My top 10 relationship DONTS on Facebook (for girls)

1) Thou shall not creep!!!! You should already trust them, so why are you creeping on them behind their back? Checking up on them is just going to make you crazy and cause a fight over something stupid. If you talk to them, and have good communication, you eliminate the need to creep on them.

2) Why do you have to be "Facebook Official?" Why can't you just discuss this with your man before you get mad that he hasn't sent you a request on Facebook. What ever happened to a man asking a woman out on a date and then asking whether or not they were officially dating or not. Note for the men: If you ever send me a relationship request on Facebook before we have talked about it face-to-face, expect me to reject it.

3) Do NOT go too far back into his tagged pictures or picture albums. Chances are there are pictures of him and an ex. It may be that he is holding onto an old romance, but the better explanation is that he forgot they were on there and hasn't gotten around to deleting them. Guys are forgetful....give them a break.

4) If another girl writes on your man's wall, don't assume that he is cheating. He is allowed to have friends that are girls, just like you can have friends that are guys. This goes back to no creeping. Just don't do it!!

5) Do not write that you love him every other day on his wall. It just looks like you are trying to mark your territory. if he wants to keep you around, he won't be out looking, so you can probably cool it with all those posts.

When People Break Up, According to Facebook Status Updates

6) Do not let your friends tell you that he is Facebook flirting or doing anything he shouldn't be doing online. If they only know this guy via Facebook, then they shouldn't be giving you life advice about him. If they have met him and something happened in public and they saw it, only then should you listen to them.

7) Do not add his friends if you have not actually met them and had a conversation with them. It is SUPER creepy, and if you creep out the friends...you might as well kiss him goodbye. On the other end of that, if his friends add you and you have no idea who they are, you can use your own judgement.

8) If one of his friends gets on Facebook Chat and starts bad talking your man, don't give in because you don't know where that information is going. Same rules apply to AIM (if you were a 90's kid and know what that is).

9) Do not set your profile picture to the 2 of you making out. It is just not classy! If an employer searches you, then that will be their first impression. This is sort of a general rule, but its a good one to have.

10) Don't creep!! Just don't!! This rule is so important it is both first and last. You will be so much happier if you follow this rule. If he IS cheating, its probably not going to show up on Facebook, and if it does, you need to talk to him face-to-face. Do not send him a text or a Facebook message....actually talk to him face-to-face.

Longest week ever!! ...I'm BACK!!!

This is a continuation of "Challenge accepted"

Day 1:
Just got my horoscope tweeted to my text messages! Fail!! I have unfollowed them and will pick them back up when I come back to Twitter. My Facebook is the only account that I have formally deactivated. Twitter said it was a permanent thing, so I will just stay off. I have also moved all social media apps on my phone to a separate page so I can't even see them. I think this will be okay.

Day 2:
I just read an email from LinkedIn. ARG!!! I totally forgot and opened it. This may get tricky because I get an insane amount of LinkedIn emails. My internet use today consisted of browsing the iTunes store, checking my email, and looking into getting a netflix account. I am super bored. People keep taunting me about not having a Facebook, and to make things worse my mom was reading me status updates from my cousins. LALALALA...I can't hear you!!

Day 3:
My friends are planning me a birthday party for Friday and I cannot get on Facebook to make an event. I really hope they are doing this for me, but I can't be sure. This is getting harder and harder!! To make things worse, I may be in a relationship and I have to go through the guessing game of "are we together, is it official" without the help of social media. This is getting sad! Then my mom wanted to show me more things on Facebook, and then was like "oh wait, you can't" and then just laughed.

Day 4:
Well, I have terrible communication skills. C'est la vie! It's really slow around here; I need something to take my mind off things, but I can't get on any of my favorite sites. I did get a netflix account, and love it, so I will be watching some movies. I really just want to get on Facebook...I want my reality back!!! I also updated my phone, bought some music because I cannot get on YouTube, and shopped online. Social media withdrawal is hard on my wallet.

