Just When I Thought I Knew Everything…

Just when I thought I knew everything there was to know about a topic, social media, I took a class called Social Media and Public Relations.

This year I’ve spent a good bit of time analyzing crisis response strategies through social media. I’ve learned that it’s the best way to reach the most people in this day and age. Your response on social media can deeply harm your brand or help you recover from a nasty situation.

While I learned specific ways to do this in another class called Case Studies, I had honestly not given a lot of thought to the opposite reason that brands should use social media. I thought it was mainly for promotions, events, etc. when in reality, it can be used for a number of reasons.

I’ve learned that social media can be used to gain trust for a brand and establish customer loyalty outside of a crisis situation. I’ve learned that social media users can be some of your biggest brand advocates, and that they will do free marketing for you, especially if you acknowledge their presence. I’ve learned that it’s okay, good really, to have a distinct voice on social media.

For example, before taking this class, I would have thought that Wendy’s was absurd and waiting on a mini social media crisis. Now I know that they have established themselves as having this sassy, smart-remarks tone. Surprisingly, people love it and feed off it. It has increased their engagement tremendously. The first guy that they roasted so bad regarding the refrigerator said that even though he was roasted, he still wanted to go get Wendy’s. He later posted a picture of a drink, burger and fries. Genuius.

Something that I kind of assumed was always lingering somewhere in cyberspace is analytics. Analytics can be used for Hootsuite, Twitter and Facebook quite easily. I always assumed that the way people gathered feedback was through some super complicated homegrown system. Now that I know better, I feel kind of silly thinking that.

I thought that because I am so technologically challenged in some areas, everything within that realm must be over my head. It turns out that it’s not!

I can easily access analytics for all of these platforms now. I can tell you which tweets of mine gained the most “impressions” or “likes.” It’s really quite incredible. Within my group project it was abundantly useful to know how simple these programs are to use, because every new strategy we suggested for our client involved confirming it with analytics. Analytics make the evaluation process in public relations tangible. That’s huge.

More than anything else in this class, I learned about the incredible program called Hootsuite.

I was (and honestly still am) amazed at the capabilities that rest within Hootsuite. In the free version that I had, I was allowed to add three platforms and push all content for each of those platforms from my Hootsuite account.

Im very thankful for the skills I learned in this class because I believe they will help me in any public relations job.

The Future of Social Media

It’s funny to see how much social media has progressed over the last 10 years. I can remember the days when I had a MySpace account and thought that I knew “Tom” better than some of my “Top 10.”

I embarrassingly enough remember only having boyfriends in middle school who had a MySpace so that I could have them as my number one friend. Looking back on things like that I realize how fleeting they were, but I can vividly remember it seeming like those details were vital to my social status. Then again, it was middle school so everything that I did was probably as equally as embarrassing.

When I moved to a new school my freshman year of high school, Facebook had basically just launched. I can remember posting a picture to both my Facebook account and to changing my MySpace picture to one where I was wearing a gray dress. Honestly pretty similar to the way that we post a photo on Instagram but additionally to Facebook. Now that I think back to the beginning stages of Facebook and MySpace they also had a lot of similarities.

Back in the MySpace days it was possible to post comments to people’s pages just like writing a post on someone’s wall on Facebook. For the most part, that’s all gone now. Most people don’t post to other’s walls except for birthdays on Facebook now. Facebook has gotten to the point that it is an overload. I’ve been told that Facebook is making a comeback from people that are my age which is interesting. I personally haven’t had any increased interest.

It’s gotten to the point that I don’t even get on Facebook anymore because I feel like it’s overwhelming. I haven’t had the Facebook app since I’ve had my newest iPhone. If I ever log on to Facebook, I use the Safari browser. The only thing I really share to Facebook are pictures that I post on Instagram. I share these because I am able to click the extension button to share to other platforms.

When I was a sophomore in high school, Instagram was introduced to me. My pictures from back then were definitely selfies or pictures in the basketball gym. I ended up deleting most of them before coming to college because they were also embarrassing. Truthfully, I think I may have been too young and immature to have an avenue for me to post about my life so indepth.

As most know, Instagram is still alive and thriving. People love having a visual instead of lots of information to read. I think that this will the direction that social media goes down. There will be an elimination of text and an increase in visual content.

I would say that the progressive direction for this is to move toward a video only outlet, but that was very temporary with Vine. Vine’s temporary success and then ultimate failure can be attributed to their length of video. It’s popularity directly correlated with the videos. A quick burst of excitemen and then it’s over.

Im thrilled to see what’s next, and also to see who gets left behind.

 

United They Stand, United They Fall

United Airlines is facing the biggest PR scandal that I’ve followed in 2017. Here is the entire timeline and footage of the event. I don’t want to discuss the timeline of events as much as the aftermath and how United Airlines, under the leadership of CEO Oscar Munoz, is handling the crisis.

