Webinar 1: Social media landscape

  1. Check slides 10-13 on the history of the Internet and evolution of social media. What do you learn from them?

The Internet begins with the e-mail in 1966. The Internet today is a growing universe of interlinked web pages and web apps, teeming with videos, photos, and interactive content. The color bands in this visualization represent the interaction between web technologies and browsers, which brings to life the many powerful web apps that we use daily. Since the late 1700, social media know an important evolution and growth. They have become a ubiquitous part of daily life. In 2001, wikipedia is create. Wikipedia was followed by Friendster, MySpace, Facebook in 2004, and Twitter in 2006. Nowadays, there is more and more platforms use around the world.

  1. Define the following terms: media, mass-media, digital media, social media and social networking? What are the differences and similarities between them?

Media is all materials that belong to a single mode of communication. The five current major media: press, television and film, display, radio, the Internet. (Singular of “media” is medium).

Mass-media is all means of mass dissemination of information, advertising and culture in order to quickly convey the same message to a large audience.


Social media means all websites and platforms that offer features called “social” users. These features include the collaborative creation of content (wikis), the exchange of information between individuals (forums, blogs open to feedback…) and sharing of content (articles, photos, videos, messages…)

Social Networking is all the sites that allow connecting people like Facebook or Twitter.

 The common point of these terms is that they all use the web (and new technology). The difference is how they transmit information.

  1. Social media landscape 2015 – how many platforms do you recognise vs how many platforms do you actively use (and by that I mean to upload content)

According to the picture on the slide 26, I recognize 16 platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Viber, WhatsApp, Messenger, Deezer, YouTube, Instagram, Spotify, WordPress, Wikipedia, Tinder, MySpace, Skype, DailyMotion. I actively use 9 platforms: Facebook, Snapchat, Viber, WhatsApp, Messenger, YouTube, Instagram, Wikipedia and Skype.

  1. Check the Edelman Trust Barometer2015 results. Find the results for your country of origin, Belgium and the worldwide results. What do you observe? Who is trusted the most (businesses, NGOs, media and/or government)? What does this mean for communicators?

For my country, France the result in 2014 is on 46ème position “distrusters” and in 2015 on 52ème position “neutral”. In worldwide, between 2014 and 2015 the changes are: for “trusters” there is a decrease from 30% to 22% while for “distrusters” there is an increase from 33% to 48%.

So, this observation watch the countries lose their trust in the institutions of government, business, media and NGOS.The institution is trusted the most is NGOS (number one with 66% in 2014 and 63% in 2015). 

  1. Check out the video summaries for the European Communication Monitor and the Asia-Pacific Communication Monitor. What are the biggest challenges communicators are facing?

 The European Communication Monitor and the Asia-Pacific Communication Monitor explains the biggest challenges, which communicators are facing. The communicators don’t have to confound the traditional advertising and media sponsoring. Furthermore power of data for managing communication is the key of challenge and for an excellent communication department it is necessary to collaborate more intensely. The biggest challenges are also the social media skills (dialogue), the explaining communication value (positive affect) and the job satisfaction (12% are not satisfied).

  1. Check out the Greenpeace vs Nestle case study (see slide 38). What did Nestle do wrong?

Nestle do wrong: he does not react in front of the attack of Greenpeace (a video on the page Facebook of the company Nestlé) because digital communications team don’t know what to do while it is a big company! “A single failure of this kind invites more attacks…”

  1. Watch the videos in the “assumptions” section (slides 42-51) on the digital divide, long tail, cult of the amateur, technological determinism and net delusion. Summarize the main point of the video. Write up in a short paragraph what (as a communicator/marketer) you learn from them.

For my part the main point of the video:

The first video, “digital divide” explains digital divide can imply a lack of knowledge and skills of how to use it, and a lack of access to technology. The second video, “long tail” explains three things: critical prices, critical mass, approaching free. The third video, “cult of the amateur”, explains an amateur couldn’t replace a professional and so criticism the role of “amateur”. The fourth video, “technological determinism” explains technology destroys us because we use all the time our computer, phones…but technology helps us have arguments.

I learn from these videos, technology has negative aspects on society and particularly, on behavior of individuals who use it. But technology allows more interactions and exchanges between people and learns more things more quickly.

Webinar 2: Social media strategy fundamentals

  1. Familiarise yourself with the platforms mentioned on slide 10. Use the example of your home university to explore their use. What are the platforms for? What insight do you gain about your university? Search and clarify the concepts and terms you do not know.

My university is: Nice Sophia Antipolis (IUT) in France.

On Alexa.com:

  • 34 639 Global Rank
  • 42,8% visitors from France

On TweetReach:

  • 25 174 likes on Facebook
  • 61 is the Like Rank

These platforms are for know the place of one company in terms of “like”, number of visit, “ global ranking”.

  1. What are the most active age groups on the most popular social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr…

We can observe on the picture (slide 17), Teens use more Facebook (94%) than Adults (67%) whereas Pinterest is more using by Adults (15%) than by Teens (1%). There are differences according the social media platforms.

Age break who use the most social media platforms is people between 18 – 29 years. Age break who use the less social media platforms is people of 65 years and more. The reason is the least knowledge of new technology by people in this age.

  1. Check out the features of the monitoring platforms mentioned on slide 33.

 Hootsuite is a social media management system for brand management. The system’s user interface takes the form of a Dashboard, and supports social network integrations for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, etc

Social Oomph allows boosting the social media productivity like Twitter, Facebook (profiles, pages, and groups). And allows also easily to schedule updates, to find quality people to follow, and to monitor social media activity!

Sprout Social is a unified box (never miss an important message and monitor all of the social channels in the Smart Inbox), social CRM tools (complete archive of all the historical conversations) and response metrics (track the team’s ability to respond to important messages with response rate and time metrics).













Louise Allemand