the Good, the Bad, and the Strugly

Everyone always complains about Mondays. They come after Sunday (the best and most relaxing day of the week!), and it’s the day everyone has to go back to work (or school) and (hypothetically) stop having fun.

But this week, I had one of the best Mondays I’ve had in a while! Here’s why (in chronological order):

7:00AM – my LAST class registration… EVER! So crazy to think about, but kind of exciting (I can pretend I’m not freaking out about graduating… right?). Anyway, no major problems to speak of…

8:15AM – a FREE pastry at Starbucks! @BostonTweet tweeted out that all day, at the Starbucks in City Place (right by Emerson), if you showed your student ID, you could get a free pastry with a purchase of any drink! So I got my usual holiday Pumpkin Spice Latte, and got a free Blueberry Scone along with it! mmm! (thank you, Twitter!)

10AM – a Boston Duck Tour! Yes, it’s November, it was cold out (but I had my P.S. Latte!), and it was a school day… But my friend Nicole and I bought discounted duck tour tickets on BuyWithMe.com back in August (wow that was a long time ago…!) and they were going to expire next week, and I didn’t have class until noon. So what better way to start my week than that? The duck tour was amazing, and reminded me that Boston is actually a really great/cool city (I catch myself complaining about it a lot, because of the cold, the smokers, and the distance from Seattle), with a lot of meaning and history built into the things I see and take for granted every day. (I brought my FlipCam on the tour – of course! – so I’ll be posting a vlog in the next few days with the coolest things I learned on the tour! Keep checking back!)

Here’s a snapshot from the Duck Tour:

our awesome tour guide pointing out something awesome!

12PM – TV News Producing Class… meh… nothing too exciting to report here. Except my job for my class was Graphics, and the producer hadn’t decided what graphics I needed to make yet, so I just kept checking my e-mail, and refreshing the HerCampus.com homepage to see if they had posted the winner of the New Balance Campus Fitness Blogger challenge!

1:30PM – I won! I got a tweet from @aahschlee saying “Congratulations to @cassidyquinn for winning the @newbalance campus fitness blog challenge for @hercampus!!!!” I was so surprised! I had been refreshing the HerCampus site, and hadn’t seen it pop up, so I didn’t think they had decided on the winner yet! But then I checked the @HerCampus Twitter page, and, yep, there was a link to the New Balance fitness blog winners! So it was official, I won! Woo! I’m really honored and excited to have won! Besides getting a year’s worth of New Balance gear out of it, hearing the positive feedback from New Balance fitness expert Holly Perkins (who chose the winner) was amazing! Here’s what she said about me:

“I choose CASSIDY QUINN!!!!!  Cassidy was absolutely engaging, fun, insightful, and offered so much content.  She created the most content by far of all the gals and used a great deal of video to make it extra interesting.  She was gracious and gave many “shout outs” to New Balance and really appreciated her swag.  She was very clear that her goal was to apply the suggestions I gave her, and also offer some other insights of her own.  She obviously put a ton of time into the creation of her videos, which were fun, funny, creative and crafty.  She really addressed the challenge at hand and offered some additional content.  She also incorporated Twitter a great deal- I had been following her all along. Love her.”

Thank you, Holly!!

(also, congrats to Meagan Aguayo for winning the Readers’ Choice Award!)

4:15PM – I got into a class I really wanted to take… using Twitter! As I said before, I was fairly satisfied with my class schedule as of 7AM when I registered. But there was one class I really wanted to get into: Social Media Marketing (aka Emerson Social Media, or #ESM). This is a 300-level class for Marketing Majors, with 2 prerequisites. So I didn’t think my chances for getting in were great… So, as I usually do when I am in class and have feelings to express, I took to Twitter to discuss my desires to get into ESM:

Tweet #1: I REALLY want 2 take the @emersoncollege #ESM class 4 next semester, hoping it doesn’t fill up b4 they let me in!#iwishiwasamarketingmajor

Tweet #2: @ZachACole I know, #ESM sounds PERFECT for me! but I’m not a Marketing major & haven’t taken the prereqs… ugh!

