Hootsuite Certification Blog Post (CIS-141 Week 15)

As part of the CIS-141 coursework, we the students were afforded an opportunity to get Hootsuite platform and Hootsuite Social Marketing certified.

It is part of our grading for the series of the course and the grade depends on the grade you get on the certification test. I'm happy to announce that after several attempts of taking the exam that I passed!

I decided to chart out my progress over the testing attempts I took.

As you can see, the first attempt did not go very well. My first grade was a 60% and passing is 80%. This attempt was taken without reviewing the material prior to taking the exam. As you can tell, the test questions were more challenging than I had originally expected. I took the remainder of the day to review the materials that I thought I did poorly on and took the next day off for personal reasons (I had a doctor's appointment that ate up most of my day). The next day I took the test 3 times with my best scoring on my first attempt at a 77%. After scoring in or near the 70s with each attempt, I took another day to really cram for the exam and as you can see I finally passed on 5/3! I am so excited!

Two cool benefits of the certification process that I found out is that the certifications never expire and our Hootsuite Academy accounts also include a bonus platform certification which I plan on taking in the coming week. Why not? If they never expire, it will look excellent on a resume!

Overall, I am very pleased with the outcome of this certification exam and social media course progress. That's it for week 15! Onward to the final exam!

Video in Social Media (CIS-141 Week 11)

This week for CIS-141 we compared two similar yet very different video platforms for social media. The first one is Snapchat which is a mobile messaging service from Snap Inc. that sends a photo or video to someone that lasts only up to 10 seconds before it disappears. Here is a link to my SnapChat profile:

(you can scan the above image in SnapChat to friend me.)

SnapChat for me is used in a more social way. I use it with close friends to share moments in time. I wouldn't consider myself an influencer in anyway as some are on the platform. I created a public story to share with the class in our Facebook group. I then exported the video to my phone and uploaded it to YouTube to embed in my blog post here. I am a broadcast engineer by trade, and messing around with video formats is what I like to do. See below.




The second platform we experimented with is called Animoto.

Animoto allows you to create professional video slideshows by turning your photos and video clips into video slideshows, quickly and easily (or so it suggests). Our assignment was to create a 30 second professional video promoting yourself to prospective employers. Since I'm not really looking for jobs at the moment, I decided to keep it more casual. I was impressed with how easy it was to put something together that looked professionally edited. The hardest part of the process was selecting the photos to tell the story. I think it turned out pretty decent. See below.



Onward to week 12's assignment! We're in the home stretch of the semester now!

Astute Social Advertising Analysis (CIS-141 Week 10)

This week our assignment was to review the 7 Best Twitter Ads on Astute Solutions Blog and select a favorite Company Ad. The companies selected in their review were as follows: Nationwide, Kikkoman USA, Volkswagen USA, Casper, Gas-X, and "Flo from Progressive." Unfortunately for me, I was not able to find promoted tweets for these businesses. They were just not popping up in my timeline. I had several other businesses pop-up, however, and in turn, I decided to use one of the ads from the other companies. Specifically, I selected Subway.

I’m retweeting this for #LCCC141 because I cannot find prompted ads for the companies suggested. I will be using this in my blog post dropping this afternoon. https://t.co/3tOEz3uQYY

— Мішель Гривня (@mhryvnak) March 28, 2020

As you can see, the photo did not embed from my retweet so I'll include it below:

What Subway did well 

Punchy copy: Not much copy here, the got right to the point with their message "Free Footlong" which immediately attracts your attention, but the "when you buy two" is in smaller type. I feel this advertisement's message is timely with all of the shelter in place, and quarantine lockdown going on amid the novel Coronavirus. Consumers may not have otherwise known that Subway offers takeout/delivery specials.

Attention-grabbing visuals: The sandwich photos play on people's hunger and wish to return to normal life. They attract the consumer to take advantage of the take-out special. (Although, to be completely honest, I've never had a subway sandwich that remotely resembles what you see in their ads)

Compelling to click through: When you click the advertisement, it takes you to a map of local subway restaurants that are offering the takeout special near your location. You can then order right off of the landing page of the restaurant you select.

