The New Influencers Chapter 1 Response

Confession: Before this class, I was a little nervous. Although the world of social media (specifically blogging) interests me and I understand the usefulness it has...I had absolutely no idea of how to write a good blog.

Questions were firing off in my head like: What kind of blog do I set up? Are there different kind of blogs? What are the "no no" things you cannot do when writing a blog? Is anyone going to read anything I write? Is it hard to maintain? How in the world do I get started?

Thankfully, the beginning of my blogging journey has been smooth, thanks to Aggie and this text. The introduction and first chapter of The New Influencers answered nearly all of my lingering questions about the world of blogging.

I want to start out this post with the sentence in the book that stuck out to me the most. The author wrote, "What's captivated me about social media is the extent to which new centers of influence have emerged in communities that have no rules, no governing structures, no standards and no hierarchy" (p. xxi) How awesome is that? Social media is a web of somewhat structured chaos. Users can do, say or write whatever they want. Looking at it initially, it seems uncontrollable and unmanageable, when in actuality, the world of social media has turned out to be the complete opposite.

The book points out that this is a new way to advertise that companies need to embrace. Social media has changed tactics into "conversation marketing." This type of marketing "creates a dialog with customers where useful information can be exchanged so both parties benefit from the relationship." Does that definition sound familiar?? No wonder the world of PR has benefited so much from the development of social media!

While reading I also learned that to people my age, (18-25 year old) the value of our peers is HUGE!! Blogging allows individuals to voice their opinions, which could be extremely beneficial for different companies. My age group is also the most likely to engage in blogging and social media as well.  I was also surprised to read that "79 percent of Americans (ages 9-28) spend 20 hours using social media per day." Amazing.

This first chapter was easy to read and opened my eyes to blogging. The author does a great job of breaking concepts down so they are easy to understand. The use of different cases, like the Ferrari/AOL incident, are wonderful. They are real life examples that depict the power of social media. After reading the first chapter of this book, I cannot wait to read more!