Social Media Campaign

I've always known I wanted to do something with media, thus the couple attempts at maintaining my own YouTube channel and starting a basic Facebook page back in Jr. High (something about America? I can't remember exactly). However, despite my increasing interest in media, I never fully understood how to effectively utilize the world wide web. Since beginning this class I can already see improvements being made within my Facebook page, as well as my YouTube channel.

My page is for my YouTube channel, Shivekat where I create humor-based videos aimed toward getting better at things I suck at. I post on my Facebook page short attention-grabbing clips from my videos with the link to the full video, as well as memes that often relate to my videos.

I created a banner picture on pixlr.com of my channel name, as well as the day of the week I post my videos so that the first thing new viewers will see is information linking back to my YouTube page. I also have the URL they can type to get to my channel as well as my logo. It's fairly simple, yet gets the message across of what my page is about.

As for my profile picture I just have a picture of myself, however I have a specific reason why I chose this photo. In this picture, I pursed my lips so that they resemble the heart linking back to my channel name of Shivekat, where above the 'i', the dot is turned into a heart.

Tactics: I attempted a few ways of grabbing my audiences attention. First I would just post the link to the video itself where my viewers could watch the video right there on my page. However that wouldn't get a lot of feedback as people most likely wouldn't want to watch a 5-7 minute video that hadn't caught their attention yet. So I then moved to a short 3 second video clip from my video with the link and that created a rather significant increase in feedback. I even wanted to toy around and see if videos were always what would work best and tried to peak my audiences attention with a picture about the video where you could see one image and then the other bit was covered with a question mark. I was hoping with this tactic, they'd become interested to see the 'after' bit, but that post didn't get the response my short-clipped videos were getting, so I moved back to those. 

Page Likes: My page started off with a total of 35 likes, all from friends and family I had invited from my personal page. I am now at a total of 50 page likes, which to me feels like an amazing increase from where I started. I got a handful of likes from other students in my class as well as a few more family members. As for the others, those came from when my page was being shared either by me or my family members. As well as the handful (well maybe more than a handful) of times I did a 24 hr. ad run on my short-clipped videos. 

Post Reach: As I said there were more than a few times I ran an ad on my videos and because of these ads I was able to reach more of an audience. I would specify to interests that would target topics of the video I had made for that week, as well as make sure I kept it to women (who are my primary viewers) between the ages of 18-30. The highest reach I've gotten was 826. My only trouble was with the types of ad I was running. It was only a day ad which meant that if my audience wasn't on Facebook that day, they wouldn't see the ad and therefore results in less number of people seeing my ad.

Post Engagement: Facebook was able to tell me when my audience was most online which on average was between 5pm to 10pm. This makes sense as it is most likely when people get home from school/work and activities, and Ten is about the time my audience goes to sleep. By knowing this information I was able to time my postings to that time period to receive the most response.

Facebook was also able to tell me what types of posts receive the most response, and as I noted earlier, my videos seemed to do the best. 

I made sure to post my short video clip every Tuesday, usually around 5 pm, which typically created the most response since it was my peaked time to post. You can also see the increase in activities with the videos I did a day ad on compared to the organic reach of my unpaid videos/posts. 

Be advised that a couple of the last videos were before the semester started.

My (targeted) Audience: 

Alexis Platt, age 20. She's recently gotten married while attending her University for a bachelors in science. she is in her second year after taking a year off to work and save up. She spends a lot of time studying and working and it looking for an outlet to let her laugh for a few minutes once and a while to distract from her stressful life.

Jared Smith, age 26. He's recently graduated from University with two bachelors degrees and is now working full time int he medical field as a CNA. He's recently come out to his family as gay and is being accepted by his friends and family. He enjoys spending hours online playing games with his friends as well as watching YouTube videos a couple times a week.

Anna Taylor, age 23. She's graduated from University with a bachelors in English and after taking a year off, she's decided to go back for her masters. She wants to become an English Professor, but for now works at an editing firm in the city. It doesn't pay as much as she'd like it to, but she enjoys it enough to stay. She looks to YouTube as a source of entertainment on her time off and is often looking for new YouTubers to follow.

