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Desserts&Dialogue: Social Networking

desserts and dialogue

This past Wednesday, I attended one of Chapman’s Career Development Center’s Desserts & Dialogue which focused on social media and networking.

Desserts and DialogueThe speakers were Tracy Chambers ’11, TOMs Marketing Coordinator, Jeff Whitlach ’08, Creative Director at Genie Den, and Sheri Lehman ’11, Interactive Marketing Specialist at Chapman University.

Tracy spoke about how she primarily began with gifting and then moved up to influencer marketing. She talked a lot about being conscious about how the brand is portrayed. TOMs has a very authentic, humble, and down-to-earth vibe, so they would want to contact stylists and celebrities to represent the brand that share those same values.

Jeff shared about his two social media experiences and his time helping out his family restaurant, Genie Den. In terms of customer service, Jeff stressed that social media is #1. For his family restaurant, Facebook and Yelp have been the most useful. He decided to respond to all of their negative Yelp reviews. Basically, if a brand ignores feedback, consumers will engage with each other and feed the negativity. He also touched on how different networks are great for different brands – for example, Twitter is a great tool for experience-based brands.

Sheri is my supervisor at work so it was fun to hear her talk about her experiences. She touched on what I discussed in my other post about social media for higher education establishments (check it out!). Sheri also gave some really great advice – to start branding yourself on social media as part of your resume/portfolio if this is a field you’re interested in. She’s completely right – that’s why I’ve been working so hard on my blog and Twitter. She said if your social media presence isn’t something you’re proud of, then don’t go into social media. Hard to accept, but very true. She also suggested buying your domain name. It’s good to claim your name on the internet before somebody else does.

Since there were only about 5 other students attending the dialogue, it was a great chance for us to have a discussion and ask questions. Overall, a very great professional opportunity for me and I learned a lot from these three extremely inspiring individuals.
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September 15, 2013 by
Lifestyle

Doubling Chapman’s Pinterest Following: How I Did It

pinterest

I’ve had the incredible opportunity to work with Chapman’s Strategic Marketing and Communication department this past year – specifically within their Interactive Department. I’ve been given a lot of responsibilities that I’ve found have helped me grow significantly as a young professional in the marketing industry.

One of my responsibilities that I would like to highlight right now is creating, gathering, organizing, posting, and writing copy for all of Chapman’s Pinterest posts. Now, many people my not even know that Chapman is on Pinterest. But at the time I was trusted with this responsibility, there were about 350 people who were following their boards. Now there are 864. So how did I do it?

The answer is simple: I started thinking as a student. What could possibly make me want to follow my university’s Pinterest account? I asked myself, what do I like to pin on my own board? The answer is probably what most women ages 18-45 would answer – recipes, crafts, fashion, DIY, career tips, and innovative ideas/tips. These are also the most popular subjects on Pinterest as the majority of the users fall into that demographic. The tricky part was figuring out how a higher education establishment could possibly post with these topics in mind without losing credibility or spamming its users.

I researched what other universities were doing effectively. One university that stood out was Butler University. They have almost 1,000 followers. Their use of “repinnable” content blew me away and was still appropriate for their brand. Using them as inspiration, I developed the following boards to implement on Chapman’s profile:

  • Healthy Panther – recipes for living in the dorms, exercises to do in dorm rooms or tight spaces without equipment, healthy living tips
  • Independent Living – “life hacks,” money management, organization, manners, laundry, other fun tips and tricks for life
  • Academic Success – study tips, vocabulary lists, organization, funny study memes, brain food ideas
  • Career Tips – resume and cover letter tips, how to dress professionally, interview advice
  • Chapman Events
  • Chapman in the News

The first four boards were widely successful. The other two had a good response as well, but did not attract quite as much engagement as the others. Through the implementation of popular but relevant hashtags and these new “repinnable” content, engagement spiked and followers increased dramatically. Almost a year later, there is more than double the amount of followers than before.

