My Evergreen Snowflake

She twinkles like a snowflake, falling from the heavens above.
Every time I see her, I try and catch her eye, yet she drifts away with the coming breeze.
In time she melts away as the seasons pass.
If only time could mend, then I could show her my true colors.
I stand true and stiff, as the evergreen that I am.
Hoping that someday she will return from the heavens above.... 

Senior Year: The Last Hurrah

It is hard to believe that my senior year is nearly halfway done.
It seems like yesterday I was graduating from high school and getting ready to embark on my journey as a college student.
What a journey it truly has been.
From the early days of freshman year, as I navigated and adapted myself to a new lifestyle and mindset.
In my sophomore year, in which I became a more globalized citizen through my study abroad experience.
Then in my junior year, I came to appreciate the camaraderie of brotherhood and friendship I was able to build with my suitemates; a year I hold near and dear to my heart.
Finally, I've come to my senior year which is the ultimate culmination of all my experiences and education.
College was just a stepping stone towards the future, and although it seems daunting, I am excited to embark and see what's waiting for me around the corner. 

Leadership

In the northwest corner of the world, there was a village in a forest.
The village was led by three powerful men, who proved to be fierce warriors and hunters.
One day one of the younger men of the village was tasked with preparing and cooking the freshly caught fish for the village.
One of the village leaders came by to tell the younger man to skewer the fish and roast them over the fire.
The young man began slowly cooking the fish over the fire rotating them every so often.
A few minutes later the second village leader stopped by to check on how cooking the fish was going.
He asked the young man why he was roasting the fish as opposed to baking them in aluminum foil.
The young man told the second village leader that he had been told to cook the fish that way by the first village leader.
The second village leader insisted that his method would be a more efficient way cooking the fish.
So then the young man switched methods of cooking the fish for several minutes.
The third village leader came along to check on the young man.
He asked the young man why he was cooking the fish in aluminum foil when they had frying pans.
Again the young man explained to the third village leader that he had been instructed by the second leader to cook the fish in the foil.
The third leader told the young man to cook the fish in the frying pans.
After the third leader left the young man was left very confused.
While he understands that there are multiple ways he can complete this task he is unsure of who to listen to.
So he decides to cook the fish as the third leader had instructed him too and brought the cooked fished to the village.

What does this teach us about leadership? 

    

The Importance of Employee Brand Advocates Social Media

Over the past decade, social media has become mainstream within society. Each every day millions of users across various platforms such as Facebook and Twitter alike are sharing their thoughts and content. With this trend, it is essential for businesses to have an active social media presence. Companies must not only create content that is relevant to its consumers, but it also must strive to encourage its employees to be brand advocates.

Buffer Social conducted some research on employee usage of social media with some interesting results:

• 33% of employees post messages, videos or pictures about their employer from time to time with no encouragement from their employer
• 39% of employees have praised their company on social media
• 16% have posted something negative about employer

With only 39% of employees posting on social media this leaves  61% of your employees unengaged with your brand. So how do we work to fix this?

David Hassel, the founder of 15Five.com, a web-based employee feedback solution, offers five ways to solve this problem:

(1) Develop A Persona

A persona is a profile identity of your consumer. This profile includes the wants and needs of the customer. It should also include various personality traits that this persona has. By providing this resource to your employees, it'll make it easier for them to create messages that resonate with that persona.

(2) Make it easy for employees to share content

Trello is an incredible asset that any company could benefit from. It allows users to create tasks or lists in an organized fashion easily. In this case, 15Five.com utilized Trello to encourage its employees to use Trello as an open forum for social media content.  Employees could post everything from videos to photos to memes. It encouraged a culture of open communication.

(3) Provide Encouragement:

The last thing you want to do is to make your employees feel as if this is something else that has been added to their workload.  Instead, you tell your employees to not go out of their way to post content.  Rather, whenever they see something of interest, they can post it to Trello.

"Empower employees to be themselves."- David Hassel

How then do most companies encourage their employees to engage on social media?