My Actual Audience: I wasn't too surprised by my actual audience, as I figured my type of videos were more aimed towards young adults as I am a young adult. My age range is usually looking for funny, mind-numbing type videos which is similar to what I make. I make jokes, mainly at myself and those are the types of jokes my age range enjoys (self-deprecating ones). However I was surprised to see I had more male audience than I thought. I knew people like my father and brother watched my videos, but that was about it.

Summary: I was able to learn a lot from this experience and as a result, my audience for my YouTube channel has grown. I started the semester off with a total of 17 subscribers and I now have 32; a number I'm incredibly pleased with as its only been 3 months and I've gained 15 subscribers. I think this is mostly to do with the spreading of my channel through Facebook and learning what works best for my audience and what doesn't. For example, learning that short videos capture my audiences attention more than pictures or just a plain link. 

If I were to change anything about my Facebook page, I would wish to make the 3-second videos I post more captivating. As of right now I'm struggling to figure out what works best as my audience isn't quite predictable to me yet. I think sometimes I get a good clip that portrays what the video is about and also captivates my audience, leaving them wanting to know what happened. But other times I'm struggling to find a perfect clip. Perhaps I need to plan a clip for the video, so that I'm not relying on chance that I come up with something (as most of my videos are raw and without written cues). 

Overall I'm extremely pleased with how my Facebook campaign went. I've made huge progress by increasing my following as well as learning who my audience is specifically, and what they like to see. I hope that as I continue down this road I can continue to grow my audience and become more skilled with my marketing attempts and video content. 

Automatic Attitudinal Response

The blog post that I'd like to assess was my third On The Media, Smoke & Handcuffs. I chose this post because I realized that I showed my personal bias on many occasions. The entire post starts off with me recalling a time Trump said he'd stop using twitter. Though this can be viewed as either fact worthy or biased, my next paragraph shows my bias and attitude about Trump still using Twitter by saying, "Trump is still using twitter, and whether we like that fact or not, he's going to do it anyway." You can tell there is a underlining tone to that sentence with my overpowering disapproval of the president using social media in this kind of way.

The next paragraph in my post was all opinion based. I automatically assume that the President is only watching the news and not getting official facts from professionals and advisers before posting a comment on twitter. I even gathered evidence of our president using "shows" to gain military advice in an interview to drive my point.

The next two paragraphs are more of a rant against our President with me stating my personal opinion with no facts to back me up and is more of my reactionary response to anything Trump does. It's obvious that anyone who didn't agree with my opinion of Trump wouldn't read past the first few sentences, making this blog post ineffective to possibly show what could be a troubling issue in our democracy and in our White House.

Looking back at this blog posts almost makes me disappointed in myself as I know I can write better than that and pull facts out in a way that doesn't have an agenda and instead can become informative and professional. Its helpful to look back and recognize where I let my bias' comes out and become more aware to make sure that doesn't happen in the future.

Facebook Ad

 I've made a couple of ads that boosted my posts before and through that I've been able to narrow down my audience to only women from the ages of 18-30, as that is the range of people that have responded the most to my past ads.
Of course this is a repeat of an ad I've already made to show you what I did for that one, although I may have just now sent out a second one that is going to cost me 10 times more than what I originally paid. (hopefully I stopped the ad from going live, though I'm not 100% sure that I have). So with that minor heart attack going on in the background lets move on to the response I got!

RESPONSE

So under the actions of this ad, I was able to reach 324 video views that led to 9 link clicks. The video is only a short 3 second video thats purpose is suppose to grab my audience attention, and where I only got 9 link clicks, I can tell that my video wasn't the best way to grab my audiences' attention. However, that is the most link clicks I've gotten on one of my videos that I've boosted, so I must be getting better. 

When we look at the people who viewed my video we see that the most people who were interested to watch were mainly from the ages of 18-24, which will allow me to focus primarily on that age group. However, I do have to take into consideration that I only ran this ad for one day, and people over the age of 24 are usually at work and not scrolling through Facebook

all day, which means that I obviously would get a higher response from the younger age group.