Check out Chapman’s Pinterest page here.
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September 10, 2013 by
Lifestyle

TED Talk Tuesday: Faculty Respond

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If you read my recent post about TED Talk Tuesday at Chapman, I only discussed my response to the speaker. However we were fortunate enough to have two Chapman professors provide their insight and feedback – Claudine Jaenichen and Kelli Fuery.

Claudine began with a discussion about how we interpret the actual visual aspect of texting. She touched on how people use emojis, smileys, capitol letters, punctuation, and formatting to convey a message. For example, the use of “LOL” and “haha” have evolved over the years. Instead of simply meaning literally “laughing out loud,” “LOL” stands for empathy or a marker of interest. “haha” lightens the tone of a message and indicates that something was amusing, not necessarily something you actually laughed at. We use ALL CAPS to signal excitement or anger. We add in smiley faces and emojis to attempt to portray a facial expression, body language, tone, or feeling. When the communication is simply visual, we create this whole new strategy for portraying our actual attitude. In addition, she highlighted how the language you use varies based on your relationship with the reciever as well as the status/job/personality of the receiver of the message. For example, a parent may appreciate a message such as “Hello! How are you?” whereas a close friend may expect a message such as “hey how r u” – it all depends on who the audience is.

Kelli explained how she had issue with the assumption that “texters” are generally youth. When asked for a raise of hands of who texts, all but one person in the room had their hands in the air. The audience was filled with people of every age group and background. She emphasized that it’s important to not associate texting only with youth because other generations use it as well – meaning a wide variety of strategies, styles, and audiences. John McWhorter explained that speech tends to be looser, more telegraphic, and less reflective. She believes that yes, speech is less reflective, however it is much more genuine, authentic, and natural. It does not make sense to apply formal grammar rules to something so informal such as texting and speech. Texting is a new form of visual communication, not a degradation of language. Both formal and informal writing have their appropriate places and share an equal importance.
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September 10, 2013 by
Lifestyle

TED Talk Tuesday: “Txting is Killing Language – JK!!”

TEDxTuesdays-Flyer

Today I had the privilege of attending Chapman University’s first TED Talk Tuesday event – John McWhorter’s talk “Txting is Killing Language – JK!!”

Every other Tuesday, Chapman screens a selected TED Talk and then professors lead a discussion afterwards. McWhorter examines how the development of texting has affected language both spoken and written. Check out the video here:

McWhorter opens with “texting is a miraculous thing.” Later he refers to it as a “linguistic miracle.” All in all, McWhorter has some great points. He addresses many concerns about texting decreasing the quality of writing by pointing out that texting is not about writing, but about simply communicating in a very convenient and efficient manner.

Historically, speech came first and writing followed. Texting revolves around writing how we speak. People argue that we should do the exact opposite – speak how we write. This does happen, but more and more frequently in a formal setting. If speaking how we write is acceptable, then why is the reverse considered less important and less correct? It shouldn’t.

In fact, McWhorter argues it should be considered even more important. He refers to texting as this “emergent complexity.” That texting does not represent a decline in language, but more of a progression. Texting is an expansion of language – if not its own language. So those that can understand and communicate this way could even be considered bilingual – a strong intellectual asset.

I also believe that understanding when it is appropriate to use proper grammar versus slang versus emojis versus full sentences is an important skill to learn. The ability to communicate to different audiences and tailoring your message to them individually creates a social awareness.

All in all, I agree with the majority of what McWhorter discusses. However, I do believe texting has very significant downfalls. For example, texting has a casual air to it and may not always be appropriate. The other would be that texting often results in more misunderstandings than in writing and other forms of communicating. Tone of voice and body language are lost. There are many ways to compensate for this – emojis, punctuation, all caps, etc. However, it is not the same.

The final concern I have around texting is the lack of knowledge of spelling, grammar, and punctuation it has. Yes, many people text with proper grammar and spelling. However, it is more common to let these rules go. There are many different ways to learn these essential skills, so I’m not saying that texting causes people to loose their ability to write properly. I’m just acknowledging that proper writing is no longer required necessarily for every day communications via text. The popularity and frequent use of texting causes people to have a tendency to ignore these rules outside of texting. Also, instead of reading news sources or written information using formal and correct grammar, they are more used to reading news and information with informal and incorrect grammar. The frequency of this is the cause of the problem. Student’s have smaller vocabularies and struggle to learn basic grammar rules because they are accustomed to the short-hand, informal style of texting.

