Week 13 - Learning A Lot About A Lot

This week we're focusing on social media and how it's relevant to today's lifestyles.  Not just looking at the beasts of Social Media as marketing tools, advertising platforms, or ways to spread information, the real goals of this week's assignments are to open our minds to all the ways Social Media are integrated into our lives, and how to use and understand that information.

I was introduced to a totally new facet of social media via Twitter, called  a TweetDeck.  I had no idea that even existed, and I'm fairly savvy regarding online platforms and Social Media as a whole.  I certainly would't consider myself an expert, as I am willingly not extremely involved, but I use accounts such as Facebook regularly.  I have a Twitter account, and an Instagram, but I have to admit that I only seldomly get on them to explore, much less post.

Based on what I have completed this week, I can say that I have learned a new way to use social media as a platform to my benefit professionally.  I kind of hate that fact that business really have to have social media sites these days in order to be relevant.  But they function as much more than places consumers can visit to learn more about brands and brand identities.  They also function as landing grounds for consumers to actively communicate and participate with the brands they either love or hate, but still post about.  Not to mention, Facebook has some of the richest analytics mines for business, including measurable reach.

In addition to social media topics, we were instructed to read a really interesting article called "Contagious: Why Things Catch On" by Jonah Berger.  The concepts in the article weren't new to me, but the article was an excellent read that was extremely well written.  The author has a way with words, and even the most uninteresting topic can become interesting when presented in a skillful way.  Though I was familiar with the main ideas of the article, I appreciated the way he organized his ideas and the STEPPS process.  Check it out here, if you're interested: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_x8VqUy9HyNRUdRWGZGSW9KLU0/view?pli=1

Overall, this week was informative and a bit inspirational.  I got to write about things a actually know a bit about, and read an article that only enhanced those ideas.  We'll see what next week has in store soon!