Elizabeth's Thoughts & Things

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Blog Post #1

The “Deadly Sins of Social Media.”

I think that it’s really easy to get carried away with social media and forget to filter what you upload. Updating your status on a social media platform can oftentimes become a sort of reflex. We are angry, so we feel the need to lash out. We are happy, so we feel the need to share how great our life is going at the moment. We are needy, so we seek people’s opinions on ourselves. It’s easy to let our emotions get the better of us and end up posting things that we don’t mean or come across the wrong way.

According to social media professional Steph Parker, there is a series of “deadly sins” that often show up on a social media platform.

Misappropriation: Inserting yourself into a conversation that you have no right to, or is commented on at an inappropriate time.

Abandonment: If you want to be successful on social media, you have to build and maintain a strong community. Building up your platform requires dedication.

Manipulation: Presenting a false sense of who you are or what your brand is and then leading your followers on is a big no-no. Being authentic is much more likely to grow your platform.

Ignorance: Oftentimes when creating an account, we enter all of our information, click “I agree to the terms of service”, and move on. Taking the time to carefully read about the application’s rules and guidelines may actually give you wisdom about how the application operates.

Monotony: The content that you are posting has to be constantly engaging to your followers. Social media is primarily visual content, so keeping things fresh yet consistent is key.

Narcissism: No one likes to see selfie after selfie from someone who is always posting about how great their life is. If you want to be successful with your social media, make it less about you and more about your audience.

Uniformity: This kind of goes along with what I mentioned under monotony, but ultimately you want to have a consistent “look” for your brand. That doesn’t mean posting the exact same thing on each platform. Twitter is primarily text-based. Use that to your advantage. Instagram is primarily photo-based. Use that to your advantage.

Freberg, Karen. Social Media for Strategic Communication. SAGE Publishing, Inc., 2018, pp. 31-33

Featured

My First Blog Post

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

Blog Post #3

Knowing how to use social media is one thing, but learning how to evaluate and interpret it is another. Knowing how to best promote your content is of vital importance if you wish for your social media account to be successful. Evaluating and measuring statistics of the performance of certain campaigns may take a little extra time and effort, but knowing your audience and what they want can help bolster your social media game.

According to the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication, the listed items are some areas that you may want to address whilst using social media:

Objectives
Inputs
Activities
Outputs
Outtakes
Outcomes
Impact

While managing your social media account, you’ll want to make sure that you have a consistent game plan. Forming a strategy before randomly posting content that may not best represent your brand is an essential to running a successful account. Be sure to identify who your key audience members are, interact with your audience, keep your content consistent, yet fresh amongst all posts, note how well your content is received and identify things that you may do in the future to better the brand.

Starting off a new account with these intentions will help boost your impact on your audience members.

Blog Post #2

What is a personal brand?

A personal brand is a sort of presence that you establish on various online platforms. Getting a social media account up and running to represent your brand can be kind of tricky. Right from the get go, you must be actively thinking about your reputation, what kind of content you want your audience to see, and what your end goal is. It’s easy to start up an account and start publishing content at random, but there are ways that you can better manage how you go about presenting yourself to an online forum.

Maintaining a consistent brand voice is key for keeping your content cohesive. A brand voice reflects how you communicate with your audience. Is your tone informative and detached? Or is it positive and personal?

If you want to be successful with your brand, you MUST invest time in getting to know your audience. Engage with them. Encourage them to provide feedback. Share with them and be authentic.

Know what you are talking about. Research information beforehand so that you can back yourself up with credible sources. People shouldn’t have to question whether or not you can be relied upon for quality information.

Overall, you should be creating a positive, engaging platform that presents your brand in the best possible way. Keep your content consistent, and get to know and grow your community.

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
What topics do you think you’ll write about?
Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.