Management Platforms and Tools

This blog topic is probably the one that I have known the least about this semester, and I think it is because I don't really put that much work into my own personal social media, but I can see the needs and potential benefits that organizations can get out of this. I might repeat a little from last week because that was about organizational communications and I feel like these two topics go hand-in-hand with one another. The only social media management platform that I have had experience with is Hootsuite and it is a very useful tool. When I used it I was an intern and most Mondays would be scheduling tweets for the rest of the week. When looking more into Hootsuite for this post I noticed that it will also help you track mentions that you have on Twitter. I think that this would have been very helpful to use as it was an organizational initiative to keep track of when we were mentioned in articles and other media and we had a master list that was open for everyone to add to when we saw that. I also used a few different tools to shorten URLs when I was writing tweets that had links. I sometimes even use this in my own social media if I need to. Shorter URLs mostly help with word count in twitter, but sometimes they just look better in a different post that I can't hotlink a word, or that won't post the link without the URL there. For both scheduling posts and shortening URLs there are many different forms and platforms available and from my experience there isn't too significant of a difference between them to have a favorite to use, but again I haven't needed to use either extensively.
While looking up things to talk about on this blog I found a social media management platform called Dashburst, and I was pretty impressed with what it could do. It has a lot of the analytic side that most platforms have but it also has the capabilities of connecting with all your forms of social media and "bursting" out one post to all of them. I could see this being useful in my own social media, because to be honest most of my Facebook posts are just shared from Instagram, and I am too lazy to make a whole other post in Twitter. With Dashburst you just make one and it sends out to others. Another feature is that is updates you and can even automatically post when artists, people, creators, that follow post something as well. I think that this is a nice feature because again it helps just take everything into one form of social media, while helping manage all of the other platforms as well. I can see this being extremely beneficial for organizations as well.

Organizational Uses for Social Media

When I think about social media, I think that I first think about how I use social media, then I think about how organizations use it. Social media can potentially benefit every organization, but I think that it also comes with potential harms as well. The interaction between customers and whatever organization is involved, is key to maintaining public relations, reputation, and business. Organizations can also use social media to better communicate within the company as well as communicate outside of the company. In this blog I am mainly going to focus on the experiences that I have had or noticed that organizations have used. The summer after my freshman year of college I had an internship with a non-profit where I helped with social media, specifically with topics that we were working on as an organization. One tool that I found to be very helpful was Hootsuite. This tool made it possible to schedule tweets in advance so I didn't have to constantly tweet throughout the day. This was especially helpful when we would release a new poll, or we would have a constant feed with quotes from people signing our petition. I would get a build-up of quotes, then in one afternoon schedule tweets for the rest of the week or month. It was really easy to change the time or day of the tweets, so if something did come up and we wanted to wait to tweet something until a better time, we could easily go in and change it in Hootsuite. This helped me manage my time better and that way I could maximize the amount of work that I got done. This was also nice because we could prepare graphs, statistics, and much more, and instead of having to save it then pull it back up to tweet it once the study was released to the public, we could create the posts at the same time we made the visuals. It may seem like a little thing, but it saved a lot of time and made things much more efficient. Along the same lines learning how to hashtag hunt was a very helpful skill. This internship made me more comfortable using a hashtag in the middle of sentence instead of waiting until the end to list all of the hashtags. As talked about in class we often used #utleg #utpol because the issues that we were working on directly involved decisions that were affected by Utah legislators votes. This was important for people in the Utah legislator to see and people outside of it to know who to talk to about the issue.
On another note besides this I have noticed, and we have talked about it in class, that the public sphere of social media is important to organizations, This is a place where dialogue is fairly open to everyone and there for everyone to see. It is important that organizations use this to promote their brand and initiatives as a company in how they interact online. This can be through sharing news coverage of the organization, offering promos, showing success stories, and many more ways. When I think about organizations that I follow on my social media all of them have a strong sense of getting clear, simple, efficient information out and responding in the same way.
Organizations who use social media get many benefits from doing so, but we have also seen how in the process of trying to use social media for that benefits other organizations have ruined customer relations and it has actually done more harm than good.

