Author: Katherine Angst

Tweeting Live From #NHsmc

Tweets from this Semester

Over this past semester, I have tweeted at least 4 times each week.  Below are my favorites as well as the tweets that received the most engagement determined by Twitter Analytics.

 

This tweet was sent during class when the class was discussing voice and social media.  It was a direct quote that still speaks to me because of the accuracy — Mercedes would never say “bae” in a tweet.  I was able to gain 3 retweets and 5 likes, 452 impressions and 20 engagements.

In September we were asked to create a media post.  I decided to do just that by taking two old photos of mine that I photoshopped over this summer.  I gained 4 likes, as well as 361 impressions and 23 total engagements. These are two of my photos and it was my top media tweet of September.

Never in my life have I made a GIF before this tweet.  So I decided to download a GIF making app, saved it to my phone and uploaded it to Twitter.  I was inspired in Bird Library when it was a bright sunny day and a tad early (even at 12:20pm).  My 5 likes appears to show I did a pretty good job for my first time by creating engagement from all aspects of Twitter and breaking out of my comfort zone.

As one of the first native videos that I have created using the in-app video, I was able to mix up my tweets with a video.  I was once again inspired by a late night at Bird and decided to take a video of freedom.  I gained 4 likes, probably because it is so relevant today — as I sit in Bird now writing this blog post.

 

This was one of the most exciting things that happened to me.  I was able to receive a follow back from Adweek after I sent out this tweet.  I had been tweeting previously with Adweek about their articles and one day during their Adweek Chat, I decided to ask for a follow — and got it!  I received a total of 551 impressions, and 7 likes. The fact that I was able to gain an Adweek still has me in shock.  Adweek is also one of my Top Followers

 

Breaking 60 on my Klout scores was one of my favorite things that happened as a result of COM 427.  I was able to raise my Klout score a total of 12.8 points this semester.  On this tweet I was able to gain 3 likes to date, 29 engagements and 297 impressions.

Despite the fact I sent this tweet at 1:51am, I was actually impressed that I gained 4 likes and 2 reply tweets.  I still need to use this hashtag since I find it increasingly clever and I don’t remember how I came up with it.  Maybe it will be something I pick up when I’m abroad in London.

 

I’d like to thank the alumni of Syracuse for this engagement as the tweet was directed to them.  This tweet to date gained 2 retweets, one from Professor Grygiel and the other from the NewhouseSU account.  I was also able to generate 5 likes.  According to Twitter Analytics it created 16 profile clicks, 9 hashtag clicks, generated 2,463 impressions and was my top tweet of  October.

 

Shortly after Twitter released their new feature of Twitter polls, Twitter then changed the option to favorite a tweet to liking a tweet.  Using emojis and the new features, I decided to take it to people of Twitter for how they felt.  I was able to gain 1 retweet and 10 votes.  I think this showcases the importance of staying relevant.

This tweet was inspired by the class discussion of becoming an activist.  I tweeted out to the Food Bank of CNY and generated 2 retweets and likes to date.  It has 401 impressions to date, and created 9 engagements.  This was also my top tweet of November as seen by Twitter Analytics.

 

Over this semester I tried new things and tweeted using new methods.  At the end of the day — I have to say I’m impressed with the work and engagement I have created.

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Increasing My Influence

My Knowledge

This course really helped increase my following and my Klout score because I was consistently using hashtags and creating new types of content.  This class has taught me not to be limited to just tweeting text. I have learned the importance of using GIFs and photos to create engagement.  The use of hashtags has allowed me to engage with new users.  I was able to achieve a follow from @Adweek which I would have never accomplished if I had not tweeted out to them which started from one of our COM 427 assignments.  Not only was it an extremely satisfying follow, but I worked for it and achieved it.  At the beginning of the semester, I started out with 272 followers, and I now have 324. I was able to gain 52 followers over the duration of the course which is pretty impressive, I think.