According to Money.CNN.com, “United is the 3rd biggest airline in the United States by passenger traffic.” This airline was formerly known for being highly respected and for drastically improving since Munoz took over in 2015. Munoz is known for making several strides in the direction of repairing and forming better relationships internally to employees and externally to current customers and potential customers. Before the crisis, Munoz was awarded the coveted “Communicator of the Year Award” by PRWeek.  The Editor in Chief of PRWeek.com was quick to say that Munoz’s actions would not merit this award now.

Oscar Munoz called Dr. Dao “disruptive and belligerent” and said that his employees were following procedure. He later issued a statement apologizing to Dr. Dao, but I believe that the damage was already done. While yes, the incident with Dr. Dao was absolutely disruptive, it was because of the United employees that drug him off of the flight. The New York Times tweeted just hours ago that Dr. Dao will have to have reconstructive surgery after suffering from a broken nose, losing 2 teeth and a concussion.

With all of that being said, there has been some investigation into the victim’s life and most believe that this is not ethical…until they hear about his past and then some change their minds.

Dr. Dao is a medical doctor who and father of 5 who was turned in by his wife, who is also a doctor, for unethical behavior. Dr. Dao was providing prescription drugs to another man for sex. He was convicted but was able to avoid prison time. He is rumored to have anger issues, too.

So, the question remains– is it a violation of ethics to bring up his past in the media? Is it remotely relevant to this fiasco? My first response was no. I didn’t understand why newspapers were covering these haunting portions of his past, because to me it only helps cover up the unethical behavior of United Airlines. Then I was told about the local Lexington paper that covered the original case with Dr. Dao. When I saw it from their perspective, I could understand why they would need to briefly mention what they had covered on Dr. Dao before. However, they shouldn’t make this situation with United look like karma or him “getting what he deserved.” For every other news outlet, I do not think it is relevant. And from what I’ve seen, news outlets who value integrity over clicks have stayed away from reporting the history of Dr. Dao.

The ethics of United Airlines remain unquestionable– these actions, regardless of protocol, were a direct reflection of their poor management. The flight should have been completely unloaded until a passenger was incentivized to relinquish their seat. That would have been peaceful and ethical. They wouldn’t be facing a lawsuit. They wouldn’t be losing money. (United Airlines lost 250 million dollars in stock in one day. They are still continuing to drop ). It’s funny to me how being lazy and cutting a corner or two always comes back to haunt you. So to all airline companies, don’t overbook. And if you do, don’t do this.

United may not be one of the best examples of a good airline in the United States anymore, but they’re definitely setting the precedent of “what not to do.”

The Wisdom I Gained From Apple’s CEO Tim Cook

As I was browsing for articles regarding changing trends in gadgets and technology, I was reminded of one of my favorite college experiences– this morning.

This morning 350 Auburn students had the opportunity to hear the CEO of Apple Tim Cook speak on diversity and inclusion.

In the beginning, Dr. Clayton asked pre-written Mr. Cook questions about diversity and inclusion. In the second half, students had the opportunity to ask questions.

Some of those questions included questions wondering why Apple hasn’t tapped into the market for drones or for brain-like speakers since those have become some prevalent. I then learned that Apple stays relevant by investing 110% into each product. If they believe a product cannot be given that, it is not produced. Thus, these two markets remain untapped for them.

I think that in doing this, Apple products remain relevant through their high quality.

Fortunately, the conversation then got back on topic to diversity and inclusion.

Some nuggets of truth that Mr. Cook said:
• In order to be successful, you have to be aware of cultures around the world
• Differences make the world interesting
• You do much better work with a diverse team
• The US has an archaic view of diversity and Apple has a broad view
• Free speech should have the broadest possible definition
• Different ideologies should listen to one another (religion, politics, etc.) because they need each other to have a broad perspective
• Apple doesn’t have a political action committee, and Cook doesn’t believe in using shareholders money to support candidates
• Students should have a global mindset
• Apple believes that education is a civil right
• Company culture is most important

As a public relations major, I found this to be insightful and helpful for my career. I am a part of a minority group in the work place sometimes because I am a female, but I am still white and this is viewed as a “privilege.” With that being said, there are a lot of problems within company culture or cultures around the world that I don’t understand. I learned that it’s okay to say that I don’t understand, but that I want to empathize and be inclusive.

After Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick publicity supported Donald Trump and Uber began crashing, one of my biggest fears is to work for a company that supports the CEO’s political agenda. I was happy to hear that a huge public company like Apple does not do that.

Overall, I think that this will be one of the most memorable talks/lectures that I’ve heard since being a student at Auburn. The best part was hearing that an alumnus so powerful and wealthy still considers Auburn to be home.

On a side note– I deeply admire Tim Cook now. He spoke highly of the Chinese, and of his frequent travels there, and I watched him flawlessly interact with a swarm of Chinese students eager to get their picture with him. There was no language barrier for him.

He also remembered my family friend that tutored him in circuits in the 80s. These two things combined proved him to be intentional. One thing that I’m highly skeptical of CEOs being.