Day 5:
Last night I was talking to my friend who challenged me to give up social media for a week and she just "had to" turn her Facebook back on. This is so wrong...2 more days after this one! Today I got a hold of my big sister in the sorority and she isn't going to come to my party because she didn't know about it. I cannot blame her for this because I didn't call her and I'm not on Facebook to make an event. This is an example of how our communication skills have been altered since social media. Tomorrow is my party...I am glad I will have some sort of distraction because I am on the edge of breaking down and getting on Facebook. This is the worst possible time for me to give social media up because people can't get a hold of me.

Day 6:
I want on creep on people so bad!! I also want to listen to music and watch funny YouTube videos!! I really want to cave in right now, but I have to stay strong. I don't really need to do any of this, but it has been a habit for so long. We all went out to birthday dinner and the girls wanted to see a picture of this guy that I keep talking about. This would be easy if I had access to Facebook so I told them that they could look him up. This is getting really difficut!!!

Day 7:
I am counting down the hours until I can get back on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pandora, and every other site I like to use!! Right now I have 4 hours to go on this dare. Last night I tried to cheat, but when I tried to login to my Facebook on my iPhone it wouldn't let me because it was deactivated.

Additional thoughts:
I feel like most status updates and tweets are jabs or hints for people that follow you or that are your friends. Why don't we just tell people directly how we feel? Life without know what everyone is doing is a blessing and a curse. Its a blessing because you have privacy, and you are no longer obsessing over other people. It's a curse because we are in a society that has become obsessed with other peoples thoughts, feelings, and day to day activity.Why have we become so obsessed with telling people where we are and what we are thinking. This entire week, when I had a profound thought or something that I could update people on, I was like "Damn, why do we all think that way?" People have gotten to the point that they rely on Facebook as a communication medium. The downside of this is that the internet is written in permanent marker, and problems can't be easily resolved this way. The upside is that we can stay in touch with people we have met over the years because everyone has a permanent address on the internet, regardless of housing situation.

Challenge accepted!

I know you have heard me talk about other people doing this, but can I do this? 1 week without any form of social media. Tonight, I was talking to a friend of mine who is studying for the GRE. After several time wasting hours on Facebook, she decided to take the plunge and deactivate her Facebook page. When she told me that she did this I was confused! How can you live without social media?! This made me begin to evaluate how many social media sites I use in a normal day.

I wake up and check Facebook and then I roll through my timeline on Twitter. I normally go back to Facebook and play some games, and then if I am bored I get on StumbleUpon and see what kind of new sites my friends have found. On top of these 3 sites, I use MyFitnessPal on my iPhone, which is a social network that helps me lose weight with the help and encouragement of my friends. I also listen to Pandora, which lets me know if my friends like a certain artist as it plays. I am also addicted to UrbanSpoon, which allows me to look at different restaurant recommendations from people in my town. There is also LinkedIn, that I normally check twice a week to make sure I am not missing out on a fabulous job. I also use HootSuite to coordinate most of these, so I also have to stay off this too. Last, but certainly not least, is YouTube!! I LOVE YouTube more than people know! I look up old cartoons, musicals, playlists, random songs, movies, you name it...I will probably find it on YouTube. I have a playlist for every mood and occasion, this may be hard! WOW!! I am online a lot!!

The next question is, can I still use Bing? They have added whether or not your friends like a particular thing. Is this social media too? I think that it technically is because you are being persuaded by your friends when you look something up. I will have to go back to Google.

The only disadvantage to not checking all of these in the next week is that I need to get ahead in one of the games I play on Facebook before I turn everything off....sad, but very true! Will this help my social skills? What will the outcome be? I will start this on Sunday, June the 5th and resume use on the 12th. At that time, I will blog the results.

Wish me luck!!

This one time at a concert....

Last night I went to a Secondhand Serenade concert and one of the opening bands was selling CD's and my friend wanted one but, as any normal person our age, only had plastic. Not a problem! The new up and coming artist had an app on his iPhone called square! I don't know if anyone has heard about this technology, because its fairly new, but it is a new app that allows you to set up an account to take credit cards. 

He didn't have the card reader shown above, which is a freebie provided by the company, so he had to key in the number. After signing your name with you finger, you can receive your receipt via text message or an email! SO NEAT!! The app is free, the card reader is free, there are no contracts, no monthly fees, and Square will only take 2.75% of every swipe. 

