YOUR Image Building Social Media Skills?

Social media skills and image-building should be taught in college..

Before the internet and social media, most people cared little about what strangers thought of them. The majority of us only turned our heads toward celebrities and politicians.

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The rise of social media changed this notion.

As social media further empowered public opinion and gave it more freedom to judge, ordinary people started to use that in their favor.

People now have a way to express and communicate to the world instantly. But just like communicating in person, presenting yourself on social media can be a difficult task. While there are already classes teaching students to communicate traditionally, like public speaking, students also need to learn how to speak on the internet — only this time, it’s with a keyboard.

You might think: “Why do I need someone to tell me how to use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter? My 5-year-old sister knows how to do that.” Yet the truth is, many people don’t know how to take advantage of these platforms.

Many people post things subjectively, with poor consideration of their image and brand. In real life, no one would do such a thing; people usually try their best to consider their actions in a real-world public context and are well adapted to handle those considerations after years of experience.

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However, social media is comparatively new to us, yet it’s evolving much faster than traditional communication.

Each time Facebook or Snapchat changes its rules or adds a feature, it modifies the way social media communicates. It is hard for students to keep track of these changes and communicate effectively via media. Therefore, offering courses that let public relations specialists teach them is important.

In addition, learning how to manage social media helps students gain success. The most significant aspect is leadership education. Gaining leadership qualities is essential to modern higher education, as it teaches you how to manage your image in public and how to build your personal brand. Employers are expecting people to show this when hiring. Some might even look at the candidate’s social media accounts to figure out what kind person they are. And sometimes, that visit will constitute their final decision. Teaching students how to brand themselves is necessary to their success.

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Most students are approachable, have brilliant ideas and are people of character, but they need to learn how to show that to the online world.

That’s why social media classes should be offered in college — or in other words, PR courses for everyone.

Social media is a powerful vehicle of self-expression and communication; having this ability brings people closer to success, and offering classes for students to master this tool is an indispensable step to help them make the most out of themselves.

Guest Authored By Li Luyuyang. Li is a writer for The Daily Illini, the independent student newspaper at University of Illinois since 1871. Follow The Daily Illini on Twitter.

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"Social media is a powerful vehicle of self-expression and communication; having this ability brings people closer to success.

Offering classes for students to master this tool is an indispensable step to help them make the most out of themselves.."

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  Post Crafted By:

  Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)

Your Image Based Social Media Impact?

Memes and gifs are dominating social feeds, the rise of which could cause problems for those using social media for insight, as words diminish and image-based conversations become the new form of communication..

More than 80 million photos are uploaded each day to Instagram and users watch six billion videos on Snapchat every day, according to Brandwatch, while Twitter says more than 100 million gifs were shared on the platform in 2015.

"People aren't typing things now to share emotion, they're taking photos," says Darren Jones, social media lead at the Post Office. "It's a growing space as more people take and share photos on the likes of Instagram - that is something that's on my mind for the next campaign."

It is "a natural way that the landscape has shifted", according to Pollyanna Ward, digital and social media manager, biscuits at Mondelez, who says brands need to "move forward with consumers" and the users of those platforms.

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She adds: "It's just a new way for customers to talk about us. If someone is posting a meme about Oreos, it's more for us to know that it is positive - if it's negative, we can try to understand why."

Visual listening is the next frontier for the providers as it is their platforms that will need to develop to enable brands to see this data. Many already identify sentiment through emojis and others can identify brand logos in images through AI and advancements in computing power.

Brands have to "develop with it" and look to providers, says Richard Bassinder, head of social media at Yorkshire building Society. "There are things like image listening coming in on the emoji side, that is interesting as it gives a universal way of understanding sentiment - and if we can search and categorize by emoji, that gives us an interesting way of looking at things."

Guest Authored By Mindi Chahal. Mindi is a features writer for Marketing Week, covering all aspects of business journalism, media and marketing. She's interviewed CEOs and CMOs from brands big and small from John Lewis to Atom Bank. Follow Mindi on Twitter.

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"He says it does "make it tougher" but adds that "part of the new world of marketing is adapting to how people want to communicate and if they want to communicate through images and emojis, we need to be supportive of that.."

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  Authored by:

  Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at GetMoreHere.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)

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