A Guide to Using Facebook for your Business

Facebook is the largest social media platform so it is a good place to start spreading your message throughout the community and your target market. Facebook uses an algorithm called Edgerank. Edgerank rewards those who post items that get lots of interaction over those that receive little interaction from followers. As your posts get more interaction, Facebook will put the post higher on people's timelines giving the post even more visibility. So as you start Facebook it is important to understand what Edgerank is and how it can benefit your Business.

The first thing that you should do when you are starting on any social media platform including Facebook is to explore the way the platform works. Although you may have a personal Facebook account their are extra features available to you when running an account for an organization or company. While you are exploring Facebook you should also follow other companies including competitors to see what they are doing and what you like or dislike about what they are doing.

As with any social media platform it is important to identify your target market, if they are not on Facebook than you probably do not want to use Facebook as your main tool to reach them. When you have identified your target market Facebook and start posting on your page, Facebook will gather data on the people who are viewing your posts and how they are responding to posts. You can use the information form Facebook's Page Insights to tell what posts are getting the most reaction and if they are reaching your target market. Using the data gathered by Facebook you can then start to create better content that gets more reactions from your target market and will increase your Edgerank.

If you are struggling with getting interaction there are some types of posts that have shown to get more interaction. One way to get reactions is to create sentimental posts, everybody loves puppies and kittens, or nice posts about family members so there is a better chance people will like those types of posts. Humor is also a good way to get engagement, it is important that you maintain the image your company has already created on social media. Utility posts that answer the question of how to do something may also get reactions. Facebook is generally a positive place, most people do not post about bad things happening in their lives but will share the good things, so keeping posts positive is the way to go. A general guideline is to keep around 80% of your posts as fun and only 20% as promotional, this will help people to keep reading your posts.

Snapchat's Gamble Update

The new Snapchat update has seen massive backlash from users of the app. An article on PR news claims there is one petition which has had 1.2 million people sign asking them to revert the update back to the previous version. The update was a major redesign to the way that the app runs. The Snap stories are now in the same place as the chat section and the place where the stories used to be located is now all sponsored news stories. The article on PR news says Snapchat still chose to roll out the update in the United States after it had received terrible reviews in beta testing in the U.K., Australia and Canada. Currently on the Apple App Store the app is receiving 1.8 out of five starts. The process of re-watching a friends Snapchat Story is one of the main issues that has users of the app in uproar.

As the PR news article points out, the update was not necessarily tailored toward everyday users, but toward the brands who have stuck with Snapchat through the years. The update now offers analytics for brands that are apart of Snapchat's Official Stories. Snapchat also appears to be working on an E-commerce platform where different brands will be able to sell through the app itself. Finally, Snapchat is working on a new way to allow more brands to create Ad's to be used on the app. These features do not seem to be put in place to improve the users experience but it is to continue to make money.

I am not sure that putting the brands first on the priority list of the user is the best move Snapchat could make. If the users of the app are upset they may not want to use the app anymore and then the focus on the brands will not have been helpful. If Snapchat starts to lose users the brands are not going to get as many views and they are not going to want to use Snapchat as a platform they will use to advertise. As an everyday user of the app I agree with the majority of users on the fact that this update was not a good update for the users. Currently I still use the app but I have slowly started to use it less often than in the past and if Snapchat continues to put the brands ahead of the users I think they will be signing their own death warrant and will lose a lot of their everyday users.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the Snapchat update. Do you think that Snapchat will reverse their update due to the pressure from their users? Will Snapchat putting a priority on the brands over the users be helpful or hurtful to the app? The way that Snapchat responds to the users of the app may have an affect on the future growth or death of the app.

The Grand Tetons

When I graduated from High School my friends and I took a trip during the summer to Estes Park Colorado. We did a lot of hiking in Rocky Mountain National park which is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been. My favorite hike that we did on the trip was originally planned as an eight mile round trip to Black Lake. When we arrived at Black Lake we noticed that we could go further up the valley that we were travelling to get to the lake. We were feeling good so we decided to travel up to the end of the valley. It ended up being surreal as we were in a place that not many people ever travel too and has rarely been touched by humanity. It was quiet and peaceful and we all just took some time in silence enjoying nature. On the way back we ran out of water because the eight mile trip we were planning on taking turned into 13 miles so we ran the last half mile trying to get some water as soon as possible.

