Cannonball into Social Media

Social networking sites such as facebook and twitter are quickly becoming outstanding marketing tools for companies and people in all fields of work. Yes, twitter lost a little luster after the whole ordeal of Ashton Kutcher vs CNN in the race to 1 million followers, and the fact that many local media outlets in Chicago went bananas over Oprah's first twitter post.

All that celeb stuff aside, twitter offers a great way for everyday people and business to contact one another. For example, Whole Foods - I think the country's leading 'healthy' food store - offers tips on recipes, in-store specials, going green and more.

Sports teams are even using Twitter. The Phoenix Suns (NBA) and the Chicago Red Stars (WPS) are just two great examples of how sports teams should use twitter to their advantage. Right this second, the Suns are doing a 'random act of orange' campaign, giving away an autographed jersey to one of their twitter followers that answers a trivia question correctly. After all the answers flood in (they have +6,000 followers) the front office selects a winner based on the response. That winners Twitter name is then posted to show that someone actually one. Contests like these are just one example of how Twitter can help to build a bigger fan base and allow for the fans to feel more connected to the organization.

The Red Stars, the first women's pro soccer team in Chicago, are also doing an great job using Twitter. During their game yesterday (sat, April 25) the Red Stars posted score updates, thank you's to the fans at the game and other little bits of information. Since Twitter allows for posts to be sent to phones, the Red Stars also took advantage of that feature by posting things like ... Face Painting available in Section C3 ... so not only are they keeping fans that cannot make the game posted on events, but they're also trying to interact with those in attendance.

When I'm not cracking the books at North Central and preparing to graduate in June, I'm working as the Director of Media Relations for the Chicago Bandits. The Bandits are a women's professional fast pitch softball team located in Elgin, Ill. The most recognizable player on the roster right now is Team USA Olympian Jennie Finch. Just last Friday I began implementing a social media plan at the Bandits. We now have a twitter and a facebook fan page that I hope to build into a great presence on both sns. I plan to model our twitters and facebook after the two teams I mentioned, because in my opinion they do a great job.

The followers are small right now, but they will come ...

Web-literate

Mark Bauerlin has a good point -- technology is harming the goals of higher education by decreasing the attention spans of readers. It also simplifys how students find information. Before the internet, we students would have to dig through encyclopedias, dictionaries and journals; now ... we google it.

The internet is killing college teachings, but, our society is becoming more and more digital every day. College is fun and we [hopefully] learn a lot, but to stay competitive in the job market and to plan for our futures, college students need to be able to operate efficiently in the digital world. This means being able to scan a website for the important information, find the correct facts we need or the correct documents required for the work we need to do.

With Twitter and Facebook hosting company pages and profiles ranging from Whole Foods to the Chicago Blackhawks to our own personal brands, it is becoming ever important to make ourselves into our own companies. Graduating college students (especially) have to market our skills by using sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in order to survive in digital workplace.

So the internet may be killing the teachings of universities, but you can't live in a university forever... even Vanwilder moved on.

Indie Martha Stewart

Megan Reardon started blogging as a simple way to keep track of things that she found on the Internet. From there her posts and documenting of the craft work she did exploded into over 4,000 unique visitors a day. While that took some time, it's pretty remarkable how popular Reardon has become -- just by putting up pictures and posts of things she's created while crafting or other peoples work that she liked. I think the title of her blog, "not martha," is also a little humorous. In a way she is like Martha Stewart (whom I assume she's referring to in her title) by doing all these crafts and sharing her insight with the public, but on the other hand

"Whatever catches my attention and makes me want to mark it to remember later on. There are lots of things I look at regularly that I forget to link to because it seems too familiar in my own head."

Reardon is more like an indie martha stewart because her craft work and suggestions are more artistic and unique. She seems to cater towards women with most of her suggestions (ie. purses, candles, sweaters, etc.). She also posts things that appeal to her.

She seems to be pretty humble with the success of her blog. In at least two parts Reardon mentions how surprised she is by the success, and also that she truly wanted to use the blog to keep track of her projects. It was kind of refreshing to learn that she doesn't have any writing experience and actually hated writing in school. I think this helps with blogging because she keeps her posts short/informative and to the point.

Opening Day

Welcome to the blog of Andrew Phillips. Currently I am a graduating senior, majoring in journalism, at North Central College in Naperville, Ill. This blog will contain the content for my spring SPC 260 class and more.