Portfolios -- Important or not?

As the semester finally comes to a close, it is a necessity to reflect on the final project. The final project in COM 336 is a very important piece in helping students to market themselves and make moving on after college a lot easier. While this project is a lot of work, it is beneficial to each student in the long-run. The final project that was assigned was to create a webpage that would be used as an online portfolio as well as a way to promote ourselves on other platforms. It is a 3-page site, complete with a bio, contact, and portfolio page. The basic look of the site is rather simple and clean with the ease of customizing it to however you want it to look. The portfolio page included around 10 works that we are proud of from throughout our college career, which can be edited or changed at any time. Designing the website was a unique experience, since it has something is new and different for a lot of people. Before this class, HTML code was something that hadn’t been taught in any other class before. However, some students were more familiar than others (hello, MySpace editing coming in handy once again!) In addition, this was the first time for most, if not all, students have worked in Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is a program in the Adobe Creative Suite that helps you to create and publish a website on the Internet. The program can be kind of confusing to first-time users, especially if you are not familiar with HTML code and how it works. Otherwise, the program is relatively user-friendly and is helpful to a lot of up-and-coming businesses etc. While a clean HTML template for the website was given, customization and organization of the site was solely up to the student. You could change anything from the color of your footer, to your header picture, even down to your font type or color. You couldn’t do much to change the format of the page (where the text/links sat etc.) but you were able to customize as much as possible. When it came to the organization, you had to place the documents for your portfolio page in the order that made most sense to you. Whether it was visual projects on the top and word documents on the bottom, or even vice versa, it was up to you. The customization and organization of each individual site was necessary to make the site reflective of each student. In addition to the important and vital customization and organization, each student’s social media accounts had to be incorporated into the site. In today’s day and age, if you are not ever-present on each important social media background, especially if you are looking to go into a communications field, you are dead in the water. Social media is a part of everyday life and staying fresh and relevant on each of the important sites just as important. On each site, there were templates included for links to these social media platforms: Blogger, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. These social media sites are the most important for potential employers when looking at a potential employee. While the site itself is used as a promotional tool for potential employers, links to our social media accounts are just as valuable when it comes to marketing yourself to a potential employer. This site will be used to market myself in ways that would have not been possible before the dawn of the internet, as well as a way for employers to see what I am all about so that I may be the one they call for the interview.

Twitter: Social Media, Marketing, or a News Site?

What is Twitter? Twitter is a giant social networking site that is used to connect users with celebrities, professionals, and other social media junkies. The social media hub has been around since 2006, but really began to gain footing in the public eye around 2008 to 2009. In 2015, it was marked as the number 2 most popular social media platform, with the about 320 million active users. It ranges in popularity between people of all ages, usually falling into the number 2 spot behind Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat (depending on the age group.) But you may ask, what exactly do you DO on Twitter? First off, you tweet (also known as microblogging, sending short burst messages out into the world that people may find interesting.)  Tweeting is sending 140 character-long messages out into the universe (it should be longer -- step it up, Twitter!) Tweeting is one of the ways that Twitter is similar to blogging, since you are sharing your own personal content/ideas/thoughts with the universe, but it is entirely different. Blogging is more formal -- the posts are long, tend to be about a serious topic or issue that needs to be addressed, not posted as often. Twitter, however, allows you to post short burst messages a lot more often, keeping users entertained while still providing the content necessary to still be considered “blogging.” Twitter is a lot more user-friendly than any other blog site (Tumblr, Blogger etc.), and keeps users coming back for more with its ease of content-sharing and relevancy. Besides the obvious thing to do, tweeting, you connect with other users based on their content. When it comes to who you follow, you can literally follow anyone! Want to follow Kim Kardashian? Do it. Want to follow your childhood best friend? Also do it! Twitter is similar to Facebook in the sense that you are connecting with the people you want to see. Whether it be friends, family, or other important figures in your life. However, Twitter can be used for something beyond simply connecting with others. What else, you may ask? Marketing.

When it comes to Maria’s Twitter project, it was required to follow the following people: everyone enrolled in COM 336, Maria herself, and three other users -- someone you would never follow, a big organization, and a smaller non-profit. The three that came to mind were Kanye West (why do people still follow him?!), the NHL, and Camp Good Days. For the project, it was required to post tweets related to a specific topic or organization. Camp Good Days is a small non-profit organization that is based out of the WNY area. While they do get a bit of publicity, especially in Rochester (where their headquarters is located), more traffic/information being spread about them is always helpful. The subject of these tweets was to spread the word about the organization, no matter what part of it was being shared. It was easy to tweet important, relatable content about this organization. Whether it was sharing the website, sharing their next event, or even tweeting pictures of their recreational facility, it was easy and fun to do. This project was informative on how Twitter can be an effective marketing tool if being used the correct way. In recent years, Twitter has been a hub for marketing for many companies. According to this article from CIO.com, “At the time of its SEC filing in early November 2013, Twitter had more than 232 million active monthly users, 53 million of which were in the United States. That makes Twitter a potentially powerful marketing tool -- if you know how to use it.” In today’s day and age, social networking sites are the best place to market your brand, product, or company. What is a social networking site? Social networking sites can be described as “any Web site that enables users to create public profiles within that Web site and form relationships with other users of the same Web site who access their profile.” Twitter falls into this category, and its usefulness when it comes to marketing is astounding. Twitter is perfect for marketing to the modern consumer. People today are sick and tired of being bombarded with ads. Whether it is a pop-up on your laptop, a 30 second spot during your favorite commercial, or just an ad on the New York Times website while you’re reading the news. It’s annoying, repetitive, and people are sick of it. Twitter is the next best thing, since you can choose whether or not you can view this form of marketing. Honestly, if you’re good at the whole tweeting-as-marketing thing, people won’t even realize you are trying to market to them. For example, a lot of restaurant chains, such as Denny's, Applebee’s, or even Burger King, have fallen into this kind of category. They tweet funny and relatable content about what is trending that gets viewers to their page. If a tweet is funny or interesting, a person is going to show someone else and they will show someone else and so on. Marketing through Twitter is effective and worthwhile for any organization, brand, company, or product. Twitter has also been the home for people to discuss important events happening in the world. In the past 12 months, many shocking, unfortunate events happened in this world. To cope with, share ideas about, and to just voice their opinions on what happens next, many took to Twitter. On January 7th, 2015, 12 people were killed in an attack on the Paris satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. People banded together in support of the people affected by the situation through the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie -- which translates to we are Charlie. Before Twitter, while this event would’ve been a major deal, we were able to see all of the differing opinions on this situation. Some similar situations to this one also includes the Paris bombings and the Black Lives Matter movement. Both of these events & the Charlie Hebdo attack used hashtags as a way to communicate a message, effectively communicating the necessary information and information to get across. When it came to the Paris bombings, the hashtag of #PortOuerverte was used so that individuals could find a safe space to stay during the attacks. When it came to Black Lives Matter, which doubled as the hashtag, it got the movement out into the world and let more people know about it than ever before. Twitter was an effective tool in these situations because it got the message of each movement out, and helped those in need. Twitter is an effective tool to use to communicate ideas and thoughts in these situations.