Summer 2014: The Difference Graduating Makes

It’s amazing how summer went from being this glorious three months of uncontrolled freedom to just another three months in which the sun is simply shining more than normal.

Summer is no longer what it used to be. When I was younger, summer meant freedom, happiness, and most importantly, sunshine. Growing up in Oregon where I saw rain nine months out of the year, it was nice to have a break and have our 70-80 degree weather and attempt at getting tan. Summer meant tennis, riding bikes, sprinklers, and staying up “late”. During college, it became a time where I moved up my work hours to almost 40 hours a week, but there was still this freedom that existed. I felt like I was getting a break from my college life and had the freedom to do whatever I wanted. Sure, I had that same freedom when I went back to school, but in between homework, classes, work, and meetings, I felt as though my freedom was restricted to a few hours towards the end of my day, or in the early morning.

Now, summer has simply become a time when the sun comes out almost daily and I wake up every morning with the sunrise (thanks east facing window). When watching TV shows, I can say that I’ll finish it when I finish it, whereas in previous summers, there was always that deadline that you wanted to finish before the end of the summer and school starts. There’s no time limit on anything anymore. No sense of urgency to fit in all my “summer activities”. I can certainly do more fun outdoor activities during the next few months than I can other times of the year, but if I want to also do a fun activity in September when it’s still sunny, I can. There’s no school or homework or anything other than work.

The idea that work is my only activity is strange. Work is literally the only thing I “have to do”. With the other time I can: sleep, eat, drink, watch TV, read a book, go for a walk, visit my parents, hang out with friends. College had so many responsibilities. Work, classes, meetings, homework, activities. I felt like I barely had time to myself. But now here I am with this weird amount of free time and I don’t know quite what to do with it all.

I have no obligations on my days off. And I have days off. Like wut. There are days when I have nothing, nothing in my calendar. Even during my “free” weekends in college, I had plans. People to see, retreats to attend, study groups to go to. I’ve spent 16 years of my life in school and with everything planned out. Now I’m just planning on what TV shows I’m going to watch and in what order I’m going to watch them. Sometimes I think about developing an exercise routine, just to give myself something else to do. And I hate exercise…that’s telling you something right there. The other day? I got so bored I decided I should shower again. Then when it only took 20 minutes, I actually groaned out loud.

My friend invited me to hang out with him and I was literally bouncing with so much energy. I was outside, moving around, socializing, and not sitting in my apartment, binge watching another TV show. I maintain that binge watching can only be effective if you have other things going on in your life. It’s more entertaining to binge watch Orange is the New Black when you have 10 other things you could be doing. It’s that appeal of procrastinating, which we all deny we’re attracted to, but deep down we know we answer the door whenever procrastination is here.

I think part of it is that I feel lazy. Lazy and unproductive. Having a routine and structure makes you feel productive, even if you don’t do anything all day. You at least have events to attend, meetings to be at, and people to talk to. I don’t do good with unproductivity, which is probably why I want to be an event planner…aka always busy and having something to do.

So the rest of this summer will be interesting. Mostly because I’m trying to go with the flow and just let things happen. We’ll see how long this lasts. I’ll give myself about a month, maybe a little longer if I get hooked on a TV show.

Alright Summer 2014. Come at me.

The Beginning of the End

I’d say that graduating college is a lot like falling off a really big cliff. One day, you’re overlooking the world. You’re happy, on top, and filled with all this potential and inspiration to do big things. Life is pretty good on top of the cliff; it’s comfortable and familiar. You worked for years to get to the top and now that you’re here, you never want to leave. But people keep telling you that once you get off the cliff, life is even better. It’s more interesting, exciting, and full of so much greatness that you can’t imagine until you experience it. What they forget to say is that the falling part sucks. A lot.

So I woke up on the Monday after graduation expecting a lot more out my post graduate life than what I actually got. Since I’m already going with the falling off the cliff visual, let’s add another. Imagine that you’re told you are going to receive the best meal of your life (I’m obviously hungry right now). You’re told this amazing meal is awaiting you. However, you have to leave the feast of food you’re currently enjoying. You’re hesitant because the feast before you is amazing. But this promise of the best meal ever is enticing. So you leave your amazing meal and go out in search of this other meal. But now you’re told that you aren’t going to get it right now. You’ll have to wait for it. You’ll have to wait and settle for this other meal, which isn’t very good and tastes as bad as it looks.

