Blog Post 3- Digital Strategy

 

A digital media strategy for a business consists of using digital channels in company advertising and communication methods. Digital media channels include “search engine marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, display advertising, public relations and partner marketing.” Having a strategy for the business objectives helps to figure out which of the channels mentioned would be most efficient to use. Strategy is key to keeping on track and allocating resources to meet your business objectives and overcome challenges.




A strategic plan is based on research of the target market, market share, and competitors. “Digital strategies require the setting up of business goals and the initiation of campaigns, which can be anything from gaining more customers, raising brand awareness, lead generation, or boosting sales. These will ensure that monthly, daily and annual goals are being reached.” A part of a strategic plan is a timeline for evaluating the outcome metrics to see if goals are being met. If the strategy is not reaching the goals the business can shift its resources and create a new strategy that works best.




Paid, earned, and owned media are important tools in a digital media strategy to maximize impact. Paid media are the third parties a company pays to promote its product. An example would be an influencer you compensate for giving a review. Owned media are the digital channels it uses to promote its product. Earned media is the organic promotion of a product from users that were never paid. Earned media can consist of reviews or user-generated content. Utilizing these media channels can broaden the awareness of a brand and obtain the business objectives.

Blog Post 2- Buyer Personas

A buyer persona is a detailed profile of your target audience. The persona is fictional but based on research that has been done on your desired audience. The persona profile will have demographics, geographics, behavioral traits, goals, challenges, marketing messages, etc. A great idea to understand your persona better is to create a mood board for them. This aids in visualizing your target persona and seeing your research come to life. Understanding your buyer persona aids in the marketing process by understanding who you're speaking to and where to put the message.

Understanding your audience allows a business to tailor its marketing messages to increase visibility and convert views to sales. The marketing message will be more successful if targeted at the consumer who is most interested in your product or service. In the persona, you can see where your audience tends to frequent including the sites they visit and what they like to view. "Personas give you the information and perspective you need in order to make objective decisions about how to craft your brand messages through the most consumed and widely accepted formats like videos, social media posts, and articles” (Digital Marketing institute). Without understanding who you are speaking to your message will not come across effectively. 

In my digital media college class, I created a buyer persona. I had a client and I put together a profile for their target audience along with a mood board. I enjoyed making the mood board because it made visualizing the consumer much easier and it showed me the research I put in paid off.  I was able to see my research come to life and apply it to the marketing model. Creating a persona also makes it easier to show your client the work and research you put together for their marketing plan.

Blog Post 1- Digital Media

 

My definition of Digital media is connecting a larger audience to deliver information, entertainment, or create a space for others to share with each other. At my University the majority of my classes have been about the history of digital media. I have learned where digital media began and where it is going. Before there was Digital media there was traditional media “Traditional media include radio, broadcast television, cable and satellite, print, and billboards.” Traditional media has been used for many years and was very successful. Now, advertisers and media expert are using digital media to connect with their audience. media has taken a drastic change in the last decade because of the advancements in technology and the rise of social media. Digital media has become more interactive than ever before. "An important shift associated with convergence and social media is the rise of user-created content, with users changing from audiences to participants." Now, there is an increase in content creators on all digital platforms. People are able to create their own content for the public to view. Digital media looks drastically different compared to twenty years ago. Instead of digital media being television and radio it is now Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok and Facebook.

A question I have about digital media is "what does the future look like?" I watched it evolve into social media but I believe it will continue to evolve and it makes me wonder what is next. With the ever-evolving digital media age, I also want to know what types of jobs are available in the industry with a degree in public relations and advertising. Many careers that were available before are almost extinct or not necessary anymore. After graduation, I want to have a solid and steady career, but I am not sure if that is possible because of the changes in the industry. "Will I be able to have a solid career or will I always need to search for a new job and gain new skills to avoid unemployment?"

 

My Digital Footprint

Technology has become a significant part of all our lives, and it continues to evolve every day. Technology has a major impact on all of us and whether that impact is good or bad can be debated. I believe that technology can be used in advancing groundbreaking ways, or it can be used to control and consume people.