I had been e-mailing back and forth with someone from the Marketing department at Emerson, trying to see what I could do to get into the class (which basically was “wait it out, if there’s still spots left in a couple of weeks maybe we’ll let you in”). But then all the sudden, a new e-mail popped up on my phone, saying that the person from the Marketing department had seen my tweets, and I would be allowed to register for the class right then! Yippee! So, for all you Twitter-haters out there, there is yet ANOTHER reason Twitter is helpful – #itoldyoutwitterisuseful (I used that hashtag when I found out I got into the class!)

5:45PM – I took a nap! Mmm… that is all.

6:30PM – Emerson Fights AIDS Date Auction! Emerson Fights AIDS (EFA) is a 10-year-old organization/week at Emerson, where a bunch of events are held to raise money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids. This year, I was asked to be an auction item in the EFA Date Auction, where students can bid on their classmates for a variety of different dates. I was really nervous that no one would bid on me, but I ended up being won for $80! And I get to go to an opera with the boy who won me! So that was a good end to my great Monday, because not only did I get bid on (*phew*), but I wasn’t even one of the lowest items – woo!

But, of course, after my amazing Monday, the week could only go downhill…

My friend Elise, who was my roommate in LA this summer, has a blog called “e-strugs” (it’s hilarious, you should read it!) about her random struggles (strugs) in life, and in a post last week she said “The thing about strugs is that they happen when you start to take yourself too seriously-they provide some comic relief to be like ‘OK I’m not perfect.'”

And that is exactly what Tuesday did for me…

Tuesday, I woke up right when I needed to be in class (and I needed to finish some homework before class)… which was already a problem. But then, as I rushed around trying to throw on some clothes super quickly, I realized that my throat was dying. Well, I guess not actually dying, but it was swollen, in pain, and I could barely speak. I also realized I was really dizzy, more tired than usual, and my body was achey and tingly – clearly none of these were good signs. So, cool, I was sick. The teacher of the class I was about to be late for is a huge stickler on not having sick students come to class (to avoid contaminating the other students), so I knew she wouldn’t want me show up.

So instead of going to class (and before taking a much-needed nap), I called my mom, expecting to just talk about winning the HerCampus competition, the Date Auction, and my class registration. Instead, it ended up with me crying about how I don’t know what I want to do with my life after graduation Me: “I just want to go across the world and run around and make video blogs!” Mom: “how are you going to make money doing that…?”), and just overall not making myself feel any better in addition to my sickness…

So before I even left my apartment, Tuesday was not off to a great start. As the day progressed, my stomach started to not feel so great (I could barely even enjoy my Subway footlong!), my head started throbbing, and the temperature of my body was changing every few minutes… fun…

But just when my energy was at its lowest point, I showed up to the Greek Council Lip Sync Contest, where the Greek orgs on campus were competing, lip syncing to songs from the early 2000s. I didn’t really feel like dancing, or lip syncing, but I had already paid my $3 to get in, so I figured I might as well stay. And I ended up having a ton of fun! Dancing around to Macy Gray, Cher, Destiny’s Child, and Missy Elliot with my sorority sisters brought my energy way up, and put me in a great mood!

Here’s a picture from the Lip Sync:

go team AEPhi!

So Tuesday wasn’t the best of days, but it ended on a good note. And I think the reason why it had its ups and downs is exactly what Elise said in her blog.

On Monday, I was having too good of a day, so Tuesday had to balance that out (with sickness strugs). But just when I started to feel terrible about myself, and take the day too seriously, I decided to give in and make a fool of myself dancing and lip syncing (I also did an extra rendition of “Somebody to Love” by Justin Bieber once the competition was over) – I wouldn’t necessarily say that the lip sync was a strug, but it was goofy, and some would say it was embarrassing (though I’m tough to embarrass…), so I’ll term it a “happy strug.”

