by A recap of the #SOJCssm Twitter conversation 1/17/17-1/18/17
By Chandler Baker @bakechan21, Katy Edgington @KatyEdgington and Sarah Johnson @surruhjean
In today’s world, everything revolves around social media. When we wake up, most of us check our phones. Whether it be for entertainment purposes, out of habit or to stay updated on the news, there is always a reason to access our SNSs (social networking sites).
There is so much to social media that we may never be able to understand all of it, especially when it is changing every day. Virtually everyone utilizes SNSs in some way, shape or form, however, the mainstream media no longer provides the only, or even at times most important, outlet for public discussion of news. Have social networks transformed the gatekeeping theory? Without realizing it, we are purposefully and intentionally deciding what media we consume.
How people use social media, what kind of media they are consuming and favorite social media influencers were some of the themes that drove the class discussion on Wednesday.
One thing we do know is this: We purposefully and intentionally consumed all parts of the #SOJCssm Twitter conversation on Wednesday.
The Day of Class:
After waiting a whole week for our second day of class, we were ready to jump back into the world of Strategic Social Media. At the start of class, most of us had our phones and laptops out, prepared to tweet the class away. The three of us had a ton of help live tweeting the morning’s discussion.
We started by talking about our upcoming case study analysis and midterm project. The options for the case study are endless! Campaigns are everywhere and happen within every kind of organization. If you are feeling stuck or overwhelmed, Kelli recommends searching http://socialmedia.org/, http://digiday.com/, http://osocio.org/ to get started.
Who knew that the Oreo cookie could have such a big effect on the marketing world? After getting a glimpse at our clients for the big midterm project, the Twitter feed boomed as students tweeted about their favorite clients. Now, for the real discussion though: influencers, gatekeeping and the social ladder.
What is “influence?” How is it portrayed online? Influencers are people who set trends, sway audiences and drive conversations. From Chrissy Teigen to Tom Hanks, the Twitter feed blew up with shoutouts to our top influencers. At this point our classmates were almost tweeting more frequently than the three of us could digest in real time.
Think about your own feed — your own network. Everyone has influencers. Some of them may be large, and some may be relatively small. It looks different for everyone.
We are active participants in making choices that will satisfy our needs, wants and desires based on the media we consume. Think about the last social networking activity you did before reading this article. What “gratification” were you satisfying?
We are not passive users, but actively picking and choosing what media we wish to consume. How we consume different SNSs, and why, reflects the type of user we are.
Some other highlights from Wednesday’s class were:
- A Twitter poll about whether we prefer coffee or tea
- Videos and photos of puppies
- Gifs to grab classmates’ attention
- Statistics on uses for social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat (It was not too surprising to learn that Twitter was rated the lowest for showing affection out of all of the SNSs).
Unfortunately the class had to end about thirty minutes early, but even with the shorter class time our group managed to send out a total of 69 tweets and the class as a whole generated a total of 113 tweets. We had an amazing time leading the class Twitter conversation. It is obvious that this term will be fun, engaging and informative!