After our first trip the next summer we decided we wanted to do another trip. We decided to go to park city Utah. The trip to Utah did not run as smoothly as our trip to Colorado because the weather was not as nice as it was when we were in Colorado. The weather patterns caused us to change some of the hikes that we had planned. One hike in particular we decided to do because weather caused us to cancel another hike was to hike up Mount Olympus. We saw it was only supposed to be about a 6 mile round trip hike which was a short hike for us at the time. We did not realize how steep the trail was going to be and it ended up being one of the most difficult hikes that I had ever completed. 

The next summer we decided to go to Grand Teton National Park and do a three day hike along the Teton Crest trail. The hike was one of the coolest things I have done. We had to carry all of our supplies because we were staying in the back country where there was no human connection. We had to carry our tents, sleeping bags, clothes for all different types of weather, and all of the food that we would need for the trip. We also had to bring a water filter so that we could drink water from mountain streams when we ran out. The first day we ended up waling close to 18 miles because we decided to take a trail that would take us to the Teton Crest Trail instead of taking a lift to the beginning of the trail. The lift would have brought us closer, but it also would have cost us money. By the time we ended the first day we were exhausted and the sun was going done so we had to put the tent up quickly and make our food as quickly as we could. We saw a lot of great scenery the first day but my favorite day was the second day of hiking. The second day of hiking was the day that we got up close to the Tetons and saw amazing scenery the entire hike. There was some good scenery on the final day of the hike but we ended up taking a shorter way back to the end of the trail because we were so tired and we were told that we did not have the proper equipment to go on the longer path. If I go back again, I would take another day to do the trip and go along the longer path because we were told that the scenery was beautiful. The longer path would have taken us through Paintbrush Canyon but it would have added a few more hours onto our hike.

We have not taken another trip since then, but at some point I would love to take some more trips back to the Rocky Mountains.

The Start of Social Media Marketing

Jason McDonald's "Social Media Marketing Workbook" provides tools for small business owners and marketing managers or non profit organizations. It looks into some of the most common social media platforms in use and will teach theory along with workbook activities that allow for hands on experience. The first chapter of the book doesn't go into depth on any particular social media platform but it does discuss some tools to help get started and to optimize the use of social media for marketing purposes. The workbook begins by relating marketing on social media to throwing a party. The goal of party synonym is to demonstrate that it takes work to throw a good party, but a good party looks effortless to the attendee. The goal of marketing on social media is to make it effortless and entertaining which means work will have to be put in behind the scenes.

Part of the work that has to be done in order to "throw a great party" is looking at what other people have already done. The book goes into some detail on "reverse engineering" other companies social media sites. One of the main points made of doing research on other companies is to take notes on what is done well on each site, and the things that you do not like about the site. By taking note of the things that you like and dislike, you will be able to tailor your content in the most beneficial way possible. When starting out, the workbook points out that Google is a great tool to use for any questions that arise while working with different social media platforms. The workbook also highlights that it is not necessary to put lots of work into every type of social media platform, instead an understanding of your target market can help you focus on the platforms used mainly by your target community. The main goal of using social media for marketing is to get people to talk about your organization and also to spread awareness for your brand to people that may not have been searching specifically for your organization.

Not all of the content that is put out on your different social media platforms has to be created by your organization, you can share other people's content if it is relevant to your cause. The workbook points out that there are benefits and costs to both approaches to sending content out on social media platforms. The workbook offers many worksheets throughout the book to help provide an understanding of the theory that is being presented in the writing of the workbook. The end of the first chapter gives the reader some content marketing tools and resources that may be helpful for running your social media outlets and creating content.

