The Changing World of Social Media: How We Can Use It to Build Professional Platforms

     Currently, I am taking a class in graduate school called Communication of Scholarship, GRSC 8200.  My teachers include a theater professor, a research anthropologist, and a PR specialist for the university.  Today, James Hataway, the PR specialist, talked about how to use social media effectively to promote yourself as a scholar and as a writer.  Last night, on my personal blog, I posted about my discontent toward Facebook and the way people use it.  Now, the more cerebral part of my brain is realizing that I can use Facebook and Twitter, in addition to my blog, to promote the ideas I am learning in graduate school and, hopefully one day, to promote myself as a writer.  

     Two years ago, I helped my father, a "baby boomer" and an introvert who dislikes social media, to construct a Facebook page and a Twitter page to promote his book Maya Lord, which is a very good action/historical fiction novel that several of my friends have read and devoured.  By connecting to social media, my father is reaching out to all generations and to people of various interests.  I now need to practice what I preach and use social media not for ranting and gossip, but to promote ideas.  Today, I wanted to share what I learned about using social media professionally.  Thank you to James Hataway for your inspiration.  Much of what I write here is directly quoted or paraphrased from the powerpoint he shared with us in class today. 

The Facts on Social Media: 

• “Technology is outpacing our imaginations, and that has serious implications for how we share information" --James Hatway 
• Social media makes it easier to capture a large audience, but harder to connect with individuals of that audience 
• By 2020, cell phones will be the primary source for internet
• There are more g-bites in an iphone than in the ship that went to the moon (a fact I learned from my father, whose grandmother was born close to when the automobile was first invented and who lived to see man walk on the moon)
• “500 years of YouTube videos are watched every day”--Hataway 
• 13% of advertising revenue this year will be on Facebook.
• Twitter users post 100, 000 tweets; Instagram users post 3600 photos; 2 million queries are searched on google every minute 
• 92% of retweets on Twitter are based on information that people find interesting 
• People interact with their phones 40 to 80 times a day on average
• 4.8 billion people own a mobile phone.  Only 4.2 billion people own a toothbrush.
• The U.S. has the greatest number of ios devices; China is a close second
• 91% of mobile internet access is for social media
• 1 out of every 7 minutes online is spent on Facebook
• In 2009, social media played a part in the Iranian Presidential Elections
• Most people who are on Facebook don’t like it!  It is actually in decline, although it is still the world leader. Even though we say we don't like it, we use it.  We even take those silly "what character am I" quizzes. :) (On a personal note, I am somewhat addicted to those.  I am flattered that the Harry Potter Quiz thinks that I'm Harry and that the Big Bang Theory Quiz thinks I am Howard W.) 
• “10 years from now, Facebook might be Myspace”--Hataway 
• Twitter is the most popular among younger people (teenagers and the younger end of the millennial generation) 
• Katy Perry and Justin Bieber are the top two Twitter accounts in the world. Barack Obama edged out Lady Gaga for third.

Pros:

• Social networking sites are the top news source for 27.8% of Americans (The bad side of this is that journalism is on decline, with the decreased readership of newspapers, etc.)  In other words, we need to look at the quality of our news stories, in addition to the quantity.  
• Politicians, Scientists, and Religious leaders are on Twitter (along with some pretty awesome writers).  The Pope is on Twitter, along with the Dhali Llama and Barack Obama.  Social media helped Obama's campaigns to the point where he spent a month not going to campaign fundraisers.  McCain used less social media and more campaign fundraisers and didn’t make nearly as much money.  Therefore, Obama not only spent less money on campaigning, but also won the election.   
• Social media sites spread information faster than any other media.  Over 50 percent of people learn about breaking news on social media.  (The perfect example of this is the fact that most of us learned about Phillip Seymour Hoffman's death on Facebook on Twitter.  We might cross check our with more noteworthy news sources, but we get the first word from social media). 
• Social media sites are useful for job seekers and those seeking professional collaborators
• It CAN help facilitate face-to-face discussion and help mobilize social change/inspire others to help the community
• Crowd sourcing and crowd funding: social media can help you to raise money for your causes 
• YOU have a chance to explain your research to people who don’t have access/knowledge