OTM #3

Smoke & Handcuffs

I recall a time after the election when President Trump assured the American people that tweeting would no longer be a way of communicating after he entered office. He stated, "Don't worry, I'll give it up after I'm president. We won't tweet anymore. I don't know. Not presidential." This remark came after his wife Melania said that she wished Trump would "tone down his twitter habit". However, as we've all seen after Trump took office, he hasn't stopped. In fact he spends most of his time reacting to whatever news he may be watching. 

This has been focused on in many occasions such as calling Chelsea Manning an "ungrateful traitor",

as well as threatening to "send in the Feds" to Chicago to fix their crime issues after watching Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor. 

I believe we've all started to get use to the fact that Trump is still using twitter, and whether we like that fact or not, he's going to do it anyway. But what concerns are there that trump is tweeting publicly about the news? I personally see an issue with the fact that our president is getting all his news from the same sources as us, without getting the fact checks a President should have before making official decisions based off it. He even claimed in an interview with Chuck Todd that he gets his military advice from "shows". Why is our President not conversing with trained officials and getting the facts on issues happening in the United States? 

Trump watches cable news from sun up to sun down, but if you want my personal opinion on this, its not because trump is watching to see what's happening in the world. He's watching the news to see what everyone is saying about him. If you want Trump on your side, you should pamper his ego and he'll be all yours. Agree with me or not, but that's how I personally view Trumps addiction to watching cable news. 

I'm not saying our President shouldn't be aware of what is happening on the news, but I think Trumps odd fascination is damaging in the respect that he does not take the time to fact check his news sources and instead reacts instantly via twitter, creating confusion and uproar in the American people. 

Well Informed #3

Racism 2.0

Mathew Cook did an amazing job of presenting the history of racism. Starting with how racism was more of a class thing which evolved into color. For centuries we have fought for the equal rights for all mankind and yet we still decide to divide ourselves into a categories to show we have more power than another category. 

Jane Elliot is a teacher who I have seen become a huge advocate for colored peoples rights. She created an exercise called the "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes exercise". In the video linked (which I highly recommend watching) Elliot gathers college students together and separates them from brown eyes and blue eyes. All throughout giving instructions, she is stern and slightly uncivil causing many of the students to feel intimidated. She has the blue eye'd people go into a room with only three chairs while those with brown eyes go into another room. She instructs the brown eye'd people to sit on either side of the room looking directly at chairs that are facing forward in the middle. She instructs those with brown eyes to mistreat those with blue. To call them names, to make them feel lesser as she teaches a lesson about listening. 

Once the blue eye'd students are put into the room they are treated with disrespect and humiliated for thoughtless things they may say. She does all this to show what those who have colored skin go through everyday. And when one blue eye'd girl couldn't take it anymore she stepped out. Once re-entering Elliot insisted she apologize for taking a liberty that those of color do not have and only then does the message of racism begins to settle in. 

Elliot not only pushes her students to tears, she makes them realize the horrible fact that is racism in our present day. We may have equal rights in a technical sense, but we still do not have equal treatment. 

I am a white female and I KNOW I have had greater opportunities because of it. I know I have had better experiences with law enforcement, I know I have had better options given to me because of the color of my skin and I am grateful for that. And because of that gratefulness I will continue to voice my concerns about the increasing issues surrounding race and show my support to those who don't have my opportunities. I think its important to judge a person based off their character, rather than their skin color. 

Well Informed #2

Privacy 2.0

When you google "Privacy Online", the first couple of posts are things like, "the top ten best ways to improve online privacy" or "Using the internet safely" when in reality, there is no privacy online. This has been drilled into my head by parents, friends, and professors. Growing up, my family always told me to be careful of what I put on the internet because it can never be taken down, even if you delete the original post. And I believe that is becoming clearer and clearer as time goes on. 

A title caught my attention in my search for what 'online privacy' really meant when I found The Illusion of Online Privacy  from USNews. They brought up a somewhat recent hack from AshleyMadison.com. For those that didn't hear about this, AshleyMadison.com is a website that allows married or committed people to meet and hook up with other committed people. In this case, a hacker was able to leek users names, addresses and card payments. 