What you can take away

Many restaurants now are offering specials to attract customers to come back to their restaurants with the social distancing that the CDC is pushing. They are offering takeout as well as delivery specials so that they can continue running their business until life returns to normal. Subway is just another one of these restaurants offering up such specials. You can bet on this continuing for as long as the COVID-19 virus makes it necessary to quarantine. People need to eat and many of us who are working from home are sick of cooking and running out of ideas! Subway helps you with doing the cooking for you and allowing you to get the food without putting yourself or others at risk!

Flavors of Social Media (CIS-141 Week 9)

For week 9, we were to review 4 different social media platforms, create an account on each (or use an existing one), complete a small assignment in each one and then share our assignments with the other students in our class. The social media platforms in question are YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and WHATSAPP! I already have accounts in the first three listed above, but have never used WHATSAPP! and do not plan to set it up or install it. I will list my experiences with YouTube, IG and Pinterest below.

My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/mhryvnak

As you can see, I have a few videos on YouTube. I have several others that are hidden from the general public. It is my plan to create a video for this class for extra credit, I just haven't had a chance to do it yet. I spend a lot of time daily watching YouTubers. Some of my favorites are Binging with Babish, Jenna & Julien and Sam the Cooking Guy, just to name a few.

My Instagram Account: https://www.instagram.com/mhryvnak/

I've been using Instagram for awhile and have a pretty strong following over on that platform though I don't post on it much. I usually only post photos on special occasions or ones that I want to highlight on a trip or experience. I do not follow many (if any) influencer accounts. Just friends and family. Below I will embed the last two photos I added to my account for the purpose of this class. One is my brand logo and the other one is my Spark photo I created for the last week's assignment. I used the hashtag #LCCC141 to follow some of the other students.

View this post on Instagram

This post is for #LCCC141 #AdobeSpark #SweetValley #lilyofthevalley #sunrisephotography #sunrises #mihalishinroad #nepa #snow #birdwatching

A post shared by Michelle Hryvniak (@mhryvnak) on Mar 21, 2020 at 6:48am PDT

View this post on Instagram

This is my personal brand logo I created for #LCCC141. #LilyValleySweet #SweetValley #nepa #nepa570 #logos #brands #lillies #tigerlilly #ditchlilies

A post shared by Michelle Hryvniak (@mhryvnak) on Mar 21, 2020 at 6:51am PDT

My Pinterest Account: https://www.pinterest.com/mhryvnak/
My Pinterest Board for LCCC-141: https://www.pinterest.com/mhryvnak/board-for-lccc-cis-141/

I've been using Pinterest for as long as it's been out. It's a good source for inspirations, vision boards, and recipes! I use it at least once a week if not more to look up recipe ideas (along with YouTube). I am not as active as I once was on it, but I still post every once in a while. A long time ago, I was on a show called ComputerWise TV which is located in the Lehigh Valley area to talk about Pinterest. I'll embed that video down below. Think of Pinterest as your virtual corkboard.




I hope everyone is staying calm, sane and safe during this Coronavirus outbreak and self-isolation. I'll see you back here next week - same bat time, same bat channel!

Life Updates and the Coronavirus (CIS-141 Week 8)

It looks like we're about half-way through the Spring 2020 semester and this course. We haven't been required to write a blog post in a few weeks, so I'll fill in you in with what's been going on. I have actually been enrolled in two programs - this one (OMT) at LCCC and also a Paralegal Associate Degree program at Penn Foster. I put my program learning on hold at Penn Foster to get back into the groove at LCCC. I haven't taken a class at the college since about 2012 and I wasn't sure how much it would affect my lifestyle with working full time. I seem to be handling one class at a time ok, I may try to take 2 over the summer. I did manage to challenge/test out of two LCCC classes this semester which will help me get to my degree sooner. I'm happy about that.

 

Speaking of LCCC, the college has decided to suspend face-to-face classes in favor of online learning in the wake of the novel Coronavirus outbreak. This doesn't affect me as I do most of my classes online. It may at some point become an issue for other students. I know the college is handling it the best it can. My kids, who are in Jr. and Sr. HS at the Lake-Lehman school district have school off at least for 10 days.

I visited Pittsburgh a week ago to see the Pittsburgh Penguins play and visit some other touristy things. My boyfriend and I had a good time and look forward to visiting the city again some day. I was lucky to see my first NHL game before the Coronavirus put an end to the season.