First Video

Second Video

In the first video, people believed that technology would only have positive effects and would make everyone's lives great. This can be true in some aspects, technology has advanced so much that it saves lives and has changed the way the world works. Technology has changed our world in ways the people in the video could not even imagine. In the other video, it showed the negative effects technology has on society. They portrayed technology as taking away human interactions and being glued to your phone. This is very true, especially with younger generations. Younger generations that grew up on technology heavily depend on it and they aren't learning life or social skills that previous generations did. 

 

What is interesting to me, is that technology affects every generation differently. Older generations only use the positive side of technology and they do not depend on technology the same way younger generations do. I think that technology has negatively impacted younger generations and we are so consumed in it we don't pay attention to what is going on around us. I am thankful to be born in my generation because I grew up with it, but when I was younger I still grew up without a phone or tablet and I was able to explore the world around me without any technology. The generation after me grew up in a time where technology advanced into tablets and phones and everyone has some form of technology with them at all times. They have never known a world where people were not glued to their phones. Now, people are more consumed with their technology because they are addicted to social media platforms. Social media has taken over all of our lives.

Social media does have positive influences like connecting people all over the world and sharing knowledge in an instant. But social media has a very scary side that has resulted in so much hatred and façades that push unrealistic images to young people. Social media has been used to spread hatred and has become a platform that facilitates cyber bullying. Cyberbullying has had major implications on our society and continues to grow.

Another major negative effect of social media has been the spread of unrealistic beauty standards. The marketing industry has taken over social media and used it as a way to push products that are targeted at people who want to attain these unrealistic beauty standards. For me, I have had to be more intentional about the people that I follow or images that I am exposed to because It was starting to affect my perceptions of myself. On social media people only post the photos that they look great in or any positive thing that happens in their life. It took me time to realize that people do not post their flaws or their downfalls.

My social media is all private because I do think about my future employers searching me up. When I search my name up I only see Linkedin, Facebook, and news articles from my hometown that my name has been in. Although my account is private I do worry about not getting a job because of what I post online.  I post a lot about social justice and what is happening in our country. I also think that if a company does not want to hire me because I am not afraid to speak up about certain topics, then I probably would not want to work there anyway.   

My relationship with technology has become much healthier since I realized I was not being present in the moment and I was missing out on the people I love because I was always on my phone. My friends and I schedule designated times when we put our phones down. in order to actually connect with one another. I think that's a perfect example of how people are consumed with their phones. I am not saying that I never use my phone and am not obsessed with it. I definitely am, but I do force myself to leave my phone behind when I do certain things or am hanging out with my family and friends. I have become more conscious about putting my phone down.  I have started to break my habits with my phone and I have shut off my social media notifications. This definitely helps me to not constantly check my phone. I also have started a morning routine where I don't check my phone until I have already gotten out of bed. I find this to help me be more productive. I am trying to learn how to develop a more positive relationship with social media and stop being in the habit of always being on my phone.

My Linkedin

Blog Post #10- EOTO Part 2

For my "Each one Teach one" project my group was assigned to research policy terms and concepts. I researched media consolidation and delivered a presentation about how it happens, how it affects the first amendment and the negative impacts it has on our society. Media consolidation is the ownership of mass media by fewer companies. Monopolies and oligopolies are increasing due to more companies merging together. A monopoly in business is a company that dominates its sector or industry. An oligopoly is when a market is shared by a small number of producers and sellers.

Basically, all of the media that we see is owned by fewer than ten major companies. That means that one of these companies owns multiple networks, magazines, and other major media publications. This has a major effect on U.S. citizens. According to Forbes, as of 2020, the largest media conglomerates are Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, AT&T, and ViacomCBS. Do you think that all of our media should be produced only by a few companies, would you like to see more of a variety in your news sources? Personally, it scares me that only a few companies produce news because I wonder what is happening in our world that they do not cover because it doesn't benefit them.

Media consolidation does have an effect on the first amendment. It specifically affects having a marketplace of ideas in our country. A marketplace of ideas was meant to allow all ideas to be open to the public, even the bad ones. Having an increasing concentration of control over information is a major threat to a nation’s desire to give its citizens a “broad choice” of media. Citizens need access to diverse opinions and perspectives in order to participate in our democracy which is threatened by big media companies and their agendas These conglomerate companies all have an agenda that they are trying to push at the American people. An example of this is the news channels CNN and Fox News. They are both huge media companies that always push their agenda and they do not show the other side of the story if it does not fit their political view. The American people are not given a variety of political views and news stories.

