This course, to me was a lot like going to an art museum. When the course began, we started with assignments that were surface level and allowed us to reflect on our own lives. The assignments were fun, easy to understand and relateable. The amount of thought needed in order to complete the assignments was very minimal. This is much like going to an art museum and starting off in an exhibit of paintings of well known cartoons or paintings of a celebrity. Here the artwork is fun and we can understand it because we have seen the subjects outside of the museum. Not much thought is needed into understanding the deeper meanings of the paintings simply because there is no deeper meaning.

Then we moved along to the readings. Given that many of the readings were not written in this decade, we were required to turn on our reading comprehension skills. For me personally, I found the readings difficult to get through. They were extremely long and the diction in some of them threw me completely off. I had to use context clues sometimes in order to understand enough to pull out nuggets that I could talk about. This to me is much like looking an abstract painting that is hard to understand. The more you look at it, the more you see that there is an amazing deeper meaning within the painting, however you just can not quite grasp what it is. You start looking at little things here and there within the painting that can help you put together what the painting might actually mean. Being asked to pull out a nugget from a reading is equivalent to somebody asking you “hey what do you think this painting means? ” or “how does this painting make you feel?” In the end there really is no right or wrong answer, it is all based on your own personal interpretation.

Finally, we made it to the main featured exhibit, the Final IP. All the assignments that led to the Final IP were smaller exhibits that related to the featured exhibit, but were not exactly the main attraction. The Final IP was like the exhibit that make flyers for that will only be in the museum for a limited amount of time. This is what most people came to see.

Overall, my experience with this class has not been the best. Even though in reality I enjoy art and museums, for the purpose of this metaphor I am a preteen who was dragged along on the family trip to the museum and I am disinterested by nearly everything that I see. With this class, I found it very difficult to be engaged in this class. Even with my Final IP which was on a topic that I eventually would like to have a career. As a student at vcu, I am an extremely abstract thinker. I do not do well in environments that are not hands on, or one on one with my instructor or peers (sometimes; I am not too fond of group projects). In addition, I do not do well when it comes to a lot of direction and rules. This class was filled with them. I find it that I can be a great writer when I am given little direction, however I know that this is something that I will have to get over since many of the writing done in college is structured. This class has been a learning experience for me and I am now ready to leave the museum.

http://rampages.us/nadia200/final-ip-project/

1. Social media marketing can improve communication between businesses and customers.

“Social media enables both reach and engagement through judicious use of all formats and platforms” (Hanna et al.)

via GIPHY

2. Social media marketing can increase customer loyalty.

“When companies engage and respond to customer service requests over social media, those customers end up spending 20% to 40% more with the company” (Social Media Today).

via GIPHY

3. Social Media marketing is cost effective.

“Unlike traditional media that are often cost prohibitive to many companies, a social media strategy does not require astronomical budgeting” (Hanna et al.)

via GIPHY

via GIPHY

4. Social media marketing can increase brand awareness.

“Without social media, your inbound traffic is limited to people already familiar with your brand and individuals searching for keywords you currently rank for. Every social media profile you add is another path leading back to your site, and every piece of content you syndicate on those profiles is another opportunity for a new visitor” (Forbes).

via GIPHY

Before joining social media, the only way I could get in contact with a business was if I went in to the business directly, I called it, or emailed it. The first option was the only way to guarantee a same day response, but even then you could still get hit with the line: “Sorry, my manager is not here right now; you will have to come back another time”. Being able to get in contact with businesses was a very difficult process in the past. However, new ways to improve customer communication are forming. A couple months ago , I ordered a pair of pants from a company called ASOS. Honestly, I knew I should not have bought them because the pants that I really wanted were sold out. But me being the impulse buyer that I am, I bought the other pants because I was determined to not leave the site until I bought something. Two days later I hopped back on to ASOS’ website just to find that the pants I initially wanted were back in stock. I was so heated, I logged on to Twitter and tweeted ASOS’ customer service account. To my surprise I got a tweet back almost instantly from an employee eager to fix my problem. Now this is not the first time I had an issue with ASOS, however, I used to have to go through a long annoying process starting with making a complaint on the website then waiting hours for a reply in my email. After that there was a long drawn out process of back and forth emailing, sometimes for days, until the problem was solved. Being able to tweet ASOS cut that process down by over half the time.

July, 26 2010. This marks the day of my fourteenth birthday as well as the day of my very first Facebook post. By officially becoming an avid user of social media, I unknowingly immersed myself into the world of “Social Media Marketing”, an up and coming marketing strategy that many businesses and companies were beginning to use and find success with. Now currently in 2015, thousands of businesses, currently have accounts on social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the like. With so many businesses using social media as a marketing technique, this begs the question: How does the usage of social media add to the success of a business or company? Although there are those that say social media can be harmful to a business’ reputation, social media marketing can actually be instrumental to a business’ success because it creates a communication bridge between the business and the customer, increases customer loyalty, is cost effective, and increases brand awareness.

Idea from a source:

“67% of consumers have used a company’s social media site for servicing”

This idea serves as the basis of my argument. The most important thing a business should focus on is communication between its customers. Whether it’s solving a customer’s problem or relaying the business’s message to current and potential customers. Good communication leads to positive results. When a business uses social media, it creates another medium for customers to reach them. Social media also allows for businesses to address customers in a timely fashion, thus improving communication.

Research Trends

Nugget: “Devices” which variously store, retrieve, or manipulate information in the form of messages embedded in a medium have been in existence for thousands of years. People use them to communicate ideas and feelings both to others and back to themselves. Although thinking goes on in one’s head, external media serve to materialize thoughts and, through feedback, to augment the actual paths the thinking follows

This nugget actually relates to my IP project more than I thought it would. The nugget discusses how people use “devices” and different mediums, more specifically, technology, to convey messages to others. It essentially goes on to say that these devices make our ideas come to life by materializing our thoughts and through feedback it can influence the way we think. My IP project talks about how businesses use social media to make themselves more successful. One of the ways social media increases the success of a business is by strengthening the communication between the business and its customers. Social media is a medium that businesses use to communicate with its customers; the customers’ idea of the business (whether they like it or not) can be heavily influenced by his/her interaction with the business through social media.

I am studying the use of social media by businesses and company.

because I want to find out how social media usage can add to the success of a business and/or company.

 in order to help my readers understand the growing value in social media in the business world. 

How does the usage of social media affect the success of a business/company?

This article explains how a variety of businesses used social media to better reach/communicate with their customers. Companies such as Whole Foods used Twitter to address customer concerns. This tactic improved their customers’ experience, which in turn added to the success of the company.

http://fortune.com/2014/01/16/social-media-superstars-2014-fortunes-best-companies-to-work-for/

This article by the Huffington Post  talks about how the restaurant chain, IHOP, began using twitter as a means to connect with a younger audience. The voice behind the tweets seems to be a young, hip teenager. However, the company got in trouble when they tweeted a slightly sexist tweet. Which begs the question, is having too strong of a social media presence harmful to business? It is advised to the average person to be careful what you put online because your employers may be watching. But could the same apply to businesses and companies. Should they be careful about what they post because their customers are watching? One could say that customers actually do employ businesses and companies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ihop-tweet-breast-joke_56249e61e4b08589ef47eacb

Call For Response

How do you feel about business using the same social media platforms as you?

Do you feel that social media usage by business unprofessional?

Would you follow a business on social media?

1. Research Question: How does Social Media affect the success of a business?

2. Search terms: Social Media Marketing

3. The article on Social Media Marketing in China seems to be very promising. It answers my research question spot on. It explains how businesses in China used social media to help boost their business.