After all of that, I'm ready for some upcoming medical appointments that I have been putting off. I have an MRI next month and some blood work to tackle before that. Next month as well, I'll be back in court getting my name changed after my divorce. I did the research and will be changing it back to the name that my great-grandparents were naturalized with.

As a final update, I'm posting an image that I made using Adobe Spark which was a tool I've never played with before. It allows you to make stunning web graphics to promote your brand. It reminds me ever so slightly of Canva. I also invite you to take my Twitter poll (embedded below). I'm interested to see if the other class members will be continuing on with their blogs? Let me know or leave a comment on my post!

#LCCC141 Poll: Do you plan to continue your class blog after the semester is over? Vote below:

— Мішель Гривня (@mhryvnak) March 15, 2020

Stay safe fellow classmates and readers, be sure to wash your hands and follow the CDC's guidelines for COVID-19.

It's Not Business, It's Personal...social media (CIS-141 Week 5)

I've been involved with social media since way back when...I've started in chat rooms, ICQ, AIM and mIRC, and have been with it through it's evolution to blogging and social media platforms. I've seen the good and the bad with regard to what happens to social media. Although social media has allowed me to find friends and people of similar interests, I'm going to use this blog post to focus on some of the bad things that I've seen happen with social media. 

One of the first and most pervasive problems with social media and social interactions online (for example, comments sections of blogs and other websites) is what's known as "trolling" which is to say online bullying. I am an avid reader of local news media websites, and their comments sections are some of the worst when it comes to this. A lot of the commenters either break out in name calling or making the discussion about politics rather than what the article is about. I know that the Times Leader recently made an effort to combat this problem by moderating the comments section. The Citizens' Voice has not done this yet, which makes some of their web articles almost unreadable. WNEP previously had a user moderated commenting model, but upon further review at the time of this post, it looks like they've turned off commenting completely. Online bullying takes many forms, the comments section is just one of them. There are several more types of online bullying, which you can read about here.

Another thing that seems to be a big concern is the role of Russia and other third parties that use social media to influence the decision of our US presidential elections. I recently watched the Netflix documentary about Cambridge Analytica and its role on influencing the 2016 election. It's quite disturbing to see how your personal information is shared for malicious purposes. I often caution my Facebook friends to be wary about what apps they use on Facebook because they could be hacked and their personal data could be compromised for malicious purposes. After the Cambridge Analytica hack was announced, I went through my Facebook and revoked access for a number of apps, which is a good practice to do at least yearly. There's a good guide on how to do it here. How social media will affect the 2020 election is still yet to be determined, but there's already some backlash on the Bloomberg campaign for violating Twitter's TOS: Twitter is suspending 70 pro-Bloomberg accounts, citing ‘platform manipulation’


Despite all of the negative things that can and have happened with social media, I genuinely believe there are ways of finding positive ways to interact with others and to "find your tribe." I'm curious to see what the other class members experiences with social media are, and how to expand on it. Furthermore, I think it's important to delve further into online reputation management, not just for yourself, but for any company or organization you may be representing online. I hope this book covers some of that in later chapters.

Hootsuite Academy Intro and Blah (CIS-141 Week 4)

It's been a rough week for me as a human, which is why I am submitting this blog post so late. Last Sunday, my beloved cat of 6 years passed away tragically. Tuesday, I had to appear in custody court for my divorce (small victory) and then ended the week being sick. I'm very low energy so it was hard to motivate myself to sit down and write something. At any rate, here I am. I hope all of your weeks have been better than mine.

RIP Rigby Davies 2/9/20

My thoughts on using Hootsuite are positive and it isn't the first time I have experience using it. We used it often for when we were planning NEPA BlogCon to schedule tweets and Facebook posts.

NEPA BlogCon's logo

At the time we were planning the conference, there were four of us, and it turns out (or at least was the case at the time) that you could only link one Twitter account to one Hootsuite account which made it impossible for all users in the group to use it. We eventually setup and migrated over to Tweetdeck for scheduling tweets. With my personal accounts, I don't really have the need to schedule pre-programmed content so much.

I did sit through all of the Hootsuite videos which I found to be a little basic for me (specifically chapter 1 & 2), but I do think it would be good information for beginners to social media, or those looking to build their online portfolios. I cannot wait to continue through with the program and attempt the certification. I think that is a good item to have on a resume or a LinkedIn profile.