COM0014 Blog #7 – Personal Reflection

From this course, I have learned the importance of storytelling and how communication styles would influence audience. Moreover, it made me clear which group of visitor is my target audience and how to construct my own personal branding which is different to others and attract target audience. 

Basically, storytelling is just another form of communication to others over social media nowadays. Due to the characteristics of human beings, communication exists all the time in the society. Until last century the major form of communication was using paper media, at that time many writers would like to open a column on newspapers or magazines. At that time, people were still telling stories to audience. 

As for myself, I would tell stories based on my personal experiences and modify the privacy part because simply art is from life but beyond it. I belive a true story is more attractive than created. Furthermore, I would like to tell the about the problems I have met during the work and how I solve it because I do not think I have rich experience to share about life. Moreover, the main purpose of my blog is about technology shares, which is exactly one of my interest to talk about.

COM0015 Blog #4 Out of the Box

There are many applications that we haven’t noticed in the field of social media. For example, the recommend system for web shopping. This is another application of search engine optimization based on related keyword and type of products customers’ searching. Speaking of search engine optimization, most people would come up with the format like google search results. However, the similar thing also runs on the shopping website such as Amazon and Ebay. Similarly on some video websites there is also a column called like “The one you might be interested”, which appears on one side every time when we open some video pages. Every time people open a video, a group of video with similar themes would be recommended and based on their watching history other similar videos would be put on the main page.

COM0015 Blog #3 Professional Networking now and in the future

My current strategy for my social media engagement is still try to let others know or at least have heard me while keep posting contents with good qualities. As I am still on the beginning stage of my social media strategy, I do not have to care too much about the data of my blog. Instead I have to put more attention on contents’ qualities, tones to different audience, building relationship with visitors and giving a good presence to them.

In the following half to one year, I would basically do the steps based on my performance on social media platforms. If things go well, I would consider moving onto the step to promote myself over multiple social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and the most important, LinkedIn. However, if things are not as expected, I would go back to check what is my disadvantages on the beginning phase and if there are other points that I have to improve. At this point of time, those social media metrics would give a lot help on judging defects. For example, the growth rate would show how much interest those visitors have for contents I have posted. The social media rate would enable me to know how popular I am over different social media platforms. With spending times on improving and then I would check and take a overview again whether I am able to go to the next step. Just as a celebrity said, “Well begun is half done”. The good start is crucial for the whole strategy so that is why I think it is very important and I do not mind spending more time and energies on it.

COM0014 Blog #6 – Do People Know Your Story?

In this blog, I am going to answer the question about the challenges I have overcome so far to get to this point. As I did not have the internship experience at Canada when I graduated from university, I suffered a time facing rejects from all employers, even I got the opportunities to have a face to face interview with them. After hearing the answer that I did my intern in China, their attitudes suddenly changed clearly. I was very depressed and anxious. It is understandable that the ways of facing challenges and logics may be different between a Canadian office and a Chinese office but I really wished that they could have offered me a chance so that I could prove to them that I am a quick adapter and bring values to companies.

To change this awkward situation, I went to WeCloud Data for gaining more knowledges with hands on project with patience. Moreover, I made lots of appointments for coffee chat with stuff who were working in related industry to get a more clear image about the industry so that I could present a better self to employers. After several month’s hard working I had an offer from a consulting company with a data analyst role. Although it is easy to say it right now, keeping a peaceful mind is really important dealing with problems/

COM0014 Blog #5 Personal Branding

From my perspective, the vital thing that makes me different with my colleagues is I am still learning new things. Many have stopped learning more to improve themselves once they get new jobs and they might think that is a goal for their careers. However, I do not agree with that, future is full of uncertainty. Take the effect of the coronavirus pandemic as an example, many people had been terminated unexpectedly due to companies’ unaffordable cost while there is no profit. They have to spend time to find a new job on such a terrible situation. In IT related industry, technologies are improving every day. It is difficult to catch up with the trends. Who can imagine nowadays there is Amazon Web Services helping running etl process with a lower cost? 

