Commenting

In Chapter 73, Brogan makes a lot of really good points about commenting on people's blogs.  There are a  ton of blog posts being read everyday and people rarely leave very many comments. It can be especially sad if you have a really great blog and get no recognition.  However, Brogan points out that lack of time is a reason for this and that if you really enjoyed a blog post you read you can still bookmark the post or pass it along to others through other social media sites in order to help that blogger out and get notice for something great that he/she has written.

It's definitely something I want to keep in mind, therefore, I decided to comment on a few of my classmates' wonderful posts. Here they are:

Meg Owens
Adrian Andrade
Doug Trein

What the BLOG?!

As I was looking at other people's blogs today I came to a few different conclusions. First of all, people are super creepy and second of all, people really need lives! I say this because the first 3 blogs I came across were all about cats. Yes, cats. People like to make blogs and pretend it's their cat's blog and write their posts as if the cat is writing them. Odd. The 4th blog that I came across was not much better. The first 5 posts or so were videos and pictures of Hitler. 

Finally, the 5th blog that I came across when I pressed "next blog" was actually really neat.  This blog is called Frances Castles' Illustration Blog. If you couldn't tell by the name it's a blog about her illustrations. I'd put it in the category of an Art blog. After looking through it for a while, I was really intrigued with how neat her work is. I even found out that she's won some awards. 

Her blog is very neat and she's got a really nice layout and image at the top of her page that really encapsulates what her work is all about. The one thing that she's really missing is an About Me. She has a link to her website, which I went to and checked to see if she had an About Me there, but she did not. I think it's really important, especially in her case, for people to know who she is. Her blog is all about her work and it is hard to connect to her as person without knowing anything about her. 

Frances' blog is pretty simple and doesn't have too many extra things added.  She does have her Twitter  off to the side as well as a way for people to follow her. She has a lot of pictures of her work, which is the best part.  That's what everyone wants to look at anyway when she's writing about it in her posts.

So many tools!

There's so many different tools that are available to use when it comes to social media. There are listening tools which are for the purpose of making searches on different topics, brands, companies, etc. easy for you. An example of this would be Google Reader. There is blogging, of course, such as home base blogs like WordPress and scratch blogs like Tumblr. These can be used to communicate all sorts of different information whether it's news, responding to something, or just feel like posting a short video or text. There are a lot of other tools out there as well like Facebook, which we use for just about everything and LinkedIn for business purposes.

Another very popular tool that is used is the Wiki. Wikis seem to be made for collaboration. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about wikis, because I've never had to use them...except for Wikipedia. Wikipedia is actually an extremely useful site, because you can get all the information you need as well as post information yourself. When it comes to uses wikis for business to be used as a collaborative tool I'm not so sure if they're worth using.  The thought of communicating to business partners through a wiki is kind of unappealing to me. I'm sure that it is a tool that works, but I just prefer phone calls or face-to-face communication.  I think that you are able to grow more as a business team if you get to know each other in person rather than through a wiki. However, one of the really great things about the ideas of wikis are that you get credit for what you're doing. Sometimes people don't get credit where it is due when your work can't be tagged to you like it can in a wiki.

As I was just saying, I don't think I've ever really used wikis. Therefore, I decided to check out Healthy Recipes Wiki from Wikia.  This wiki is actually really great if you're into finding recipes for healthier dishes to eat.  You are able to upload your own recipes as well as use the search box to search the wiki for different recipes.  It has a section for Featured Recipe, Ingredient Spotlight, Food Poll, The Weekly Dish from Eat Life Whole and Healthy News.  The wiki is really lighthearted and simple.  It doesn't really talk about anything other than good recipes for Spring and has articles in the Healthy News section.  I think this wiki is really useful if you are like me and try to eat healthy and also try out new recipes!  Maybe I'll change my mind about wikis after all. 

