Social Media Campaign

I am going to promote my husband's business, The Rope Hog for my Social Media Campaign.  Here's the link, I will get more photos.

The Rope Hog







Byron Whitmore 46, school teacher and professional roper.  Works with other people's kids nine months out of the year and ropes with his own during the summer.  Byron is a professional team roper and family man, the best of both worlds.  He loves the Rope Hog to keep his high caliber horses calm and focused and his young horses learning proper position.  Because Byron's kids rope the Rope Hog nonstop it gives Byron the ability to coach them as they are learning as they are having fun.

Mackenzie Hewitt 12, student and lover of all things horses.  Started roping with her Dad in the 1st grade.  She hates losing to her older brothers and that's why she can't get enough of the Rope Hog.  She's busy practicing while they're out chasing girls.  The Rope Hog gives her consistent, slow, steady practice, run after run.  Mackenzie can practice for hours on the Rope Hog and still have enough horse at night for live cattle.  Her brother's won't be beating her for long.

Corrine Lewis 53, full-time mom and team-roper.  Gets in an hour of practice after work and before the evening rush.  Doesn't have to call the son-in-laws to run the chutes or the grand-kids to drive the 4-wheeler to pull the dummy.  The remote-controlled Rope Hog gives her the time and independence to practice solo.  It has given her the confidence to pull her slack and dally smoothly.  She can slow it down and get the basics mastered before adding speed in the roping pen tonight with the hubby.

My Campaign Plan
I plan on reaching my audience by following anyone related to team roping on FB, instagram, and twitter, and becoming aware of the current events in the world of roping.  I plan on making my posts compelling by finding the answers to why people care about team roping?  And keeping to what is relevant in the world of team roping today.  We currently have an employee with a Rope Hog Twitter account; however, I plan on taking that over as I cross-promote with Rope Hog's Facebook page and website.  I also plan on creating a blog especially just for Rope Hog as well.  I will post one blog a week on something informational about team roping, three pictures in the morning and afternoon on instagram, like and retweet as much as I can on twitter and post videos on FB after work and before bedtime once a day.  Hopefully these actions will build my city of influence on Social Media.     

 

OTM No. 1: Brooke on the Longform Podcast

This On the Media Podcast caught my attention because 1) Well, she's adorable 2) The tag-line piqued my curiosity as to how she "unconventionally got into journalism" and 3) I remember somewhere back in the far recesses of my grey-matter that our Professor considered her "Goddess material among journalists."  What kind of person could merit such status?  At any-rate, Mrs. Gladstone (technically Kaplan) did not disappoint.

I always find it interesting people who do not work in the career that they received their college diploma.  By her own admission she was a washed up theater graduate by age 23.  But she met a guy that for some reason or another thought she could write.  (I would actually like to hear an interview with him, what struck him about her to conjure such a suggestion?)  Since she had just recently been fired from a job, she figured she had nothing to lose, so she proceeded to write her first article about MX missiles.  One thing lead to another and the rest is history as they say.  She has now been in the field of journalism for over 20 years.  Her journey to journalism is only an interesting prelude about Brooke.  She not only doesn't work in the field she graduated in, she has been fired from every waitress job she's ever had, she self-sabotages herself when she gets bored at a job, she's terrible with money and her worst fear is (again) boredom, over and above living in poverty.  I feel this girl on a spiritual level, and not just because I've been fired from every waitress job I've ever had, but boredom is HELL for me, literally. 

This may be somewhat narcissistic, but I find people intriguing who are able to answer a somewhat elusive question I personally have, in simple terms.  This interview with Brooke did this for me.  I don't know about anyone else, but when Professor Young said that we needed to come up with three  "compelling Facebook posts," did anyone else ask, "How do I know if something is compelling?"  I am doing my Facebook page on my husband's invention The Rope Hog.  It is a training tool for anyone who would like to become better at their chosen past-time (team, calf, or breakaway roping.)  So of course, I have been asking myself for the last week, "What can I post that could possibly be compelling, that had anything to do with Rope Hog?"  Honestly, other than funny team-roping Memes I didn't even remotely have a place to start, until Brooke.  About halfway through the interview, Max Linsky asked her how she kept coming up with material after basically 21 years of journalism.  She ever so eloquently replied, "Whenever my staff and I write material, I keep two questions in my mind, 'Why should we care?' in combination with 'How do we make this truly relevant?' These require quite a bit of soul searching."  So she focuses, listens hard and holds fast to these two questions.  Answering these questions is how she makes any topic they decide to write about compelling.  Merry Christmas, and you're welcome.  That's how I felt anyway, that I'd been given a gift.  Thank you Brooke.