Next question: Will we ever be able to live without the iPhone or the Droid? Probably not! Companies are making their products and services more social for a society that is much more socially conscious than we were ten years ago; online bill pay, bank apps, credit card readers on our phones, Twitter on our refrigerators, what will they think of next?

Real websites vs. Facebook pages

Have you noticed lately that every website mentioned in a commercial is a Facebook page. Take tide for example: when they come out with something new, they always reference their Facebook page.

Companies are now catching on that if they don't write about, someone else will and you cannot control what they say about you. A company can influence the conversation about them online, but they cannot control it fully like they could 10 years ago.

I have learned at my new job at Griffs (doing social media marketing) that you have to get consumers involved in the conversation for them to care about you and your product. If they care about you, they will have more brand loyalty and you will move up in their evoked set.

I like that companies are catching onto this social media wave that has happened lately. I know that I was on Facebook earlier looking for a particular bag that I saw. Real websites will always be around, but companies on Facebook will only increase from this point on.

A lot has changed on my break from blogging... but social media always changes

I haven't blogged in a while so here is a quick update on my life:
As you know, I am a senior at WKU and I am graduating in May with my degree in social media marketing. We had to take this huge exam over everything we have ever learned in the marketing department in order to graduate from the business college. Not everyone passes this exam and one girl in my major is back again this semester to take it. Needless to say, I was a wreck trying to study for this exam. GOOD NEWS!! I PASSED!!!! Something else exciting in my life is that I have started a job where I get to apply what I have learned as a social media marketer for Griffs Deli (a local business) in Bowling Green, KY. Enough about why I haven't blogged about social media, and on to what you really want to read about,

Social media changes everyday:

Insights page you would see as an administrator

Since working as a social media marketer, I have learned so much about this realm of the internet. If you are an administrator on a Facebook business page you can see who is looking at your site and if the users are engaging more on a month to month or a week to week basis. WHOA!! This is probably the best feature Facebook has ever come out with for business owners. In my social media classes they have always talked about the ROI (return on investment) being so hard to track, but now you can track it from the "Insights" tab on the administrator's page. It is so cool!! I have raised Griffs Post Feedback up from 150% a week ago to 788% this week. Needless to say, my boss is pretty happy with these results!!

The main reason I love this field is that you get to learn something new everyday because this field changes everyday and you have to keep up. I went to a webinar last week to update myself on what was going on. I have since applied these concepts to Griffs, and we have seen a significant increase in sales. EXCITING!! I was even mentioned by a guest speaker that came to talk to my class. She didn't know that I was the marketer for Griffs, but she sung out what a wonderful job we were doing with our Facebook page (Griffs Deli's Facebook Page)With all of this success that I have seen, I want to help other businesses grow.

"It's like a chapter of my life is dead..."

So the other day I was thinking about what I used to do before wireless internet and the invention of social media. I used to sit on the internet, tying up the phone line for hours using AOL Instant Messenger to talk to my friends and join the AOL Chat Rooms to make new friends. If you are around my age, 22, you will remember lying about your age and location to people you would meet online to make yourself seem more appealing. Part of going in these chat rooms, for me, was defying your parents because if your mom was anything like my mom, you knew you were going to get into trouble if you were caught "IMing" people you didn't know.

After reminiscing about the "good ol' days" I decided to find a chat room. When I clicked on the room I had visited as a child, a message popped up saying that due to the decline in traffic that all AOL Chat Rooms had been closed. WHAT?!?!?! What has happened in America that I cannot get in a chat room and meet some strangers? I know this doesn't sound safe, and it's probably not, but I was kind of disappointed when I got word that something in my past was dead and future generations wouldn't get to feel what I felt when I had been apart of these rooms.

Along with finding out that chat rooms had died, I was talking to a friend of mine about AOL Instant Messenger the other day because it popped up when I restarted my computer. I noticed for the first time that absolutely no one was online except for SmarterChild. SmarterChild was a screen name on AOL that you could "IM" and they would play games with you. I decided to see if this was still the case and got the message "My brain is retired but watch some cool videos! Send an IM to GossipinGabby and Type VIDEO!" Turns out that SmarterChild has been offline since May 2009. I loved playing the games and especially just messing with the computer on the other end. Here is an example I found online of people messing with SmarterChild:

courtjester5000: I hate it when people use up all my printer paper.

