Week #14- Article #2

This week I read another article that my professor wrote, this one was also about Artificial Intelligence. In this article he says his goal was to find evidence that AI wasn't going to be a big thing in the upcoming years, but he says he couldn't really find anything. In the accounting/finance world, he says the short/medium term outlook for them is okay. but the medium/long term outlook is down. He says that no one can say when or how soon, but there is a lot of evidence that AI is going to take over at a certain time in the future. 

The next are he looked at was Business Analytics/ Marketing. He says that the short-medium term outlook was excellent and that the medium- long term outlook was excellent as well. Business analytics is a fast growing area continuously year after year. On LinkedIn's list of top skills that people get hired for in 2017, it said that in the top 10 there was; Statistical Analysis and Data mining, and data presentation. The risk for automation of these jobs is still there, but not as greatly as it was in finance. 

The third are he looked at was Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs help to create jobs for people. 

But the nation is still trying to recover from that huge recession that happened a couple of years ago and this makes it hard for creating new jobs. Small businesses have been the most powerful generator of new jobs. He adds in that a survey from Bentley University says that millennials feel that career success will require them to be more entrepreneurial. Then he says, "as a society, we should do everything we possibly can to empower every young person to learn about entrepreneurship, including opportunities to take classes, participate in workshops and get support from business mentors." 

The last area that he talks about is Human Resources/Management. The short-medium term outlook for this is okay and the medium-long term outlook is also okay. The whole point of HR is to have human contact, but he says that there are aspects of HR work that can be automated. 

There is going to be a constant demand for Business Analytics and Digital Marketing. But society needs to prepare themselves for artificial intelligence in their area of work. He has another article that is super informative about artificial intelligence as well. 

Week #14- Article #1- AI

This week I read an article that our professor wrote about Artificial Intelligence, AI. He has been doing research for the past year about it and has gotten some very interesting things that he shared in his article. He gives us three perspectives on how to look at AI. He wants us to adapt to at least one of the three perspectives, they are:

1. Adapt (good): this is where we need to learn more and keep up with the news of AI.

2. Adopt (better): this is where we need to adopt AI and be involved in the management side of AI

3. Adept (best): this is where we need to get directly involved with AI, learn coding and how to work with it. 

I think these perspectives are great because if you don't adapt to AI, you could be blindsided when you happen to lose a job to robots. Crazy things are happening with this and they are happening quickly. He says in his article that within this past year of getting research, so many things have already changed. 

I happen to have a part-time job right now that could be taken over by machines any day now. I am a bank teller, and fortunately enough for me, at the bank that I work at, we haven't switched over to the many new technological advances that have come out, like some other banks have. Usually at a drive-thru at banks now, you don't see the tellers inside anymore. They have a camera outside and it shows you a teller on the other side of it, and they are helping you with your transaction. But they are not the same tellers that are inside of the bank. I'm not completely sure of how it works yet, because the bank that I work at hasn't had this problem yet. 

The other thing that is happening is that they are starting to get rid of tellers all together and they are having people become, Universal Bankers. This really means that a person is a teller and a personal banker. This isn't so much of an AI issue, but it is still a real issue for me. I am not a universal banker, I'm just a part-time teller, so this could really be a problem in the upcoming years. As long as I stay educated about AI like he says to do, then I should be okay for a while. 

Week #12- Hootsuite Certification

For this class, Social Media Marketing, we have to get a Hootsuite certification. That's a plus side of this class, we take it and learn a ton of stuff about digital marketing and we come out of it with a certification!

To get this certification, first, you have to pay $99.00, but since we are in college, we got it for free :) But after that you have take a test and get at least a 65% on the test to get the certification. There are a bunch of different reviews and things to help you understand the material that will be on the certification exam.

This is part of the courses that you can go over to prepare you for the certification exam. You can take the certification exam as many times as you'd like, but you only need a 65% to pass it. 