I woke up on Monday and discovered that postgraduate life is a lot like that disappointing meal. I’m waiting on this amazing life that I’m promised and for the time being, I have to settle for this other meal, which is basically the same four things on a cycle: sleeping, eating, drinking, watching Netflix. Now don’t get me wrong. I love doing all four of those things without having anywhere to be. But had you asked me before graduation what I was going to be doing after college, I wouldn’t have told you I would be drinking copious amounts of wine and sleeping a lot.

So as we come to end of week one of being out of college and I realize that what lies before me is a long stretch of road and I’m just at the beginning of the race (I really need to stop it with all these cliff, food, and now running visuals). So this blog came to me the other day while commuting to work and hopefully it’ll provide some much needed reflection about what is going to happen over the next few months as I navigate this postgraduate journey.

While this post is mostly a negatively view of my life, I am optimistic. I know it will “get better” (for lack of a better phrase), and honestly, life isn’t too bad right now. Drinking and eating until I sleep for 12 hours and then watch Netflix for another 12? Life could be worse. Thank God it isn’t. Just not quite what I was expecting.

So for now, I’ll settle for this unscheduled, unplanned adventure that will get me somewhere someday. #onedayatatime #theressomepostivity

Also, let’s talk about how the song: Ain’t It Fun by Paramore is actually written about the life of college graduates. But maybe that’s just me…anyways, here’s a link to the lyric video so you can make your own judgment. All I’m saying is that some of the phrases are very similar. “Ain’t it fun living in the real world?” is the prime example…Anwyays, ignore me. I will literally find meaning in anything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izx9ADLjgbM

Now, as we wrap up the quarter, let’s reflect on Internet and privacy

I think one of my main concerns with privacy on the Internet is how far is too far in terms of collecting data. There is a line between collecting data for data analysis purposes and using that data in an unethical or inappropriate way. There is this increasing fear about giving away private information on the Internet, but there are still many who are oblivious to how much information they actually are giving away. Think about signing up for Facebook and how much information you give by simply creating an account. This is worrisome because it doesn’t take much to steal someone’s identity and if someone gives the wrong person the right kind of information, it could end up being a bad situation.

However, if people are giving away their information, then do they have a right to privacy? And here is the ethical debate happening with privacy on the Internet. If you willingly give away the information to a site, like Facebook, are you willingly giving them the ability to do what they want with the information, within reason? Obviously, they shouldn’t abuse it, but you still gave it to them in the first place. But when security is breached and information is taken from that site, obviously that is not at fault of the person who gave their information. And now we can cycle back to giving away information in the first place. If you give away your info, are you also taking on the risk that someone may try and steal it?

Another interesting thing is that the Internet is where a lot of communicatation is in today’s world. So there’s this difficult situation where you don’t want to give up your information on the web, but in order to keep up with today’s fast pace world, you need to be on the Internet. So it’s almost as though you don’t have a choice with giving up your information.

Also, can we talk about how online platforms are just getting smarter in general? I changed my Facebook password recently and when I tried to sign in using my old password, Facebook informed me that it knew it was me, but I was using the wrong password. Then it reminded me that I had just changed my password.

It’s crazy to think how far the Internet has come and how far it will continue to grow in the years to come.

We All Love Stories, Especially When They Touch Our Hearts

I just discovered this video the other day and found it extremely interesting. It’s put on by a group called Save the Children USA and it takes a new spin on “sexy commercials”.

I found this to be a great story because it takes the idea that “sex/sexy sells” and tries to adopt it for a serious issue. The part of the video where the models realize that it’s not selling a product and is actually talking about a serious issue, they get uncomfortable. It also made me uncomfortable because I can’t stand watching others be uncomfortable. However, I was also intrigued to see how the models would respond to the situation. And some of them went for it; they tried to make it a sexy commercial while talking about young children dying.

By ending the video with the same models giving a call to action for people to help out with the cause, it was still using the idea that “sex sells”, just in a different way. They were hoping that people will use this video as motivation to start helping the cause.

They recently just released another video, making a more emotional attempt to get people involved with their organization.

Both of the videos appeal to different influential strategies in order to encourage people to donate. They are interesting and different ways to tell the same story about the organization, Save Children USA.