As Brooke has been writing about Media and its effects,  Max asked her several questions about this medium.  Max:  "What is Social Media?"
Brooke:  "Any way that people communicate with each other, from personal license plates to blogs."
Max: "Is Social Media a reflection of society or does it drive society?"
Brooke: "Reflection."
Haven't we heard this before when Professor Young asked us to monitor our Social Media feeds during the SOTU Address?  I think during that assignment he asked us to notice how our Social Media frames how we think.  I've thought a little bit about that assignment and well, I don't think my Facebook feed is a reflection of MY personal values but rather a reflection of my social circle of friends values.  And since It's been about 25 years since I was in High School, my circle of friends is rather varied not just the 30 people or so I was in contact with in my High School.  I am open to people's thoughts and opinions who don't necessarily think like me.  I have friends that we disagree on many things on many levels; however, we respect each others opinions.  So my Facebook feed is definitely a reflection of my many friends thoughts and values, not necessarily my own, and Brooke agrees.

One point that Brooke really hit home with me was about how she makes her work different, "Tons, tons, and tons of reading about the topic, and than hopefully I can come up with other questions other people haven't thought of, the other side."  Brooke has a real, sort-of laser focus to her work.  Her process:  there is a topic, she asks her self two important questions, she reads everything about the topic, asks her self more questions that maybe others haven't thought of and then she edits.  And then she edits again for clarity.

Brooke is a real respecter of other people's time.  There is no fluff to her work, she does not want to waste anyone's time that has made the effort to listen to her show.  Brooke has the self-awareness to acknowledge her biases, the experience to look outside herself, and the wherewithal to stand her ground.  Professor Young and I may actually agree on something this semester, Brooke Gladstone is probably the closest thing to a Goddess as it pertains to journalists.          

Social Media and Stabilization

According to an article by The New Internationalist, it cites how technology has actually stabilized countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

"Each element of the digital technology used in communication has a particular function.  The internet is useful for information dissemination and gathering social media for connecting and coordinating groups and individuals, mobile phones for taking pictures of what is happening and making it available to a wide global audience and satellite television for instant global reporting of events. For dissedents all of these digital tools allow them to bring together remote and often disparate groups, and give them channels to bypass conventional media which is usually state controlled and unwilling to broadcast any news of civil unrest and opposition to the government and help stabilize the Middle East and North Africa since 2010."

In summary of the video, the spokesman basically said if we are to stabilize this world we are going to have to catch these poverty stricken countries up to our economic level.  And we can do that through technology. We need to quit thinking Western Europeans are something special and start equalizing all people of this globe.

I did learn in History 1700 that countries that manufacture have strong economies. Nixon opened China for trade with the vision the US would be manufacturing for Chinese consumers. As it stands China turned the tables and we became consumers for their manufacturing. Our economy has struggled since we became a service oriented country. And as the video highlighted, Asia is now fast becoming a world power because of their economy.

We as a global community need to figure out how all countries can contribute economically.

In Response to In a Handbasket

About seven years ago I did have an "automatic attitudinal response that reared its rigid head when my values were challenged."  I have always been for gun-control.  And one fateful day I needed a gun and didn't have it.  Only through the grace of God was my life preserved.  Yes, it took a life-threatening experience to change this particular attitudinal response of mine.  I have since learned to recognize said responses and be able to, "stand outside myself," if you will, and be open to other perspectives.  Yes, I do have strong opinions about abortion, family, capital punishment, heaven, (especially gun rights!) God (yes, I capitalized it) and gay marriage.  Strangely enough I do not have a strong opinion about President Barrack Obama.  I am self-aware enough to know I do have an attitudinal response when his name is mentioned; however, it is one of indifference.  Maybe my Social Media Feed picked up on that because there was no rhetoric on my feed whatsoever concerning him and the #sotu.  This I'm aware of and have my own personal reasons why, but I don't believe anyone on this site cares, so onward.

