S o, I took the Hootsuite social media certification exam...and I'm happy to announce I passed with flying colors! I can now say I am "social media certified," and it honestly feels wonderful.  I thought the exam would be harder than it was, but the program was so thorough with its lessons and videos and step-by-step quizzes I didn't think it was difficult to understand and absorb the material being presented. Despite the program’s ease of use, I was still thrilled to see my passing score at the end of the exam. Yay! Now, I can go out into the world and feel more confident about my ability to not only use social media, but also provide social media services to potential employers while augmenting my own skills for my current position.

 

Sometimes, I find myself wondering if companies can even relate to me anymore. And then I saw an ad for Semrush services on Twitter  And then I saw an ad on Semrush's feed. They advertised an ad for Winnie the Pooh to promote their ability to have fictional characters get unique and "beautiful" feed, and I couldn't help but wonder if Eeyore would have also had an Instagram feed? Would Eeyore have even used Semrush, or would he have one post and refused to use it ever again because it would be an even bigger detriment to his mental health. But that's not the point. The point is that Semrush went big and used a character I related to as a child to grab my attention to sell me on their service and it worked. I bet Eeyore would have been an advocate for mental health.

  T here comes a time when too much negative attention forces a complete image change. And Facebook rebranding as “Meta” is one the prime example. I have been using Facebook for the last 11 years, and – to me – the whole rebranding reeks of misdirection. The rebrand has neither done anything regarding how I use the app, nor has it either positively or negatively affected the features of the app. While the public announcement of the rebrand is, to use CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s phrasing, to build more / make better, the actual day-to-day functions of the individual apps like Facebook and Instagram haven’t changed. What’s changed is the company responsible for those features. Meta is now the company that owns both of these apps, and Zuckerberg’s choice to do this wasn’t born out of a desire to “build more.” Rather, it was created to create distance between the Facebook app and the scandals Facebook – the company – was dealing with due to its lack of crackdown on misinformation durin...

Sometimes , I get scared when approaching new concepts…especially ones as intensive as understanding the ins-and-outs of social media marketing. And stress isn’t healthy for anyone – especially someone who has a history of anxiety, like me. One of the only ways I have been able to relax in the past – to channel this anxiety in a helpful and beneficial way – was working out. But when I logged on to Hootsuite, about which I was initially very apprehensive, I was surprised to feel calmed. Because Hootsuite was so straightforward, using Hootsuite to learn about social media marketing made the whole process pretty enjoyable. After logging on to the online software, the process of which was somewhat confusing, I thought the online modules were very easy to use. The videos provided a nice visual element to what otherwise could have been boring plaintext, and the fact that the information was parsed out into smaller, digestible bits only enhanced my experience with the program. I thought t...

July of 2016 was sweltering. I especially felt the heat after sitting in a taxicab for almost two hours, driving around Beijing, China with an equally sweaty cab driver trying to find a hockey rink somewhere in the city proper. I was on my way to the Little Wolf Hockey Club to interview members of the Boston Bruins, who were hosting two week-long hockey clinics in China, and I was completely lost in the city. The taxi driver spoke no English, and I spoke no Mandarin, and we were parked in the middle of a Chinese slum pointing vigorously at each other and at the address of the club which had been translated for me into Mandarin from English by one of my Beijing-born coworkers. But if the address had been translated incorrectly, or the driver had no idea where we were supposed to go, I had no idea. All I knew is that we were driving in circles, following down potential paths but having those suddenly go up in smoke when we’d reach a dead end. It's been almost six years since tha...