Cons:

• There is a lot of unreliable and false information
• You can get yourself into a jam if you’re not careful (on so many levels, both professional and personal) 
• It can become a time waster if you’re easily distracted. (On a personal note, if you are a writer, you might want to turn off your internet while you are trying to write for a long stretch of time).  
• Once it’s online, it’s there forever.  People can archive or screen save information.
• Sites are vulnerable to security attacks (ex: hackers) 
• If you become too dependent on social media for networking, you may begin to ignore more traditional channels (ex: talking to people, cocktail parties, etc.)
• It’s one more thing you have to add to a busy schedule

Tips on using social media to build your professional platform: 

• Create tangible goals and tactics to meet them.  You have to go beyond “Let’s get the word out there.” 

Ex: Comment on stories in the news, increase the number of “likes” you have, use qualitative measures to measure your success (who is following you, not just the number of followers) 

• Learn what is important to your audience 

• Be passionate about your message (but back yourself up with facts)  

• Observe others in your field and see what they are doing in social media.  Look at hashtags and trending topics that are relevant to you and your audience.  

• Remember that people who are hiring you will check your Facebook page.  They will NOT just check your LinkedIn page.  If your status updates are set to public and not to friends only, employers will see you! 

• Spend some time “lurking” before you jump into things.  Set up your account and use it to watch those who have already experienced some degree of success.  As in teaching, you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel completely.   

• Create useful content!! Once you know what your audience needs and likes, see if you can make your research fit within that spectrum.  

• Comment on posts and blogs related to your field  

• Share the content of others 

• Be careful, but don’t be stiff.  It’s okay to inject some humor and funny anecdotes. 

• Link! Drive people to other sites.  They wil appreciate you doing so, and it makes your content more useful to others. Also, they might return the favor and link your sites.  

• We, as academics, see things that the lay public does not, so we should share it!! 

• Especially on Twitter, it’s okay to write the gist of the information. 

• If you establish yourself as a source of interesting information, people will notice you. 

• Manage expectations!! You are one researcher working in a very specialized field, and you are competing against people and corporations with their own PR teams.  (Ex: Barack Obama has a whole staff doing his FB’s and Tweets.  He signs them BO if he actually tweets them) 

• Obama is the most popular person on Twitter who is not an entertainer or athlete.  Bill Gates, at #41, is second.  Therefore, we can’t necessarily compete with the entertainers. ☹ 

• Quality matters more than quantity when it comes to followers. 

• You will have followers if you have useful information.  

