University of Memphis
Journal # 13: Finally…Facebook
StandardFinally…Facebook
In your journal blog, describe what your Facebook strategy and goals might be. Be as specific as possible. If you would like, you can set up a Facebook group or page for your topic area.
Ah…finally, Facebook. My buddy, my pal, my go-to social network. Does that make me old? Out of touch with the youth? Boring? I don’t think so. In my experience on Facebook, I have been able to reach out to thousands of college students in order to organize liberty groups across the states of Tennessee and Mississippi as well as make connections with thousands of liberty-minded people and organizations. These connections have afforded me some amazing opportunities and I hope that there will be more to come. I’ve found that reaching people on Facebook is easy. Almost everybody has a profile and even if they don’t “use” Facebook as often as others, they check their news feed and inbox semi-regularly.
My personal Facebook strategy started long before my “topic” blog Facebook strategy – in fact, long before my “topic” blog was even a thought. As a member of the Liberty movement and someone who works in political consulting and grassroots activism/organizing, I am my own brand on Facebook. The majority of my Facebook time is filled with sharing relevant liberty movement memes, updates, news stories, events, and the like. The other percent of my time on Facebook is spent catching up with family and friends – and those people who used to be friends or attended high school, church, or something similar at the same time I did. I find Facebook to serve many purposes in my life. I use it to make connections, to find people who are liberty-minded college students in order to reach out to them about joining the Young Americans for Liberty chapter at their school, to organize and advertise liberty relevant events, to beg people to participate in phone banking, sign waving, or Get Out the Vote campaigns or to volunteer on a campaign, to arrange meetings with those at campuses and in cities across the state to talk with them about student chapters, adult groups, campaign, and anything else.
As part of my personal branding strategy, over two years ago I created a Facebook page called Tennessee and Mississippi Leadership in order to have a more consolidated way to share information relevant to the Liberty movement in Tennessee and Mississippi. Since then, I have shared at least 2 pieces of relevant information each day – sometimes a lot more– in order to maintain a constant flow of information and engagement with my audience. By monitoring this page’s metrics, I know that I have a decent reach and engagement as well as a supportive audience. However, my audience isn’t one that comments on posts unless it is to argue with me or another person. So, for the liberty-minded, it seems that sharing and reach are the metrics I should continually monitor. I can also tell that a good number of my blog audience has come from publicizing my posts on Facebook and on my Facebook Page(s).
Here are a few screenshots of my Tennessee and Mississippi Leadership page:
In addition to that page, I am also the admin for the Young Americans for Liberty at Memphis Page, the Shelby County for Ron Paul Page, the Tennesseans for Liberty of Shelby County Page, and one of the admins for the Libertarian Party of Tennessee Page and the Campaign for Liberty –Shelby County Page. Although, I used to have time to constantly update and monitor these pages as well as the many groups I am an admin of, admittedly I have just not had the time to keep up lately. In the future, I would like to work on my reach and engagement through sharing a bit more as well as continuously post relevant information on my Tennessee and Mississippi Leadership Page.
I would also like to have more time to develop the Young Americans for Liberty at the University of Memphis and hopefully, find a student who has the time, ability, and passion to take over as President of that student organization because god knows that I do not right now.
Here are a few screenshots of my reach and engagement for the uneventful past week on Tennessee and Mississippi Leadership:
Other than that, my strategy is to keep on keepin’ on.
And since we’re on the topic of Facebook, here is a great blog post about why Sarah Elahi loves Facebook (sort of). It’s quite witty and I agree with her, down to the bit about the creepy stalkers. Yes, I said creepy stalkers. Find out what I’m talking about by reading it for yourself.
UPDATE: While I am on the topic of Facebook and seriously cool stuff, I wanted to share an amazing analytic software for your personal facebook page with you all. Okay, so maybe i just nerded out over some analytics but I found it quite awesome. Check out Wolfram|Alpha so that you can see all the neat statistics, metrics, and wicked cool information it collects from your profile. It even gives you a nifty little “report.” Oh and did I mention there are pictures and charts too? The best part? IT’s FREE!! Check it out! Below is a slideshow of my report.
