Ramblings of Reese

     This week's chapter was all about marketing with Instagram. I learned how useful it could be if you use it the right way.      Since your Instagram profile is oftentimes people's first impression of your brand, it's important to create your brand aesthetic. Whether you're bold and vibrant or more minimalistic, consistency is important in trying to create a memorable and recognizable brand identity.      Instagram stories have become the platform's most popular features, with millions of user stories every day. Therefore, it is a great outlet for real-time marketing. Stories give brands a chance to show limited-time promotions and interactive features like polls and surveys. Since Stories disappear after 24 hours, they create a sense of urgency, which results in a higher click rate.      Something that a lot of companies might forget to do but is vital for discoverability is the use of hashtags. They are a great tool for in...

     As some of you might know, our PRSSA chapter traveled to Chicago, Wednesday through Friday, for our Midwest District Conference. I got to visit three different PR/Communication companies and learned a lot.      The first place my group and I visited was APCO, an independent global public affairs and communications company. Upon arrival, we were taken to a big, homey feeling office, where the team gave us a presentation all about APCO. I learned that they work with a lot of well-known businesses and corporations, such as Levi’s, IKEA and MARS. A big part of what they do at MARS is create issue groups to discuss what crises may occur and how to solve them should they transpire. I also learned that APCO helped to fight gender inequality in crash test standards. Many people don’t know, but the likelihood of women getting injured in car accidents is significantly higher than men because the crash dummies that are used for testing are all based on a mal...

     After reading this week's chapter, Marketing with Facebook, I took away a lot of positives Facebook brings to businesses. This being said, there were definitely some negatives I came up with too.     When it comes to the positives, there are many, one being Facebook's advertising platform.  Their platform allows businesses to target users based on demographics, interests, behaviors, location, et cetera. This increases the efficiency of ad spending by reaching the right audience. Facebook also brings cost-effective marketing to the table. Compared to traditional forms of advertising, Facebook offers pretty low-cost marketing options for businesses, making it feasible for small businesses that might have limited budgets.      Furthermore, Facebook enables businesses to reach a large number of people all over the globe. Through things like paid ads, brands can boost brand awareness and grow their audience, even with a limited budget. W...

     For those of you who don't know, last Thursday, you were able to make your own sugar scrub and bouquet of flowers. I saw this as a perfect second half of my gift to my girlfriend, so I went with a bunch of friends and got to work. I honestly could not tell you what essential oils I put in the scrub, but it smelled amazing. As for the flowers, I was just looking for my girlfriend's favorite color, purple, and trying to match the rest of the bouquet to that. Now, for not having a clue as to what I was doing, I thought everything turned out pretty good.      Fast forward to Friday evening, my girlfriend, Katelynn, arrived around 4 p.m. I got her settled into the dorm, and we hung out for a little bit before heading to Tavern 101 for dinner at 5 p.m. We ate, and then I walked her around Main Street and showed her all the little shops and good places to eat. We found a few places to take pictures while walking around, but soon enough, the cold got to us, an...

     Chapter three was all about marketing strategy and social media advertising, but I want to focus on the marketing strategy. I am going to rank the 10 steps in creating a social media marketing strategy from what I think is the most important to what I think is the least important. 1. Step 1: Identify a target market and create personas      Understanding your target audience is the most important step. If you don't know your audience, their pain points, and what their interests are, the rest of the strategy is pointless. Buyer personas help you create your content, set your tone, and decide what platforms to use. 2. Step 3: Establish goals, objectives, and metrics     Clear goals ensure that what you're putting on social media lines up with your business objectives. They give direction for the things you want to achieve, like brand awareness and engagement. They also provide measurable metrics to track success. 3. Step 4: Determine resources,...

     My younger brother, Blake, came to campus this past weekend and stayed from Friday to Sunday evening. He's a little less than three years younger than me, so we've always been really close. My mom, brother, and sister met me halfway in Findlay at a restaurant called Cheddar's. We all caught up over dinner, which was really good, and then I took Blake with me, and we headed back to ONU. We made it back to my dorm and had an exciting start to our weekend! He sat on my couch and finished a movie he had started earlier that day while my roommate and I finished homework that was due that night.       We all then went to the C-Store and got some snacks and milkshakes, and this is where it actually got exciting. When we got back to the dorm, we turned on the projector and watched Thanksgiving, a 2023 horror/mystery film. I had already seen it, but both Blake and my roommate hadn't, and I wanted to see their reactions. It's pretty gory, but it really isn'...

     I kicked off yesterday at 9:00 am when I had to get up for my work orientation at Vancrest. I would usually be waking up for my Intro to Theater class at this time, but today was different.      My orientation started at 9:30 am, and we hit the ground running. From the moment I walked in, I was learning all about Vancrest. I learned about their rules and regulations, their drills, their staff, and even the history of Vancrest. While learning all of this, I was required to answer a packet of fill-in-the-blank and multiple-choice questions. Following that was a quick icebreaker between Jen, who was the HR lady running the orientation, another woman who was there for a nursing position, and myself. We really just answered a list of questions, and I honestly learned a lot about the two of them. After that was our tour of the nursing home. It is honestly a lot bigger than it looks on the outside. I tried to pay attention and remember as much as possible, bu...