Microblogging: Sammy Luterbach

Throughout the course of the semester, I have spent a lot of time on Twitter and Tumblr thinking about my actions as I went along. I think both microblogging sites are enormously interesting, but I find Twitter to be the most fascinating. The site is simultaneously fun and informative, but it has allowed me to make professional connections. I have been able to be a part of different communities and contribute to the content on the internet in my own way. It has been really cool to experience Twitter from a personal perspective and from a professional perspective. My personal account is fun because I can be my full self and express my personality while still participating in the communities I am a part of: the CollegeFashionista community, the fashion community in general, the UW-Madison and Madison communities, and observing the celebrity community. On my professional @CFUWisconsin, my goal is to create a community of our own. It's a lot of hard work that I need to think about creatively and professionally. My most recent goal has been to inject a specific personality into the brand, and I feel like I've been a bit more successful at that in the past work. I used more "I's" and "me's" and injected more opinions and fun photos into my tweets.

Since I really enjoyed working with Twitter, I decided to contribute to their Wikipedia page. Their page was protected so I just had to submit a request to edit, but I talked about the value of using Twitter for a business by saying, "Twitter is a great place for businesses to communicate with their customers in real-time and gain valuable insight from them. It's an easy way to be a part of a community and start your own community. It's also a great place to build relationships with customers, partners, and influencers online." I learned this information myself, but also found that Twitter.com/about said that same thing and used that as my reference.

 

Tumblr has been quite interesting as well. I found Tumblr to be most rewarding from a professional perspective because I had a clear goal: to gain the most reblogs, followers, and ultimately, direct attention to CollegeFashionista.com. I spent time testing which photos were the most accepted and loved ones by the community that follows us and hopes that it would allow us to gain for followers. I think I was fairly successful in doing so, since we have gained around 800 followers this semester and get way more reblogs than we ever have in the past. It has been like trying to develop a good formula for us, so it was fun experimenting. I tried finding a formula for my personal Tumblr, but I never really gained followers that weren't my friends. I think in order to do so, I would have to really advertise my blog on other social media outlets. I kind of enjoy keeping Tumblr to myself though. I feel like if I were to gain more followers, I would have more of a responsibility to follow a strict schedule everyday and maintain it. Right now, my Tumblr is an outlet for expression and creativity and a place to store inspirational photos I find online.

Microblogging: Sammy Luterbach

While running both my own personal Twitter and CollegeFashionista's UW Twitter, I find myself using them in different ways.

On my personal Twitter, I tend to catch up on news, celebrities, and friends. I'm definitely more quiet on my Twitter. When I do tweet something, it's about something funny or fun. I inject a lot of personality in what I'm saying. I also promote my own online work and tweet fun fashion finds and tips. Although I'm not really saying a lot, I find that more people tend to tweet at me than they do to the CollegeFashionista UW account. I think people connect with me more because I display myself as an actual person with a personality instead of a brand.


On the CollegeFashionista Twitter account, I am constantly trying to remain anonymous and neutral. I try to speak for all of the writers at UW-Madison in my tweets, so I stick to fun and fashion-filled topics. I do try to interact with fashion brands and authorities as well as my Madison contacts. This has definitely started conversations, which is always fun. My boss is very pleased with the way I have been running this account, which is great, but I have only gained fifteen followers since I last blogged about Twitter. This could be for a variety of reasons, but it might have something to do with the lack of a distinct personality. I think people think this is more of a generic, stale, brand Twitter.

I want to aim to be more like @dkny, or DKNY PR GIRL as she is more lovingly known as in the fashion and Twitter communities. Aliza Licht is a PR representative for DKNY, but she has taken over Twitter in a dynamic way. She speaks for and represents DKNY, but she has such a strong, fun personality. We know she is speaking, but to us, she is DKNY. She's just an awesome New Yorker who lives in the brand. My goal is to be more like her on the CF Twitter since she has had incredible success on the site, and she is just plain fun to follow. Wish me luck!

Microblogging: Sammy Luterbach

Before I started my own Twitter account, I had absolutely no interest in the site. I thought it was stupid, and I thought they were just trying to compete with Facebook. I was remaining loyal to my beloved Facebook. Eventually, I was required to get Twitter for my internship and did so reluctantly. Over some time though, I have grown to love Twitter, and I don't know how I would get through my day without it (I'm exaggerating...but not really). For me, Twitter is a news source, a way to stay on top of what's happening in the fashion industry (where I would like to work someday), and a shameless way to get a glimpse into the lives of my favorite celebrities.

I have my own personal Twitter account, @SammyLuterbach, that I use to follow other users, talk to fashion authorities, stay connected to my CollegeFashionista community, and promote my CollegeFashionista work. Over some time, I have accumulated quite a lot of followers simply because I belong to the fashion and CollegeFashionista communities. I really don't regularly search out followers on my account, but receive them simply by association.


