Christine's Column

  Last week I received a text in my family group chat from my uncle asking my brother and I if we were able to come home for the weekend because he wanted to have dinner to celebrate my grandfather’s seventy-fourth birthday. My brother and I were both eager to go home and see the family and our dog, Barrett. I was especially happy because my brother said he would drive us – all I heard was I didn’t have to pay for gas to drive home myself. We didn’t end up going home for the entire weekend, only Saturday to make dinner and then we drove back to Ada that night. We live in Toledo, which is only about an hour drive, so it was easy for us to simply go for the day. My brother and I have always been close and with him graduating Northern this May it’s nice to spend time with him before he leaves, even if it is just a car ride together. When we finally arrived in Toledo we hung out with our mom and caught up on what’s going on in school and life. The three of us have always been super c...

"Instagram is the third most used social media platform". When I read this in Chapter five, I was honestly shocked. When I think of Instagram, I think of a collection of all social media outlets wrapped into one. Over the course of the app's existence, it has been constantly changing and adapting with the development of other outlets. It has always been a photo sharing outlet, similar to Facebook, but the platform has come a long way from the little beige polaroid icon it started as.  New features are constantly added keeping the app in competition with other social media. The story feature on the app reminds people of Snapchat; reels are like TikTok; the photo editing software is similar to VSCO; and the explore page is relatable to Pinterest, including the fact that users can save posts and organize them in different collections just as Pinterest does with their boards feature. And on top of all these features there is still more such as collage creation, boomerang vi...

Being at school obviously makes me miss my family and friends, however, I always miss my nephew, Leon, especially. Technically, Leon is not my nephew, and we aren't related by blood, but he is my best friend's son. Emily and I have been best friends since high school and have always been there for each other, except for one period during Junior year we refer to as 'The Lost Year' and we didn't like each other but that's beside the point. Despite that, I have known Leon since he was a newborn and over the past couple years since he was born, I have always thought of and treated him as if he was my real nephew.  Emily and I have a relationship that is more similar to a sisterhood than a friendship. Beyond my relationship with her son, I have relationships with all of her family members including her parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. and vice versa, she is considered family within my family. I go on their family vacations, attend family holiday pa...

While reading Chapter 4, Marketing with Facebook, there were pieces of information that stuck out to me and surprised me regarding the platform. I am aware that Facebook has been around for quite some time, as it was one of the first widely used social media platforms created, and has continuously grown since being founded. However, considering the rapid growth in popularity of other social media outlets over recent years, such as TikTok and Instagram, I found it shocking that Facebook is the largest and most used platform.  The main reason I found this surprising was due to the fact that other apps allow creators the possibility to create careers off of their followers and can obtain a platform within the network (e.g. Instagram models and TikTok influencers). Whereas accounts with larger followings on Facebook are typically companies/brands who have already established a name in the public's eye. It is not common to see an individual "blow up" on Facebook the same way w...

This week honestly has been super uneventful for me. I have been racking my brain trying to figure out what to blog about that I did this week but there hasn’t been much of anything. Over the weekend, I wasn’t feeling good, so I pretty much was in bed Friday until Sunday. I did go to Lima on Sunday though, and spent way too much money at Ulta. The rest of the day I hung around while doing homeworking and watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta. I have been very hooked on this show lately because all the drama is entertaining to watch. I also think it is funny to watch all these women (who are mostly NFL and NBA wives) fight with each other of miniscule things and without a doubt it gets out of hand every time. I just saw an episode where one of the housewives pulled the other one’s wig off because she didn’t attend her fashion show. The rest of the week was basically the same as the weekend, except it included going to class. Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, which was probably the o...

  Chapter three explores different social media strategies and tactics to help maximize social media marketing and advertising efforts. Things such as creating personas, performing social media audits, having a content strategy, etc. can boost the engagement on your posts and grow your brand’s social media presence.     Paying attention to the analytics of your posts can help you to be more aware of what days/times to post that will result in the highest engagement, the demographics of your audience so you can formulate content marketed specifically to them, which platforms reach the most users, what type of content does best on each platform, etc. Analytics provide a plethora of details pertaining to the state of your social media, and if you understand how to interpret them correctly, you are able to use them to your advantage to help boost your account(s).   Step three, of the ten steps discussed in this chapter, dives further into this by giving specific ...

  My job has given me many things, one of those being some of the best friendships I have. Kayla, Christine, Jai-Lin, Lamai       Throughout last Summer, some of my coworkers and I became very close friends. They all live in Toledo so at the end of Summer when I had to go back to school it was a sad time for us all. Luckily, I don’t live too far from school so I was able to go home on weekends to see them. We are all so much alike and we all have such a good time when we get together. Kayla and Lamai are 23 and Jai-Lin is 21, so we all joke that I’m the baby and I love reminding them that they’re friends with a 19-year-old…they, however, do not like being reminded.           Over this past weekend I went home to celebrate Kayla's twenty-third birthday with them. Since Kayla’s birthday wasn’t until Saturday, I decided to go to Bowling Green on Friday to see Jai because that is where she goes to school. I had a great tim...

              For my podcast I decided to talk about the growth of social media affecting jobs. I wanted to talk about this because my mom is a perfect example. My mom’s background is in graphic design and that is the career she started in, however, now she does work in Public Relations and social media for different businesses.               With the growth of social media, the demand for graphic designers has decreased because there are tools available that allow people to create graphics, logos, etc. without specifically needed graphic design software or even any knowledge in this field. People are able to plug in information they need, and it is able to create an entire graphic for you. My mom still uses her knowledge of graphic design, and those skills are very helpful to her in her current work position. But those skills wouldn’t be as useful to her ...