Week #11- More Facebook Stuff

This week in class we learned about how to look at the views and everything of our Facebook ad that we ran. I did not run a Facebook ad because I am a broke college student and didn't want to spend money that I don't have on a Facebook ad. But we did look at some cool statistics on our professors ads. There is a thing called CTR, which is click-through rate. The click-through rate of an advertisement is defined as the number of clicks on an ad divided by the number of times the ad is shown. And it is expressed through a percentage. These things are super important for businesses who really need to focus on their advertising. In my case, I'm really not worried about how many people are seeing my ad and how many people are clicking on it.

This is the equation to calculate CTR. Again things like this are really important for major businesses and even small businesses just trying to get off the ground.

Week #10- Facebook Ad

This week in class we learned how to create a Facebook ad, to try and draw more attention to our digital marketing pages. This was super cool, because it was kind of a behind the scenes look of Facebook. I never understood how much work went into making the ad and running it and having to pay for it. I just see these ads and typically scroll right through them. There is a lot of background work that goes into it. You get to chose how much you want to spend on them, and figure out when you want them to begin running and end running, unless you want them to continuously run, that's an option as well. You can also chose what you want your picture to be, like what you want the add to look like. I just chose to make it one of my blog posts that I put on there previously.

This is a preview of what the add would look like when I post it onto Facebook. It says sponsored right under the Lauren Digital Marketing, that's how you know it's an ad. And then it gives the option for people to like it, so the page gets more likes and more people will begin to read my blog! 

Week #9- What Color is Your Parachute- Ch. 7

This week in What Color is Your Parachute, it was about self-inventories. These are super important for a job hunt because you learn more about yourself and what good qualities you would bring to a job. Then, in turn, will help you find a better job that would better suite you. By doing a self-inventory you really get to see what kind of job would best fit you, and that will definitely help in your future job search. It will make you more eager to find something you are looking for. Also by doing this self-inventory, it gives you unique ways to describe yourself to potential employers. Also, having done this, if you're up against so many other people for this job, you can tell the employer your unique qualities that will make you stand out above the crowd. If you ever wanted to change your career, after doing the inventory, it would really help you to decide what career path would be good for you to go into.

There are a number of steps that go into actually doing the self-inventory. They are:
1. Mental Preparation
2. One Sheet of Paper (Digital or Physical)
3. A Number of Worksheets
4. Some Kind of Graphic or Picture
5. A prioritizing Instrument or Grid
6. Conclusion: Prioritizing the Petals

I encourage you, if you want to know more about a self inventory and what exactly each of these steps are, to go and read this book, because it's really amazing and gives a lot of other helpful tips and tricks that will really help out in the real world when looking for jobs. 

Week #9- Hootsuite Demo

Today in class we learned more about how to use Hootsuite and honestly, it's pretty cool. It's a really neat way to manage all your social media profiles. So today we learned how to add our accounts to the page.

In this screenshot it shows all the profiles I have added to Hootsuite. My Digital Marketing page, Twitter page, and LinkeIn page are all added to Hootsuite, so I can post to them simultaneously. You can add more and different profiles. I could've added my personal Facebook page, but I just decided to do my Digital Marketing Page. 

In this screenshot, it shows how to post. In the left hand side of the page, it shows the three accounts that I have linked. And just by tapping on them you can either add them or delete them to where you want to post. Next to it, in the big white box, you write what you want to post. 

In this picture you can see that my post has worked! Wahoo!

The post got sent to LinkedIn

And finally, it got posted to my Twitter! All at the same time, which is super cool!

All of this stuff is super cool and I'm super excited to continue to learn more about Hootsuite. 

Week #8- Hootsuite- Ch. 7

This week I read a chapter of Introduction to Social Media Marketing and it was about Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a took to help you manage your all your social media accounts in one central location. You can post to multiple accounts by just having this one thing. This is very helpful because once I write a blog, I have to go to each one of my different social media accounts, including: LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, so I can share my blog. Then I always forget if I already posted it on my social media or not. So this would be really helpful for me, who is forgetful sometimes. 

