City Connections: IIT Stuart Students at 2014 Chicago Social Media Week - Part 1
Several IIT Stuart undergraduate and graduate students attended Social Media Week Chicago this September, a week-long series of events that takes place in cities around the world featuring experts, iconic brands, and leading thinkers sharing their ideas and inspiration. Thank you to Ziwei "Daisy" Han, a student in IIT Stuart’s M.S. Marketing Analytics and Communication program, for sharing her experiences and insights from the week.
IIT Stuart: Tell us about the sessions you attended and what you learned.
Daisy: I appreciate that I had an opportunity to attend some amazing sessions in SMW Chicago! These are some of the events I attended:
Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places: How to create genuine interactions with your community
In this session I learned how and when to create experiences that foster a loyal community and true customer love. The speakers talked about their real experiences that create true affection between the brand and the customer. I enjoyed it very much.
Social Creativity: What is it? Who should make it? How do you make an impact with it?
Technology is evolving at blinding speed. The speaker, Marc Landsberg, discussed a model for assessing the value and impact of social creativity.
Networking With Purpose: How Organizations Can Leverage Social Media For Greater Social Impact
This panel discussed the common pitfalls that foundations and nonprofits face when it comes to social media, including challenges with reaching new audiences, establishing brand consistencies and telling ownable stories that create brand differentiation.
Building Engaging Communities on a Hyper-Local Scale: An Experiment in Community, Journalism and Volunteerism
In this session, I learned that the proliferation of hyper-local publications, news sites, and blogs prove that there is a huge appetite for “what’s going on with your neighbors.” The speaker, Kate Hamilton shared key observations from her experiment where digital marketers, brands, and storytellers are employing their own strategies and tactics to full effect.
#SMWChicago Opening Night Private Pre-Party
The pre-party was nice. We met at Rockit Bar & Grill, which is located at 22 West Hubbard-- nice music and nice food. I met with several speakers who held events that day.
Predictive Analytics: Harnessing Twitter to Forecast Trends
The CEO and Co-Founder of Social Market Analytics, Joe Gits, gave us a wonderful speech. He introduced how SMA processes, filters, and mathematically analyzes the Twitter universe to calculate sentiment and provide real-time market intelligence. I am impressed with SMA.
The Intersection of Law and Social Media
The speakers presented three different legal issues related to social media. I learned social media policies, employment laws, and employee rights to privacy. They were very interesting topics.
Using Social Media to Personalize Syndicated Content
This event was part of a graduate course at IIT Stuart School of Business. The speaker, Scott Madlener, demonstrated how the government curation and recommendation site eDemocracy.com leverages its viewers to categorize news and events and create customized feeds based on political pre-disposition.
Tweet Me: Using Social Media to Mobilize People and Customers
The speakers used the case study method to examine a comprehensive dataset of tweets. This presentation highlighted some of the challenges organizers and entities face when trying to mobilize and sustain a campaign through social media.
#SMWCHICAGO Closing Party
Awesome party! We met at Willis Tower 82nd floor. What a great view! I met people at various stages in their careers and talked about my personal career path.
IIT Stuart: Were you able to take advantage of any networking opportunities during the week?
Daisy: After I attended the session Predictive Analytics: Harnessing Twitter to Forecast Trends, I talked with the CEO of Social Market Analytics, Joe Gits. We discussed analytics for social media. He was very nice and gave me his business card.
IIT Stuart: How have you been able to connect content from SMWChicago to what you're learning in class?
Daisy: I am a graduate student majoring in Marketing Analytics and Communication. I am taking a Social Media Analytics course this semester. SMW was a good opportunity for me to gain practical training from experts in the field fields. I enjoyed listening to their personal experiences, and learned how to put the statistical information from marketing classes into perspective, giving me a better idea of what those numbers mean.
IIT Stuart: Will what you learned inform how you utilize social media personally and professionally?
Daisy: Before I attended social media week, I considered Facebook and Twitter as online sharing and chatting platforms. After listening to social media professionals, I learned that we should be aware of all content we have posted online. Employers will likely look at your Facebook and Twitter content. I never used Twitter too much before SMWChicago. However, I found a lot of people heavily used Twitter for networking and job seeking. Students can consider using social media to build up their professional profile and communicate with people.
IIT Stuart: Would you recommend IIT Stuart students attend next time?
Daisy: Definitely! I appreciate that I got this opportunity this year. I learned a lot from this experience.