During my freetime and weekends, I would usually do some personal project with applying new methods. Such experience would make me more competitive in my career. Just several days ago, my manager was wondering if I could let the script run automatically for daily process and I was the only one introduced him how to use AWS, he was amazed by the tech, things were tackled easily. I felt happy not just because the problem was solved but I was the only one solving it in the team, which made me feel unique and I could prove to my company that I could bring more value than they expected. I think I will keep working on it to keep my advantage in the company.

COM0015 Blog #2 Strong & Weak Organizations

For this blog, the first company which I think it has a great social media strategy is Starbucks. Starbucks has a clear mind for their brandings and a clear goal of their strategies, which is increasing profits. They are targeting to all the public from teenagers to elders around the world. Social media is the best way for them to promote itself with the low cost and high efficiency letting customers know about new products such as pumpkin series every autumn. Other than that, Starbucks would post interesting pictures and customers from all over the world to improve brand affinity. In addition, they would use proper tones to comment back to visitors no matter if comments are negative or not. They are always trying to deliver the highest quality of coffee to customers. Moreover, Starbucks makes it more than merely a coffee shop. It upgraded its shops into social places where customers can talk to each other.

Another one is Adidas Originals. With the similar targeting group of customer like Starbucks. Adidas Originals also combines fashion with its products when promoting over social media platforms. Social media has played a role to increase its effects among public. For example, They also use tagged pictures and streaming on Instagram to engage with customers such as new yeezy. This also offers Adidas Originals opportunities to contact with targeted customers, which increases the efficiency over social media platforms. Moreover, by doing this Adidas Originals can always keep its product as a hot topic among public.

On the other hand, The one which I think needs to adopt social media strategy is CrossFit. Just several days ago its CEO’s unproper tweet has been criticized as racism. In last year, it announced an statement quitting social media (Lukas Mikelionis, May 25, 2019) saying to protect customers privacy. However, they returned on this March on Facebook. Obviously company’s C level staff do not have a the recognition about their branding and promoting during their daily lives and they did not set up their social media strategy clearly.

As for organization which would benefit from social media strategy, the first one came into my mind was WeCloud Data. It is an educational institution and offers solid knowledge for data analytics and data science and tries to help for those who want to change jobs to this industry. Currently the majority of people who go to the lectures there are introduced by someone else who had courses there before. Even under such condition still more and more people are attending the lectures there. Although they tried engaging with customers over multiple social media platforms, without a clear mind and strategy the result was not good. With the growing weight of AI, it should also try to reach potential customers with new tools like scripts automatically show those potential customers preferred tones when engaging with because it is also in AI related industry and by doing this it can show its competitive with its rivals. From my perspective, the first thing they should try to reach is increase its accounts number of followers over all social media platforms as currently their number of followers are still too low although many companies’ HR have heard of them in GTA area.

COM0014 Blog #4 B2C Case Study

On this week’s blog, I would like to focus my case study on Starbucks. From the definition of this week’s module content, clearly it is a classic B2C type business. Not just does it sell its merchandise (coffee, foods and other accessories), but also sells online which would be delivered to your address in short.
Starbucks respects with their customers, it caters people within the range of its abilities for customizing customer’s modified choices. It also listens to their customers for needs and concerns on social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter and comments back to them. On every season they would promote new inspired products which are welcomed by customers.
Furthermore, from my perspective Starbucks is doing great on their marketing strategies. For example, it is doing great on promoting its brand on multiple social media platforms. Not only does it possess its domain with its own brand names, but also on Instagram, Twitter it has its brand name even divided by districts, which would benefit for the result of search engine optimization. In addition, on those platforms Starbucks communicates with visitors, building a solid relationship with them, which could be transformed into trust and favor in the long term. It also synchronizes their posts on multiple platforms and tries to deliver the posts to all the visitors with no gaps among them.