 

Ethics, Social Media, and How They Should Be Intertwined

What interests me the most when it comes to social media and ethics is how quickly something can spread across the internet and social media. If a company is seen as unethical, the news can spread like wildfire. Typically, faster than an ethical company or good news. People love reporting about bad news or spreading the bad actions of companies.

An example of how a company’s bad ethics were called into question and spread like wildfire amongst the Internet is the JP Morgan Twitter scandal. JP Morgan decided to open up a Q&A for their customers with the hashtag, #AskJPM.

Now this company wasn’t necessarily unethical via the Internet, but their actions and arrogance ended up with their unethical practices spreading far and wide amongst the Internet community, eventually leading to having to recall their Q&A session.

Regardless that they recalled the Q&A session, the hashtag went viral and their unethical behavior spread itself all over Twitter with a variety of people calling into question their actions as a company.

This went for hours after they recalled the Tweet and people continued to talk about the company in a negative way. It was amazing how fast the news of this spread among the internet.

SEO…Reminds me of CEO…Although, they are not the same thing at all.

In my quest for Search Engine Optimization trends and best practices, I found myself googling the phrase “SEO trends” and  “SEO best practices” to find a suitable article to discuss in this post. Is it a little ironic? Possibly. However, I did end up discovering two articles, one on mashable.com and the other on forbes.com regarding the best SEO practices.

While looking through the articles, 6 Best Practices for Modern SEO and 20 Tips, Trends, and Predictions in 2014, I picked the top seven ones I found to be most important in regards to SEO trends.

1. Local SEO is rapidly growing.
According to both Forbes and Mashable, it’s becoming easier for search engine users to search for a term and get local results first, before the national results. This means that if a user searches for “Chipotle” on Google, there will be a listing of all the Chipotle locations that are near the user’s location. Another example would be a user searched for “coffee shops”. Upon searching, they would first find a listing of the local coffee shops and cafes in their area, instead of a listing the most popular ones in the country.

2. Social and search are becoming one in the same.
Both Forbes and Mashable agree that social media is beginning to play more of a role in search. Often times when a consumer is googling a brand, seeing their Facebook or Twitter pop up will be more beneficial for both the consumer and the company. The consumer will be able to use sites they trust (like Facebook) to look up how others are reacting to a brand and see reviews by actual customers. For the company, it allows the potential for more customers. Both social and search will only continue to grow together throughout the years.

3. In the years ahead, SEO will get smarter.
Forbes talks about how SEO will only continue to get smarter in years to come, especially with identifying real website content versus unauthentic or fake content. SEO is gaining intelligence with the online world and will help combat issues that come up, such as spam websites, on the Internet.

4. SEO is starting to be more focused on content marketing.
Content marketing is becoming huge in the SEO world. Both Mashable and Forbes agree that search engines, especially Google, are getting better at identifying what is good content and what is fake or spam content (see #3 trend). As a company, your goal is to make sure that your content is honest and true. Then when you consumers are searching for your brand or company, the first results they receive will be the honest ones you posted.

 5. Stay honest. 
Similarly to the above trend, staying honest will help keep consumers on your side and learn to trust your brand. Honesty will always win out. Meaning that if you create a good product, then people will soon see that and buy it. There is no reason to lie in the beginning just to get higher sales. Be honest, wait it out, and customers will come to you. You can keep a reputation in the long run or destroy it in the short  run by trying to attract consumers with lies.

6. Natural language, aka thinking of people, not robots, is more important when using keywords. 
Forbes and Mashable agree that people want to feel a sense of “talking to search engines”. They want to search for terms that are similar to the way that speak, or what we can call: their “natural” language. So when utilizing keywords, make sure to be thinking of how people speak and think rather than what a robot or computer would search for. Both are certainly different in their approaches to searching.

7. SEO is going to stay with us as the years to come.
SEO isn’t going anywhere. Forbes makes it clear that companies need to get used to SEO and use it to their advantage. Otherwise, they will lose out in many opportunities to help promote their brand and company.

Overall, in terms of best practices for SEO,  I find that being honest and working on creating good content are the most important for companies to use. SEO will not be fading away anytime soon, so companies should learn to use it honestly and for the benefit of their customers first, not themselves. This will enable them to create a good reputation and a good relationship with their customers.

That Urban Outfitters Twitter Lyfe #killingit

Many companies start a Twitter and basically spend the whole time posting about their products without trying to interact with their followers. Urban Outfitters seems to have found the correct balance between sharing their products and still offering funny commentary that keep their followers coming back for more.

