Final Post

At the beginning of this Spring semester I had three goals for my Social Media course. I hoped to learn how to use social media correctly through experts and my classmates. Secondly I hoped to help others learn what I already know about social media. Lastly, I wanted to grow my social networking skills. 

Now as I look back, I can see that I have reached all of my goals. I learned a lot about social media and how to use it to my fullest potential. I read many articles about what to do and what not to through social media networking sites. I learned about and how to use many other networking sites I didn't know how to use before.

I will continue to use social media to connect with others after I finish this course. I will use delicious to bookmark good articles and websites I come across and then share those with others. Mashable will continue to help me learn about other networking sites and social media. 

Check out my social media resume!  

LinkedIn

I finally created a LinkedIn account! Click on the link below to check it out!
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=179773865&trk=tab_pro


Check out these additional Resources for LinkedIn beginners:
5 Top Tips for LinkedIn beginners
7 LinkedIn Tips for Beginners 

Mashable Job Search

Mashable's job section has a broad array of social media internships available. On their website I found a link to a social media internship for Kids II, Inc. Kids II in located in Atlanta, GA. If I was not already doing an internship, I would want to apply for this internship to use my social media skills. I love kids and social media so this would be a great ideal internship.

Below are the day to day duties Kids II is needing an intern to do:

• Write engaging and creative copy for Facebook posts for all 4 brands and schedule for 3 months in advance at time
• Write promotional tweets for all for Brands and schedule for 3 months at a time
• Daily monitoring of all 4 Facebook accounts responding
• Monitoring the conversations on Twitter; i.e. all mentions of our brands and products and tweeting directly when appropriate for the brand
• Create Facebook ads & managing these campaigns for CPC
• Review analytics for all Facebook accounts and ads and make suggestions to improve reach
• Research and identify what brands are doing well in the social space and how can we emulate their success?
• Monitor competitor’s social media sites
• Monitor reviews on retailer sites
• Manage the relationships with current mom bloggers and respond to new bloggers who contact us
• Review new bloggers UPV, posts, etc and decide on products
• Maintain the overall blogger schedule and spreadsheet

I feel as though I have learned how to do a lot of these things from my social media class. However, I do feel I need more experience comparing two different sites to see which one is better.

Basecamp

Basecamp is one of many outsourcing organizational tools organizations use.

Check out my slideshare about Basecamp!

My slideshare has some tools and tips for how to use Basecamp.

Also check out this video on YouTube that explains how to set up a new project on Basecamp.

Popular SMC Books

Below are three books about Social Media I would like to read sometime in the near future. They seem very interesting and they could all help me with my future career working with non-profits.

 

If Social Media is a Game, These are the Rules: 10 Rules for Building a Profitable Social Media Strategy by Joshua Leatherman

The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective, and Powerful Ways To Use Social Media to Drive Social Change by Jennifer Aaker, Andy Smith, Dan Ariely and Chip Heath

 

Social Media for Social Good: A How-to Guide for Non-profits by Heather Mansfield

Social Media One Day Training

One of the assignments for my social media class was to create a one day training for my professional colleagues to attend. My group came up with the idea below.

In order to do this one day training, we would ask our bosses to allow everyone to have the day off on Friday and instead have a conference held in downtown Nashville to teach how to use social media professionally. Below is how we would organize the training:

Session 1 - Overview of social media (What it is and Why it's important) from 9-11am
Break for lunch
Session 2 - Twitter/ Facebook (How to use it professionally) 1-2pm
Session 3 - Linked In/ YouTube (How to use it professionally) 2:25-3:15pm
Session 4 - Professional Do's and Don't in Social Media 3:30-4:30

We would promote this conference through e-vites to our colleagues, we would put a poster up in the break-room, and make an event page on Facebook.

Hopefully through this one day training our colleagues will learn the importance of social media and how to use it professionally.

What I've learned...

So I've been working on this social media blog for almost two months now and I feel like I've learned a lot about social media. Before taking the Social Media course at MTSU, I just thought of social media as using Facebook and twitter. However, over the past month and a half I've learned that it's more than Facebook and twitter. There are many other social media networks out there to use such as linkedin, google+, and many others.

I've learned about the importance of social media communication, sites such as mashable, delicious, about.me, klout, pinterest, etc. I've also learned about what to do and what not to do while networking, I've learned how to be a better listener on twitter. I'm very thankful for the amount of information I've learned over the past month or so.

My social network has also grown, specifically on twitter. Since tweeting about things I care about, such as the fight against human trafficking, other advocates have started following me and I've learned a lot more about human trafficking going on locally. I've connected with some great organizations such as One Less Ministries, End Slavery TN, and Wellspring Advocate.

I do aspire to be a better blogger.  I do not always have a lot of time to write my posts because of how busy my life is. I do like learning more about social media topics, trends, and new concepts. I hope to continue to learn more about social media after this course is over.