SmarterChild: Oh yeah?

courtjester5000: They think paper just grows on trees or something.

SmarterChild: They think paper just grows on trees or something? I dunno.

courtjester5000: Do you have any of those trees growing in YOUR backyard?

SmarterChild: Have any of those trees growing in your backyard? I'm pretty sure I don't.

courtjester5000: Me either.

Now we have Facebook Chat instead of AOL and wireless instead of dial-up. I don't know about you, but I kind of miss the opportunity to make a sandwich while my computer connected to the internet. Not really, but you get the idea.

Social media experience?

I have been racking my brain for a topic to blog about this morning and I have decided to share with all of you something that I have come across recently; when looking for a job as a recent college graduate you are faced with a dilemma. You can't get a job without experience, but at the same time you cannot gain experience without a job. This is also true in the Social Media Marketing field, but I wonder what they consider experience considering it is such a new field.

Do they mean general marketing experience?:

       In that case, I have written several plans that I could provide them. 

Do they mean in working with social media?:

       I have a Twitter, Facebook, and a Linked In account. On top of that I blog about social media and this account is tied to Technorati. I have been actively involved in social media since middle school with the creation of MySpace.

Most of the jobs I have been looking at in the Social Media Marketing field require around 3-7 years experience. I believe that I am well versed in social media, I mean my entire generation has gotten on the social media bandwagon. If you are looking for experience, I have it in spades! I blog about it as well as use it in my day to day life, which you will understand if you have read any of my other blog posts.

Hopefully in the next several months when I am applying for jobs potential employers will see my dedication to social media through this blog and my other social media profiles.

My two cents about Social Media Marketing

By now I guess you have gathered from my blog that I am a Senior at WKU and am majoring in Marketing with a concentration in Social Media. I love seeing social media being used for the greater good of an organization and I am sickened when companies like Motorola ignore it.

My best friend is abroad in Ireland and she had found an international sim card to put in her Motorola Backflip and she didn't know what to do with it. Being confused myself, I decided to get on my new favorite site, Twitter, and mention Motorola in a tweet asking for help. Well, as you can see I posted this on January 6th and as of today, January 13th, I have not heard anything. This bothers me because 30 minutes after I posted this @MotoMobile had tweeted again. Going back to January 6th, they tweeted 11 times and they have tweeted 25 times since then. Going back and looking at the content of these tweets they have mentioned other people and thanked them for support or for mentioning they positively.

All I wanted was some help for my friend and I couldn't even get that. This is some really bad news for Motorola because not only did I send out another tweet discouraging my friends from buying a Motorola phone, but now I am writing about their very poor customer service in my blog! If they had taken about 5 minutes out of their day to get in contact with me all of this would have been solved, but I guess not everyone is a Social Media Marketing major.

Some of my favorite things

One of my favorite things to do is go to Lowe's and look at appliances, home decor, paint, lights, cabinets, and other household fixtures. It makes me feel better and takes my mind off of things. I typically go by myself because I could spend days looking at everything. People have called what I like to do weird or strange, but I don't see the harm in doing something that cheers me up. One of my new favorite things is Twitter. In my previous blog post I shared with you my morning routine with the addition of Twitter, and I'm getting the hang of things quickly.

I recently watched a news story on CNN about a new refrigerator that has a touch pad on the front that allows you to keep virtual sticky notes and other online applications such as Pandora, the local weather, and Twitter. You can now send out a tweet about what you are cooking for dinner, or you could even mention your kids in the tweet so that they will know what time to be home.

I think this is a very cool item that I will definitely be purchasing in the future. I think this will catch on because it allows the user the customization aspect without cluttering up the fridge. My favorite thing about this new appliance is that you can have Pandora right there on your fridge so you can listen to music without having to drag your computer into the kitchen and risk it getting dirty while you are cooking dinner.

Social media and the news

7:00- First alarm goes off and I hit the snooze
7:10- Hit the snooze for the second time and turn on the Today show
7:15- Still haven't seen the local weather, switch to The Weather Channel
7:20- Switch from The Weather Channel to CNN to get the headlines
7:25- Finally get out of bed to make coffee and get ready

I am a self proclaimed hater of mornings. I do not like the process of getting out of bed and starting my day, unless that particular day begins at 10am. With that being said, if I get a job where I have to be there at 8am I will make it work and probably drink a lot of coffee before I get there.