Love and Christianity

At Ohio Northern University I am the treasurer for an organization called Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Fellowship of Christian Athletes is often shortened and called FCA. Every week we get together for an hour and discuss the Bible and connect it to our lives. I recently live tweeted one of our discussions which was on the topic of love. Love is a very important topic in the Bible and is a crucial aspect of the Christian faith. During the discussion we covered three main areas of love. The first was discussing love for yourself. The main of the section of loving yourself was finding value in yourself, not being a narcissist. We looked at the idea that God created us in his image and since God is perfect than we are perfect. This doesn't mean we do everything perfect, but it means we are perfectly ourselves. I am the perfect version of the person I am, and you are the perfect version of who you are and no two people are alike. The Bible is not as concerned with loving yourself as it is with loving others and those around you.  The second portion of our discussion looked at love for others and how we can go about showing love for others. Having love for everyone is one of the most important things taught in the Bible. If you are looking for a section in the Bible that has a major focus on love I would recommend first checking out 1 Corinthians chapter 13. In 1 Corinthians 13:13 it states "And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love." According to the Bible we are called to act in love toward everyone, even your worst enemy. I think if everyone acted in love toward one another, many problems present in the world would disappear. Unfortunately, we do not live in such a world but it is the job of the proclaimed Christian to do everything in love regardless of the world around us. Romans 12:9-21 was another section of the Bible we discussed, it gives an overview of how to love others.  The final section of the discussion looked at our love for God and his love for us. For this section we looked at 1 John 4:16-18 and Proverbs 20:28. With these versus we discussed how we can prioritize our love for God versus our love toward earthly things. We also discussed why love from God can drive out fear, and finally we looked at the differences of emotional love and God's biblical love. C.S. Lewis has a quote that does a good job of describing where our focus should be "Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither." A focus on heaven will allow us to have joy here on earth, but if our aim is only toward earthly material objects than we will not find joy. No matter what you believe there are going to be good and bad times in life, in fact there are many stories in the Bible of suffering, but with an aim toward heaven we can still have joy even when times are difficult.

The New Life of a "Swammer"

Over the weekend, I competed in my last collegiate swim meet. Swimming has been a large portion of my life and finishing my competitive career in college was bittersweet. It was an emotional event for all of the senior swimmers during the final session of the meet. I was extremely nervous before my last event which was the 200-yard backstroke. There were so many thoughts going through my head about it being my last race, I was afraid I would not be able to swim as fast as I was capable of and would leave having regretted some part of my race. Our team was also in a tight race for the conference championship so we needed every point possible which added pressure to performing well in the event. In the end, I dropped three seconds from my prelim seed time to my final time and set a new personal record and maintained my position to help score points for the team. It took me a while to realize that I was officially done with my swimming career. I am not sure that I have fully come to comprehend how much different my life will be without swimming taking up a major portion of my time.

The 100-yard butterfly was my main race in high school and college, and when I finished my last 100 fly I was extremely emotional. Being done racing the 100 fly was a hard pill to swallow it was by far my favorite race and you can bet that every once in a while when I get in a pool I will swim a 100 fly just to see what I am capable of doing. The 100 fly was the only race that I swam throughout all of high school and college which is why it holds a special place in my heart.

Swimming has not completely left my life, I plan on coaching after I graduate and hopefully sharing some of the joy that I found during my career with others. I will also continue training in the pool for triathlons, especially as I train for Ironman Arizona. The fact that swimming is a sport that you can do for your entire life makes the sport all the more enjoyable and I would not trade the time I have spent in this sport for anything.

Swimming has given me so many memories that I will take with me and cherish for the rest of my life. Swimming has brought me pain, tears, happiness, sadness, but most importantly, it has given me the opportunity to meet some of the most amazing people and it has brought me some of my best friends. The chapter of my competitive swimming career may have closed but as I come close to graduation I am looking forward to starting new chapters of my life and creating even more memories. I am sad that I am done swimming in college, but I am so thankful that I stuck it out through all of the early mornings and difficult practices because I love the sport of swimming.