In class on Tuesday we made our own Hootsuite accounts and now we are going through a course to teach us how to use it. Hootsuite makes a lot of YouTube videos to help everyone learn how to use it. They are very user friendly. In the book he takes you step by step on how to use Hootsuite and especially on how to get started. The nice part about Hootsuite is that you can schedule when to post things for you. So in my case this is very helpful because like I previously said, I forget to post to some places and I don't always post a link to my blog every time I write one. So this way I can schedule when I want to have something posted and then it does it for you. How convenient! Hootsuite really helps with people who manage many different profiles. The author of the book, my professor, manages so many different pages on Facebook, so this took, I'm sure, is very helpful for him!

This is a snapshot of someone else's Hootsuite account, just so you can get a glimpse of what it looks like. We haven't gotten that far in our Hootsuite experience, but when we do, I'm sure I will have more to blog about!

 

Week #7- Social Analytics

This week in class we learned about Social Analytics, its learning how to analyze things, such as our Facebook pages we created. We got to learn how to see how many people have "liked" our page and how many people look at our posts. Where the people come from that like our page. It was actually super cool to be able to see all that.

Seeing certain things like this are super helpful to people who are really trying to market things and advertise different products, for me, I'm not too concerned about if a ton of people are liking my page or not. I'm not really trying to sell anything.

In this screenshot of my page, it shows the post that I have made to my page. Then it shows in the orange how many people I have reached. In the light blue it says how many people have clicked on my page and then in the red it shows how many reactions, comments and shares I've gotten. As you can see I'm not doing too hot. But that's okay because my grade doesn't depend on it.

Week #6- Twitter- Ch. 5

This week I read Introduction to Social Media Marketing chapter 5, and this chapter was about Twitter. I absolutely love Twitter. I think its a great way to get things out to people and to market yourself and others. There is a feature on Twitter that lets you take a post that you see and you can "retweet" it, which means it's almost like you're sharing the post again, so everyone you follow can see it once you retweet it. You can also just "like" something. When someone you follow likes something, it might pop up on your timeline because you usually like the same things.

There are certain times when people just post something funny to their Twitter and just by a couple of people looking at it at retweeting it, these people can reach hundreds of thousands of people with their one tweet that they just thought was funny. I've seen so many people who are just like you and me, get thousands of retweets on Twitter. Anything that is going on in the world will be on Twitter within a few minutes of it happening and everyone will see what is going on. I have found out about so many events that have happened in the world through Twitter. They also have a tab called "Trends for You", and this is basically like "what is everyone tweeting about right now". It shows you news, it shows you the latest celebrity gossip, it is very very useful if you want to stay up to date.

You can see in this photo is my Twitter account. Already you can see on the left hand side of the page is my Trends for you column, and then in the middle is what people are tweeting and retweeting. The first tweet that pops up is about President Trump. Everything he says usually ends up on Twitter, not to mention the fact that he already tweets a lot of what he wants to say, but anyways, news outlets will tweet clips of his press conferences and other things that are going on it the world. So if you want to promote a business or get people to start talking about a certain product, Twitter is the way to go because you can reach so many people in such a fast amount of time.

Week #5- Introduction to Social Media Marketing- Ch. 4

This week I also read Introduction to Social Media Marketing, chapter 4. This chapter was all about Facebook ads. Facebook ads are so important to businesses of all sizes. Big or small, you can have a Facebook ad. I believe Facebook ads are the most important type of ad, because they are seen by so many people, even if they don't think so. People watch videos all the time on Facebook, and usually within the first 30-45 seconds they play an ad in the middle of the video. Even if you don't have anything that you're selling, you can still make a Facebook ad. In this chapter Kelsey writes about how he wasn't selling anything, but he still made an ad to try and get people to read a story he wrote. The great thing about Facebook ads is that, you can see so much different information about the ad and how many people it reached and things like that. You can also target ads on Facebook to certain audiences.