 

Critics of Media consolidation also believe it enables censorship. Monopolies like Google have been involved in lawsuits about cooperating with the government and censoring certain websites. Censorship is directly taking away someone's right to speak and directly taking away a marketplace of ideas. In my opinion, The algorithms on social media apps that people get their news from could be considered a minor form of censorship or very similar to it. These apps will customize the news feed to topics the individuals using the platform are interested in. This means that person does not see stories that do not fit the algorithm. For example, if a person reads news stories about social justice issues the algorithm only shows them those types of stories. That person can be completely unaware of anything happening in foreign affairs. This is not technically censorship but it does take away that person's right to have a varied news timeline and only give them one-sided news that fits their interests. This issue is becoming a slippery slope towards censorship.

Companies pushing their own agendas eliminate net neutrality. Net neutrality is “the idea, principle, or requirement that

 

Internet service providers should or must treat all Internet data as the same regardless of its kind, source, or destination.” Companies censoring which websites they allow on their networks directly affect net neutrality. We have seen news networks completely avoid topics because it does not fit their political views or help them gain views.


Media consolidation decreases the media's integrity by giving minorities fewer opportunities for voicing their concerns. It also gives U.S. citizens less diverse opinions. Not only does it give us less diversity in our news it creates more bias. The news networks we watch are biased because they do pour money into political candidates or policies. They will cover news stories that have a positive effect on the side their money is on.

Media consolidation is becoming a scary reality that I believe many Americans are not aware of. Without a variety of news, people can not fully form their own political opinions are be informed on what the government participates in. I wonder how media consolidation will affect the mass media in the next five years.

Blog #9 Diffusion of Innovation Theory

I looked at the innovation of Instacart through the lens of the Diffusion of Innovation Theory. Instacart is a service that people can use to hire a shopper to pick up and deliver their groceries to their door. Instacart was founded in 2012, but It really gained its popularity within the last three years. It became especially popular when the Corona Virus pandemic hit. People were too afraid to leave their homes and would rather hire a personal shopper to deliver their groceries.





The Pioneer of Instacart was the inventor Apoorva Mehta, he was able to launch the service in 2015. The pioneers and people who really believed in the service were Mehtas two hundred employees. America was really the early adopters of this service as many states were starting to see a growth in Instacart. Instacart changed their payment contracts with the drivers which made more people want to be employed by Instacart and become personal shoppers.

Instacart started its uptake when it transcended into other countries including Canada. It reached the tipping point when the late majorities (large grocery store chains) started to make contracts with Instacart. Food chains like Kroger, Publix, and Costco all joined in on the Instacart service. The market became completely saturated when the Pandemic hit and Instcart hired hundreds of thousands of employees to assist families in the pandemic.





Although the majority of the population knows what Instacart is there are still people who do not see a need in the grocery delivery system. Some people do not have the extra money to tip the drivers and pay off the extra fees. Others simply do not want someone shopping for them and they prefer to go out and shop for themselves. Insta Cart has definitely made shopping more convenient for the consumer, but some people still do not see the need to have someone else deliver their food items.


Background Information on Instacart


Background Information on Instacart

Blog Post #8- What I Learned from EOTO

In the Each One Teach One presentations in class today I learned about many revolutionary inventions. One in particular that was vital to the communication technologies we have now, was the invention of the telephone by Alexander Grahm Bell. The telephone was invented on February 14th, 1876. What was interesting to me, was the Bell was not the first inventor to try and invent the telephone.

An inventor Johann Reis was the first person to construct a technology that was similar to the telephone. He did not take credit for inventing the telephone because it was only able to communicate one way. Antonio Meucci was the second inventor of the telephone in 1874, he did not have enough money to afford the patent.

Bell was almost not the inventor to get the patent for the telephone. Two hours before Bell filed for the patent inventor, Elisha Grey filed for the telephone patent. The patent was given to Bell. This caused him to be involved in hundreds of lawsuits, five of them made it to the Supreme Court.

Bell not only received the patent for the telephone he also was the founder of AT&T . Bell's invention was the foundation for the technology that we use today