Basket Ball Cop - Case Reflection

Basketball cop is another great example of how social media can be the leading influence on an initiative or a campaign becoming successful through social media. The fame that Bobby White gained through the viral video of him playing basketball with local kids that were called in for being too loud, has created a whole foundation that is aimed to help lower crime within impoverished neighborhoods. This is an idea that wouldn’t even exist or have enough support to get started if it wasn’t for the viral video. As we have seen a theme in class, when there is a problem that is made viral through social media there is often a go fund me to follow up quickly. In this instance I feel like it is a good thing and that the money is going to a trusted place. They have posted pictures of Bobby with kids that he has given new basketballs and hoops on the gofundme page and they even hosted a basketball game just this week that was between some of the local kids and police officers. I think that this is a really good campaign because the kids now look up to the police officers within the area and see them more as allies than as enemies or people to be afraid of. This is especially important as other media would probably tell these kids to not only be afraid of the police officers, but that they are hated from them and they are discriminated against by the police force. The Gainsville Police Department was quick to jump on the attention that the video was getting and commented with links to their twitter page, which is actually pretty stellar. I don’t know of many police departments that have such a strong following base, but because of the video the GDP has now gotten more attention with other programs that they have been working on that they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise either.

This is important to establish as good relationships within communities like that can keep more kids out of growing up in crime and it just creates a safer environment for everyone. The idea has spread to other police stations that want to implement similar programs in their neighborhoods, with the idea that if kids have the resources to play basketball that it will keep them out of crime and creating a support system in the community. #hoopsnotcrime was started with the original video and has now gone internationally viral. I think that this is a good thing that can encourage other communities to take the same action and positively help better their community by simply donating basketball hoops and basketballs to neighborhoods that wouldn’t otherwise have them. I would be really interested to know that if this viral video didn’t catch the attention of Shaq how the circumstances would change? Would there be enough attention to get this much support enough to start a whole foundation? Shaq showing up and playing a game with these kids significantly changed their lives. He also paid for them to attend an NBA game, another opportunity these kids would not have had were it not for social media and the viral video.

Beyond this incredible initiative that has been started I also think that it is interesting to compare reactions that the public has had to this viral video versus the viral comment that we had a case reflection on early this semester with Killroy’s Bar. The gofundme for that received so much more attention and money that completely passed the amount needed for the victim’s medical costs. The basketball cop gofundme, which I would argue has much more of a positive impact and an actual need, hasn’t received nearly the amount of money as quickly as the other. I think that this is a shame. This comparison is a good example as to how social media can be disappointing when people rather support an outrage rather than a positive community program. I think that this is not a rare occurrence. There are several really important and deserving causes that receive little attention while other stupid things get a ton of attention and therefore money. 

Class on the Cloud

Beyond learning that cats are superior to dogs (thanks for posing the question Max it was a fun thread) and that Travis has a mustache just like a cat,  

I learned that Twitter is a more useful app than I thought in the first place. In had a Twitter for a while and I wasn’t utilizing it much so I decided to delete it, just a few months before this class….that I needed Twitter for. So I got my Twitter back and I have only used it for this class recently. The class day on the cloud made me realize how easily accessible things are on Twitter. I have mentioned in class before that for a summer internship I had, I was often responsible for tweeting about our campaign and different things that we were involved with that summer and I would always hashtag notable things or key phrases that were often used and I saw how it worked then, but I didn’t hashtag hunt as much as I could have. I would use other hashtags that community partners were using and ones that were already established, which made it easier for me, but I think that the reason why I did that was shown to me during this class. I think that Twitter (and many other social media sites but for this activity we will just talk about Twitter) is super helpful in getting mass interaction in a quick and easy way. It is easy to provide a short explanation and link that people can follow. I also found it somewhat to come difficult to come up with a good social media question that was short enough. I got an answer during class (thanks Prof Parker) then a random answer the next day form eClincher which turns out to be a social media managing company.

 I think that if I wanted to have a substantial discussion or get advice about a topic, I would not choose to do that on Twitter because of the 140 character limit. However, if I was to do it on Facebook then only my friends would see the post and respond to the post, while I feel Twitter has much more of a capability to reach outside of my direct network of people. Micro-blogging is interesting because I feel like people make a lot of claims that they don’t really have to back up (unless they provide link to something else, which people should do more) what they are saying and provide any warrants to their claims. I feel like this is harmful to important dialogue, but again with the right hashtags it can reach a wider network. For silly banter with friends this doesn’t matter that much, but when it comes to organizations using Twitter I think that it is a challenge. Sadly, Dan Croll only liked my tweet to him and didn’t respond. This doesn’t mean I am any less of fan, or that I will stop liking every single one of his posts, it just means that keep #fangirling shamelessly and using Twitter a little better than I did in the past.