I am also in charge of the UW-Madison CollegeFashionista Twitter, @CFUWisconsin. This is something that is brand new as of about a month ago, and I am the first person to be in charge of the account on this campus. The ultimate goal is to gain followers so people learn about CF on our campus and read and follow the website. I started by following a lot of fashion authorities, Madison magazines, Madison news sources, UW-Madison and affiliates' accounts, etc. I received quite a few follows back simply from doing this, so it;s good to place yourself in communities right off the bat. The next trick is to promote our page and writers, but still remain interesting. I do this by tweeting out articles along with fun descriptions everyday. Also, every week I ask all of the Madison writers to answer one fun question regarding fashion, and I tweet out the answers throughout the week. I try to tailor the questions so the answers will contain fashion authorities in Madison and worldwide that I can mention in the tweets. It's fun to get responses from those. I also try to generate conversations by asking questions. So far, we have approximately 80 followers, and I'm hoping to get that up by the end of the semester.

Response to Microblogging: Sammy Luterbach

I am having difficulty in being able to add a comment to the original post "Microblogging: Sammy Luterbach" thus in my frustration I decided to just create a post about it.  

I found your presentation to be especially interesting because I think as college students this platform is very relavent to us.  Furthermore, I was surprised by the answers that students in class were giving about which Social Networking Sites they were truest.  From my own experience, I find that Facebook tends to be where people spew out the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Several times I have unsubscribed to Friends' status updates because they lay anywhere from being annoying to down right inappropriate.  With Twitter I feel less vulnerable to these problematic statuses.  And since I have come to these realizations about the problematic sharing of Facebook and Twitter, I have started to censor what it is that I am saying on each platform.  Thus, I truthfully don't feel I am completely my true self on these sites. 

  

Microblogging: Sammy Luterbach

When I first joined Twitter quite awhile ago, I had a really hard time participating in any kind of community. I didn't know what to say, I didn't really understand how things worked, and I felt awkward about talking to or replying to people. I just started following people and observed, but it took quite awhile for me to really want to take further action. I was so used to Facebook, and the two seemed like they couldn't have been more different. I still think this is true, but I have found my niche in Twitter now and don't know what I would do without it or Facebook.

Facebook is such a different world to me than Twitter is. On Facebook, I keep up with my friends and acquaintances. I can see what is going on in their lives in a somewhat unabridged version by reading status updates, their conversations with other people, and their pictures. I am more likely to go on others' profiles to get a full view of them and their lives. Twitter is a place where I go for a broader view of the world. I follow celebrities, people in the fashion industry, people in my CollegeFashionista community, and news sources. Twitter is fast-paced and, when you follow the right sources, reliable. I follow some friends on Twitter, but we never really use it as a platform for having a conversation with one another. It's more of a way to share interesting information through links and retweets. Plus, it shows others what kind of niche you belong to by who you follow and what you have to say to them.

I never really realized how similar Tumblr and Twitter are until I started doing this project. On Tumblr, you share even less information about yourself than you do on Twitter, but you still kind of forge a niche for yourself, just in a more visual way. Anyone that looks at my Tumblr can easily see that my interests lie in fashion, interior design, and general creativity. It's also easy to determine what kind of fashion, interior design, and creativity I'm interested in. You wouldn't know much about who I am as a person or what I'm doing in my life though. This differs from a blog that you would create on Blogger, because on that type of blog, you would have to have a voice. Words are the focus on Blogger, while graphics are the focus on Tumblr.

Tomorrow, I am giving my practicum presentation on microblogging. The question I have come up with for discussion is this:

What differences do you notice between different social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, and Tumblr and Blogger? Where do you feel like you are expressing the truest version of yourself, and why do you feel that way?

Microblogging: Sammy Luterbach

I was really excited to be assigned to microblogging for this practicum project for a couple of reasons. First of all, I already have both a Twitter and Tumblr account and I love them, so I am comfortable with both and can really delve into doing something different with them. Second, I have a social media internship with CollegeFashionista where one of my jobs is to control the site's Tumblr page, so I spend a great deal of time on Tumblr thinking about ways to improve the page, gain more followers, and get our photos re-blogged. This project will be a great extension of my work and fun on both Twitter and Tumblr.

I was hesitant to create a Twitter when it first became popular because I thought it was just going to be a different version of Facebook, but once I bit the bullet, I found out that I couldn't have been more wrong. On Twitter, you only have 140 characters to say what you need to say, and it better be creative or no one will read more than two words. It's a challenge! I've also found that Twitter is somewhere where people share a lot of links and news. In fact, I really consider Twitter to be a news source for me, because I follow reputable sources. On Twitter, I like to talk to people in the fashion industry, celebrities, and the other CollegeFashionista interns across the country. I've even had celebrities Tweet back at me; it's so fun! I don't really use Twitter to talk to my friends, and I don't post a ton of original content, so I am going to start doing more of that in hopes of receiving more comments and starting more conversations.

Tumblr is one of the easiest platforms to share original information on in an original way. You can share photos, blog posts, quotes, anything on a page that you can totally control to make it look like it's your very own blog. On Tumblr, you also follow other Tumblr pages. When you first log-in, you are brought to your Dashboard where you can see all of the photos or information that the people you follow have shared, and you can re-blog any of this so it will appear on your own page. On my personal Tumblr, I pretty much only re-blog inspirational or cool photos. I want to make an effort to include more original content and gain more followers. On CollegeFashionista's Tumblr, we are already undergoing changes in order to gain more followers. I will share more on the changes in a later blog.