Photo365 Challenge – Day 81
ImageFor today’s Photo365 Challenge, here is Barry showing off StockBoy’s victory at Ideas Weekend
Don’t forget to come back everyday during this Photo365 Challenge in order to see more of our crazy life!
Journal #12: It’s All About Me: Branding & Strategy
StandardIt’s All About Me: Branding and Strategy
Discuss in your journal blog, what are you doing to establish your personal brand online? What could you be doing better? What do you plan to do in the future? What strategies will you employ?
Personal Brand:
My personal brand. What can I say? I’ve always been one to worry about how I appear to others and online is no different. My friends thought I was weird when I originally locked down my 
Facebook profile like Fort Knox and then, they soon followed. Friends also wondered why I made them ask for my approval before they posted a picture of me in any online capacity in the days before there were so many tagging and timeline removal options on Facebook. I would remove friends’ comments on my wall or take down any picture that portrayed me in a light that I found, or thought someone might find, “unbecoming”.
As time has gone on and employers began social media searches, I have realized how important this is, among other things, to my professional brand. In addition, my career paths have changed as times have changed and maintaining a positive professional brand, both on and off line is more important than ever before. In addition to portraying myself in a professional light, I must maintain a public persona and brand that is both knowledgeable and social, In order to work in the liberty movement, grassroots organizing, political public relations, and digital activism.
Numerous Strides:
My personal and professional brand has made numerous strides just by creating and maintaining two blogs this semester. These blogs have made me more noticeable by encouraging me to branch out from my old Facebook fallback and have given me more things about which to create social media posts. In order to further establish myself, I have attempted to make frequent posts to both blogs but know that TN liberty will require me to do so on a more consistent basis. I have also become a more active Twitter user and in doing so, have begun to clean out and balance my “followers” to “following”. On Twitter, I have chosen to keep my profile public in all forms and now that I’ve learned about what a non-balanced follower to following ratio could portray, I have made steps to remedy the situation.
Due to my extreme time limitations and the amount of work it will take to promote and execute TN Liberty in the manner it deserves, I have decided to focus most of my attention on this blog for the time being. This summer, I will have more time to maintain and promote TN Liberty on a consistent basis. After graduating with my Master’s in December of 2014, TN Liberty will become my main focus and a larger part of my branding. However, for the rest of this semester, it will remain a side project. That being said, after noticing that I have gained for than 650 views on this blog, I purchased my name at .com and .org. I am now using www.robinspielberger.com for this site. Unhappy with having to use “libertytn” instead of TN Liberty as a WordPress domain name, I also purchased www.tnliberty.com.
In order to grow my career and secure a position working within the liberty movement, I have to make sure my social media presence is one that shows knowledge, passion, education, self-control, personality, the ability to unite and connect, and consistency. In addition to the aforementioned branding , I have outlined the strategy and metrics for my social media presence, designed to make my personal brand more effective in Journal #10: Do You Like Me? Check Yes or No.
Engagement Strategy:
As for my engagement strategy, I am working on promoting my posts for this blog and TN Liberty through various social media channels and sites. I have also begun using Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Foursquare, and Yelp on a more consistent basis in order to supplement my Facebook profile and professional Tennessee and Mississippi Leadership page.
I am also keeping track of which blog posts get the most views so that I can see what my audience is most interested in reading or viewing. So far, It is obvious that my What Liberty Means: TN Liberty video garnered the most engagement, reach, and views but I am interested in seeing what other types of posts could potentially gain new followers and if they same strategy works for all sites or if each site requires a different strategy.
Currently, I am working on garnering a Yelp following by consistently “checking-in” and writing at least one review a week, so that I can develop my personal brand in a more well-rounded way.
I am also trying to become a more consistent and active Twitter, user and while doing so, I am testing the phrasing of blog promotion to see if just the mention of an interesting post on my blog is enough to gain a new follower or if a direct ask is more productive, as well as monitoring what kinds of tweets are more likely to get retweeted by my following.
On the most basic of levels, I feel that my increased and more consistent social networking activity on both blogs, my Facebook profile and page, Twitter, Yelp, and Foursquare, as well as peripherally on LinkedIn, Tumblr, Instagram, and Pinterest, should allow me to increase my number of followers and make my online brand stronger. It has been shown, that the people with the most popular personal brands are keeping up with their topics and followers and posting with consistency.