Basically, here’s my point: Don’t take yourself too seriously. Enjoy the days that go amazingly well, but be prepared for it to go downhill from there… but just when you think a day can’t get worse, do something random and you’ll be surprised by the difference it makes!

I hope you are all having a great week! It’s almost Thanksgiving (I leave for home in 2 days – yay!!)! Work hard the rest of this week, so that you can take advantage of family time next week, without feeling guilty about not doing work!

As always, thanks for reading!

— Cassidy

P.S. I know I’m not always the best at updating this blog very often… I always come up with the excuse that “I don’t have any time,” etc. etc… but here’s my new plan: whenever I am sitting around thinking “hmm… what should I do?” I WILL write a blog post (that’s how this post came about – not being allowed to go to class left me with some unexpected free time). Even if I can’t think of anything extremely meaningful to blog about…

Social Media Panel @ Emerson College 11/08/2010

So I know I’ve somewhat neglected this blog for a while… I’ve still been blogging and vlogging a lot, but just not on here! For 3 weeks, I was a New Balance Campus Fitness Blogger for HerCampus.com (you can check out my blogs and vlogs here), and I’m going to continue to vlog for them, and I’m also vlogging for the EVVY Awards (Emerson College’s own award show – you can watch my vlogs for them here)!

Anyway, I want to fill you guys in on some cool things I learned/heard about this week in the online world.

As you probably know, I am addicted to social media (if you’re reading this, you probably got the link via some social media site). I personally love social media, so I think this is a great addiction for many reasons (If you’re not addicted yet, I can probably convince you to be!), but some of my friends and family would beg to differ…

Anyway, this past Monday, I attended a social media panel at Emerson College, hosted by EmComm, an Emerson College marketing firm. More specifically though, it was moderated by @ZachACole, an Emerson senior Marketing student, who does a ton of things when it comes to the internet (including writing for a bunch of different websites). He’s one of my favorite people to have nerdy social media conversations with…!

The panelists were Twitter celebs @BostonTweet @BostonTweetup (@joselinmane) @likeablemedia and @oneforty . If you’re a social media fan, and live in Boston (or really anywhere – but especially Boston!) you should definitely be following all of these people.

The panel was great – Zach Cole started off introducing each panelist, and then asking them questions. Each panelist had a ton to say about social media, and how to use social media to your advantage, depending on your career and life goals.

It’s the 3rd day of the week, so I decided to format this blog around 3s… so read on for 3 tips in different categories about social media…!

3 things all college students should get involved with in the social media world right now: Twitter, LinkedIn, and a personal blog.

1. Twitter. Other than the fact that it’s super easy to sign up for (just give an e-mail address and a username and you’re all set!) and it makes it possible to network within seconds (just click “follow”!), there’s not much you need to know about Twitter when you’re just starting out. If you want more evidence on why I love it so much, just ask me!

2. Blog. They said as far as the blog goes, not to worry about having some amazingly clever and creative idea, just blog about what you’re passionate about! If you’re a college student, getting ready to apply for real world jobs (ahh!), blog about what you want to do in your career. Just start a WordPress site, a Tumblr, whatever you want. The panelists said that as long as you are passionate in your blog posts, you will stand out to employers, because who doesn’t want to hire someone with passion?!

3. Linkedin. This is important for anyone who has or wants a job, but especially for us college students hoping to make connections before we graduate! If you don’t know what Linkedin is, it’s a career-oriented website where you can basically post an online version of your resume, attach your Twitter, blog, whatever you want, and then connect with people – literally, you add them as a “connection” (it doesn’t sound as creepy as “followers,” eh?). But it’s not just like Facebook where you’re only connected with your own friends – on Linkedin, you’re connected with the people you know, and the people they know, and the people they know, etc. etc.! So let’s say you have 10 connections. If each of those people has 5 connections – voila! You’re connected to 50 more people! This is very useful when trying to find jobs, because the people you know may be connected to people in your career field. There’s also Linkedin groups (somewhat similar to Facebook groups), where you can connect with people of a similar career path, hobby, etc. One thing with Linkedin I learned about at the panel that I didn’t know about before is Linkedin Questions. On the site, you can post a question about anything, and then anyone on Linkedin can answer it! For example, right now I’m trying to buy a domain name, but I don’t know which site to use, so I just posted the question “What is the best web hosting site?” under the “Web Development” category. Hopefully some people will answer my question soon!