In fact, in 2016 the number of U.S. data breaches hit a record high of 1,093. A 40% increase since 2015 with only 780 data breaches. This raises the question of how truly private our information is online. If 1,093 data breaches were actually detected, how many do you think happened undetected? 

However, data breaches from online hackers are not the only sort of monitoring the internet does either. Have you ever been looking on Amazon for a specific item and a few hours later be scrolling through facebook and see an ad of the items you'd been looking at? Or an ad from a separate website of similar items? According to Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Arvind Narayanan, "What this technology is really good at doing is following you from site to site, tracking your actions and compiling them into a database, usually not by real name, but by a pseudonymous numerical identifier. Nevertheless, it knows when you come back, and it knows to look you up, and based on what it has profiled about you in the past, it will treat you accordingly and decide which advertisements to give you, sometimes how to personalize content to you, and so on." 

I found this information extremely interesting as I've always wondered how what I had been searching for shows up in my daily feed. Its insane to think that our technology is so far developed that based on the websites I visit and the posts I make, the internet, or rather the cookies on the internet, can trace and create my profile that matches fairly close to who I actually am and what I actually like. 

In all honesty, I'm not as surprised by the amount of data breaches I found or the fact that advertisers are able to track what I like. I think its become an assumed risk we all take when we go online. It does slightly worry me with the amount of breaches we've had and the steady incline that will probably take place , however I know there's not really much we can do about it. The government is spying on us, advertisers are spying on us, even our facebook friends do a little stalking from time to time. In all honesty, who isn't spying on us? I think that the facade of having online privacy is a sham and we should all adjust the way we think of it. A facebook post announcing you don't authorize the use of your information is not going to stop someone or something from using it. Instead, being more cautious of the information we put online will give us a small ounce more of privacy. It may not be much, but it is something. 

OTM #2

The Ties that Bind

Bob Garfield started off this podcast with a large attention getter, and news I hadn't even heard about. That we the United States were not at war with Australia. . . yet. Immediately I was alarmed, what did Garfield mean war? What did our half-a-brain president do now? And why wasn't this circulating the mainstream media as much as the Celebrity Apprentice ratings were. 

So I looked it up.

According to Vox news and The Washington Post , Trump had called the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull on January 28th, 2017 and wanted to discuss the pre-existing agreement made with former President Barack Obama. In this former agreement, Obama had agreed to take in 1,250 refugee's that were in detention centers just outside Australia. As we all know how much our current President Trump hates taking in refugees (*cough Muslim ban cough*) its obvious what Trump wanted to discuss.  He didn't want to take in the refugee's. When Prime Minister Turnbull wouldn't change the agreement, Trump abruptly ended the call (after insulting Turnbull and boasting himself) at 25 minutes, which was suppose to be an hour long phone call. 

The aftermath was what we can expect from Trump, a mean tweet on twitter saying, "Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!" as well as accused Australia of exporting the "next Boston bombers".

However that is not the only topic that grabbed at my attention. Garfield also brought up the fact that Trump did threaten to invade Mexico "if they don't take care of 'bad hombres'". I delved deeper into this topic and found he was referencing the drug crimes in Mexico. According to the Washington Post , a spokesperson from Mexico said, "It's absolutely false that the United States President threatened to send troops to Mexico". Later clarifying that Trump was speaking in jest and that the Mexican President knew it (thank god!). 

These are both stories that I hadn't even heard about in the news circles I follow. Perhaps I just hadn't been paying attention when those headlines were being talked about, or perhaps they were buried under the unimportant new. This is something I had been thinking of when Garfield was reporting on those stories, which eventually became a concern of Garfield's too.  

With all this leaked news from insiders of the White House, I'm excited to know we are seeing what our President is truly up to. However, I feel that the reporters are focusing too much on the dumb things our President is known to say and they aren't paying enough attention to the dumb things our President is actually doing. And its not just the reporters doing this. I see people on Facebook re-posting dumb things our President has said recently or in the past and though I do find it entertaining, its not what we should be focusing on as a society. We need to stay up to date on what is happening in that White House so that we the people can have a say in what happens and be prepared for the inevitable. 