Journal #11: Leveraging LinkedIn
StandardLeveraging LinkedIn
Assignment: Establish a LinkedIn profile if you don’t have one. Enhance your profile if you do have one; join groups and interact with others. Please describe what you did to enhance your profile in the journal blog.
I’ve had a LinkedIn profile for as long as I can remember and last summer I spent a good amount of time updating it. My profile is now at the All Star Level and I have over 500 connections on LinkedIn. Each connection is someone that I know personally, have worked with, or is a member of an organization or in a field that I could potentially leverage for a future job, campaign, or a need, such as printing services, catering, banquets, conferences, social media, advertising, press, and so on.
Each month, I get over 50 profile views (not all of which I can see because I have refused to upgrade to the premium version – I just don’t get the point and it hasn’t been a necessity) and over 10 requests to connect each week.
I also have 18 original recommendations for my most recent 4 positions and 147 endorsements for 25 skills.
In order to enhance my profile for this week’s assignment, even though there wasn’t much that I could do, I reordered my key skills so that the ones in which I am most interested in leveraging for a new job are now displayed at the top. This will also help me to gather more endorsements for those skills from connections.
I also joined a couple of new groups, removed myself from a couple of restaurant centered groups, followed several companies, added a connection or two that were waiting in my inbox, uploaded some of my recent work to include the StockBoy startup presentation from Entrepreneurial Journalism class and the What Liberty Means: TN Liberty video, changed my headline to a more current description of my skill-set and job-set, added my volunteer work from the Libertarian Party of Tennessee and in the new “Test Scores” area, I added my MAT score, as well as a description of the Miller Analogies test and the percentile in which I scored.
See the slideshow below for the updates and the various sections of my profile. If you’re interested in seeing my actual resume, click here.
I would say that my LinkedIn profile is fully complete and ready to be leveraged for an exciting new position in grassroots and digital activism, youth leadership and organization, and campaign management, as well as political and nonprofit public relations. Fingers crossed.
Journal #10: Do You Like Me? Check Yes or No.
StandardDo You Like Me? Check Yes or No
1. Create a list of specific goals you have for your social media presence, tailored to your needs and what you have learned so far about what works and doesn’t work with your topic area.
2. Decide what metrics you will be collecting about your blog/social media presence that will measure progress toward those views, using the readings for guidance. Make a specific list or spreadsheet. Begin collecting this info on a regular basis.
3. Create some kind of challenge for yourself and describe it on your journal blog. Maybe you will try to post a photo on Instagram every day. Maybe you will try a “30 days of blogging” challenge, or similar. Maybe you will try to write a post at least once a week. It’s up to you, but the first step in boosting your metrics is learning to create a regular stream of content.
Metrics. Measurement. The Numbers. The Scores. The Who’s Who proof that we all seek to obtain. These are the things that a media maven’s online life depends upon and thus, I suppose I will have to start making sure my metrics are towing the line.
I’ve always wanted to be famous. Popular. Someone Important. Anyone, really. Just as long as everyone knew my name. At age 6, my parent’s friends would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. My answer was always the same: “I want to rule the world.” I may have grown up, changed, and become cynical but deep down the answer remains. I’m just a girl who wants to rule the world. My parents were so very pleased (yes…that’s sarcasm) that Madonna was my idol and I dressed in lace and mini skirts, followed by pointy bras each year for Halloween from the age of 6 to 13. What can I say – I’m a believer in finding a costume that works and sticking with it. So much for my originality. I guess my personality was original enough though.
Today, my idol has changed. Yes…breathe that deep sigh of relief. My idol is someone who should be respected – not for the clothes he wears or the songs he sings, but for his passion, his beliefs, his courage, and his dedication. So, yes. I still want to rule the world. Although now, my dream doesn’t involve twerkin’ it to the top, it involves activism and continuing the fight for liberty and freedom. In order to grow my career and secure a position working within the liberty movement, I have to make sure my social media presence is one that shows knowledge, passion, education, self-control, personality, the ability to unite and connect, and consistency.