I think the recipe for my success was following the assignments and engaging with as many people and accounts as possible.  Keeping up to date with social trends and news also helps keep content fresh.  Photos and GIFs, as mentioned earlier, definitely creates more engagement probably because it breaks the clutter of the Twitter feed.  While I do not exactly know what doesn’t work to gain followers, I do think that excessively tweeting (ie. live tweeting) can cause a drop in followers.

Klout

My Klout score was directly affected by COM 427.  As you can see from the beginning of the semester in September, my Klout score started at 49.77.  By the end of the course I was able to reach a high of 62.57 which is a 12.8 point difference.  Another thing to note is that apparently jumping from a 50 Klout score to a 60 Klout score is one of the hardest things to achieve, according to my Advertising professor.  None the less, my Klout score has been a direct correlation from this social media course.

Conclusion

COM 427 has helped my social media influence skyrocket.  I was able to increase my Klout score by approximentaly 13 points and gain 52 new followers.  I learned the ins and outs of social media and I couldn’t be happier with all my new knowledge.

 

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#Trump2016

Overview

The 2016 presidential debate in going on full swing and the hashtag that is one to take a look at is none other but #Trump2016.  With a collection of both positive and negative tweets, Trump is a candidate that is being tweeted about all over the nation.

Live Tweets

Conclusion

From this collection of live tweets, it is evident that Donald Trump, regardless if you are for or against him is one to be talked about.  His social media presence is higher than any other and on September 29th, he had the highest campaign digital campaign score of 75, according to The Week.  The collection of #Trump2016 tweets are both positive and negative, some Twitter users are just putting their opinions out, and other tweets are from activist groups like @SoCal4Trump and @HispanicsTrump.  #Trump2016 also includes tweets from the presidential candidate himself, @realDonaldTrump. There is also a collection of negative tweets within the hashtag, which creates engagement with people who dislike Trump and brings another view to the hashtag feed.  Overall, #Trump2016 for the most part show that Donald Trump has doing well in the race with consistent poll updates, updates on where Trump is campaigning and supporters showing what Trump is saying during his debates that make him a good candidate.

Regardless of any political views on Donald Trump, it is important to realize that #Trump2016 is gaining constant attraction on Twitter and it seems that he will continuously gain attraction until the primary elections where Donald Trump’s fate will be decided.

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You Ready to Chill?

 

Creation

The 5×5 card centered on the idea of “Netflix and Chill”, as shown above, was created through Adobe Illustrator and my crafty glitter skills. I printed it on cardstock paper at the local Kinkos to add additional weight to glue to not seep through the paper. I then went ahead and added glitter to certain parts of the snowmen and on the TV to add a little bit of sparkle to the winter scene.

Background

“Netflix and Chill” is a term used to reference “hooking up” and is said among various college students on a daily basis. I am hoping to encourage engagement between college students between the ages of 18-24. I believe this bracket will appreciate the dual meaning of “Netflix and Chill” and will generate interest due to this clever play on words.

Even though this card is targeted towards college students, I also believe it will resonate with a variety of different consumers, specifically those who have recently graduated college. This age bracket of people still are trendy and understand the connotation that is being reached. Therefore, I think they would be an added target who would create some engagement.

Engagement Creation

I believe that my “Netflix and Chill” creation will create of lot of engagement on my various social media accounts. As of today, I have 323 followers on my Twitter, 438 on my Instagram, 6 followers on Pinterest and 890 friends on Facebook. With the power of my social media followers I believe I can be extremely successful.

Even though I have a fairly strong following on my social media accounts, I plan on adding strategic hashtags to create more engagement. This will allow me to capture as many people as possible who might not be in my target audience, but at least understand what my card is talking about. Additionally, I hope that the engagement I create on these social media platforms will go beyond what I intended in order to reach a wider spread age bracket.

One of the hashtags I plan on using during the duration, is #NetflixandChill. Looking at the recent Tweets, even L.A. Weekly is using the hashtag which means the term is one to use.

While the hashtag is not currently trending, it is one that is used fairly often. At 12:17am, on November 11th, it received 13 tweets in the past half hour.

