wanted to reread. Was it in my Facebook account? In a Blog? In a Tweet? Or was it in my email? Who knows?!?! When will I be able to utilize a service to keep up with all of this for me? One that will make it easy for me to sort through the boring and keep the good stuff?

This service might be here sooner than I thought. While reading through TechCrunch blogs, I stumbled upon a blog about a personal search engine still in private beta. Introspectr, part of a new class of startups trying to tackle the developing problem many individuals are now facing; keeping up with all of your media streams. Once you give Introspectr access to your Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail account, it indexes them for you. Introspectr allows you to search for any term and it will bring up all the Tweets, emails and Facebook messages where the keyword is found.

I also read that Greplin is another startup in this class that has been released. As for right now there seems to be flaws with both startups, but they are heading in the right direction and most importantly they are trying to position themselves in the market before their competitors. It won’t be long until we will all  be using these personal search engines to manage all of our media streams. I can hold my own when it comes to staying current with social media and technology but it is becoming more and more difficult for me to manage all of the available information. With new social media streams developing and gaining popularity daily, we will all start searching for help from a service like this.

LinkedIn's New Feature for Recent College Grads

LinkedIn will be soon be releasing the launch of Career Explorer, a new job finding feature that is aimed toward newly college grads.

Career Explorer gives you the ability to surf a variety of career paths based on your level of education, location, and even your dream industry. Career Explorer is set to initially launch featuring a total of 60 universities in the US. It is assumed that LinkedIn already has plans for more to follow shortly. LinkedIn says that this new job finding tool will be helpful for the following:

• To map out career paths. Based on your work interests and take into account the paths of established professionals. You can also create and save multiple paths.
• Find relevant connections.
• Learn about your desired job. The site will give you stats like average age of individuals that hold the position you want, as well as geographic distribution.
• Find job openings.
• Recommend people in your network for jobs.
• Suggest companies to follow.

Determing Social Media Metrics

I recently read a very intriguing blog about measuring social media. The blog was by blogger Chris Brogan. Chris is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency. He works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications like marketing and PR.

In his blog Social Media Metrics, Chris explains knowing which social media metrics to track is based on what you’re hoping to accomplish as to which metrics you might want to track; views, comments, leads, etc. Below I have quoted Chris' blog because I feel like he simplified his thoughts perfectly while thoroughly explaining how he favors tracking certain metrics over others due to their level of engagement and ROI.  

"·      Comments – it’s great that people comment. It shows some level of engagement. Did anyone buy?

·      Bookmarks, tweets, retweets, likes – it’s useful because it shows whether information spreads well and on which kind of media, but again, there’s not as much of a call to action inherent in that metric. Use it, but use it as a way to test your marketing, not as a way to test the results of the product/service.

·      Pageviews – again, it shows someone showed up, but if they didn’t do anything, I don’t care as much.

Metrics I DO Like

I like sales. Can you track dollars from your links?

I like leads. Can you track number of raw leads?

I like members. Can you count members, who then might be further massaged into leads?

Those are the metrics I think have some value, at least from a business perspective."

After reading this on Chris Brogan's Blog, I truly agree with what Chris Brogan has to say about social media metrics. With social media becoming increasingly important to businesses daily, there needs to be an understanding of what is effective. Figuring out what you want to get back from social media is the first step.

Check out the full blog at:  www.chrisbrogan.com

This one is for those businesses who just don't get it.

Social Media has taken over! I believe that the name of my blog, The Freeway of Social Media, expresses how social media is a fast moving, ever-growing trend with a price tag all companies and individuals can afford- FREE!  Social media forms such as twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, blogs, etc. is becoming the number one way for businesses to market their products and advertise their brands to the public. Early adapters of the social network have experienced the rewards that social media can provide.

A successful social media campaign creates online conversations about your brand. Customers will spread your message more effectively then tradition methods due the ease of communication.  The low cost of social media can save companies money by cutting back on prior advertising and marketing campaign costs. Customers and the general public can be reached almost instantly and can be spread by the click of a button. Social media campaigns bring up large amounts of back links that benefit your ranking in search engines. This means the more you communicate through Twitter and Facebook, the higher you will appear in search engines such as Google, (talk about killing two birds with one stone!)

For those lagging I have provided a brief description of how to start up accounts on both Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter Instructions:

 1: Go to the Twitter website.

2: Before you set up an account understand what you're getting yourself into. Just because everyone is tweeting and chirping, it doesn't mean that Twitter is for you, watch the Twitter video.

3: Click Join the Conversation to set up an account. Select a username. This is the name by which other Twitter followers will recognize you.

4: Select a password, provide an email address, read the terms of service and click "I accept Create my account."

5: Add friends or skip it until you become more familiar with Twitter. You can always add friends later.

6: Begin Twittering.

Facebook Setup Instructions:

1: Got to Facebook.com, Click on "Sign up"

2: Fill out the form that asks for your full name, your current status, email address, a password and your birthday. Click the "Sign up now!" button when you have completed the form.

3:  Facebook sends this email to confirm your registration. When you get the email, click on the link in the email to confirm that you did in fact register for a Facebook account.

Digital effect on Newspapers

            Newspapers are changing their look to escape their end by cutting down on content. Readers have began to get their news online and this group is led by young readers. Not to mention print advertising is decline and in recent years there has been a spike in online advertising. Readers can use search engines to find breaking news and daily coverage without paying for a copy.  To overcome sales decreases, newspapers have had to reconstruct their print and develop a leaner and more target focused paper.Smaller, local newspapers in America have shifted their focus to local news and sport, while leaving national and global news to bigger publications like Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press.

            Publishers are hopeful in thinking that this change of putting emphasis on distinctive content will help the move from print to digital distribution. Newspapers survival is unknown, due largely to decline in young readers not willing to pay for news.The recession has brought testing times for print and they have adapted to the times and so far,  fared well. If newspapers survive the recession, they can contemplate more than mere survival for the future and begin to focus their efforts on rebuilding this nations thinking of how to get the news.      

For the whole story visit The Economist. http://www.economist.com/node/16322554