3 tips on building your social media presence:

1. Believe in yourself, and just get started! Don’t worry too much about what to say, or what to do – just do it! And with Twitter, the panelists said don’t make your profile private. They said that somewhat defeats the purpose of Twitter if you make it private – Twitter is about getting as many people to hear your thoughts as you can! I learned this when I first got Twitter. I started out with my page private, because I didn’t want any creepers to find me. But then I realized that many more people would follow me if I made it public, and that rather than being afraid of the creepers, I should just not post anything that I wouldn’t want them to see!

2. Don’t separate your professionalism from your personality. Twitter is the most successful when you are transparent, and being your true self, quirks and all.

3. Go to Tweetups! Since @BostonTweetup was there, of course tweetups came up in the discussion! Tweetups are Twitter meetups, where you can essentially get offline and build real relationships in-person with the people you engage with online. They’re clearly very useful, because for all you social media cynics out there who think you can’t form real relationships on the internet, tweetups allow you to make real relationships out of the relationships you already have online! They can take place anywhere – a bar, a restaurant, or wherever you want! If you’re still confused, go to Boston Tweetup’s site, where you can check out all the tweetups going on around Boston. I personally have only ever gone to one tweetup (it was a Social Good Day tweetup sponsored by Mashable and the (RED) Campaign), because a.) I don’t have much free time, and b.) I don’t hear about them a lot – but now that I know about Boston Tweetup, I’m definitely going to start hearing about and going to more of them!

3 ways social media is changing and will change in the future:

1. @likeablemedia: she comes from a marketing perspective, so she originally started using social media as a marketing tool, which many companies do. But she thinks companies will start using social media as more than that – for sales, for customer service,Q&A sites, etc.

2. @JoselinMane: the next phase of social media is influence. Specifically, Klout! I had actually heard of Klout before this panel, but it is new for many people. Klout says it is “The Standard for Online and Internet Influence.” On the site, you can type in your Twitter username, and it will give you a Klout score, along with a bunch of other statistics, For example, I have a Klout score of 34, a true reach of 310 (the size of my engaged audience), an amplification of 15 (the likelihood that my content will be acted upon), and a network of 77 (the influence level of my engaged audience). If you click on any of those numbers, it gives you more explanation. Basically, there’s a ton of information on Klout, so if you have a Twitter account, you should definitely go test it out! And if you don’t have a Twitter account, well, you know how I feel about that…!

@JoselinMane also said that certain places will actually give you a discount depending on how high your Klout is! I’m definitely going to test that out… So you can be rewarded for having influence on Twitter. He also said social media is “the great amplifier.” He cited the movie Bruno failing (because everyone talked about how bad it was on social media), and the new GAP logo (social media users complained about it, so the company went back to it’s current logo – yay! Look how powerful we can be, guys!).

3. @BostonTweet said social media is changing the way news works. We are now the media. It used to be that the local media broke the news first, and then the consumers found out about it. But now we are the media, and the local media picks up on what we’re saying. He also talked about the power of the Twitter search engine, and how it may even be more powerful than Google, because Twitter tells you what people are talking right now, what’s happening right now, whereas Google tells you what has already happened.