From now on, I must begin making realistic goals for my social media presence and measuring them with….consistency. There’s that word again and as you read on, you will see it a few more times. I have extensive knowledge in the How-To section of Social Media and Social Networking but have only showed consistency when it came to my personal branding on Facebook. It’s time that I shared my passion with the other networks with the same….consistency.
My Goals:
1. To become an active and consistent Twitter user.
2. To increase my number of Twitter followers.
3. To balance my followers to my following on Twitter. (Every time I say or type “Following” – all I think of is the Joe Carroll cult on the FOX show “The Following” and it creeps me out)
4. To actively read tweets from Liberty-Minded and digital media professionals in order to remain current on topics pertaining to those fields, to promote myself, and to encourage engagement. In order to be noticed as someone knowledgeable and serious about these topics, I must make myself known on a consistent and professional basis.
5. To increase the number of Retweets that I receive on Twitter.
6. To increase the number of followers on both my personal blog (this one) and my tn liberty blog.
7. To increase the engagement level of my followers on both blogs. Currently, I can tell that people are following me through Twitter, my Facebook Page, and on both blogs but no one is leaving comments. This is frustrating and I hope to figure out a way to remedy this situation. However, I have noticed for years that the liberty-minded typically don’t leave comments or engage unless they want to argue. So, it may be better to let “sleeping dogs lie.”
8. To use Foursquare & Yelp with more consistency. I find that I always “remember” people who appear often on my Foursquare notifications. They seem to be people always in the know – the ones who have the best patio tables on sunny Saturday afternoons and have already tried the new restaurant or hotspot in town. This used to be me, before the days of grad school and prior to that, the days of traveling the state for weeks at a time. I have become accustomed to staying home more often but do go to these places occasionally. However, when I do, I forget to check-in, leave a tip for others, or write a review. It’s time I changed that.
9. To continue to provide a unique point of view for my audience on both blogs, Twitter, and my Facebook page. I bring something to the table that many who are currently active on social media and in the liberty movement do not – experience organizing and training youth YAL and SFL groups and garnering new support for these groups, candidates, and the movement.
10. To continue to increase my Klout score. This positions me as an expert in my field and although I already have a medium high score on Klout, I would theoretically like it to move to the high 70s at a minimum. Currently, I have a 64. In this SocialJ7330 class, only Burton Bridges and Carrie Brown have higher scores with a 65 and a 71 respectively. Other “celebretarians” in my network have scores in the upper 70s to upper 80s.
11. Finally, for my personal brand – I want to make sure that I show another facet of my personality. I love liberty, freedom, the Constitution, and Ron Paul but that is NOT all of who I am. I love television, media studies, event planning, traveling, being a foodie, seeing and being seen, fashion, Tiger Basketball, the organic lifestyle, whitewater kayaking, animal rescue, and babysitting my best friend’s 7 yr old boy and that involves knowing some awesome spots in the city for afternoons without mom. It’s time I began writing stuff on this blog about these topics as well. I want to show that I am unique and bring a multifaceted personality to every table.
How I am Going to Do This:
1. By working to increase my social media presence in general, my followers should increase as will the attention paid to my blogs. This will happen through making a consistent and focused effort to open Twitter every single day and adding new posts to both blogs at least 2-3 times per week. I would also like to continue the Photo365 Challenge for the entire 365 days as it seems to have helped me gain a good number of followers on my personal blog. (See challenge below),
2. I will spend some time using http://tweepdash.com/ in order to clear out some of those erroneous people that I have collected and followed on Twitter, over the years. This should help me balance my Twitter follower/following numbers, especially if I am able to increase the number of Twitter followers through my other strategies.
3. Increasing the number of Retweets that I receive on Twitter should come fairly easily when I begin to use Twitter consistently, read more posts on issues pertaining to my aforementioned topics, and begin to write more original tweets.
4. I also want to spend some time with http://www.Hashtagify.com, http://www.tweetlevel.com, and http://www.topsy.com as well as http://www.followerwork.com, http://www.tweeple.com, http://www.Twitonomy.com, http://www.tweept.com and http://www.FriendorFollow.com to see if I am missing any influential Twitter users in my following list. Once I am able to spend some time using these free Twitter metrics tools, I will be able to narrow down the list to just the ones that are most helpful.