A Review of "The Art of Social Media"

I would suggest "The Art of Social Media" by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick for anyone working or planning to work in the public relations field. The book is tailored toward people using many different platforms of social media to promote a company or a brand. Some of the tips in the book can be applied to personal use but this is not a book that teaches you how to use social media tools. The book gives tips for optimizing the use of different social media platforms and creating the best content for each platform. 

The book is a quick read and offers over 100 tips which you may or may not use. When I read the book, I found there were some tips that seemed like common sense and I feel they did not need to be stated in the book. An example of a common-sense tip is asking yourself if other people would reshare your post before you post. To me if you don't think other people would repost it than why would you be posting it in the first place? However, the book is full of tips I had not even thought of when considering different platforms of social media. An example of this is to wear solid colors and avoid stripes when you are on a platform such as google hangouts where you are on video. The stripes can create an optical illusion where the image looks wavy instead of clean.

The book doesn't cover every type of social media platform currently available, but a lot of the principles are used on other types of social media platforms may be applicable for platforms not covered in the book. For example, Snapchat is not a topic covered in the book, but it is a tool some business can use for promotion such as making a filter with the company’s name for an event being held. The tips the book gives for videos and pictures could apply to the use of Snapchat for your organization or business. 

"The Art of Social Media" will guide you through the best way to optimize your profile so it is attractive to other viewers. The book will give tips on how to gain more followers. There are tips for naming your blog so it will attract readers, and tips on how to find interesting content if you are running short on ideas. A main focus of the book is to gain more followers, the more followers you have means more people will be reading your content, sharing it, and creating a larger brand awareness. There are also tips on how to deal with your followers and handle their comments. The book not only gives tips on how to use specific social media platforms, it also gives tips on using different platforms for events being held and can be used to promote your business.

Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick did a good job of creating a simple book that covers a broad spectrum of topics. The book is a quick read and will provide you with many tools for the job. No book can give all of the information required to be the most successful user of social media because the field is constantly changing. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just dive in and learn some lessons yourself.

The Taper

For a swimmer taper is the most wonderful time of the year. Taper is the point in the season where the amount of yardage the swimmer is swimming starts to go down. The practices shift to shorter sprint sets with lots of rest and a focus on race specific details. If you are around swimmers who are going through taper you will notice a sudden increase in the amount of energy they have compared to the rest of the season where they may have been in a constant state of fatigue.

Throughout the entire swim season swimmers will have two-a-day workouts until taper starts this means there are a lot of very early mornings for swimmers throughout most of the year. As a swimmer the morning workouts I have taken part in would consist of dryland and lifting, along with a shorter pool swim. Dryland is a term used in swimming for workouts performed out of the pool. For me these workouts were often composed of some type of circuit training where there are different stations set up and at each station there are different exercises you perform. The morning workouts usually happen anywhere from three to four times a week. The main swim workouts happen every afternoon, this is where the bulk of the swimming yardage is put in throughout the season. 

There are different styles of training for swimming, some programs will focus on swimming lots of yards, while others will swim less yards at a higher intensity. From my experience there has been a shift from the programs that use lots of yardage to the programs focused on high intensity training. The high intensity training allows for more race specific details to be practiced whereas swimming lots of yardage will create a large aerobic base. I prefer the high intensity style of training. I think the high intensity training teaches you how to swim fast, and considering most of the races in swimming are 200 yards or less you do not need to train where you swim close to 10,000 yards in a day. The high intensity training also gives you a good benchmark for how fast you will swim once taper comes and you are rested. The yardage training offers an unpredictable taper performance and the outcome varies greatly from person to person.

Taper is a time where swimmers become loaded up with energy and it can be difficult to contain, but don't be surprised if you here a swimmer making an excuse to not do something because they are on taper and do not want to over exert themselves. A joke used quite often among swimmers is when they say a random activity will ruin their taper. Taper is a time of high spirit and lots of excitement on the pool deck, it is a time every swimmer looks forward to and it often marks the end of a season full of hard work and dedication.

Modern Immigration

I had the pleasure of getting to speak with Riku Watanabe about on a podcast that I did called The Social Engineers. On the podcast we talked with Riku about his move from Japan to the United States. We take a look at his first few years in the United States, then his life and college, and finally his future hopes for employment.

