Guest Speaker from Texas Tech Social Media

Today we had a guest speaker (Lisa) today who works for Texas Tech in the social media marketing department. She discussed several things that I think really opened people's eyes to how difficult it is to be successful in the social media from an organizations perspective. I think people have a skewed perspective of how easy and effective social media is... and it is in certain areas and instances, however for an organization using it as a marketing and branding tool, it can be extremely difficult. Everyone hears about those videos on YouTube that change the world and impacts entire corporations. For example, the "United Breaks Guitars" YouTube Video that was posted by a band on July 6, 2009 and by July 15, 2009 had reached 3 million views. For a mass media perspective if every variable lines up perfectly a video such as that "United Breaks Guitars" video, it could explode in popularity. There are so many social media users that this appears to happen extremely often and be extremely easy to accomplish, however there are entire departments that work for certain organizations that dedicate their full attention to their social media presence, and it turns out, it is extremely difficult to keep up and maintain a positive and effective branding and communications presence.

It was very interesting to hear from Lisa today about her job and how hard they work to maintain all of Texas Tech's social medias and the struggles they encounter.

Social Media and Business

We talked in class last time about a few businesses that have slowly integrated social media into their business strategy through mediums like Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, etc. Businesses provide discounts, free products, and news about specials through the mass use of a social media. This I believe for the next several years will be very successful as people of all ages are dipping their feet into social media and looking around. It is ingenious for businesses like Freebirds to send out a mass text or twitter for a free burrito or drink. They are really establishing themselves with the generation that surrounds themselves with technology and social devices, which will continue to bring popularity to them through word of mouth and just the overall branding that they are displaying. These businesses are "cool" and in tune with their market.

Facebook and Parents

We talked in class last week about how the demographics of Facebook have changed over the years and how now more than 2/3 of the Facebook users were out of college and the 18-24 age range. Also that more than 70% of Facebook users are located out of the United States.

My mom has become addicted to Facebook as well and spends lots of time catching up with older friends or playing all kinds of Facebook games with them. She also can see every single thing that happens on my Facebook, which is pretty annoying, but I don't spend a lot of time on there so there isn't much she can see, however what does annoy me is that she does use Facebook alot to talk to my girlfriend and her mom.

Car

The car seems to be working better now that I got the transmission fluid and the works flushed out. It should at least hold me off for a little longer, I was planning on buying a new truck soon anyways, so we'll see how that goes.

Car Trouble

I am the Media Director on the Exec staff of a large summer camp each year and I hired a few people to take care of the video productions while I had to stay home for summer school. I have traveled to the camp everyday to check up on things and make sure everything is flowing well. On my way yesterday, in the 106 degree weather, my car started having transmission problems about 30 minutes out. I decided I had better turn around before I got stuck out at camp for the rest of the week, I would hate to miss a few days of summer school. Needless to say, today will be spent full of car repairs and checks.