Review on “Sponsored Hashtags & Promoted Tweets- Worth the Investment?”

Tags

hashtags, promoted tweets, review, Sponsored hashtags, twitter

When I first visited the site www.text100.com/hypertext, I noticed that it is very clean, not very cluttered with pointless graphics. The posts are very clear and the visuals are interesting and eye-catching. I mainly looked at the post “Sponsored Hashtags & Promoted Tweets – Worth the Investment?” because I am really interested in sponsored hashtags and how they work.

At the very top of the page there is a giant, blue hashtag and you have to scroll down a bit to get to the title. After the title, there is anther giant hashtag and you have to scroll down even further to get to the information. It was a bit annoying. At first, I didn’t know if I was going to find any information.

Once I made it to the article I found it to be very informing and useful. Three lessons were covered that were learned from early adopters of early “hashtagers.”

• Before you buy, anticipate sentiment: This discussed that when deciding to purchase a hashtag, you need to think through the role in your hashtag and what positive and NEGATIVE feedback it could receive down the road. Example was #NYTimesNews receiving negative hashtags after it announced its paywall.

• Make sure context & association is clear: This one is basically self explanatory. You need to make sure that your hashtag can clearly be identified with your company or organization. Example was Dell with #popclickswitch and they received some tweets that had no relevance to the company at all.

• Pitfalls of buying promoted tweet for an existing hashtag: Too much information can be overwhelming to your audience and they might question the the content or authority of the writer. Example was Southwest having #SMAROI for an annual panel. This hashtag was linked to a social media “guru’s” blog which the crowd was seeing on their news feeds. The audience viewed it as clutter and spam.

In my opinion, I think that sponsored tweets are a great way to increase engagement with your target audience. I watch the channel TLC quite often, and I notice in the upper left-hand corner of the television screen, there is usually a hashtag with the show title (or something close to it) after it. I have participated and used that hashtag numerous times which caused me to look and see who else was using the same hashtag.

Interview: Stephanie Oleyar, Public Relations chair, SGA

Tags

facebook, public relations, radio, social media, Student Government Association, twitter, Westminster College

There are many organizations on Westminster College’s campus, but the one that influences its students the most is the Student Government Association (SGA). SGA is comprised of four executive council members, seven executive committee members, and 48 senators that represent their respective classes. Senior Stephanie Oleyar is the current public relations chair for SGA and one of her main jobs is to inform the campus about SGA news and events through news releases on the campus website, email, and social network sites.

Oleyar was asked various questions pertaining to her experiences with using social media and what she does to stay up to date:

Q: What do you do with social media for SGA?

A: For social media we have a Twitter account, a SGA Facebook page and we also have a SGA Student Concerns Facebook page. I usually post “don’t forget about SGA day” and post when the times are and with the Student Concerns page we got back the spicy chicken sandwich in the TUB, so that is where we updated the students. We also use it for any events we hold such as Titan Tailgate and Volleyrock and keep them updated with other events such as Fireside Chat.

Q: Who is your general target audience?

A: Well with Westminster SGA it is the students as well as the faculty. Richard Dorman now follows us on Twitter and will tweet at us through that page, but it is mainly the students to keep them updated.

Q: How much time do you spend managing the social media pages?

A: I make sure to check it at least once a day because of the different things we have with the Twitter page and the Facebook pages. We have to go back and fourth between the Student Concerns page and the Student Government page and with Twitter, our posts usually post directly to Facebook, so that saves us some time.

Q: Have you ever had to deal with negative feedback from the students or faulty?

A: Not so much with the SGA pages, but this summer I worked my internship with CBS Radio and we ran the Twitter accounts for 100.7 STAR and Y108. We would get information about people getting mad about if they didn’t win a contest or they didn’t call in, but we put it to our promotions and they said there was nothing we could do they were just “hate tweets.”

Q: From your experience with social media, which tweets or posts have gotten the most attention?

A: With tweets and Facebook posts I’ve noticed that mentioning an event that is “coming up” attracts a lot of attention. I know last year when Volleyrock was coming up we posted on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook a picture of me in the Volleyrock t-shirt and holding all the gear that we were giving out to the participants and that got the students really excited and interested. So anything visual or something that is upcoming that the students are really looking forward to should attract the most attention.

Q: Is there anything that you particularly like or dislike pertaining to social media?

A: I like that you can stay updated, but at the same time I don’t like that you can stay updated, I guess on the personal aspect of it. I didn’t have a Facebook account until my senior year of high school and I never had Myspace or anything, so it’s really funny when I am here doing social media updates for events and such when I was just introduced to it a short time ago.

Social media is the fastest way to keep your audience up to date with events and promotions. Especially on a small campus such as Westminster’s, word gets around fast when something new is happening. It is important to always check the social media pages especially if it deals with Student Concerns such as SGA’s page. Social media keeps expanding every day and will continue to reach new levels.

 

How To Create A Facebook Account

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create a profile, facebook

1.) Go to http://www.facebook.com and enter your name, email address, password and birthday into the boxes under the “Sign Up” headline.

2.) The next page will take you to an option to enter your other email accounts to find friends that are on Facebook. you can choose to use this feature or you can click “skip” in the lower right corner.

3.) This will take you to the page that allows you to enter profile information such as school, work, interests, contact information, about and other various information.

4.) The final main step is to choose a profile picture for your account.

5.) After these four steps just simply follow the instructions that Facebook has you follow. It will show you how to use Facebook, some features, and some extra tips and tricks that you can use.