• 55% offer easily accessible tools for their employees to use in social media
• 50% provide messages about the employer for the employee to use on their social media channels.
• 35% allow employees to use social media at work
• 39% ask employees to stay alerted to social media posting about company
• 35 % provide employees with social media updates so that they can stay current with the tools
• 39 % provide training on how to use social media effectively

Why does this matter?

If you remember from before, only 33% of employees post messages, videos or photos without any encouragement. Brands who do encourage their employees to use social media have better results than those who don't. As they are providing their employees with the resources, they need to be successful brand advocates.

(4) Consistency is key

The person who ultimately, posts the content to social media must make sure that they maintain a consistent voice. Otherwise, you will have trouble maintaining a brand image with your customers on social media.

(5) Share Social Media Statistics with team so they can see their impact

Showing your employees the social media statistic will make them feel like they are making a difference. Everyone wants to be recognized for their great work, so why not praise the team for their efforts?

 

Does your organization encourage its employees to post on social media? What strategies does your organization use?

 

Why We Should Be Concerned With Virtual Realities Emergence

It is scary to think that virtual reality is becoming a bigger technology in our day to day lives. While it is certainly amazing that we have developed a technology that brings a vast amount of opportunities, it frightens me.

Virtual reality will provide an even greater disconnect in the world around us. It'll discourage us from going out and exploring the world and learning about new cultures. Instead, all we would have to do is put on a pair of VR goggles, and we are walking along the Great Wall of China or swimming in the Great Barrier Reef, without ever leaving the comfort of our home.

On top of that, if Facebook's vision of Facebook Space comes to fruition, we will have an even greater disconnect socially. Already social media has lessened our face to face communication, but this new platform seeks to further that disconnect. With Facebook Space, users will have the ability to meet friends virtually and do things together. While it would certainly be an amazing innovation, it begs to ask what does the future hold for VR?

The technology already exists that allows users by a few clicks of a button to find an encyclopedia of information stored on the internet. What is to say that won't someday become a part of VR?

The need for formal face to face education would disappear. Instead, it would be replaced by an artificial intelligence that would teach us. Valuable life skills that we develop from the classroom would disappear.

Over the next decade or to we need to tread carefully and make sure VR doesn't take over our lives and begin to replace what makes us unique as human beings.

How to Market a Company on Instagram

Here are 6 quick tips that you can use to better market your content on Instagram:

(1) Hashtags:

When considering the type of content you are posting on Instagram, it is important to take into consideration the hashtags that you use. Hashtags will allow your content to reach more viewers than content without.

To find the most effective hashtags, do some research on your industry. Determine what keywords are most important. You can do this simply by typing hashtags into Instagram, and seeing what sort of content is coming up.

Look at what sort of messaging people or organizations are posting about on those related hashtags. Consider how their audience is engaging with that content. What other hashtags are these people or organizations posting? Are these hashtags prevalent to your content?

The most important practice, I learned through HubSpot Inbound Marketing is to include your key focus word or phrase within a hashtag. This keyword or phrase is found within your title of the blog post and will help improve your Search Engine Optimization(SEO).

(2) Call To Actions (CTA):

Call To Actions, are content that entice your prospective viewer or follower to engage with that content. Content that have no CTA from personal experience do not perform very well.

As a professor of mine always emphasized in his lectures, you need to consider the acronym WIFM(What is in it for me?). If audiences have no CTA to interact with within your content why should they bother liking or commenting on your post?

So how can you get more people to interact with your content? Consider asking questions within your content that will get your viewers or followers thinking about an idea or concept. Since you can't include clickable links within your Instagram post, consider making the question or content around a particular blog post or idea on your website that you want to draw attention to. Then simply include the hashtag #linkinbio, and this will indicate to the viewers or followers that they can look in your bio to find the clickable link to your website. In turn, this may result in your followers or viewers into becoming either a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) or a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) somewhere down the line depending upon where they fall on the lifecycle stage.

Another forum of CTA that you may consider aligning with your other content is to include quotes that relate to the blog post or idea you are trying to convey. From my experience, these have generated lots of interest, especially if the person you are quoting from is well known.