I also plan on using the hashtag #Netflix to engage with more Netflix users and also a few others such as #giftideas and #tistheseason to attract to a wider audience who may be looking for gift ideas.

As far as the class hashtag #nhsmc, I hope that my classmates retweet and favorite my 5×5 card. I believe that my classmates will enjoy my card and find it at the very least funny and get a little chuckle out of it.

Conclusion

In the end, I believe my content will go viral because of my social following, my target of college students between 18-24 and the ability to use hashtags to appeal to a wider audience. This funny pun of chilling is something I know people will be doing this holiday season.

You can find my pin below:

[pin_widget url=”https://www.pinterest.com/pin/330310953899325157/”]

 

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A Story Through Snapchat

What makes a good story you ask?  A good story is made up of pictures, it’s made up of seconds and it’s made up of friends.  The story I am conveying is none other, but the Snapchat story.

 

 

Snapchat is one of my favorite mediums to tell a story, but it needs to have a few concrete requirements in order to be exciting.

  1. It needs to be less than 70 seconds
  2. It needs to show something funny, exciting or outrageous
  3. It shouldn’t just be about you, it should be about other people and your friends

 

By following these three things, Snapstories are more enjoyable.  Having it less than 70 seconds allows a viewer to stay interested. Even though Snapchat stories can be fast-forwarded, it is best to make sure that your viewer doesn’t get bored.  By having a funny or exciting Snapstory with people other than yourself, your content will not be fast-forwarded.  It’s one thing to have a Snapchat story, its another thing to have a story that gets talked about.

The first three things are necessary for an interesting Snap story, but it is important to make sure you don’t include the following things since they are common mistakes people make.  So don’t include:

  1. Random lights in the dark at a party
  2. The time or temperature without an image (ie. Black room)
  3. Posts shouldn’t include multiple videos in a row that aren’t funny
  4. Photos or videos that have been individually snapped to people
  5. Photos or videos in regards to the weather

Snapchat Stories should include:

  1. Geotags, but not to be over used, unless traveling somewhere exciting or life changing
  2. A progression of events
  3. Text during a video, in case sound is off

By doing these things, it will makes sure that your story is entertaining and ready to be watched.  I am not a fan of seeing weather posts, we all go to Syracuse and signed up for 30 degree weather, it isn’t necessary to make an entire Snapchat story dedicated to it. These are just a few things to make this creative medium more entertaining and worthwhile.

At the end of the day, using these ideas of a Snapchat story are relate-able to any type of story. As the creator of content, you want to make sure that the content short and to the point.  While it can be longer if necessary, it needs to be done once in a blue moon – you don’t want to be known as the person who has a 120 second Snapchat stories.  You also need to make sure that the content needs to be relate-able in some way, or outrageous.  By doing this, a person will be engaged in what was going on and will continue to read or watch the story.  Using Snapchat stories also reminds you that you can’t be selfish all the time. While a Snapchat story is about your life, you need to remember that being relate-able will keep a story alive.

 

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Budweiser #BestBuds

The Campaign

One of my favorite campaigns that I have seen within this year is the Budweiser “Best Buds” series of commercials.  These commercials have run on television, but were cleverly designed and promoted over social media.  The campaign has been running for quite some time now, and ads have been shown on both the 2014 and 2015 Super Bowl.  This campaign is not only a different taste of beer advertising but it taps into the emotion of a man and his best friend.  The one below is one of my favorites from the series, since the message is clear and makes me tear up. Every. Single. Time.

If you go to the YouTube link, you find that it has been watched over 23 million times, and liked over 60 thousand times. If that isn’t social engagement, I don’t really know what is.

In this particular advertisement, it evokes an emotion that is hard to come by in today’s era.  If an ad makes me tear up, I always consider it a good one – because I hardly tear up for anything.  The thought of a loved one dying is one thing that is hard to evoke, but instead of making it about humans, Budweiser decided to make it about the dog.  Not only is it a perfect twist, but it makes viewers realize what effect it has on our favorite four legged friends.  I think this advertisement really resonates with a lot of people – and that’s why this campaign did so well.