So I bet you are wondering what my love of coffee, my dislike of mornings, and my wake up schedule have to do with getting the news through a social media channel. Well, let me just say that was the old way I used to get up and get my news. The new way is something like this:

7:00- First alarm goes off and I hit the snooze

7:10- Hit the snooze for the second time and turn on the Today show

7:15- Get out of bed and log on to Twitter and make coffee

7:25- Start getting ready

I can get all of my news to start the day just by the people I follow on Twitter. I get the CNN headlines, the local weather, sports, and even whats going on in Bowling Green just by logging into one source. Instead of flipping the channels to see what is going on, I save time in the morning by going to one social media source. One real life example pulls it into perspective to me. The guy I am seeing has an iPhone and he came over and mentioned that the alarm on his phone still wasn't working. I had remembered seeing something on my top tweets where Steve Jobs had posted something about the alarm having a glitch. So I turned to my computer and got on Steve Job's Twitter account and showed my guest his most current tweet that said,"Until Apple issues an official fix for the iPhone alarm glitch, please do not open your iPhone's clock app. Doing so may void the warranty." When he learned this he posted it on his Facebook where it was lost among all of the other posts. Bottom line, Twitter is an awesome news source.

I think we are going down the wrong Path

Recently, I've really been getting into twitter. I follow my horoscope, CNN, Mashable, and a few of my friends. I like how this form of social media is kind of like a time line of what I am doing, and I especially like that I can get my news from this source as well. Why am I telling you why I like Twitter? Well, about a week ago Path was launched to compete with Twitter (Mashable). Path is a lot like Twitter in that you can micro-blog about your life, but the major difference is that Path will only allow you to follow 50 friends. They want to stick with the number 50 because of a psychological study that was conducted that proved that a person can handle only 150 relationships. Path wants to a more intimate setting that you can share more personal things with your friends, and they want you to be yourself. In every post you have to have a person, a place and a thing. The example they give in the article is in the picture below:

                      I really like how this is setup to include pictures with your text, but I don't know how they are going to get a lot of members since you can only have 50 friends. The reason Facebook and Twitter are so successful is because they started with a few people and they brought new people, and so on like the snowball effect. Also, this isn't on the internet, you can only access this through your IPhone. What do you think? Do you think this could be the next Twitter?

November 17th is National UnFriend Day on Facebook

"Jimmy Kimmel calls for National UnFriend Day" CNN

Jimmy Kimmel has a late night talk show called Jimmy Kimmel Live where he talks about things going on in the world and he puts his point of view on things. On Wednesday the 10th Jimmy Kimmel declared that November 17th is going to be National UnFriend Day on Facebook. Kimmel believes that Facebook is "cheapening the meaning of friendship" (CNN). I have to say that I agree with him. It feels like everytime I am on Facebook I have yet another friend request. Yes, I do add people from class that I talk to, but I really do not talk to them outside of class and then I forget to delete them after the semester is over. I know I am not the only one that does this. I will not, however, add complete strangers that creep on my Facebook and add me as a friend. I also have a very tight control on who can even search me.

I think National UnFriend Day should be targeted towards high-schoolers more than anyone just because I feel like they don't see the problems with adding a complete stranger. I know I am definitely take Jimmy's advice and cut some "friends" that I don't even know anymore. I have been at WKU for three and a half years now and I can guarantee that there are some people I am "friends" with on Facebook that I don't even talk to anymore. Happy National UnFriend Day!!

Its "Facebook Official" ...Breaking up on Facebook

Have you ever wondered when you were going to be dumped by your significant other? Well, thanks to David McCandless, a British journalist and graphic designer, you can better prepare yourself to be dumped. He has created a chart of when you are most likely to get kicked to the curb on Facebook.

The graph above is a visual representation of the most likely times of the year you will be left

I personally think this graph is hilarious, as well as fairly accurate. In my personal experience, I feel like a ton of people break up right after Valentine's Day because they don't want to spend it alone. This is good news for marketers! You have made us feel so bad about our lives that we feel obligated to find someone, anyone, and stay with them long enough to buy them something for this particular holiday. Good job! On the other hand, people break up right before Christmas. This could be due to the fact that prices are too high combined with the simple fact that this isn't exactly a holiday that revolves around love.

