Zach Likes to Yap

     As a commuter in my junior year at Ohio Northern university, I am not on campus as much as the average student. This leads to a lot of extra pressure for me, not due to the commute but due to my responsibilities outside of building my career. I live in Elida about 40 minutes away from campus and I work at Five Below part-time while being a freelance music producer. For my college career, I have classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 10 a.m., to 3 p.m, with an hour break at 1 p.m., which I like to call the 'odd days'. For my Tuesdays and Thursdays, the only class I have is from 1:30 p.m. to 2:45 p.m., which I like to call the 'even days'.      On both my even and odd days, I wake up around 7 a.m. and get myself together to tackle the day. Most days I have to work an hour after class so I don't have much time in the evening to hang out with my girlfriend or play video-games with my friends. On my days in the morning, I get all assignme...

    Juggling multiple social media accounts for one business is a laborious and tedious task. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), TikTok and Pinterest are the most commonly used sites for uploading content to attract awareness to their business. Many of these platforms have their own tools to be able to schedule a time for a post and monitor the engagement rates of the posts without having to manually tally up the necessary data. To say the least, this process has been streamlined by the use of third party websites like Meta Business Suite, Hootsuite, SocialBee and many others that allow you to manage all the content for all of your social media sites.     Meta Business Suite in specific is built within Facebook and allows you to schedule posts for all Meta owned social media pages, those being Instagram, Facebook and Meta. Also within this program you are able to use the inbox of all of these previously mentioned platforms for easily managing your requests, complaints...

Over the course of the last three years I have been absolutely enthralled by music production. It all started when I expanded my music taste from the classic tunes from my childhood like those from Metallica and Eminem, to a whole range of genres and artists that all use different ways of producing to get their message across. I first began writing lyrics for some goofy-rap songs that me and my friends made just for laughs, and it eventually turned into me dedicating hours of my free-time almost every day to learn how to be a music producer from scratch.  My journey through producing has not been the best, as not having a mentor or solid support system to help guide me through the new terminology and tools at my disposal was very daunting at first. One of my friends, Cameron, was using FL Studio, one of the most popular digital audio workstations, or DAWs, to make beats. He recommended to me that I download the trial version after one of our recording sessions to see if I would enj...

     Starting out social media for a business can be very daunting as there are so many facets that need constant attention. It can seem especially daunting with the added pressure of gaining a following while juggling all these factors. To make it less of a hassle, organization is a very important skill to have when it comes to developing a marketing strategy. Along with organization, developing a schedule that will allow you to monitor how often you post and how much time you allot to a certain post, will drastically help the amount of time spent overall on developing social media content, versus actually marketing the content.     The text affirms that organizing the platforms you use within a spreadsheet of some kind, that takes note of many factors going into social media like: types of content, follower count, engagement rate, what content works and what doesn't, and much more. This will help decrease the pressure immensely as you will have a bet...

Hey all! As the first two weeks of classes come to an end the workload as many can tell is getting larger, which means more time must be spent maintaining responsibilities. As we enter the bulk of classes it is important to stay up to date with your assignments and look ahead to what may be coming to not fall behind this early on. When it comes to college work, time management is one of the most important skills to develop that will make your life far easier than it may come across at the start.  Managing your time may seem like a daunting task, especially coming from the summer, many do not have as many responsibilities as they do when classes are in session. I have learned a few ways to help alleviate some stress with managing responsibilities and time. One way that has helped me immensely, is to read up on what the assignment may entail a few days before doing it and knowing the due dates of those assignments. This can help you to rationalize which assignment you should do first...

Have you ever wondered what it's like as a small-business owner to use social media platforms for promotions, advertisements and connecting with the community? Over the weekend, I had the great opportunity to interview a small-business owner from Lima, OH, who uses social media to help drive foot traffic into his store.  Mike Kaye is the owner of R&K shoes, after the creation of the business by his father in 1983. Their main mission as a shoe store is to give people the best possible shoe based on what types of activity a specific person does in their day-to-day life. Mike values connecting with members of the community, and giving people the best experience when deciding what shoes would be a perfect fit for the customer's wants and needs.  Here is a full list of the questioned I had prepared to ask Mike during the interview about how he uses social media, and how it has effected his business over the years. (Bear in mind not all questions were used due to time constraint...

Over the weekend I took a trip with my girlfriend's family to Northern Michigan for a relaxing weekend away from the noise. At the Crystal Mountain Resort, we rented out a gorgeous Airbnb that was right next to the mountain and took in the beautiful scenery. On the first day, we didn't do much because we were so tired from the drive up that we all just wanted to pass out. The next day after waking up well-rested we went out to Crystal River and rented some kayaks. As we journeyed down the river we quickly realized why it was named the Crystal River. It was because the water was crystal clear and you could see absolutely everything under the water. About two hours down the river we had a mishap and my girlfriend's little brother flipped his kayak which caused us to pile up in a muddy spot and get stuck. After we finished kayaking, we went back to the Airbnb and got out of our wet clothes and decided on a place to eat for dinner. We found a bar and grill right off the side of...

When trying to start a new brand on social media, it often falls short due to one fatal error, which is not being consistent with content generation or having enough content that can be searched. In the reading it was stated that on average, companies that publish 11+ blogs a month receive 3x more web traffic and 97% more links to their webpage. It is clear that one of the key factors in marketing a brand is having a blog and posting to it consistently to more effectively convert people to your brand. Blogging requires individuals or brands to commit a significant amount of time writing out new and creative blog posts weekly. This workload may seem daunting on top of all of the other social media sites they may be posting for, especially since there is no instant payback for blogging. One way to ease the burden is to use the blog as a diary, as it originally was intended for this purpose. This can help you to organize your brand as a whole and have a sort of base of operations for what...