One of my favorite parts of this commercial and campaign is that it promotes safe drinking and driving.  I think everyone this day in age has known someone who has been in a car accident, and furthermore, I’m sure many of those people know someone who has gotten into a drunk driving accident. With the upcoming generation of millennials entering the legal drinking age, we have been taught that drinking and driving is something you should never do.  It’s very encouraging to see a beer company promoting the same thing in a way that reminds you in a lesson that isn’t a high school teacher telling you what not to do.

 

The Target

This Anheuser-Busch campaign, is targeted towards people of the legal drinking age.  However, it is more specifically targeted towards drinkers between the ages of 21-27.  Anheuser-Busch wanted to specifically capture the 21-27 target because this demographic consumes and shares content via the internet; mainly though social sites and news sources.  According to the Anheuser-Busch article, the main purpose of the campaign was to promote responsible drinking and driving.  The campaign voices that it is super important not to drink and drive, but is even more important to have a safe place to stay.  From the YouTube video that was shown, it is clear that that message has been obtained.  From other commercials, like the one below, it is a little harder to tell – but none the less, the campaign is still a strong one.

This YouTube advertisement above generated close to 59 million views and has over 246 thousand likes.  This “Puppy Love” commercial was aired during the Super Bowl XLVIII, which is why it has more views than the other ads.  This last advertisement I will show below, was aired during the Super Bowl XLIX.

“Lost Dog” commercial generated 29 million views with 120 thousand likes. This ad was as a result of the campaign’s success from the prior year.

 

The Strategy

As seen by the ads that I have posted in this article, the strategy of this campaign was to promote safe driving to all alcohol consumers.  The importance of safe drinking is one that has always been promoted by the alcohol industry, but Budweiser took it to a whole new level. Alcohol advertising is actually self-regulated, and no advertising focuses on partying or getting drunk.  Rather, alcohol advertisements focus on the taste and or social aspects of enjoying a beer with friends.

The strategy of this campaign was very smart and well thought out.  As noted before, Anheuser-Busch wanted to advertise to all alcohol consumers, and advertising online was a great way to do so because viewers would tend to see the post during the day and notice it was posted and shared by a friend.  For a discussion that is centered on safe drinking and driving, it is almost better to have a friend share the information, since its saying to a friend “hey, don’t let this happen to you, because if it does, I will be crushed.”  Budweiser, in my eyes, did everything right, they had a goal, they achieved it, and they gained a lot of earned media.  News sources listed Budweiser as having one of the best commercials on the Super Bowl – always something people talk about after the football game. Huffington Post, WGNTV, and AdWeek all promoted Budweiser through earned media.  The advertisement that ran during Super Bowl XLIX had the highest ranking by increase in positive comments according to Venture Beat.

Besides the sharing of the YouTube videos via social media, Budweiser also promoted their brand through other vehicles.  In this tweet below, you can see that Budweiser ran a sweepstakes.

This Tweet alone, which was sent on the 23rd of January 2015, generated 4,373 retweets and 2,950 favorites.

Twitter was not the source Budweiser used, they also got the Vine community involved by getting famous viner Vincent Marcus to create an ad.

Vincent Marcus made this content exclusively for Budweiser, and you know it’s an ad with “#BestBuds Budweiser #ad.”

 

Conclusion

The Budweiser brand went ahead to create content in a way that would engage users – which I think is one of the most important things to do in this time period.  If a brand doesn’t create conversation, how do you really know if you are truly reaching consumers? Budweiser understood their target and they realized how important social media is for promoting their brand.

Budweiser, I think did a phenomenal job with the #BestBuds campaign and while I would love for Budweiser to do another commercial for the 2016 Super Bowl, I doubt it will happen, but hey, it was fun while it lasted.

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#digitalmedia #winning

How do you gain the attention of millions of people?  That, is the question that advertisers and marketers face every single day.

 

Being an advertising major, I am very open to seeing ads.  I enjoy watching new commercials and observing what different brands are doing to be creative and stay in touch with their target demographics.  Nothing makes me happier than seeing a creative and clever campaign.

