Post 1:

When it comes to my interpretation of what the term social media entails, I would say it covers the following. Social Media refers to platforms that facilitate people’s ability to connect, share and distribute content, seek out interests and new people, network, grow one’s personal business and brand. All of this can be for personal and/or business purposes. This interpretation is founded on my personal experience as well as on two sources: Enterprise Social Media: Definition, History, and Prospects for the Study of Social Technologies in Organizations (Leonardi, Huysman and Steinfield, 2013) and Social media definition and the governance challenge: An introduction to the special issue (Obar and Wildman, 2015)..

The first takes a business savvy approach by stating that social media are “Web-based platforms that allow workers to communicate messages with specific coworkers or broadcast messages to everyone in the organization.” (Leonardi, Huysman and Steinfield, 2013) Whilst the later acknowledges the difficulties of defining social media as “the speed at which the technology is expanding and evolving, challenges our ability to define clear-cut boundaries around the concept” (Obar and Wildman, 2015) and that in order to create a valid definition we should “identify the following commonalities among current social media services” (Obar and Wildman, 2015).

In regards to the Sensis reports I have learned a variety of interesting information regarding social media. Firstly, I found it particularly interesting when it came to the percentages of social media platforms being used. I did not expect Facebook to remain so prominent, I was expecting it to be overtaken by platforms such as YouTube, Instagram or Tik Tok. Perhaps these assumptions were formed on the basis of a ‘younger’ naive understanding rather than looking enough at the big picture. What still surprised me was by how large a gap Facebook had with other social media platforms. The 2^nd closest platform in terms of use was YouTube with a 35% gap.

I also did find some of the statistics concerning branding on social media interesting. I didn’t realise how much age was a factor as younger people noticeably are more comfortable and receptive to advertising. I would have thought that younger users would be more resistant to such things, but I was wrong. Overall, I very much enjoyed reading through the Sensis data, it was both insightful and fun to read.

Bibliography:

• Leonardi, P., Huysman, M. and Steinfield, C., 2013. Enterprise Social Media: Definition, History, and Prospects for the Study of Social Technologies in Organizations. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication,https://rmit.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=cdi_crossref_primary_10_1111_jcc4_12029&context=PC&vid=61RMIT_INST:RMITU&lang=en&search_scope=EverythingNOTresearch&adaptor=Primo%20Central&tab=AllNOTresearch&query=any,contains,social%20media%20definition&mode=basic, pp.1-19.
• Obar, J. and Wildman, S., 2015. Governance of social media. Amsterdam: Elsevier, https://rmit.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=cdi_crossref_primary_10_1016_j_telpol_2015_07_014&context=PC&vid=61RMIT_INST:RMITU&lang=en&search_scope=EverythingNOTresearch&adaptor=Primo%20Central&tab=AllNOTresearch&query=any%2Ccontains%2Csocial%20media%20definition&mode=basic, pp.745-750.

Post 2:

When it comes to being inspired through social media, I would often refer to many of my favorite fitness related social media pages and ‘influencers’. I think that social media is a great tool for informing and inspiring people due to how quickly and how specifically you can create and post content. I have found myself often inspired by the likes of Larry Wheels, Jeff Cavaliere and Eric Bugenhagen.

These content creators have made themselves known through their videos that charts their success in the fitness industry. They all started out doing simple videos of themselves doing workouts and attempting difficult tasks and feats of strength. They all differ in terms of training styles and goals, yet they share many similar attributes. Larry Wheels focuses on strength competitions and growing his own brand, Jeff Cavaliere is about teaching gym activities for safety and fitness. Eric Bugenhagen meanwhile appears to be focused on showmanship and fun, with training to boot. Yet all three share the same domain on social media in regards to their presence in the fitness niche.

Without the reach of social media These online fitness influencers/content creators may not have been able to accrue such a following as easily as the have. I have had the pleasure of watching these people struggle, grow and overcome immense physical challenges and this has inspired me when it comes to many facets of life. Additionally, I find their success on social media fascinating, I believe it can reflect one of the most empowering aspects of social media broadly. The fact that individuals can go out and create content that inspires and impresses others without the requirement of having a huge costly production crew is really astounding, and it gives more people a chance to gain success whilst exploring their passions and inspiring others.

They each have a variety of social media pages across different platforms for the sake of brevity here are their YouTube channels:

• Eric Bugenhagen: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg1HMNQ94Ba1rH6JZueBcag
• Larry Wheels: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeU05pwtEAreeF81saVb9XQ
• Jeff Cavaliere: https://www.youtube.com/user/JDCav24

Post 3:

When it comes to my work within this studio, I hope to utilise my current knowledge of social media which is founded on previous classes such as Alternate Mobile Media as well as personal experience and independent research. This combined with new information from this class as well as the Sensis data will help shape my upcoming assignment work. I believe that when it comes to looking at how to create positive campaigns on social media I think that I could learn a great deal from the Sensis Data as well as other sources of information that I shall come across in this class.

In relation to my previous social media examples (from blog post 2) I suppose I want to also see how social media can be used to enrich and better people’s lives. I have often felt that social media is often discussed in a negative light so I think it would be good to instead see how it can be beneficial to people. This could be in the form of spreading information about issues that effect people or it can be giving inspiration or advice to people in need.

When it comes to the Sensis Data, I hope to learn about more ways to create effective methods of advertising and campaigns (e.g. Spreading awareness). I would want to focus on how to use the analytics of social media sites to achieve this. By looking at what sites gain the most traffic, what audiences have the best attention rates, who is most likely to click on links, and what the most successful cases of attempting similar goals have done. I understand that Sensis cannot give me all the answers I am looking for, yet I believe that it will be a valuable asset towards my work within this studio