WI #1

My first experience of learning in a group is a fond one. I had gone through elementary school, Jr. High, and even high school before experiences it, and honestly, it changed my life. I have never been a fan of school. Learning, reading, writing all bored me. I had gone through a year and a half of college still hating education to the point that I was ready to quit. Go to a trade school and start working. 

That is until my second semester of my sophomore year. I was taking classes to fill my credit amount and decided Communications would be an easy one to use. I went into the class expecting to get an easy A and finish getting my associates degree.  Only I found it changed my life completely.

 My teacher believed in learning as a group instead of as an individual. Because of that he forced us into groups and told us that would be who we could take all of our quizzes with, all of our tests, everything. At the time I was thinking this would be the easiest class I had ever taken, that I'd hardly even have to try to pass. And in a way I was correct, but for a different reason than what  I was thinking. 

As the semester went on, I found that I actually enjoyed going to class, something I hadn't experienced before. I loved what I was learning about and because of that put more effort in to learn more. I would go home from class and do my own personal research to understand things being taught and because of that, I passed with flying colors. Because of this teacher and the way he taught and the relationships I built while learning, I decided to further my education, and even change my major to communications. 

This story came to mind while I was watching the TED talk from Sugata Mitra. I found the quote, "If children have interest, then education happens" to truly resonate with me and I'm sure with many others. 

According to getcollegecredit, there are three benefits (I'm sure among many, but these three are all they listed) from learning in a group which are: Increases retention, boosts motivation, and expands access to information. I believe we as a human race usually seek some sort of friendship or relationships and we can always remember things when they have a discussion tied to it. So I think by learning in groups, we are better able to retain  information when we discuss it in a group, whether as a classroom, or in small study groups. Those that promote socialization, tend to make it last longer in their brain. 

Memorizing does nothing for most students. From personal experience I can vouch that when I'm forced to memorize things, it goes in one ear, keep it there until the test, then goes out the other. Just as the comic portrayed above. I think that to improve our learning here in the states, we should assess the issues of how lessons were taught back then, and change them to a more advanced and effective way for the future. 

OTM #1

New Reality 

Abortion is something that has always been a hot topic and has had constant tugging and pulling on either side from both republican and democratic politicians. In fact from the beginning of this hot topic, groups have banded together to create pro-abortion and anti-abortion organizations in hope to push their movement on the U.S. government in hopes that they can change the way abortion is handled and looked at. 

So where exactly do pro-choice and pro-life organizations stand on this issue? 

From the pro-choice Ohio website, they state, "...being pro-choice means that you believe that women, not the government, should make their own reproductive health care decisions". Whereas pro-life supporters believe that once an egg is fertilized and becomes a zygote, that is a human life and should not be aborted because its viewed as murder. 

So how do these two campaigns come into play in our governmental decisions? To simply answer this question would be; funding. 

Jennifer Donnelly said in the 'New Reality' podcast, a politician can band a group to their side by using funding as their basis. A politician may make the claim to end or support funding towards abortion clinics, which will rally a large group to their support. This tactic is more often used by Republican candidates who use the idea of funding to band the pro-life supporters behind them. 

This made me wonder about our current President, Donald J. Trump. We have documented evidence of Trump saying he was a pro-choice advocate. However, in our recent election he's flip-flopped on his stance on abortion. This could be that he just changed his mind over the course of his life, and that's a perfectly understandable thing to assume. On the other hand, gaining the knowledge of this political tactic Republican nominee's have used to gain a large group to support them makes me wonder if Trump did the same. 

Now, how does this constant tug and pull of changing politics on abortion affect the people? When talking about the predictable toggle of pro-life to pro-choice and back again, Donnelly said, "If you go abroad and look at it from their point of views, this is a policy that's really impacting women's lives abroad, and impacting these organizations every four to eight years. They're having to completely reorganize as a result of these executive actions." I tried to look into this as I feel I don't have a strong understanding of what Donnelly was saying, however I came up short on how the change between funding and non-funding affects women abroad. I intend to speak to my teacher about this and come back and edit. 

