In November I got the chance to go listen to Doug Conant speak downtown in the University Club Room. For those of you who have never been there, it is a very cozy environment, where they even had the fire place going during this talk. It is a pretty small venue so the atmosphere was very intimate. For those who do not know, this man has a very impressive resume and professional career. He was the CEO of Campell Soup Company for some time as well as Chairman of Kellogg. Those in my mind were the two most impressive.
He spoke a lot about what his young career was like and what he had to so he would one day have the chance to hold these executive positions. He really spoke on how by telling a story can create a brand. How you deliver a message, how you use emotions, can all effect how a brand is made. If these aspects can be perfected, you can make any brand into anything you want. He also talked a lot about how difficult it is to take an already established brand and change it or revamp it. Which in my mind was a very interesting concept!
This again, was another great thing offered by the school, for FREE! Someone like this can charge thousands of dollars to come and speak, and we got the opportunity to listen for free and meet this man. I certainly took this experience as a blessing.
Hess, L. (Photograph). (2015). Selfie From Branding By Story Telling.
Right before Halloween I had the opportunity to go listen to Keith Donovan speak at our downtown campus. He is the VP of Airfoil Group which is a very successful company, so I was obviously very excited to listen to him talk. I personally think that it is always very beneficial to hear an actual professional speak about a subject, instead of just in the classroom. By hearing first hand knowledge, you really get a good feel for how the business world is.
He really pushed taking the next level throughout his speech. That “good” is no longer acceptable, it has to be “great” if you want to be successful in this world. By pushing this concept, he noted how much more in life you will stand out form the crowd and not just fall in the shadows of others. I think this is very true in current day with so many people having a hard time find jobs, you need something under your belt to stand out, and by going above and beyond all the time I think companies will really respect it, and want you in their company.
It was a really humbling experience since he did open himself up after the talk for questions and just casual chat. He made it seem very personal, no matter what the question was. Offering his best career advice possible. I did get the opportunity to hand him one of my business cards and talk about some of the skills I have to offer in the job world. He really strained to me that I never should never be satisfied with what skills I have. There is always more tools of the trade you can learn and equip yourself with to make yourself more desirable.
I certainly enjoyed this experience quite a bit and can say I really learned a lot. It’s really amazing that GV offers so many free speeches and events like this around campus throughout the year.
Hess, L. (Photograph). (2015). Selfie From Taking Flight Networking Speech.
Social media has become one of the biggest tools, and biggest trends of the 21st century. It is basically hard to go anywhere in the world without finding someone that has a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or some other site. I personally think that it is a good thing. It is expanding the world that we live in and offering up more opportunities. I think now a days people are so consumed with the idea that it is a bad thing because everyone is on it and constantly checking their notifications, but in fact, that is just how the world is now, and times do change.
I like to stay up to date on what is going on with my friends, and what news is going on around the world. I can basically fill both of those needs within a 5 minute check in on my social media apps. And to be completely honest, I have meet so many new people through a simple Facebook request, that would later lead to a meet in person situation that I don’t know who would, and wouldn’t be in my life because of it. According to BrandDignity.com the top reason for the popularity in social media is in fact because people want to meet new people. –> http://www.brandignity.com/2012/11/6-reasons-why-social-networking-is-so-popular-these-days/
I see my friends basically use social media in the same ways I do, to stay up with recent updates and news stories, while occasionally getting a good creeping session in on the new girl in class. According to MakeUseOf.com some of the biggest benefits of social media are in fact staying in touch with the world, no matter where you are in it. –> http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/positive-impact-social-networking-sites-society-opinion/
I personally think social media is very beneficial to the 21st century person. You are almost out of the loop too much if you don’t use these resources, and can really miss out on some great opportunities without it. I know with sites like LinkedIn it is an actual social media platform for the professional world.
On the flip side of all of this, I do believe there is a bad side of social media. I think some people get so caught up in it that it truly ruins their real personality. All they care about is their social media life and followers, likes, and favorites that they lose touch with their inner-self.
All in all, this world just continues to move towards a more basic platform of everyone uses social media, and it will be a necessary part of life if you want to fit in with the rest of society. With that being said, I do think proper education on social media use is something the country should look into!
To be completely honest, I have never done blogging before this class. I always felt as though it was kind of just a way to gossip for yourself, and hope others care to read. I always viewed it as more of a girly thing, but I was wrong after going through this process. I found that it was a very useful tool, not only for this class, but it made me a better writer as a whole. It challenged me to continually post multiple paragraphs about these assignments, so I did appreciate that aspect of it.
As of now, I do plan to keep my blog active, I do not know how much exactly I will be using it, but I certainly do not want to delete it. I think it’s nice to have for your resume and show off to possible employers that you have done something like this, with a nice, neat area where all your work is stored. I believe that some employers will like the fact you have this as yet another tool to add to the company.
Like I said, I really did like having a blog. I don’t think I’ll ever use it just to write about my life or gossip, but for a more professional setting to show off to employers. I am certainly glad I got this opportunity to try it out!
InDesign is hands down one of my favorite software programs to mess around with. In my mind, it is an easier version of photoshop for those people who want to make cool pictures or graphics. It allows you to easily layer different images on one another, as well as add in some awesome effects and shapes. If you know how to use one program, in my mind, you already have a good base ground of learning for the other one. It may be a tad bit overwhelming at first, but using online tutorials and just following directions can be very useful with this program! I taught myself how to use it a few years back, so if I can do it, anyone can!