This picture is a picture of what I would see scrolling through Facebook. This is one of the ads I would most likely click on because it talks about millennials, and I am a millennial. Also on the right side of the picture there are two other ads. One has pretty jewelry (I like pretty jewelry) and the second one is wiper blades (I'm not going to look at that one). I think Facebook ads are great. The amount of times I'm scrolling through Facebook and stumble upon an ad and actually click on it, is a lot. I'm usually the type of person who hates ads, but when I see cute clothes being promoted on Facebook, I can't help myself not to click on it. I love shopping, so Facebook ads can be dangerous for me, because I'm one of those people who will not only click on it, but I will usually end up buying something on the website it takes me to. And that's exactly what these marketers for these companies, are trying to do. They want the best picture on the ad so that it draws in the buyers, and I think that is awesome because I see it really working in my own life.

Week #4- Introduction to Social Media Marketing- Ch. 3

This week I read chapter 3 of Introduction to Social Media Marketing, and the main area of discussion for this chapter was Facebook. Facebook is a huge place to market different things, such as yourself or other products. Todd gives you ways to create a page on Facebook that can really help you get noticed by different kinds of people.

In Social Media Marketing class last week, we had to make our own Facebook pages. We all made a digital marketing page and we had to post our blogs to it. I would definitely recommend making a Facebook page for your blog or just anything you want to get more attention with. Before I posted it on my page and my own personal Facebook page I had maybe 4 views on my blog, (they were all probably just me), and once I posted it to the page I had 200 views on my blog. Every blog since is getting more and more views too.

I think Facebook is a fantastic way to get people to see things and help people to learn about whatever the page is about. Facebook is also really good about telling you how many people have seen your page and how many likes you have and a lot of the details someone who is managing a page would want to know. Facebook obviously also has its ways of making money for themselves, so if you actually want to pay Facebook, they will promote your page even more. There are a lot of things online that will help you to promote your items, Facebook is pretty cool!

Week #3- Introduction to Social Media Marketing Ch. 2

This week I read Chapter 2 of "Introduction to Social Media Marketing" by Todd Kelsey. In this chapter he discuses blogs and then says how to edit videos on YouTube. People upload videos to YouTube constantly. I've uploaded a video before, and I'm not tech savy at all. Many people do this because they have vlogs. A vlog is a blog in video form. So instead of reading everything I'm writing here, you would just listen to it instead and see me in the video. There are a lot of vloggers out there on YouTube, some just do funny videos, some do makeup tutorials, and some do exercise tutorials. There are a lot of different things you can do as a vlogger.

This is one of the vloggers that I follow on YouTube. His name is Joe Santagato. He just creates funny videos and he is just a funny guy, and he gets paid to do this. Companies can sponsor your videos and that's how people can make a living from YouTube. It would be awesome to have a vlog someday, I just don't think I have the time to keep up with filming and editing. YouTube is very helpful in terms of learning how to edit your videos. This book also goes into a great detail on how to sign up for YouTube and how to just start a simple blog and how to add screenshots to your blog. All of these tips are very helpful to new bloggers like me. 

Week #1- Making a Blog

My name is Lauren Bosman, I am a senior here at Benedictine University and my major is Psychology. This is not the typical class a Psychology major would take, but I think it will better help my understanding of people and how some people are attracted to certain ads and things like that.

This is my first blog post ever. I am super excited to learn how all this blogging stuff works. I am also really excited to learn some more about social media and how we use it so much to market different items. When I first heard about this class I was very excited because I love social media, but hate the ads that pop up all the time. So I am excited to see why those ads pop up when they do and how to maybe make those ads pop up on certain screens and not others. It's actually annoying when you watch the video, but now that I get to learn about these marketing strategies, they might start to become more interesting to me. They also have ads that just pop up on the side of the screen. Those ones I tend to just ignore.

Other things I think of when I hear the words 'Social Media Marketing', I think about Instagram and how I'll be scrolling through and see an ad for a clothing line or other retailers. Those ads are pretty interesting to me because I usually see clothes or shoes and I love both of them. I hope this class teaches me everything that I want to know and more!