Coffee and Communications

Sometimes, okay more than sometimes, I joke that something is very “on-brand” for me. What, exactly, does this mean, you may ask? When I say it in this context, I mean that it is very “me.” The color green, hydrangeas, cats, being sarcastic; these are all “on-brand” for me. All jokes aside, it is very important for a person’s personal branding to be consistent across several different places. When people look at your social networking sites, both personal and professional, are they going to want to get to know you? Personal branding is important for everyone, but today it is becoming even more important to social media influencers. Now, I know what you are thinking. Emily, you talk about these influencers all the time, and yes, I do. I do this because these influencers are changing the way we go about our daily lives and we hardly even notice that. It is so important for these influencers to have consistent branding across their sites, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and...

The rise of social media influencers started around 2010 – 2011, and it has only grown since then. It is interesting to me that, according to our reading, a Major League sports team was one of the first places we saw these “Brand Ambassadors.” They would invite social media users to sit in a special part of the baseball stadium to watch, and post, about the game. The social media users would also have media passes in order to access information typically reserved for traditional journalists. Today, you can’t scroll down Instagram without seeing a social media influencer posting an advertisement for a brand that they are affiliated with. According to Ste Davies , a digital consultant, there are more than 500,000 active influencers on Instagram alone and over 2 million companies use these influencers to advertise products. These influencers can be used for anything from promoting a product to releasing information about the company. Influencers don’t have as many restrictions th...

For most people, it is easier to trust something that is coming out from a friend rather than a stranger. Even if this stranger’s job is to report the news. This is one reasons blogs are so popular, but according to one of our readings this week, people have been communicating news in a “blog” type fashion for hundreds of years. By this, I mean learning about local news from friends and anonymous sources by letter or newsletter, rather than just reading it in a newspaper. People find their friends to be more trustworthy. Rather than watch someone on the news tell you about a new restaurant opening, wouldn’t you like to hear it from a friend? This friend may know someone who knows the owner. This makes you feel like you have inside access to the story instead of hearing it from someone with no connection at all! Today, the mainstream media has several things against it, most of all that it is seen as untrustworthy “fake news.” In fact, according to this Gallup poll, only 41%...