People love changing their relationship status on Facebook to reflect that they are taken or, to quote a fairly new term, "Facebook Official" which would make this chart pretty accurate. On the other hand, you also have those people who joke around and say that they are in a relationship with their roommate or best friend. What do you think? Do you think this is an accurate chart? Do you think that marketers could use this to their advantage? 

Winners never cheat and cheaters never win, especially on Foursquare

Mayor badge in Foursquare

Earlier in my blog I took my stance on location based forms of social media. Although I feel like they are unsafe, I also know that people are really into the gaming aspect of it. In Foursquare, if you check into a certain place more than anyone else, you become the mayor of that place. Earlier this month in my Social Media Marketing class we discussed how people could cheat the system and check into places from their couch and eventually become the mayor of that place. I also learned from an article on Mashable.com that people can also check into a place if they are near it instead of inside it. I bet you are thinking, "So what?" I would be thinking this too if I didn't fully understand the ramifications. The problem with this is that most businesses are starting to give mayoral discounts, and incentives to the mayor of their establishment so that more people will want to check into their location and cash in on the deals. Foursquare finally caught onto this and so they are putting the power of the highly sought after mayor badge into the hands of the store owners. Since Foursquare cannot fix this problem immediately, Foursquare knows that businesses using this social media platform know their regular customers. This means that business owners can now flag you on Foursquare and you can lose your mayorship. What do you think? Do you think this is taking it too far? Do businesses have the right to tamper with a social media game? I think they have every right to do this if others are exploiting this loophole to gain discounts and other incentives that they don't deserve at the companies expense.

Getting searched!!

With graduation so close by, our professors and advisors keep warning us about what to put on our Facebooks. I used to not listen to them until I started taking Social Network Marketing for my Social Media concentration. My professor gave our class numbers about how putting up bad pictures and statuses could really hurt us, and since stats and cold hard facts make me listen, I checked over my own site to make sure my grandmother, or a future employer, could see it. More recently than this lecture, I saw an article on CNN "Could Facebook be bluffing on search-engine plans?" that was talking about how Bing and Facebook may join forces so that you could search people more easily. The real reason behind this is because Facebook is such a huge force on the web that it is messing with Bing's search results. 

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I think it's pretty crazy, but not hard to believe, that Facebook is such a huge force on the internet that it is effecting how things are searched. I think that having a strictly social search would be a smart move for the companies with search engines and also a good way to creep on future employees. I know this is just another warning about what not to put on Facebook, but these guys are making it easier to find you. What are your thoughts? Do you think this will happen anytime soon, or do you think bigger companies are willing to finance something like this so that they can search future employees faster and more efficiently?

Location, Location, Location!!

Gowalla, Foursquare, and now Facebook Places, are all social media platforms that are location based. With these applications you can "check in" to different locations and at the same time see where your friends are. This tool comes in handy when you need something to do on a Saturday night, or if you are driving around town during the week looking for something to get into. These applications are all in good fun, awarding mayors to people that check in the most often to a certain location, or getting merit badges if you party hop a lot one night. There is even an article on CNN.com that talks about how NASA is getting involved with the location based social media platforms. Above you see a picture of what I am talking about. NASA has hidden virtual gifts around the country to gain more recognition for the space program. Another article on CNN.com reveals that even the good people at CNN got into the game by offering up a healthy eater badge on Foursquare to people that ate well and shopped at local farmer's markets.


At the other end of the spectrum, people are telling all of cyberspace where they are. Is this really the safest thing we can do? I have read local reports of people going out of town for the weekend and checking into various places out of town, which then resulted in their houses getting robbed.


What are your thoughts about location based social media platforms? Do you think they are dangerous? Or do you think they are all in good fun? I feel like it is a double edged sword that could go either way. I personally will not be using this technology anytime soon.