My stance on the issue has always been the same, which is women should make their own decisions for their own reproductive health care. I believe that these personal choices are just that. Personal, and one that should not be decided on from an outside source. There are many reasons as to why a woman may need an abortion. Perhaps they are a rape victim who became pregnant from the instance and don't have the means to care for the child. Or perhaps the mother is faced with the fact that she will die in childbirth, and abortion is the only way to save her life. Its a touchy subject, and I realize that some women who get an abortion are only doing so because it is an unwanted consequence to a past action. I personally don't believe that abortion should be viewed as an easy way out of a sticky situation. I just feel that for the women who may need abortion for practical reasons such as being raped or facing loss of life, should not be denied that medical procedure because others view it as wrong. I also have not been able to find any non-religious reasons as to not allow abortions, and our constitution is laid out that church and state should always be separate. 

Social Networking Workflow

The page I've created is for my YouTube Channel, Shivekat.  My mission is to have people follow me on Facebook so they can hear about videos that have been uploaded, as well as getting my followers involved in the content I am creating.

Target Audience:

Alexis Platt, age 20. She's recently gotten married while attending her University for a bachelors in science. She is in her second year after taking a year off to work and save up. She spends a lot of time studying and working and is looking for an outlet to let her laugh for a few minutes once and a while to distract from her stressful life.

Jared Smith, age 26. He's recently graduated from University with two bachelors degrees and is now working full time in the medical field as a CNA. He's recently come out to his family that he is gay and is being accepted by his friends and family. He enjoys spending hours online playing games with his friends as well as watching YouTube videos a couple times a week.

Anna Taylor, age 23. She's graduated from University with a bachelors in English and after taking a year off, she's decided to go back for her masters. She wants to become a English Professor, but for now works at an editing firm in the city. It doesn't pay as much as she'd like it to, but she enjoys it enough to stay. She looks to YouTube as a source of entertainment on her time off and is often looking for new YouTubers to follow.

To reach my audience I will always post when a new video is up as well as post funny pictures that can relate to some of my videos at least twice a week. This way my viewers can feel like they are getting to know me a little better. It also creates the opportunity for me to get to know my audience by seeing what makes them laugh and react. That way I can gear my content more towards things they may like to watch.

I have already invited literally every one of my facebook friends to follow my page, and the ones that choose to watch my videos will be asked to share and like the video if it made them laugh in hopes that my content can be shared with their friends and their friends friends.

Update:  I fixed the watch button on my page as well as created an introduction and pinned it to the top of my page. I'm hoping that by doing this, it will encourage more people to be directed to my channel and videos from my page. 

Update (02/07/2017):

I've uploaded two shorts of my videos to entice my Facebook viewers to go and watch my video. For this weeks, I thought to try with a picture and compare and contrast the response. In my first two videos, they're usually an enticing video sentence that might get those who see it wondering what happened or what I'm doing. In my picture only, I let the viewer know that I would be drawing something and then hid the actual drawing behind some clipart in hopes that they'll click on my video to see how the drawing turned out. 

Update (03/30/2017)

I realized I never updated what happened with the picture post. I did not receive a high amount of reaction from that post so I now know that video is more of an eye catcher and receives a better response. 

Get to Know Me

Welcome to my blog! 

My name is Kathryn Shiverdecker (I know, quite a mouthful), but most people just call me Katy. I'm a YouTube phenomenon, the rest of the world just doesn't know it yet. I'm mostly just playing around with it and having some fun, so if you actually DO want to watch some of my videos you're more than welcome to on my channel Shivekat. Anyway, enough half-assed marketing attempt. 

As you can see from my profile picture I ride horses. I have two of my own Sunflower and Saffron, (though most of the time I call them a short five letter word that's not appropriate for this kind of setting). I've been riding for almost sixteen years now and have no intention of ever stopping. 

I got my associates degree in science at Utah Valley University and am now at Dixie State University getting my Bachelors degree in Communications with a minor in Media Studies. Who knew the girl who hates school would be getting a bachelors degree AND a minor. My parents sure as hell didn't. 

Anyway, I'm excited to be in this class and blah blah blah, some clique crap about being excited to learn and get to know everyone in the class even though nobody talks to each other. 

I'm not really sure how to end this so instead I'll just.....