A Look Into My Life

I have wanted a dog since my mom got a puppy two years ago. Being up here at school can be stressful sometimes and I just want a little puppy to cuddle when I'm stressed. I thought I found her, and I was so excited but let me tell you how my dreams were crushed. Yesterday, my friend Ireland told me about this chihuahua (my favorite breed) she saw at the Lima Humane Society. Naturally I look her up and find Sophia, the dog in the picture to the left. Instantly I am in love. My mom continues to tell me I don't need her, but I continue to tell her I do. I asked her how many retweets to get her and she said 4000. I'm not even close to the number of retweets that I need but decide to message the people and ask about her anyway. Everything was perfect. She is only a year old and the cutest little thing. I asked the Humane Society about adopting her and they told me they would only let me adopt her if I took her sister too because she would be too depressed if she separated fr...

Chapter 11 was very interesting for me because it was right up my alley. When my cousin and I formed our singing duo, we decided to kind of separate roles between the two of us. He would book shows and I would run the social media to get our name out. Some of the things this chapter explained I have already experienced, in the most minor way possible of course. The book explains the best practices to keep in mind are identify the platforms that can best serve your brand, have a strategy for all aspects, got loyal fans and ambassadors behind your brand on social media, and be aware of trolls and how they can take a toll on the celebrity. These are important because you want to create posts to get noticed or get people to use your product or service you're promoting, and these are the best ways to do so. The chapter also explains the crises that can take place in social media. An example would be responding to a current event and your audience taking it the wrong way, or not reco...

Okay, I don't know about you guys, but I have a serious addition to Starbucks . I am not a coffee drinker, but I love their pink drinks. It is the only caffeinated drink I like beside iced tea, and I drink iced tea so much it doesn't give me energy anymore. The pink drink is a strawberry acai refresher with coconut milk. If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it. One thing that has helped a ton is the Starbucks mobile app. With this app you can upload money or gift cards and use it to buy drinks. For every dollar you spend, you earn two stars. When you earn 150 stars, you can get a free drink. I don't want to tell you how many free drinks I have gotten because the number is slightly embarrassing. Starbucks uses this app for more than just payment and earning stars, they use it to market. Throughout the week, I get notifications from the app telling me about happy hour or specials they have on drinks. This brings attention to the store and makes people want Star...

Yesterday I traveled to the Ohio Statehouse for Mascot day. Honestly, before we left, I thought it was going to be a long day and I was just going to be bored the whole time, but I was wrong.  When I heard about mascot day, I was very confused. I didn't know it was even a thing. But I guess once a year the state government invites the independent college mascots to the statehouse to meet the people working for the state of Ohio, and this year they invited the cheerleaders too. Not knowing what it was, I decided to take the risk and go. (I mean I did get out of my classes for it so how bad could it really be?). I ended up having a blast.  We all went into one room in the statehouse and as the legislatures walked by, we took pictures. But in between the pictures, we got to watch the mascots interact with each other and that was hilarious. Everyone was being so silly and messing with each other. By the end of the two hours, we were teaching the mascot for Mount Vernon Naza...

This week I read chapters 8 and 9 of "Social Media for Strategic Communication." My favorite out of the two is Chapter 9. Chapter 9 talked about creating, managing, and curating content. Something you never would have imagined to be part of a job description is creating content for social media. I always thought social media would be all organic and you would never need someone to create the content you posted, but boy was I wrong. This is a very important part of social media now and there is so much that goes into it. But not only do you create content for social media, you have the create content for the marketing of a product. The process is similar because you want to market your social media too, but most of the time personal pages won't pay for people to help create their content. Chapter 9 stresses the importance of having good quality content and how to create the content. This chapter ties into the content the speaker we had in class on Tuesday spoke about...

Let me tell you about one of my absolute favorite apps, Pinterest . Pinterest is an app that allows you to share ideas, inspiration and many more things with other people, or you can save it in a "board" for yourself. This is kind of in the realm of social media because you can see what your friends are saving to their boards, but it's also for people to get creative ideas on projects.  I find myself scrolling through Pinterest for no reason most of the time. I have my whole wedding planned, even though I'm not engaged, my future house and all of its decor picked out, keep in mind I'm only a junior so I still have a while, and I have a whole board filled with cute clothes that I plan on purchasing, maybe one day I'll have money to buy them all. I love the app because it gets me excited about the future and helps me become more creative. If I need to wear a cute outfit for something, Pinterest is always the first place I go. Recently I have had to craft a l...

Chapter 7 in "Social Media for Strategic Communication" talks all about how to write your social media posts. It explains that writing takes time and dedication. I never realized how much time and dedication you would need for social media until I started this class and had to keep up with a blog. These blogs are way more time consuming than I thought they would be, and I definitely have to think hard about what I am going to post. One point that really stood out to me was understanding the difference between tone and voice. I think these two things get mistaken for each other a lot and I like that the book really pointed out the difference and explained them clearly. They are interconnected, but they are not the same thing. Brand Voice is the uniformity in selection of words, the attitude and values of the brand while addressing the target audience or others; whereas, tone is the overall voice characteristics you want to interject within the content you are writing. I di...

The third week in October brings the Pumpkin Show in little Circleville, Ohio. This festival is extra special to me, lasts from Tuesday through Sunday and brings more people than you can imagine.  A question on Jeopardy the other day was about the Pumpkin Show.  Downtown restaurants get extra packed because people want a break from fried pumpkin food, they might want an alcoholic beverage or just to warm up. Most businesses have live music play too to bring more people in and give entertainment for that night. This year my cousin and I were asked to sing at a local business called Gibby's ! This meant a lot because they asked us to sing on one of the busiest nights so that implies that they really liked how we sounded last time and wanted to have a good band for one of the busiest nights. Blake and I are singing for four hours, which is two more than what we're used to, but we had fun learning the new songs and we have even more fun performing them. We are really hoping fo...

