A Look Into My Life

This week was crazy for me. In one of my previous blogs, I talked about recruitment and after recruitment comes big/little. This is very different from the potential big standpoint. 16 new members accepted their bid for Zeta Tau Alpha two weeks ago, and now it's time for them to get bigs. Each girl gets one big and it's based off of how close you are to a girl that doesn't already have a little. Well unfortunately this year there were 16 new members and 22 potential bigs. This means six girls weren't getting littles. Big/little pairs are really important in a sorority, so it is very disheartening to not get a little. I really thought I wasn't going to get a little and would have to wait until next year, until I met someone that I connected with on a deep level. This new member has been through similar life experiences and I have never met someone that I relate to so much.  I decided this is the girl I want as my little. Because decisions are made basically on th...

This week we started a new book and this book is more of a textbook. I'm not going to lie, it is harder to read because it is a textbook and not a regular book but oh well. Today I read Chapter 2 and it is all about ethics. I actually did find this chapter interesting because I have taken two different ethics classes and it's nice to see it put into the perspective of social media. A lot of times you don't really think a whole lot about ethics when just posting your next picture on Instagram because it's just an everyday thing, but it can affect you more than you think. If you are running social media for a business, you have to be extra careful. This chapter tells us about the importance of waiting for permission, following laws very carefully and educating yourself. If you make one wrong post it could completely destroy the business. This could be difficult in today's society. One post can be taken the complete wrong way and it could turn into a bad ethical si...

Let me tell you about the best application invention yet; Venmo. Venmo is an app you connect your bank account or your credit/debit card to and you can transfer money to and from your account by sending people money or receiving money from people. This app has been the biggest life saver in college. My first week of college I was buying a textbook from an upperclassman and the first thing she asked me was, "do you have Venmo?" I was so confused and just said no. The next day it felt like, I was getting food with a friend and she said, "you can just Venmo me." This is when I decided it was basically a necessity on a college campus. Now i don't go at least a week without using this app. I've noticed it not only reaching younger crowds, but older too. A lot of parents use Venmo to send their kids money while they're here at school. My mom actually Venmoed me one dollar the only day to tell me she has it now. (I wish it was a larger amount but hey, I...

This past weekend was recruitment weekend here at ONU. For those of you that aren't familiar with recruitment, this is a weekend full of rounds of girls and sororities where new members meet all the sororities and try to get a bid from their favorite to find their "home" in Greek life. Last year I went through recruitment to find my home as a new member, but this year I got to be on the other side of it. Going into the weekend all I could think about was how overwhelmed I was going to be and all the time recruitment was going to take up. And although it was overwhelming and time consuming, I had one of the best weekends with my sisters. Spending five or six hours with my sisters three nights in a row really gave me the chance to get to know some of my sisters on a more personal level and I am so grateful for it. I felt so connected to my sisters the whole weekend and it really made me remember why I joined Zeta Tau Alpha (ZTA). I got to spend so much time with my best f...

Chapter 10 of "The Art of Social Media" talks about a lot of "don'ts" when using social media. Some are obvious, some aren't, but they are all helpful either way. I have heard of a lot of people doing some of the things to make their social media better, but clearly, it's not making it better; only worse. A few of my favorite points Guy makes in Chapter 10 are don't buy followers or likes, don't ask people to follow you, and don't swear. He tells us that buying followers or likes makes you look worse because when you buy these you don't get the response you need to actually help your business succeed. Not to mention, being a young female on social media, I can easily point out the people that buy their followers because they always have a lot of followers, but very little likes. It honestly makes you look worse. He also tells us to not ask people to follow you. He basically says if your social media is good enough you shouldn't n...

This past week I was assigned to make a podcast interviewing a social media expert in my Principles of Social Media class. I decided to do my interview with my mom, Cyndi Newman. She is the owner of a small business dress boutique called She Said Yes! She purchased the business in August 2008 and has had social media ever since. She realizes the importance of social media and has a lot of experience using it, so I figured she was the perfect person to interview. The five questions I asked her were: 1. What is your target audience? 2. What types of posts have you found work best for all social media? 3. Do you use different social media platforms for different reasons? Ex. Does Facebook reach a  different audience than Instagram? Or do they all reach the same audience? 4. How has social media changed the dynamic of your business? 5. What are some positive and negative effects of social media in your industry? My podcast gives you all the answers so feel free to take...