I read this and was like…”Yeah! I agree!” Does this say anything about their product or new clothes on sale? No. But it was funny, relevant to today’s current music, and most people would probably agree with this statement. Most importantly, it kept me going through their Twitter Feed. If they have a tweet like this, then there are probably more waiting to be read and enjoyed.

Literally the next tweet was:

I clicked on the link and bam, we were at the Urban Outfitters website, in the shoe section. And the best part? I wasn’t annoyed, not one bit. They could have just posted a tweet saying, “Check out our wide selection of shoes!” Maybe that would attract people who wanted to look for shoes in the moment, but how many people are on Twitter looking for shoes? Not many. This was a clever way to get people to check out their shoe collection. I felt more positive about buying shoes, just because they hooked me with a clever line. I thought I was being taken to a photo of 500 shoes…but then it was their website and the marketing major in me was like, “Niceeeeee.”

The best part though? All of their tweets are like that. They have enticing lead-ins to a link to their website, which features a collection or new outfits. I’m more likely to go visit their website if I know that they have put some thought into their tweets. Why? I don’t know, but it’s engaging and I love it.

Honestly, this feels like something I would say if I saw a pair of shorts that I really wanted. Also, even though there was a photo attached, I still found myself clicking on the link to Urban’s website in order to see the shorts again and evaluate whether or not I would actually purchase them.

Also, what does this have to do with Urban Outfitters? Nothing. But people know Mean Girls, people watch Netflix, and this is a great way for Urban to connect with their followers without selling them anything. Also, now Urban just isn’t a place for you to get clothing, it’ll keep you updated on what’s on Netflix. They are making their Twitter a resource for their followers that goes beyond just selling clothing, which will help their brand image immensely. Their followers are going to start trusting Urban more than if they were only posting tweets about the clothing they sell.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with some more tweets to show the way they structure their product advertisement and random thoughts to appeal to their followers:

To Learn About Good Social Media Engagement, One Must Learn From the Best

Engaging people on social media can be the easiest or the hardest thing in the world. In my opinion, it’s more entertaining to watch companies attempt engagement with their customers and having it backfire in their faces (JPMorgan Twitter scandal, anyone?) But to truly understand what good social media engagement is, it’s important to look at companies and organizations who are having those good and enriching conversations with their customers via social media. I will be focusing on the podcast: Welcome to Night Vale and the YouTuber: John Green. Both have managed to stand out by having incredible social media presence and engaging with their fans.

(Left: Welcome to Night Vale Podcast photo. Right: a darling picture of John Green)

Let’s start with Welcome to Night Vale. This podcast first aired on iTunes on June 15, 2012 and will release it’s 45th episode on April 15 of this year. The podcast centers on the fictional town of Night Vale and the strange and mysterious things that happen to the town and its residents. The podcast is presented as a radio show, hosted by the amusing and adorable, Cecil Baldwin. I am not one to listen to podcasts, but someone on Tumblr mentioned it was good, so I decided to give it a try. Now from my limited knowledge of podcasts, most of them aren’t super engaged with their listeners outside of the podcast or a website. WTNV is extremely invested in its listeners and will do anything to get them involved or donate money to help keep the show continue.

There are incentives for donating such as getting your name read at the end of the podcast or, if you donate enough, getting a personalized thank you message from Cecil himself. For those that want to donate money and also get something tangible in return, there is WTNV merchandise. Some of it is created by the WTNV staff, but others are created from the fans themselves. They run a t-shirt contest every few months and the WTNV community gets to vote on their favorite shirts. The winners are then put up for sale on the WTNV website for a limited time. Sometimes if a t-shirt is particularly popular (like the one I want desperately), they might re-release it for a short amount of time.

If people want to contribute their ideas instead of their money, WTNV allows its listeners to submit ideas and writings for future episodes or audio submissions for a segment called, “The Weather”. If a listener’s suggestion is used, they will often be thanked at the end of the podcast, saying what they contributed to the show. Lastly, they decided to go on tour and give fans the opportunity to meet and greet with everyone who works on the show, including taping a live show in front of each audience. They just released their live show from their last tours, Condos, on bandcamp. You can purchase it or download it for free (it’s a donation, not a required payment). I wanted to donate, so I paid for the download and it was a great investment. The whole podcast was full of plotlines that fans had wanted to happen for a while and the writers actually listened to them. It made the experience that much more interesting for a fan, like myself

All of their communication is done through their website, Twitter, Facebook, and the podcast itself, of course. They are known to release traditional quotes with a slight tweak to make them weird and strange. WTNV fans love them and its a majority of what they post on Twitter and Facebook, as well as the way to get involved within the community. If fans ever have questions, they can ask on Twitter and will receive a vague and weird response, which is exactly what they want, since that is the nature of the show.