I told myself I wouldn't do it, but here I am, 1:00 in the morning, laughing my butt off while scrolling through the hilarious videos I see on TikTok. TikTok has been pretty popular for a while now, but I refused to download it because I knew I would become addicted. Now I have the app and literally cannot stop watching it. I lay in bed and not realize it has been an hour, and even though I wanted to get to bed early that night, I catch myself getting an ab workout from laughing so hard. I have even made one myself. For those of you that don't know what TikTok is, it is a social media app that you make videos on. It's a lot like the old app Vine, but you can do even more with the videos. The most popular way to use TikTok is to make a video using audio that is given to you. So basically, you are lip syncing to whatever the audio says. I have puppy fever more than you know right now, and of course one of the most popular types of videos are of people's puppies. I lov...

One of my favorite things to do here at Ohio Northern University (ONU) is cheer. I have been involved in cheer and gymnastics for as long as I can remember, and I love it just as much now. All through high school I was a base (someone on the bottom of the stunt lifting the flyer by her feet), but when I transferred here, I became a flyer. I love flying more than anything and I still get to base in some stunts, but the adrenaline of being thrown in the air is my favorite. We had practice last night, like we do every Monday and Wednesday, but last night we did my favorite stunt for the first time this year and it was a success. The stunt is called Nip Tuck. In Nip Tuck I am holding on to two girls, one girl holds one arm, while they are in a normal one level stunt on the side. Then my stunt group throws me in the air, I do a back flip, then they catch me standing in the stunt. The picture shows the ending product after the stunt. One of my favorite things to do as a flyer is flip in...

The last chapter we had to read was Chapter 5. This chapter talks about the research and information needed for successful social media. You want to research what to post so you can get the best reaction. If you post information that isn't true, then you run into your followers finding you untrustworthy and you will start to lose them. It is important to be informed and honest because social media changes so fast you don't want to lose your credibility. This chapter also talks about all of the metrics included in social media; basic, advanced, channel and behavioral. Then it goes into the two different rates; conversation and amplification. You can read about these in this book "Social Media for Strategic Communication." The book goes into detail on each one and how it applies to social media. I never realized how much actually goes into the research side of social media, but it makes complete sense after reading this chapter. If you are working for a business, ...

This past weekend was homecoming for Ohio Northern University (ONU). Homecoming is my favorite weekend because a lot of the alumni come back and I get to see friends that don't go to school here anymore. The whole weekend is filled with activities for alumni and it spans from Friday through Sunday. As an assignment in my Principles of Social Media class, I had to live tweet an event that took place during homecoming weekend. I chose to live tweet the football game against Marietta College. A lot happened before and during the game. A few individuals were inducted into the hall of fame and the band put on a good show for pregame, then the game started. At halftime they announced homecoming queen and king and the band played again, then the game finished. As you may know, I cheer for ONU, so it was kind of difficult to tweet and cheer at the same time, but the polar bears scored a lot, so I had great content to tweet about. ONU ended up winning 31-23. This was a huge win for the...

So, guess what? I GOT A LITTLE! I couldn't be more excited and I'm so thankful for getting the little I wanted. Last week I talked about the stress big/little brought, but I'm here to tell you it was all worth it in the end for me. I got the call two Tuesday's ago that I received Kimmy Gregory as my little and I was ecstatic! Her and I have so much in common and I couldn't imagine not being her big. From Tuesday to Sunday I had to keep it a secret and I gave her three clues to who I was, but what she didn't know was I was giving her fake clues, so she didn't know it was me. She told me so was so confused because she didn't know if I was messing with her or if she really didn't get the person she wanted. I was so happy she was still surprised because I was worried she already knew who I was. On Sunday we did the reveal. Her reaction was PRICELESS. She thought it was someone else so when we revealed me as her big, she screamed and hugged me. Her fi...

In Chapter 3 we learned about personal and professional branding. Branding is important because you want your voice to be heard and you want it to be heard in your specific way. Two examples we learned about were The Rock and Rosanna Pansino. The Rock has a very personal and family filled brand. He cares for his family a lot and that shows through all of his posts. He likes to update people on his everyday life so they can feel like they are a part of his life. Rosanna Pansino is a big vlogger and has created her brand through videos.  There are many things to think about when creating your personal or professional brand. You really need to make sure it is true to you so your followers can know they are following an honest person. It is really hard to keep track of someone's social media when you know they aren't the same in person. We even learned about the components of personal brand.  Personal brand is something that we all subconsciously think about when using socia...

Happy October! Today is October 1st and Twitter is going crazy. The trending hashtag right now is #October1st and posts everywhere are talking about "Spooky Szn." One of my favorite things about social media is how fast trends like this happen. People were raving towards the end of September about the fun October brings. So now that it is the first, everyone is super excited. People my age love October because the fall weather, football, Halloween movies and, of course, Halloween. There is nothing worse than hot weather when walking to class because you are drenched in sweat before you get to your class, so cool weather is so much nicer. College football is always a good time. It's almost like there is a college game on every day of the week. Disney channel is the move this time of year because it has all the classic Halloween movies playing all of the time. Halloween is such a fun time on college campuses because it is an excuse to dress up and party with friends or...