Riku first moved to the U.S. in 2005 following his father who got a promotion in his job leading the Watanabe family across the Pacific. During Riku's first year in the U.S. he did not speak any English and it would take him 8 years to have a comfortable command over the English language. Riku's hard work would eventually pay off and being bilingual is a very marketable trait in his search for employment after he graduates. During the podcast Riku talks about his first day of school and his story highlights a need to provide a better transition experience for young children from other countries into the school systems. For Riku, there was very little that was done for him and he often did not know what was going on during his first year of school.

Riku followed in his fathers footsteps and decided to go to college to study mechanical engineering. During his sophomore year he became the president of the Asian American Student Union at Ohio Northern University. He also has a job on campus working for International Student Services. Riku helps students transition to life on campus among other things. Riku's experience from moving to the U.S. from another country means that he was once in the international students shoes and understands some of the confusion that comes with moving to this country. As Riku's college career is coming to a close he faces many more tough situations, as he looks for work he has to find a company that will sponsor him so that he can obtain a work visa in order to stay in the U.S. Riku discusses some options that will give him some time after he graduates to stay in the U.S. and find work. The fact that Riku is in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) field, under current laws and regulations which are constantly changing, he will get 2 extra years to find work.

I learned a lot during the podcast with Riku, even though I have been friends with him since our freshman year of college, there are a lot of things dealing with international students and the way that work visa's which I still do not know about. The complexity behind being able to become a citizen in the U.S. baffles me, I don't think that it should be as difficult as it is for someone like Riku, who has lived in the U.S. since he was 10 years old, to become a citizen of the U.S. I had an awesome time talking with Riku and I encourage you to check out the podcast for yourself and hear what Riku has to say about being from another country.

Thriving on Social Media

The final chapters of Guy Kawasaki's book "The Art of Social Media gives readers some final tips for using different forms of social media. Before diving into the different forms of social media he gives readers some tips to not look clueless while posting on different forms of social media. Some of his tips for not looking clueless seem obvious but there are still people that do some of the things that he mentions, otherwise he wouldn't have to bring them to the reader's attention.

The first tip is to not say bad things online. Sarcasm doesn't always convey through words on line so depending on the type of media that you put out, it may be best to not use sarcasm. Just being belligerent and mean is not okay to use at any time as a general rule of thumb for life. You do not get anything good from being mean to other people. His next word of advice is to not tell people what to share. People don't like to be told what to do but I don't think that this is a black and white rule for using social media. Making suggestions for other social media profiles for people to read is not a bad thing but telling people that they shouldn't read something should generally be avoided. The next tip is to not buy followers or likes or other things that social media tools use to show that people like your content. This is different from buying page space on Facebook because that is the way the Facebook was designed to run. However, buying followers is unethical if you are trying to show that you are improving your numbers. In the long run it just hurts your company, you are not going to see improvements in other fields which would reflect that the increased number of followers is not helping. I think that the main lesson you can take from Kawasaki's tips to avoid looking clueless is to put yourself in the shoes of your audience and see if that is something that you would react positively towards.

Kawasaki discusses some ways to make your content better based on the platform that you are using. If you can, depending on the platform that is being used, embed videos that you are uploading. Embedding videos is more visually appealing and it will be more likely that people will watch the video as opposed to clicking on a link. The Instagram app was designed to keep posts simple. Instagram was made to share the moment of life that you are in, so there is no need to overthink it and try to make yourself look better than everyone else. LinkedIn is a social media tool that is becoming a standard tool used for searching for jobs and building a network in the professional world. If you are trying to build your network, writing a personal message asking people to connect will give you a greater chance of that connection being added. Kawasaki gives multiple tips for many of the most popular types of social media, if you are interested in many more tips across multiple platforms of social media I would encourage you to check out his book.