As far as my card goes, I wanted to make something simple, elegant, but made sure it really gave you that holiday feel when you looked at it. I started off by finding my picture of the lit up Christmas tree in the middle of the snowy woods, which to me, just put a smile on my face. Adding a simple text box and words I felt as though the “Happy Holidays” is all you really need on a card like this. The back side is relatively simple, using the line tool to create an area for a stamp as well as the address. I decided to add my own personal touch with a faded out image of a bow and ribbon. Enjoy!
Hootsuite is hands down one of the most useful social media apps out there! It is an easy way to schedule tweets for yourself that you want to make sure get out, but you certainly do not want to forget. It is nice because you can schedule them months in advanced, and never have to worry about it again. This can be useful for companies that know they are launching a new product and want to get all these tweets out but do not want to worry about it while the product actually comes out. If you feel like spending money, you can pay for the pro version so you can connect all of your social media pages to be able to do this!
As for myself, I have been using Hootsuite for quite some time for my fraternity page that I run. It is nice to have tweets already made that I know we want to send out later in the semester. As an example, we always send out a tweet to sororities on their founder’s day to congratulate them, and I always type all of those up before the semester even starts so I don’t have to worry about it later. This is a very useful tool that many people should learn to utilize, it can help you in your professional career.
Here is my screenshot form my Hootsuite page, showing my scheduled tweets as well as the other pages I have running.
BrandYourself.com is a very useful tool for professionals to try and up their image on the web. It is a site that offers you the ability to help your search results when your name is searched for online. It is very useful since it offers free tools that help you make sure when your name is searched, posts about YOU actually come up, not someone that shares the same name. Everyone knows how annoying it can be that an employer may do a Google search on you, and judge you off of results that aren’t true to you.
I was surprised to see that my search results gave me a D-. When i took the time to actually look at the results though, I saw that there are some pretty crappy Logan Hess’ out there. The more I thought about it, the more I thought about how much this could effect my professional career. As I continue through my college career, a career continues to get closer and closer, and I want to give myself the best possible chance of landing a dream job. This is important because a lot of business’ now do online searches for possible employees.
I went through every step I could on the site to possibly boost my online score. I wanted to make sure it knew the right results for which were mine, which sites were mine, and which pictures were mine. I never realized how easy this could be and how useful this website is! I certainly encourage any young professional to go through and take these easy step to help better their professional career!
Info graphics are one of the most creative ways to demonstrate how to do something or how something happens. It uses both text and visual pieces to help out in these efforts. A lot of time, people will use images that go hand in hand with the words next to the image. This is an easy way to get your ideas out to your viewers who are more likely to pay attention to images instead of reading a lot of words. It is simply using graphics and information together as one to show the process of something.
An easy way to create an info graphic is to use a free online maker. They are very simple to use, supplying templates and all sorts of images for your use. A lot of times these info graphics are shared through different sorts of social media including twitter, Instagram, Facebook and so on. You can even share them on your very own wordpress blog :] The world of info graphics is truly endless, allowing the common person an exciting way to show how something is done and created.
For my project I did a pretty simple, 9 step tutorial on how to play golf. I used a template the site provided, but changed the color scheme and the background image to compliment my topic a little bit better. I certainly plan on using these a lot more in the future now that I know how to and since it is free!
Below is a video showing off some of the best made info graphics.
Google AdWords is one of the most helpful resources available on the web in my humble opinion. So often people find themselves lost as to how to gain a bigger audience. Well AdWords simply takes all that information you need, and gives it to you with statistics to back it up. If you are unsure as to which phrase gets more hits on the web, it will tell you. Often people are torn as to which words to actually use with their websites to gain the biggest audience possible, again AdWords will tell you.
This all just goes to show how much Google is utilizing technology for the everyday man. It is a pretty simple platform to use once you get the hang of it, and there are plenty of tutorials out on the web to use. Not only does AdWords help in search optimization, but you can also use its Ads to help boost popularity with certain social media post. I know people who have used it to gain a bigger following on YouTube for example, by utilizing its ads. The opportunities are truly endless when it comes to Google.
My 5 words / phrases are as follows:
“Grand Rapids”
“Advertising”
“Public Relations”
“College Student”
“Technology in Advertising”
The 5 new words / phrases AdWords gave with their number of searches are as follows:
“Grand” 135,000 searches
“Ad” 589,900 searches
“Marketing” 689,430 searches
“Scholarship” 1,850,260
“News Media” 14,100
If I were to come up with a sentence to put in my blog to utilize these new key terms it would be as follows, “A grand student who attends Grand Valley State University on a scholarship, ventures into the marketing world with news Ads in the media”
Here are some big mistakes people make in regards to Google AdWords
KissMetrics. 2014, March 7. 6 Deadly Mistakes of Google AdWords Advertising – Part 1. Retrieved From: youtube.com/watch?v=k_G-nBf1xks
When it comes to Photoshop, the possibilities are truly endless. You can take a picture that comes off as something simple, and add so many elements to it so it becomes such an amazing picture. It gave people the ability to be able to create whatever they were thinking, to become true reality on a computer screen. Everyone remembers the days of messing around with Microsoft paint, well luckily for us, Adobe made a Microsoft paint on steroids and called it Photoshop.
I took a very simple logo from my favorite team, the Chicago Blackhawks to edit. I simply used the tools to take out the letters in the original photo, and replace them with filled in black color to match the rest of the logo. Personally, I think it is a pretty cool look since it shows of more of the actual Indian head, instead of the team name. I added a simple filter of “sprayed strokes” to give it a little bit of an edgy look. It is all about making a picture or design stand out and be different, I believe from this simple tools I have done so. Go Blackhawks!
Before:
After:
If you are interested in learnning to Photoshop, checkout the video below!
Logan T. Hess 