COM0014 Blog #3 Target Audiences

Right now, the only interest I have is switching to a new role working as a data scientist or a data engineer. The target audience would be those who are working in related positions or students who are studying with related background or who are seeking chances to change their job roles to related positions trying to find some useful information for themself.  

The ways to get know about target audiences are various. One possible way is using surveys asking some basic information about their gender, their education level, whether they are atheists, their job roles as well as their hobbies. Also, we can conclude some information from the interaction I made with them. Basically I used the latter one because I do not prefer asking such questions to audience personally, it sounds like police are investigating some cases. 

Once you concluded information with target audience, then you can engage with them in a higher efficiency such as using tones they prefer, posting the contents they would like to see. Moreover, it is practical improving blogging styles and writing styles based on the comments visitors left with us. However, I do prefer making survey asking for posting contents audience would like to see. I think it is a better way comunicating with them.

COM0014 Blog #2– Storytelling and Communication Styl

From this week’s lecture I learned the importance of format for storytelling. Similar to engaging into social media for business, although it seems to be a very common thing just keeping posts, there are many things to be care about when we actually doing it. In the following passages I will give my opinions to them.

It is vital to form a particular way for storytelling for grammar and tone. Just like the first glance at one’s Instagram account page, the first thing we notice would be the fantastic content and user’s format posting pictures of videos, some may post 3*3 to form a large picture in order to catch potential followers’ attention. One’s habit using grammar and tone for storytelling is similar to catch visitors’ eyes. 

Besides, the structure for a passage is also important. Recently I started reading the Economist, one thing I noticed immediately is that those articles’ structure are very clear. Authors tend to express their opinions for each paragraph in the first sentence and Usually they would lay out the whole point in the first paragraph which is very convenient for readers to improve reading efficiency.I think that is the thing we should learn from.

Engaging into comments with others is another important thing we should keep in mind. One evident benefit is that by reading comments we can get some advice from visitors which would improve yourself and followers’ experience, which is vital for building loyalty. Furthermore, the comments will let us know what they need. However, similar to writing stories, it is important to care for tones when replying to visitors in the way they prefer.

Blog #1 Amazing tools for social media monitoring and News Sources

Nowadays various methods for social media trend monitoring and sources for news and updates have popped up with the development of technology. Among them, there are some tools which I particularly prefer due to the convenience and their fast speed for delivering information to users. Today I am going to introduce them to you.

Google Alerts

Google alerts is one of the products produced by google in aim for delivering new interesting content to its audience. I found this amazing tool from the lectures (COM0012) I attended last semester. It has many selections on setting frequency sending news to users from at most once a day to at most once a week. Users would only need to input any keywords of what they are interested in including their own company, related industry news or even updates for competitors. Once everything is set up, users will receive emails for those new content. Below is an example of my settings on google alert:

You can even get a summary about any contents you or your email are mentioned on it. Besides, it is totally free. So it is very nice to the social media trend monitoring beginners like me as I do not have to cost too much over it.

Hootsuite

This is another ideal tool but will cost a little money. On this site you can track for your own brand, a campaign or even any event of the industry and performing market researches. There is a selection on the dashboard page which enables you to decide to track from Twitter, Instagram, News, Forums and Blogs or not. It is very handy on getting a clear understanding about what is going on. I have to say Hootsuite worth every penny. 

Sources for news

Kaggleblog is one of the source I use to receive updated information for subjects that I am interested in. As it will post new winners’ experience and thoughts for each competition and introductions of new published programming packages, which is helpful for me to broaden my views. 

Another is news source is Linkedin. Right now I have decided to change the job for higher position in order to improve myself, I have to watch the industry’s news so that I could have a better answer for interviews.

So far these sites work perfectly fine for me. Hope these sites would be helpful to you.

#Socialmedialistenning #Socialmediamonitoring