What's Going On?

That's what you're wondering, right? What is this girl doing?

This summer I am going to unpack the transformation of pet adoption and ownership through social media. I will visit here and share my thoughts on how social media has played a crucial role in getting pets adopted and shelters funded.

Since this project is part of a social media course, I have some other goals and questions I want to take care of while I am actively working through this topic. Maybe you have similar questions if you are just now dipping your foot into social media management or maybe you're a business owner yourself who is wondering... what's going on?

A few of my social media questions that I hope I can work out during this class:

- What does the social media process look like for a large-scale corporation? I am fairly familiar with local, small-scale accounts and don't become easily intimidated to manage them. The following is usually smaller and most of the followers know the business owner or the one is posting. How does one transition from low-risk to high-risk?

- How can a social media manager produce organic engagement without paying for boosted posts? I firmly believe the best way to spread a post is to share or retweet, but what are the secrets to include in your content that makes your followers want to retweet?

- Who should your business account follow? Does it matter? Should you follow back your followers? Should you follow people in order to get followers? We are always so focused on getting followers that this question often gets left out.

- Does it hurt your company's brand if you post the same content on multiple platforms at once? i.e. post explaining black friday deal with same photo and caption on Instagram and Facebook.

- When working for a company who doesn't have a strong social media presence, how do you engage those in the office/company to start having a "content-minded" train of thought? If I am being hired in, I don't know the environment as well as them and those employees may know the best content, they just don't know it's content worthy. What can I do or say to get the wheels turning for them to start thinking this way. i.e. For my company this summer (State Farm) I am only in the office 2 days of the week. I am familiar with maybe 75% of our client base and am familiar with the office location. If we are creating a social media campaign highlighting people of the community, I need my colleagues to start asking clients if we can take photos, grab quotes from them, or tell me what businesses they would like to highlight. This is unfamiliar to them but comes easy to me. Maybe this one will just come with experience!

A few of my personal goals for this class include:

- Having content and projects to showcase for future employers. This website and professional twitter is a start!

- By the end of the summer I would love to have at least 100 followers on my professional twitter and a consistent "like" number of 10 on my tweets. Real engagement.

- I want to feel empowered and excited to work for a large-scale company managing social media - not intimidated.

- Networking! I firmly believe everyone you meet is a connection. Although this class is online, I am looking forward to teaming up with classmates and connecting with them even after this class is over. Supporting each others social media accounts and reaching out to them when I am in a creative rut. Community is everything.

- This sounds like a given but I want to plan ahead. All too often I work on things right as they are due but the feeling of being prepared transforms your confidence like no other. I want to come up with an efficient, but simple way to plan posts and share with others the content I have scheduled for their business.

Now you know my thoughts and can keep me accountable for the upcoming months, right? I am looking forward to updating these goals and questions with accomplishments and answers. I'm off to it!