(3) Short and Sweet:

You may have the most elaborate idea to draw people into your content, but the reality is most people's attention spans are pretty short. Try and aim for no more than 300 characters.

(4) Personality:

Consider trying a more personal approach to your posts. This can include a wide variety of methods including posts about but not limited to: meeting the team, a day in the office, employees out in the community and etc...

By taking this approach you are far less robotically and will allow you to connect with your viewers and followers on a more intimate level, than some of your other more business type posts.

(5) Images with People:

Images that simply have stagnate visual representation like images of just text, do not perform as well, as opposed to images with action shots, such as a group of people out in a field playing catch.

(6) Instagram Business Analytics Tool:

Instagram's Business Analytics tool allows marketers to analyze key metrics including reach, impressions, engagements and demographics.  

These key pieces of information will help you market your content more effectively.

If you are unfamiliar of how you can set up this useful tool you can click here.

How do you use Instagram to engage with your audience? Are there ways in which you can improve?

The Journey of A College Student

"Life is a journey and it's about growing and changing and coming to terms with who and what you are and loving who and what you are." 

- Kelly McGillis, American Actress  

Freshman Year- The Year of Exploration

As a freshman in college, you are exposed to a whole new environment that offers a lot more freedom and responsibility than you ever had before. The social comforts you once had, such as friends and family become distant.  However, this gives you a new opportunity to reinvent yourself, as you head down your educational career.

Within this new environment, you have to figure out how you will fit into the "ecosystem" of the college.

What role will you fill?

Are you going to join clubs on campus, and if so, do you plan to take on a leadership role? Or will you be an active member?

From an academic standpoint what interests you the most?

You'll start taking classes in your desired major and eventually determine whether or not this is the path you want to continue to peruse.

However, a better understanding of what your major is and what you might be doing won't come until the towards the ending of your Sophomore Year.


Sophomore Year- Understanding Your Major

So you made it through Freshman year? Phew!

By now you have a familiarity of how the college life works.  Most likely by now you have figured out what role you are playing within the "ecosystem" of the college.

The next step of the journey is understanding your major. As you progress throughout your classes you will start to get a better understanding of the opportunities are available within your field. Then it'll be time to start researching various career opportunities, usually starting with applying for internships.

What kind of internship are you looking for and what do you hope to get out of it?

What skills do you have that will make you stand out from other applicants?

By the time your Junior Year rolls around it will be time to start applying to internships.


Junior Year- Field Experience

So you landed your first internship! Great work!

But wait you just realized that through this internship that this field isn't something you want to pursue. Don't sweat it! This is perfectly normal, it is apart of the college students journey.

On campus there are tons of resources available that will help you find the right fit for you!

On the flipside, let's say that you absolutely love your internship, what do you do then?

Well you become the very best intern you can be.

This means be willing to take all opportunities that you are given.

After all you are there to learn and get hands on experience.

Maximize your time by branching out to as many relationships within your internship as possible. The larger your network is the more easier it will be to land a job in the future.

Constantly update your resume with new skills and abilities you acquire, so that way you are prepared for the final part of your undergraduate academic career.

Senior Year- Career Bound

It is amazing how time flies! Seems just like yesterday that you were a freshman trying to orientate yourself within the college "ecosystem".

At this point in your college journey you have to make an important decision about your future.

You may decide that you want to explore graduate school or go straight into your industry.

Either way you choose, the journey takes a similar path.

The biggest thing to consider is how are you going to market yourself to a potential employees or graduate schools.

This could be from industry experience you had while at a internship or any other relevant experiences that you might have.

Preparation is key  in these last few months.

Your cumulative experience at college has prepared you for the road ahead. Each part of the journey helping you grow into a more educated and well rounded individual.

Denotation vs. Connotation

What are we if not just an assimilation of thoughts, ideas, dreams and our ever growing imagination?
Are we nothing more than a mere spec on the wall or do we have the ability to become something more?
Are we a mere denotation in the eyes of society or are we our own individualistic connotation ?
If we choose to live by our own individualistic connotation is this necessarily a good thing?
Or is it better live your life as a literal definition?