3 things I learned speaking to the panelists one-on-one after the formal discussion:

1. @SeattleTweet? I told @BostonTweet I’m from Seattle, and asked him if he thought anything similar would be possible in Seattle. He asked me about the size of Seattle, the public transportation, the neighborhoods, etc., and asked me if I thought Seattle was similar to Boston in the way that you can get from one end to the other (e.g. from Back Bay to Cambridge) in just a few minutes. Boston is a walking city. As of now, I’m not sure whether or not a @SeattleTweet would work… but who knows, maybe someday it’ll exist (made by me, or someone else)!

2. Video Blogging. I talked to @BostonTweet, @JoselinMane, and @oneforty about the video blogging that I do, and asked them all how they think video can be used with social media, and how it’s possible (or if it is possible) to monetize vlogging. Most of them seemed on the same page that they didn’t really know how some people seem to have a decent amount of money, but it seems like they just make YouTube videos, and none of the panelists seemed sure of exactly how those people make money. But some of the panelists cited how YouTube does sometimes pay its users to have ads on their videos, depending on the number of views and subscribers on your channel.

One thing @JoselinMane told me is that, for YouTubers, it’s really good to try to post videos at a consistent time. And that time should be consistent with your viewers. This is something I definitely want to start implementing. For example, the people who watch my videos are probably mostly college students (and my parents, of course…!), so I should try to figure out when college students are most likely to watch videos, and then post my vlogs at that time! This will get me more views, more subscribers, and just overall more success in the long run!

3. A new vlogger role model! @oneforty told me about Sarah Dussault (@dietsarah), a fitness video blogger in Boston. On her YouTube channel, The Sarah Fit Show, she talks about fitness tips, health tips, and weight loss tips (she just finished up a 6 week pre-Halloween Weight Loss Challenge on her show). Every week she answers one of her viewers’ questions, so she really gets her viewers involved in her content. She even allows her viewers to vote on which questions they want answered, which is something I haven’t really seen before! I had never heard of her before @oneforty told me about her, but Sarah seems like a really great model for the kind of video blogging I would like to be able to do (not necessarily fitness-related – although I did that recently with HerCampus.com – but just in the way she interacts with her viewers and produces consistent content). Since she’s based in Boston, maybe I can meet her sometime!

There’s a ton of other things I learned and heard about at the panel, but this blog post is already way too long, so I will leave you with one last thing – some of the tweets from during the panel! I tweeted 10 times during the 1-hour panel, and then a few more times once I got home. Here’s some of the highlights people posted during the #ECpanel :

“the more times ppl say ‘follow me,’ the less I want to follow them” – @bostontweetup (tweeted by me)

Great night tonight at Emerson College with the #ECPanel & of course all the students who listened to me babble. http://twitpic.com/356rpq (tweeted by @BostonTweet)

“each and every one of you can become your own CNN” – @bostontweetup on social media influence (tweeted by me)

@bostontweetup talking about sun and the wind.. all you can do is provide your goodness and they will come to you (tweeted by @celianissen)

Twitter is a conversation not a distribution center via @BostonTweetup @ #ECPanel (tweeted by @akelley18)

“I know most of Emerson is addicted to @boloco” – @BostonTweet – sooo true! I might get some after this #ECPanel (tweeted by me)

http://twitter.com/#!/celianissen/status/1801877758935040

“Use Twitter as an extension of your voice” -@BostonTweet (tweeted by @celianissen)

@BostonTweet says he walks 15 miles a day from going to so many different places and events! Crazy! (tweeted by me)

“be authentic and genuine, and you can connect with almost anybody.” – @BostonTweetUp @joselinmane (tweeted by @Karlan_Baumann)

“Think before you tweet” -Janet A. @oneforty (tweeted by @val_molina)

“think twice, then tweet once.” @BostonTweetup on thinking before you tweet (tweeted by me)

“social media is not new media, it’s NOW media” – @BostonTweetup (tweeted by me)

Full house in the bill bordy for the @Emcomm’s #ECPanel ! http://twitpic.com/3566hj (tweeted by @akelley18)

#SoEmerson Tweeting @BostonTweet when he’s in the very same room.(tweeted by @simply_stephi)