Things seem to catch on....viral marketing

I know you have recently seen women all around the world updating their Facebook status to say things like "I like in the chair" or "I like it on the door." Reading statuses like these cause people to take notice and start asking questions. When people start asking questions the knowledge of what's going on spreads like wildfire. I admit I was one of those people that were like "what are they doing?" Since then, I have jumped on the bandwagon. If you were curious, the question that these women were answering with their statuses is "Where do you like your purse" and it was supposed to generate awareness of breast cancer awareness month. This is cool and all, but if you are like me, you change your status twice a day or maybe more so this was a very short buzz.

My favorite viral marketing ploy of the month has been the "Count me out" social media campaign to support National Coming Out Day, which they have stretched to continue all week. What you do is go to the link above and follow the instructions on the site. I am an "Ally" because I support those coming out this week, and my friend Skylar's picture says "Out" because he is already out. We are both doing this to support equality in the community and to support the anti-bullying and anti-homophobic efforts. 

I think pictures give you the best way of being heard. People notice when your profile picture changes rather than a status, just because you don't change your picture several times a day. I have seen several pictures like the ones above and asked the same questions like I did for the breast cancer awareness. Those statuses never raised as many questions and confused messages as these pictures did, and once people found out, they started changing their pictures too. Story short, if you want to raise awareness, Facebook is the way to go!

I've seen the power of social media!!

Before I tell you about how social media has impacted my life recently, I have to give you the back story. About a week ago I ordered from a local place I like to eat at in Bowling Green, Kentucky. I was SO EXCITED to hear that they delivered! I placed my order for my favorite meal, a chicken salad sandwich and a salad with their mango pineapple vinaigrette. I was especially excited about the salad because this was a dressing I had never tried before and it sounded amazing! When I ordered my food they said it would take 60+ minutes for it to arrive, and I was okay with this. When I had gotten my food, I began to unpack the bag after the delivery guy left (first mistake) and I realized that he had forgotten my dressing! Oh no! I quickly called the restaurant and told them what had happened and they said they would "send it right out." Well about and hour later and still dressing-less I called back. They then passed me through the phone system and then rudely assured me that it was on its way. I gave up hope at 10pm when they close. 

I told my friends what had happened, but how can you get your friends to not eat at one of the best restaurants in town? It didn't hit me until today in my Social Media Marketing class what I had to do. Facebook! I would write on their wall and see what they do, either way a lot more people are going to see what I say on Facebook than if I talk to them. This is what happened:

They answered my wall post the same day! I did take Jodi up on this offer. I emailed her and told her what happened and then, like she asked, I gave her my campus address. Quickly after I read this I clicked onto their wall to see if this was visible to the public and was disappointed it was not. They could have taken this opportunity to put a positive spin on the situation, but little do they know that I am a marketing major with a concentration in social media. If they do keep their promise of the gift card I promise to re-post on their wall about the positive experience I received with their customer service. This just shows that if companies do have pages on social media sites, they do need to check them multiple times everyday so that problems like these can be resolved. Good Job to Mariah's for being prompt!!

Even as I am finishing up this blog post I got another comment on my Facebook comment from Jodi:

and yes, I am the one that liked her post.

I will keep you all up to date on the situation. : )

Facebook crashes!!

Okay, this is really weird!! My last post was about how a Northeastern school was going to block social media to see the impact on the students life. Thursday September, 23rd around 3pm Facebook was experiencing problems and I could not log on!! I first thought it was some joke, haha Facebook. Good one! It did not hit me until I got to work that day that I realized this was no joke!  I sat down at my desk and tried to load Facebook like I normally do. (I am just going to share my nerdness with you and admit that I am in love with Facebook games and if I don't get to play them at work I am not happy and I sit there and pout.)

I had just started this new game and I was about to level up and I had been waiting all day to play it at work and Facebook was officially not working!! So I tweeted about it, "Why is Facebook not working?!?!?!!!!!" (yes those were my exact words). As I sat there on twitter I decided that maybe I could follow Facebook to see what the deal was. Well, much to my amazement, the server was down and they were fixing the problem. I love how all social media works together for the common good!

This made me think about what I did before Facebook. I really can't remember, which is kind of sad. Facebook from a marketing standpoint is a goldmine!! It links ads to your particular interests and because of this feature alone I have learned about so many more products and have become a more informed consumer. I think all of this knowledge about products can be a double edged sword, but as long as companies positively endorse their brand without bashing anyone else I will still be looking at what they have to say. That is unless Facebook crashes again!