Instagram Scheduling

For anyone that works in public relations the news that Instagram is coming out with a scheduling feature is a big hit. Currently, according to an article on PR News the scheduling feature will only be available for business accounts and there are future plans to make it available for non-business accounts. The Instagram app itself will not have the scheduling feature on it, instead it will use some of its partners which include Hootsuite, Sprinklr, and Sprout Social. The update includes the ability to search for accounts that it has used the @mention feature on previously. There is a fear that the scheduling feature will create an increase posting, and the increase in the number of posts could lead to a lower quality post.  For those working in public relations that are excited about this new feature it still remains important to create quality content even though scheduling may give you the ability to create more posts.

Scheduling posts will give companies the ability to create content ahead of time and reduce the potential workload buildup by allowing content to be created ahead of time. Scheduling also allows content to come out at the same time on the same day every week. It also allows you to post content based on the time zones so people get there content at a normal time of day for the viewer. The ability to schedule also allows companies to send out posts on the weekend or over holidays when the person who is running the social media account may not be in the office.

The ability to schedule has many advantages, one of which is allowing you to stay ahead and be prepared. As an article on Sprout Social points out, if an event is starting at midnight most people would not want to be up at midnight waiting to hit the post button. Using scheduling, it is also important to use it properly, scheduling lots of advertisements can cause a loss of followers to your social media account. Scheduling can allow you to put up many different kinds of content and spread them out so that they are not over saturated.

Using analytics from different social media tools you can also determine the best times to post on your different social media outlets and the number of times a day to post on each form of social media. Scheduling can be a very helpful tool but just like power tools it should be used with respect. Sending out to much content can turn viewers away, or cause them to scroll past your post because some people might see the company name and scroll past it because it has shown up too often. The Sprout article gives guidelines for how many times a day to post on different social media outlets. For twitter it says that you can post between one and 51 times a day. I do not think that it is beneficial to post 51 times per day on any form of social media. It would cause me to either stop following them or to always scroll past the posts that they sent out.

The Affordable Cirrus Vision Jet

Cirrus Aircraft is looking to make a big impact on the aircraft industry with their new Vision Jet. The jet is designed to be much more affordable than any other aircraft in private jet sector of aviation. An article on Business Insider states that the aircraft will be priced at around $2 million. According to Business Insider the Vision Jet is roughly half the price of its nearest competitor. So, if you are fortunate enough to be able to afford a private jet, what does the $2 million dollars get you?

If safety is a priority than you may be interested to know that the Vision Jet comes equipped with a parachute for the airplane. So, if things go horribly wrong you will have a much better chance of making it to the ground safely. The Vision Jet can carry up to 5 adults and 2 children, with multiple different seating options. The cockpit offers some of the newest technology, using touchscreen displays to improve pilot awareness and limit the amount of buttons and switches that have to be used.

The design of the Vision Jet is different than most other aircraft in its class. The jet uses a single engine that will give the aircraft 1800 lbs. of thrust. The most interesting feature is that the jet has a V-shaped tail instead of the typical vertical stabilizer and horizontal elevators that are found on most aircraft. The V-tail requires a more complex flight control system, however it reduces the amount of control surfaces on the aircraft which saves overall aircraft weight. The use of the single engine along with being light weight for a jet makes the jet fast and gives it an impressive range. According to Business Insider, the jet can fly up to 1,380 miles.

If the $2 million price tag on the Vision Jet is a bit too much for you, Cirrus also has a selection of other piston engine, general aviation aircraft. Cirrus makes higher end aircraft so even their piston engine aircraft will set you back a couple hundred thousand dollars. For the casual pilot a lower priced aircraft from a different manufacturer would work, it just may be a little bit less comfy and a little bit slower than the Cirrus aircraft. The Vision Jet is an attempt by Cirrus to create an entirely new category of aircraft, the personal jet. If other aircraft manufactures decide to try and create aircraft in the category of personal jet and as jet engine technology advances and becomes more efficient, the price tag of a new personal jet may decrease over time.

Although I don't expect to ever be able to afford a personal jet for myself it is still fun to dream and see the amazing advances that continue to be made in the aircraft industry. It is amazing to see how far the aircraft industry has coming and general aviation aircraft are slowly starting to become more affordable to the general public allowing more people to experience the joy of flying.