5. I will also start to use http://www.Followerwonk.com and http://www.Topsy.com in addition to http://www.Klout.com to make sure that I am and continue to be positioned as an expert in the liberty movement, tn liberty, and digital media.
6. Next, in order to make sure that my messaging is reaching people beyond my current following on Twitter and thus, helping me gain new followers for Twitter and my blogs, I will use http://www.Tweetreach.com and http://www.twtrland.com.
7. I will also use the Google Analytics, Google Alerts, and the WordPress.com Stats to keep watch on my metrics such as acquisition, engagement, reach, growth, CTRs, and new followers. By watching these stats on my blog, I can figure out where the traffic is coming from – Google, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I can also make sure that my reach is hitting the numbers that it needs to on Twitter and Facebook so that It can help the blogs grow.
8. Finally, I will be making a concerted effort to use Klout on a daily basis, along with Twitter, Foursquare, and of course, Facebook. I also hope to begin writing a review for Yelp at least once a week – I don’t want to get too crazy here and theoretically, I would like to begin posting numerous stories to my tn liberty blog on a daily basis. First, I am going to spend a few days finishing the site and making sure that all important information has been added and is correct.
I am also going to need a lot more time. I have the passion and the content but the time is my only limitation. There is just not enough of it in my life. I have heard some say that if you want to be a hugely popular blogger, you’d almost have to quit your day job and spend all of your time, blogging. From my experience, this is pretty much true. Before grad school, I used a good number of hours during the day focusing on my networking and social media presence. Now, there just isn’t enough time to even say hello to family. So…many of these things will have to wait. However, I feel that I have increased the avenues by which I can connect to people and have some good ideas for forthcoming content. One day I’ll blog by the beach. One day….just not today.
Challenge:
1. To continue the Photo365 Challenge for at least through 365 days
2. To open Twitter at least once every single day for 30 minutes, retweet influential people, and write at least 2 original tweets on both of my aforementioned topics.
3. To open Klout each day and share stories from within it’s system to help increase my score
4. To write at least one short review a week on Yelp and REMEMBER to check-in on Yelp and Foursquare consistently.
5. Eventually, after this semester of grad school, I would like to post at least 2 stories a day to tn liberty.
Photo365 Challenge – Day 66
ImageToday’s Photo365 Challenge is an edited picture of my favorite beer. This is from the Tiger’s game opening round! #gotigersgo
Don’t forget to come back everyday during this Photo365 Challenge in order to see more of our crazy life!
Journal #8: Reflections of a Picture Taker & a Movie Maker
StandardReflections of a Picture Taker & Movie Maker
Personal reflection on your experiences creating and sharing the video should include thoughts on: How can you continue to use video to enhance your blog? How do you think professionals in your future desired career – journalism, public relations, advertising, or any other could best utilize these sites?
In reflecting on the blog on your experiences this week, consider: What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of the sites you’ve used for your topic area? How can you use photos going forward as semester continues to enhance your blog or website? How do you think professionals in your future desired career – journalism, public relations, advertising, or any other – could utilize these sites productively?
Due to how these two assignments are related, I decided to combine them and share my experiences on both in one nifty neat little blog post.
Creating a video for “tn liberty” was an interesting undertaking, to say the least. In the beginning, I wasn’t sure exactly which route to go. If I had been creating a video for this blog, I would have gone the funny route or the “a day in the life of” route – something that shows my personality. However, I was creating a video for “tn liberty,” a topic that is rather hard to define and even harder to show when put on the spot. It’s not like I can head out the front door and take a few photos or shoot some footage of “tn liberty.” It’s not a bird, a plane, a particular event, or even something easily defined. It’s a movement. It’s a cause. It’s a passion. So how do you visually represent a movement, cause, or a passion. My first thought was an event but seeing as it isn’t campaign season and I’m a busy little bee I didn’t have many options, here in Memphis, from which to choose. Then I realized that most indoor events are in a room at Jason’s Deli with beige walls and many people who attend those events are not all that excited about having their picture taken. Libertarians can be a bit odd and most aren’t exactly the #selfie taking type. Apparently, I’m an odd duck every where I go.