ah, social networking

So, social networking is a pretty big deal these days. Quite frankly, I can't get enough of Facebook. This is probably the social networking site that I tend to use the most often because it literally has pretty much everything on it.  You can talk to your friends, post things, look at pictures, videos, etc. Not only that, but you can link your other social networking sites to it as well such as Pinterest and Twitter. It's extremely convenient to share information and conversation. The reason I use Facebook so much is because it has everything and it's incredibly addicting. I don't think that they need to add anything else to it to make it any more functional. The weird thing about my habit of using Facebook is just that; it's a habit. I would love to stop using it, but it's almost impossible for me. If I stopped using it I wouldn't get group notifications about different films I'm working on, I wouldn't hear from a lot of friends anymore, and I would lose all of the photos I have with friends that I don't want to save on my own computer. Overall, I have an intense love-hate relationship with Facebook.

Another social networking site that I use somewhat often is Twitter. The thing about Twitter is that I go on it often, but I rarely ever post anything. I kind of made my Twitter because my friends told me to, but really didn't understand the purpose. The reason I do go on it at all is because I like to follow people who post funny or positive things. It's nice to go on my Twitter and have a nice laugh once or twice a day or read something positive.  Sometimes I think that is where Facebook is going wrong. From my experience, people tend to complain a lot in their status posts on Facebook, but for some reason everyone likes to say really positive and fun things on Twitter. Who knows. As I already said, however, I don't really USE Twitter. I don't think I've ever posted anything of use on there. In fact, I think the only things I have posted on there are just quotes I enjoyed. I still don't know if I get the point of Twitter. I don't think anything really needs to change on the site, though. I think it just is what it is and if you enjoy it, you probably use it.

Goals 'n Gadgets

The goal of my blog, as touched on in my first post, is to kind of get to know how blogging works. I want to get a good grasp on how to get people to read what I have to say. One of the main reasons is because I want to consistently blog over the summer about all about my experience interning in LA. Along with that, I want to know what is appropriate for me to say regarding that internship and not get myself into trouble. Not only that, but I want to explore social networking and how what others and myself write can affect people's ways of thinking about the subject. Basically, I want to have fun writing this blog and jot down my own personal experiences and thoughts on different things! :)


I added two gadgets to my blog.  The first being the Share It gadget, which I've added to the right side of my page. This allows people to share something I post onto their Facebook or Twitters.  I thought this would be a neat addition, especially because I want to blog about my experience in LA and I know my friends and family might get a little excited for me and want to share some things I post! In addition to that, I added the Followers gadget. This allows people to follow my blog, which I thought might be useful because I'd love to have followers first of all. Second of all, It's always cool to see who is following you, because they might be following you because they blog about similar things and I might end up enjoying their blog as well.

A little bit about myself

My name is Carly Straight and I am currently a video production major. I'm hoping to someday move out to LA (as typical as that is) to become active in the production/post-production side of the film industry. Currently, I'm quite obsessed with editing, but I don't want to say for sure that that's what I want to do for the rest of my life...that is a pretty big decision. So instead, I plan to continue gaining experience in all areas of production/post-production by doing some internships out in LA this summer and maybe next summer and then make a decision to hone in on one area.

Some interesting facts about me that are unrelated to my major
(and that you can't find out from my facebook page) are: I love making mix cds (even though they are outdated, I still prefer them), I paint in my spare time, I try to take a yoga class 1-2 times a week, I really enjoy going to bars to listen to live music even on week nights, and crab rangoon is one of my favorite foods. Also, I have a ridiculously cute dog. He's a little cavalier king charles spaniel. If you don't believe me, just look at this picture.

To be honest, I signed up for this class because I needed to take a management class.  However, this is one that interested me a lot because (let's be honest) who doesn't love social media?! Not to mention, I really want to clean up my profiles and social networking sites so that I don't have anything that could deter me from getting a job or internship. That's something I'd really like to get out of this social media class. I want to know what is appropriate and inappropriate as well as knowing what I should and should not be saying about myself and/or the jobs and internships that I will be working for.  The last thing I want is to get myself into trouble. The internet can be quite scary nowadays with all the ways people can find out your location and personal information just by typing in a search. Also, I really wanted to get into blogging (which is awesome that we are doing this!) because I want to write all about my internship in LA this summer while I'm there.