You move straight from our attitudinal responses on different topics to "how they shape our reality, one in particular, that it's all going to shit."  Interesting, did you just make a generalization about "our" reality?  Whose reality?  Southern Utah?  The LDS Church?  Student's at Dixie State?  Student's in particular Comm 3480?  Muslims?  The FLDS Church?  Citizens of Hurricane?  I can confidently say this is NOT MY reality.  But then again, I wasn't raised in Southern Utah, or in a predominantly LDS Community, near preppers etc....Annnnnnnnd I didn't grow up with TV, and apparently didn't study the teachings of John the Revelator.  So my reality and culture is obviously different than one you apparently have lived in for the last 30 years.  I was taught to be self-sufficient, work hard, prepare for a rainy day, because living in this physical world there were times, things went "to shit," especially if you made a living off the land.  I have lived through a seven year drought in eastern Oregon; cows breaking down a fence and a train slaughtering 28 head of my parent's cows; they had to open the Malheur Dam one year and ruined all of our fields at the river bottoms, which resulted in devastating financial loss; my Dad and brothers had to sit in fields at dawn and shoot coyotes in the calving field, because the coyotes were eating the baby calves AS they were being born.  I myself was involved in three car accidents before I turned 18.  These were all major life-changing events during my growing up years.  All times where things, "went to shit."  But never did I hear of my parent's talking about the end of the world.  In fact, the first time the topic was brought up for discussion was after I was 40 years old and my Mother had "Tivo'd" The Walking Dead for my kids.  I had no idea what it was.  My kids then proceeded to tell me and then and only then was "The end of the world," ever discussed.  The Zombie Apocolypse - how would we ever survive?  All of a sudden I was a hero because I am (and readily admit) a food hoarder.  That stems from being in the Construction field where paychecks are not steady and sometimes seasonal.  So even if we couldn't pay the bills, I always made sure we could eat.

And again, "this attitude is in step with the notion of how terrible everything is."  Who said, everything is terrible?  Whose attitude?  Do I not know this because I don't watch the evening news?  Do we (My family) have our struggles?  Absolutely.  Personally, professionally, financially, emotionally......but even in my darkest hours I never felt life was terrible.  Am I missing out on something?  Is there some pandemic in the US I'm not aware of?

Yes, "We all have our own indicators that make up that dichotomy of how life is going." But really, if you're waiting for life to be going the way you want it to be going before you make the choice to be happy, you're going to wait awhile.  I know in my own life if I am not happy, I have to check my gratitude thermometer.  Those of us who have been on this earth, a few trips around the sun know, that external circumstances do not frame your happiness.  There are filthy rich people who are miserable and there are monetarily challenged people suffering the pangs of poverty that exude joy.  It is a conscious choice. 

One thing I will agree with you, "There's a correlation to the increase in the amount of folks who are online and the declining line on the z axis of those who are less happy."  Could that be because we are on-line comparing ourselves to our friends' perfect lives?  The lives of which they only choose to show us what they want to show us.  Personally for me, I know that the more active I am in my "Physical World," and I just "Check-in" to my "Online World," the happier I am.  When I feel particularly out of sorts is when I need to look at my on-line time and adjust accordingly.  If I am living in my "On-line World," and I'm just checking in to my "Physical World," it's obvious my happiness quotient is suffering.

So the end of the world may be in a billion years, or we as a human race will engage in "mutual destruction," as Dr. Klackle suggested,  or as I believe (Someday) the Second Coming will happen but when it does.....it will be a GREAT and dreadful Day.  I'm looking forward to the GREAT part. 

Until then, I hope I can remember to always be grateful no matter my circumstances.

My reaction to #SOTU

What Rhetoric stirred up things on Facebook?

Sometimes silence speaks louder than words.  I did not have one Facebook post about the #sotu on my feed.  I looked at the dates on the #sotu feed and my friends had posted quite a bit in previous years.  So why the indifference now?  Well, I can take a few guesses but can not speak for them in absolutes.  However, it reminds me of something my Dad used to say.  "Quit telling me what you're going to do and just get to work!" President Obama has been telling us for some time, what he's going to do and how great it will be.  This is his last SOTU so most surmised it would be a "tooting his own horn," session.  Really, I personally, don't want to hear his version of how supposedly wonderful his last 7 years in office have been.  And honestly there isn't much he can do from now until the elections.  So why comment?  Why blow up the Facebook feed with something I can't do anything about?

Where you affected by the rhetoric and/or your social media feed?

No, I wasn't.  I guess what affected me the most about the whole SOTU address was as he kept speaking about our world today, I kept wondering, "Do we share the same planet?"  Not once instance of what he spoke could be shared with my personal experience and reality.