Now this blog post is quickly becoming a very long ramble, so I will talk through John Green quickly.

In case you forgot, the man below is John Green.

John Green is an American author and YouTuber vlogger (one who does video blogs). He has written several young adult books like The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, and An Abundance of Katherines. He also runs a vlog on YouTube that often is centered around educational themes. He is known as one of the “Vlog Brothers”; his brother, Hank Green, is also a vlogger and they make videos “to each other” about a wide variety of topics. They will often appear in videos together, like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyQi79aYfxU

Anyways, John Green is all over social media, constantly communicating and talking to his viewers and fans. He’ll often has them what he should make his videos about:

He constantly keeps his fans updated with his books, videos, and upcoming movies, as of late. His book, The Fault in Our Stars, was made into a movie and is being released later this year. John Green started his own blog about it and constantly talks about…you can’t get him to shut about it. Through his interactions with the fans of the book, the movie, or both, he’s increasing the chances of more people going out to see the movie.

He also does this awesome project called Project Awesome where he has his viewers submit videos about charities that they are involved in. Throughout the process, people vote for their favorite videos and the audience donates money to the different organizations involved. In 2013, almost $870,000 was raised through this program.

To end this long post, both groups do a good job of engaging their fans in conversations that help continue loyalty and often times lead to some kind of financial support. And they do it all using social media. #getit #awesomeposseum

 

 

The Engaging Nature of Anna Kendrick’s Twitter

Twitter is one of those social media platforms that I got under the assumption that I knew what it was about, but then I came to the realization that I knew little to nothing about it. My Twitter usage went through stages: a few starting tweets where I didn’t actually understand why I was tweeting, 60 photos that were linked from Instagram, and finally, a tweet by tweet commentary of my first tattoo experience. Since then, my twitter has been silent and I feel as though it may stay that way for a while. Twitter, to me, has always just been one of those things that never quite kept me engaged. That is, until I found Anna Kendrick’s Twitter.

Anna Kendrick, a 28 year old actress from Portland, Maine, is the star of two movies I thoroughly enjoy: Pitch Perfect and Up in the Air. Based on the fact that we were both born in cities named Portland and her self description on Twitter (picture shown below), I should have know I would enjoy any of her musings. Her twitter (twitter.com/AnnaKendrick47) is a collection of her thoughts and experiences as an actress, which usually rank in the funny or hilarious category.

 

I find her twitter engaging and interesting because she’s honest about what she’s thinking. I feel as though she often just types out whatever is currently rolling around in her mind, whether it’s about Chanel nails (shown below) or puppies curing hangovers (also shown below), she speaks whatever she feels is relevant and funny to her.

 

Her Twitter is filled with a ton of random thoughts, which makes her more real and thus, more engaging. I enjoy being able to scroll through the different thoughts and opinions she has on things. Sometimes they are on relevant topics, like the Superbowl:

 

or the Oscars:

Luckily for me, watching the Superbowl and the Oscars are something I enjoy, so getting to see her thoughts on these two events is of interest to me. Now, are any of these tweets of significant importance or enriching my knowledge of the world around me? No. But I always have viewed Twitter as being for the purpose of reading people’s random thoughts and observations. Yes, you can follow others to get news and stayed updated in the world, but I feel like often we are just trying to find other people who are just as weird and strange as us…only they are willing to share it publicly on this social media platform. They are willing to go out there and express their inner “weirdness” and we can enjoy and secretly agree. But maybe that’s just me.

Additionally,the best thing about Anna’s Twitter for me is that she often tweets exactly what I’m thinking or her tweet is something I would likely say in conversation (example below). Home girl just gets me and that makes it so I visit her Twitter weekly, if not more. I may not quite understanding Twitter or use it on a regular basis, but I will always come back to Anna’s Twitter. Us Portlandians got to stick together…even if we are from opposite sides of the US.