So, let me tell you about one of the best and most exciting weekends I've ever had. It was this past May when my cousin, Blake, and I formed a duo singing group and decided to start booking shows and we also decided to think even bigger. June 22, 2019 Blake and I traveled to Chicago to audition for The Voice . Both of us have auditioned for The Voice and American Idol before but we decided this time to audition together instead of separately, and needless to say, it was a pretty successful trip. What a lot of people don't know is there are three or four rounds with one producer before you can audition for the celebrity judges. These pre rounds are really hard to get through because they see so many people, you really have to do something extravagant to strike the producer's interest. Lucky for us, our duo did what it was supposed to and we were asked to sing again then we were put through to the next round. Blake's sister auditioned for The Voice a while back an...

Planning events can be tough but getting the word out can be easier than ever with social media. I would say most popular events are annual and the best way to get people to come to the next event is market your current event hard. "The Art of Social Media" does a good job of describing how to socialize events. A couple points that stand out to me is creating a short hashtag that never gets old. For example, you could use a shortened version of your event name and the year. This was people can always remember what the hashtag is, and it keeps circulating. It wouldn't be hard to keep up with posts that are all using the same hashtag. You also want to stress the use of the hashtag. You want to use it for every post you post and have the people attending use it as well. You can also provide a live stream of the event. This could be in form of a live video like on Facebook or even just a live stream of posts like tweets on twitter. This would help keep your audience outsi...

Social media is so big for my generation, but I still hear about some parents not knowing how to use it. I'm jealous of those people. My mom started using social media when she let me have it so she has had the most popular forms of social media for a long time. I still have to teach her some things, but every once-in-a-while I catch her teaching me new things and that freaks me out. How can my mom be so tech savvy? The answer is her bridal and formal store called She Said Yes . My mom bought She Said Yes 11 years ago. A store of this nature means you have to keep up with social media because that is the best advertising for the teenage audience. She has had Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter from the very beginning of her business and has learned clever ways to market her store using these platforms. Although it's annoying having her constantly monitoring my posts at age 21, it's still nice to know she is keeping up to help build her business. She has found that social ...

When you hear someone is a model what do you picture? A beautiful girl with flawless hair, skin, makeup? Maybe someone that's really tall and slender.  Yeah, I did too, well until I had the chance to model myself. I never in a million years would have imagined that I could have the opportunity to model for anyone at all. I am 5 feet, 5 inches tall, I weigh way more than a typical model and I have more visible muscle than most girls do, but this didn't prevent me from booking my first modeling job in 2016. I was so excited because I had traveled to shows with my mom to buy dresses for her bridal and formal store for a few years already and every time I wanted to model so bad but never thought I would get the chance. Like I said before, I did my first show in March 2016 and I have continued modeling since. I have modeled for two dress designers; Rachel Allan and House of Wu . With a job this like comes traveling, but I can't complain. I have traveled to cities like Chica...

The next two chapters we read this week were Chapter 3 and Chapter 4. In Chapter 3 there were two points that I really agree with; be brief and be organized. The book touches on the "sweet spots" for the different social media pages and ways to organize your posts so they are easier to read, but it's also not too hard to figure out after using social media for almost nine years now. I have found that the shorter the caption on my Instagram post or the shorter my tweet is on Twitter, the more reaction I get because it's easier to just quickly react to while people are scrolling through social media. However, I could see how a business would be able to use longer post because they do have more information to relay to their audience. The book states the sweet spot for tweets is 100 words, blogs is 500 to 1000 words and Facebook is two or three sentences. I have also found when I post more organized and visually appealing posts, people will take more time to read it. ...

Keeping up with personal social media accounts is easy right? So how much harder can running a group or organization's social media be? This is exactly what I thought before taking over the role of social media manager for my signing duo that I have formed with my cousin. We decided to start singing together at the beginning of summer this past year for a singing competition in my hometown. We ended up winning the competition so we decided to not stop at this competition and began booking shows. One of our first steps in creating the duo was creating social media. My cousin isn't big into social media, so I decided to take it over. I created a little bit of a following on my own personal social media accounts so I figured it would be easy; plus, I'm working on my Bachelor's in Marketing and a minor in Social Media. This was right up my alley and it made me kind of excited to take on this role. But let me tell you, running a business type Instagram and/or Facebook is...