For the video, I finally decided on asking members of the Liberty Movement and contacts that I have made to explain in a short sentence or phrase What Liberty Means to them. For those who were not located in the Memphis area, I asked that they use their computers or phones to record themselves and email me the footage. It took a bit of begging but in the end, I had numerous clips from which to work. I realized that I also had footage from various events such as campaign rallies, protests, and other types of activism that I had taken in the past couple of years during my extensive travels across the state of Tennessee and that I could document the Tennessee Liberty Movement in a short movie.
As I began to edit the clips and footage, I realized I had embarked on a HUGE project and once I was in the middle of it, there was no turning back. I had to make the mini-documentary as awesome as possible no matter how many hours it took. And by hours – I mean days and days. Next, came the technical difficulties. My MacBook Pro is a very full Mac and even with a 3T external hard drive for all my files, the programs and necessities stores on the computer leave very little room for any temp files created by iMovie. As I was nearing the end of a 30+ hour editing session and could see the light at the end of the tunnel, my computer told me it was full. I moved a few things to the hard drive and added another transition to the movie. Again, my Mac was full. This process of moving, trashing, and adding went on for another hour or so and I finally closed iMovie and decided to rid my computer of all secondary and tertiary files of old emails (WHY does the computer keep multiple copies of emails from days of yore?) and duplicates of all my music (again, WHY does the computer and iTunes make copies of every file you add?). Finally, I had 30Gb of space available and that was enough to complete the video. Thank God!!
I completed the video, uploaded it to YouTube, embedded in to my topic blog, “tn liberty,” and then immediately began sharing it on every Facebook page of which I am an admin, in every Facebook group of which I am a member, by tweeting it on Twitter, and by begging everyone I knew to share it. Within one day of posting the video and sharing like a mad woman, I realized that I had gained hundreds of new followers on my Facebook page “Tennessee and Mississippi Leadership” and on “tn liberty,” as well as almost 200 views on YouTube. I had even gained a few new followers on this blog. As it stands today, the video has approximately 230 views on YouTube.
Next, I had to figure out what I was going to do about the pictures assignment. Capturing “tn liberty” was hard enough with video – how the heck was I going to capture its essence in a still??? So, I actually decided that I would go 2 routes.
First, I was going to take the end of the video I had just made (What Liberty Means) and turn the final section entitled “Faces of Liberty” into a series. I would cut “picture” portion of the video (I put a ton of pictures of people in the movement holding up campaign signs, at events, protesting, and the like at the end of the video in a slideshow-esque montage.) Most of these pictures were ones I had taken during the past two years and some were pictures that other liberty movement friends had given me. I now had several 30 second slideshow montages of “tn liberty” and added the first one to my topic blog. Due to the lack of time, I didn’t promote it all that well. It only has like 10 views on YouTube. However, there is always time to promote it later and I’m sure it’ll gain a great response.
Next, I realized that throughout my travels I had taken an extraordinary amount of tn landscape pictures. I have always said that nothing shows liberty quite like a beautiful mountaintop or bubbling brook in Tennessee. I created another series – this time just stills – called “Landscapes of Liberty” and placed it on “tn liberty” with a call for followers to send me pictures they had taken of TN landscapes. I also created a TN Liberty Flickr account and posted them there, with the hopes of adding to that as time goes on. Fingers crossed that I can get another job traveling the state of TN and organizing groups in the Liberty Movement!!
To conclude, I feel that moving forward, including pictures and videos in posts on this blog and on my topic blog is extremely important. People like pictures and people like movies. It’s a given. It also adds relevance to your topic and can show a “behind the scenes” look at events that I may be privy to and others aren’t. In addition, it can show the non-liberty movement people that we are human and normal – it gives your site a personal touch. I can say that the next video will be much shorter and less complicated. What Liberty Means is a once every couple of years type project!! In the future, I will also start to share the “Faces of Liberty” and “Landscapes of Liberty” series in hopes of gaining new followers and gathering new pictures from others.
The World According to Robin 