There’s no question about it – texting has changed our language. Some argue it’s for the better, the others for the worse. No, texting is not killing language. It is simply changing it. However, there is no denying that since communication is evolving so quickly with technology, it’s difficult to maintain the “old” rules of language.
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September 10, 2013 by
Lifestyle

HighEdWeb West

HighEdWebWEST

This summer I had the unique privilege of working at the first Western regional conference for HighEdWeb. This inaugural event, hosted by Chapman University, opened my eyes to the incredible work, dedication, and strategy that goes into creating an online community for higher education establishments.

HighEdWeb West, the inaugural conference

For those of you unfamiliar with this event, HighEdWeb is a conference for higher education web professionals to gather, collaborate, discuss, and inspire. There are four other regional conferences throughout the East Coast and a larger annual conference every October. HighEdWeb West brought together a unique group of innovators who shared their expertise through a series of presentations and social events over the course of 1.5 days. The event was incredibly successful, clearly illustrated through the collection of tweets and pictures posted throughout the conference using the hashtag #hewebwest. Feel free to read through the Storify to see the awesome conversations that were generated by this event!

I had the opportunity to attend sessions such as accessibility, project management for web professionals, social media, blending personal with professional, and building online communities. Hearing these individuals speak with such enthusiasm and present their work was incredibly inspiring. It was a privilege to observe the professional discussions, but to also join in.

A student’s perspective

During breakfast, Chancellor Daniele Struppa explained how educators and administrators have an obligation to their students to stay current with the changes in technology. Between cracking a few jokes, he emphasized that although these technologies may seem new to the older generations, tools such as Facebook are old news. The need for better communication and online engagement between higher education establishments and their communities has become a vital component to the identity and success of the organization – it cannot be ignored or postponed.

From the perspective of a current student, I agree with the Chancellor wholeheartedly. The way Chapman has embraced social media and overall engagement online with students has blown me away. The focus on conversation and collaboration invites students to voice their opinions, share their experiences, and learn about the university. It is beyond exciting when Chapman’s Twitter “favorites” or replies to your tweet. They also feature student photography of campus with their their “#CaptureCU” tag on Twitter and Instagram. Sharing and resharing the photos with the entire community allow for more people to appreciate the original work.
Geeking out on social media

One of the most exciting parts of this conference for me was the social media lightening rounds. I work on Chapman’s web and interactive marketing team, and tend to “geek out” over anything related to social media marketing and strategy. My supervisor, Sheri Lehman, presented first about changing the way universities and schools communicate online with their students. The emphasis on asking for contributions, encouraging discussions, and understanding one’s audience stood out to me. She explained that higher education web professionals need to “trust the user and shake their hand.”

I have the advantage of being on the other end of this and I could not agree with Sheri more. In the current age of information sharing online, people will post about almost anything – positive and negative. Sometimes, they just want to express their feelings. Other times, they want a response. I believe the latter to occur more frequently. When a student raves about what an incredible experience they had at the university upon graduating, responding by thanking them and congratulating them on their accomplishment fosters a positive relationship between the university and that student.

Sheri focused on humanizing the university by talking with the community, not at it. Maybe a disgruntled student has a negative experience with parking and complains via Twitter. Using the framework Sheri presented, the school can respond with an explanation of steps they are taking to to remedy the situation. This reassures the student and instills confidence in the organization as a whole. Being acknowledged, heard, and respected online is key for higher education organizations.

Beyond social media, the speakers of HighEdWeb West touched on every aspect of the growing technology in our society and how it relates to higher education. I have a whole new appreciate for the work, passion, and commitment it takes to create a strong online community after attending this conference. This was an incredible event and I hope that there are many more HighEdWeb West regional conferences in the future.
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August 29, 2013 by