 

Take Coke:

 

While this is a more traditional advertisement, it is so clever because it is make an awkward situation – meeting people on the first day of college a fun one.  Honestly, it upsets me that I wasn’t able to come to college on my first day and share a Coke with another student.  To me, this grabs my attention because it is relatable and created by a brand I know and love.  This advertisement also catches my attention because it is found on YouTube, which makes the advertisement highly sharable. The first time I viewed this ad was actually through someone’s Facebook page who shared it from YouTube.  However, this advertisement stands out to me – not necessarily the average consumer.

 

In this digital age, it is even more difficult to grab people’s attention.  I get annoyed when I see content that blocks me from what I want to see, especially on the web.  I want to listen to a YouTube video when I want to.  I don’t want to have to sit and watch a minute ad in order to view my content.  I want to be able to go to a homepage and not have an annoying homepage takeover blocking what I need to do or get done.  While banner ads are fine, I am not receptive to them because I mentally block them out.  Why would I pay attention to an ad when I know where they are and how to avoid them?

 

Instagram

One of my favorite ways that advertisers have gained my attention is through Instagram.  I love being able to scroll through photos of my friends and celebrities that I follow to see one photo that captures their day or week. Advertisers have gotten creative by placing promoted ads in my feed that I often don’t think about.  I am not the type of person that looks at an Instagram account name until I see the photo.  With that, I also do not notice the promoted notification on the upper right hand side of the post.  By having these Instagram ads in my feed, I am able to like the post and be interactive with a brand or product.  I enjoy being able to see new products, and eventually when the shop button gets implemented it will be a great way to make purchasing products found on Instagram easier.

 

Target

 

In this example, you can see that this Target ad is promoting the clothing being worn by the model.  To me, I can tell it is an advertisement because of the pose and clothing that is being worn.  I enjoy this Instagram advertisement because I can look at the post and just scroll through it.  This ad is also relevant to me because I enjoy Lilly Pulitzer and I ended up going to that event.  While this post can be seen as intrusive by some people, I enjoy the simplicity and ability to just scroll through the remainder of my feed if I want to.

 

Snapchat

Advertisers also are able to gain my attention by using Snapchat stories.  When I go through a Snapchat Live story, I see sponsored advertisements.  Since this technology is new, I enjoy seeing the content that is relevant to me.  Most of the ads are similar to my lifestyle and brands that I know of, use, and wear so I enjoy them sometimes.  Snapchat also has been a good way to reach millennials and show trailer videos to which I personally enjoy because I don’t watch enough TV to view movie trailers.

 

The only issue with these Snapchat ads is that you can tell they are advertisements because it says “Sponsored” on the very bottom of the screen and the time circle also goes away during the duration of the ad.  I personally think that these snapchat ads could be more effective if it was content that was clearly recorded with a phone and thus looked more authentic.  I think this would help consumers feel like we are not being directly advertised to. This would also prevent people from clicking through the advertisements.

 

We Are Your Friends

 

An example of a trailer that was promoted using Snapchat was the Zac Efron movie We Are Your Friends.  I could not find the specific Snapchat trailer, but I did find this Tweet which is promoting people to add the movie on snapchat to get updates about the movie. I knew from social media (ie. Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook and bloggers) that Zac Efron was having a movie come out, but I had no background on the storyline because I am a busy college student.  My first priority is not to look at movie trailers but rather to finish my homework and catch up on Twitter.  But, one day when I was looking through my Snapchat stories I noticed the movie trailer.  Not only was I able to watch the trailer, but the movie resonated with me weeks after the movie’s release date.  While I have not yet seen the movie, I enjoy Zac Efron and I know I want to see the movie in the future.

 

Trying to spark conversation in this digital age is becoming harder and harder.  It’s a new medium which has no limits.  However, even though there are no limits, it can be challenging to make consumers notice your advertisement and create conversation.  I personally think that digital advertisements is the new way to advertise to millennials because of the receptivity of my generation.

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