How Does Accessibility Affect Our Success as Students and as Citizens

     I grew up in a house full of books.  Anyone who knows me fairly well knows that I'm a bibliophile and that books are like candy to me.  When I look at my bank and credit card statements, I spend the most money on two things beyond rent, groceries, and gas: 1. Books, and 2. Going out to eat/drink coffee, etc. with my friends.  Of my two luxury expenses listed at the end, I am reasonably pleased with both of them because they give me more access to words and thoughts, both of which color my world.  In reality, I love words, both in written and spoken form.  Not only do they help me to connect to others, but they intellectually stimulate me.  While I believe that my overly-active imagination is part of what makes me quirky (although I hope pleasantly so for the most part), I also believe it is what will enable me to change the world, if I continue to learn how to develop it right. Yet  I was lucky enough to grow up in home and school environments that encouraged this creativity.  I do believe that today's public schools don't do enough to encourage imagination and creativity of the students.  Sometimes, as a teacher, I know it's hard to think of how you individually can be more empowered to change the system, but you can change the classroom for your students.  I think what it comes down to is giving your students more access to books and to innovative teaching strategies.
     In my children's literature classes. we talk a lot about accessibility to multicultural and international texts.  I believe that it's important to access students to texts that are high quality multicultural literature and take a step beyond choosing the "tokenized" books.  I do believe that access to quality multicultural literature is growing in this country, and I hope it continues to do so.  Also, there are many wonderful international children's books out there that some students just do not have access to due to financial, political, and other constraints.  A friend of mine recently wrote a blog that explores this issue in more depth, which I encourage you to read: http://criticalchildrenslit.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-world-of-books-seeking-international.html.  We had a whole class discussion about how we can increase access to high quality international children's books, which I found enlightening and encouraging.   I think the more able children are to relate to the characters in children's books, the more likely they are to be engaged in reading.  In an increasingly diverse and global world, it's important to offer a plethora of books from a variety of cultures and countries.  
     Also, while it can be hard in today's educational climate, I think student creativity can be further encouraged by more problem-solving based teaching methods.  A friend and colleague of mine have been observing at a local elementary school that utilizes the Schoolwide Enrichment Model.  The SEM is based on the theories of Joseph Renzulli, who believed in more problem-based educational methods to bring out the gifts and talents of all students.  In other words, the SEM advocates exposing all students in the school to methods traditionally used in gifted education classes.  In the school where we've been conducting our study, the students spend one hour a week in a self-selected "cluster" class where they get to explore a topic of interest, such as reading, health, writing, sports, gardening, etc.  In the class, the teacher and the student decide together a project they'd like to do, related to their topic, that will help the school and/or the community.  Examples I've seen so far include a vegetable garden, a "little free library", and a cultural quilt.  What I love about this approach is that the students can see the fruits of their labor and also how they can use their talents to help others.
     I myself was a student who benefitted from gifted classes and programs, along with my sister.  While I think gifted education should continue to exist, I think we should reframe how we structure it.  Studies show that Culturally and Linguistically diverse students tend to be underrepresented in gifted programs.  As someone who used to teach gifted classes in a very diverse school, I believe this statistic based on personal experiences.  Therefore, I believe in the SEM as a way to give all students access to gifted methods and also as a means of identifying a broader range of students for gifted services.  I realize, realistically, that many teachers are in schools that do not utilize clusters or the SEM.  If that is the case, though, I still think one could have a class project that encourages students to use problem-solving skills and creative thinking to help the school or community.  I know it's an extra hour or two out of an already busy school week, but I really believe it's worth it in the long run.
      Part of why I have been successful in school is because I've always worked hard and believed that education is important.  Also, I've had access to books and to educational resources. Yes, the importance of education is a social construct, but it is also a key to career success and to personal fulfillment. I believe that if more students had accessibility to books and to problem-solving based instruction, then there would be more opportunities for success both in future scholastic endeavors and beyond.  I think we've made great strides in equalizing education for people of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds, but I also think there's further progress that could be made.  

Introducing my New Blog :)

     Hello, I am Margaret, and I'm a first year Ph.D. student in Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia.  I have a BSEd. in English Education (with ESOL Certification), and I taught middle school Language Arts and Reading (including gifted classes) for seven years.  During my time as a middle school teacher, I worked with the Reading Bowl and the Beta Club.  I loved both of those extracurricular activities. I also taught high school for a brief period of time.  I have a Master of Arts in Teaching (with Gifted Certification) with a focus in English from UGA and a Creative Writing Certificate from Kennesaw State University.  I am very passionate about the National Writing Project and have done work for both the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project and the Red Clay Writing Project sites.  Several of my colleagues have started blogs about what we are learning and discussing in our courses, and I thought I would do so as well, especially since I am interested in how blogging and social media are changing communication.

     All of my research interests fall under the umbrella of language, writing, and education.  They include the following: 

• Multicultural Education (including issues of equality) 
• Children's Literature (especially International and Multicultural Children's Literature) 
• Graphic Novels and Memoirs (novels written in the style of comic books) 
• Multimodal writing and composition 
• Critical Media Theory and New Media 
• Writing Pedagogy, especially that which involves Creative Writing 
• Critical Pedagogy 
• Gifted Education and how it is changing, shaping, and evolving (in particular, I am interested in how we can give minority and economically disadvantaged students more access to rigorous and engaging curriculum) 

     My colleagues and I are committed to creating an online community in which we as educators, scholars, and writers can share ideas, both with each other and with those outside of our field.  I hope you all enjoy reading about what I am learning, and I would love to hear your input.