Matthew's Moments

In the first two chapters of her book, '"Measure What Matters," Katie Paine wastes no time in helping her readers understand what to measure and why when it comes to social media. I like the way she set up the first chapter in her book. Paine made beginning to learn about measurement less painful than I had imagined (I couldn't not make this pun). She starts off the book by explaining why social media matters so much in today's world. She points out how nowadays, "customers talk to and trust each other more than they do companies. They choose how they spend their time and money based on recommendations from people with similar tastes and profiles. They trust, and therefore prefer to do business with, companies that are open, honest, and authentic" (5). This little section reminded me of the principles we learned about at the beginning of my introduction to public relations course. Dr. Fleck really drilled in the concepts of openness, honestly, tra...

This past weekend I was privileged enough to see this year's student directed one-act play festival. The show itself was called "Love's Fire: One Act Plays Inspired By Shakespearean Sonnets," and featured four one-act plays written by Eric Bogosian, John Guare, Marsha Norman and Wendy Wasserstein. There were five chances to see it at the Freed Center's Stambaugh Studio Theatre from March 22 through March 25. One fun little piece of information about the show that you might have missed is that the Production Stage Manager, Daniel Edwards, is an English exchange student from the University of Salford. The show's four pieces each had a different director/director team. The first piece, Guare's "The General of Hot Desire," was directed by seniors, Annie Liskow and Eli A. Underwood. The next one-act play, Bogosian's "Bitter Sauce," was directed by Underwood. Wasserstein's "Waiting for Philip Glass," was directed by jun...

This week I was challenged to create a video of something fun to do either in Ada or at Ohio Northern University (ONU) by my Social Media Principles professor. I had to record videos, do voice-overs, edit the clips and then use iMovie put it all together with music and transitions before I had to post it on YouTube. After making the video, I also was tasked with promoting the video on a social media channel and my blog. I chose to share the video on the Twitter account I started for the live tweet assignment ( @ImprovLiveTweet ), and a screenshot of this can be seen below. When I posted the video, I had to be sure to include key words in the description/tags so that it could be easily found by someone searching for it, but for my purposes I put the video on unlisted so it only shows up to people who have the link to the video. I had a great time making the video! When I received an email on Monday morning about a lotion workshop with essential oils I thought it would be a good...

Back in my middle school days I was obsessed with YouTube. I would watch professional YouTubers like Shane Dawson, Jenna Marbles, Grace Helbig, Tyler Oakley, Miranda Sings and many others. I would even share their content on my social media channels every once in a while. After sharing one of Shane Dawson's videos on Twitter my freshman year of high school, I got a follow back from Dawson! The proof is below: Learning more about YouTube in a marketing sense revealed a couple of insights I'd like to share with you. 1) YouTube is a Social Media Platform In case you didn't read the very first page of the YouTube reading assignment, James McDonald makes a strong case as to why YouTube should be considered a social media platform. McDonald allowed me to look at YouTube in a new light with this observation. He points out as on other platforms, people like/thumbs up your posts/videos, viewers can comment on and share your posts/videos and they have the ability to subs...

ONU's Women's Indoor Track Team While I was getting ready to perform in Near West Theatre's benefit, fellow Polar Bear, Emily Richards, won first place titles in the 800 meter and mile at the NCAA Division III Women's Indoor Track & Field Championships on March 10 at the Birmingham Cross Plex in Alabama. I found this story on the Ohio Northern University (ONU) sports website . The senior chemistry major also received an All-American title with a third place finish in the 3,000-meter run at the event. Richards began the day by winning the mile in 4:51.24, beating the second place runner by 1.52 seconds. This was the second time she won the event indoors. Richards has also won this event in the outdoor championships. I can't even imagine winning a national title once, but this girl did it three times! A short 50 minutes later, Richards pulverized the competition in the 800 with a time of 2:06.53. This was a full 2.25 seconds ahead of the other runners and s...

While some people spent their spring breaks going on cruises or taking vacations to some warm, sunny beach in the South Atlantic states, I spent my break rehearsing for and performing in a Cleveland theatre's annual benefit performance. The theatre I am referring to is Near West Theatre, and their last benefit was entitled, "40 Seasons of Love," and occurred on March 10, 2018. I have done three shows with this theatre since the summer of 2017. I was first involved with their production of Steven Sondheim's "Assassins," and instantly fell in love with the theatre and the people there. It was at this theatre I fell (deeper) in love with the art that is theatre and began to understand the impact it has on everyone involved. Whether you were a part of making the piece or if you were just in the audience, good pieces of theatre leave an impact on you. Following "Assassins," I was in their winter production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technic...

Millennials love online challenges. In my short 19 years on this planet I have seen people shove spoonfuls of cinnamon in their mouths, people trying to snort a condom and pull it out their mouth, and even eat a tide pod for attention on the internet. Those challenges were mostly done on YouTube, but Instagram has its own set of viral challenges. One that I saw the other day is pictured above. I thought it was a cool idea to see how far you've come in a year, and I like this challenge because it allows you to think back on the good times you've had while also appreciating where you are now. For this week's blog post I thought it would be a fun idea to do this challenge for my blog, but also talk about where I was/what was going on in my life based on the pictures. I will be finding all the photos in this post from my Google Photos account. If you haven't checked it out after my post about it I still highly recommend doing so! One Year Ago: One year ago I wa...

This week I thought I'd share my favorite tip with you all on how to make the most out of your phone's storage and how to relive your favorite memories all at the same time. You will need two applications to accomplish this. Those two apps are Google Photos and Timehop. Both of these are available on Apple and Android products so there is no excuse not to be able to take advantage of this. I learned about Google Photos a couple years ago when trying to figure out how to keep all of my pictures and videos on my phone because I am a hoarder when it comes to memories. Google Photos allows you to save as many photos as you want to a Google account, and then you can pull up the pictures anywhere you can sign in with your account. This is very similar to the iCloud concept for Apple products, but it works on all platforms and all devices and doesn't have a limit of free backup you can make like iCloud does. This app is also really cool because it scans the pictures you save...

Ohio Northern University's Department of Theatre Arts began the first week of rehearsals for their spring musical production of "Sweet Charity" on Feb. 26. This show has music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and the book by Neil Simon. It was originally directed, choreographed and conceived by Bob Fosse and was based on Federico Fellini's screenplay for "Nights of Cabiria." Fosse, with the help of Simon, created a story following a hopelessly romantic dance hall hostess, Charity Hope Valentine, as she tries to break the bad cycle of men in her life. Fosse blurs the line about what the job requirements are for people who work as a dance hall hostess and lets the audience decide, which adds a fun layer of mystery to the show. Heading up the production team is musical theatre professor, Courtney Kattengell, as the director and choreographer. The guest stage manager position is filled by Kristen Sutter, with ONU students, Connor Rock Brunken, Sarah M...

This last week I had to read Chapter 4 in Jason McDonald's "Social Media Marketing Workbook." Like in the previous chapters, he laid out the social media platform for us and then dissected it in a way to help us with our marketing strategies as they relate to said social media platform. This chapter was all about the platform known as LinkedIn. Here are three key points that you don't want to miss from this chapter. 1) LinkedIn Is All About Business I am including this because while many of us already associated LinkedIn with the business/professional world, McDonald pointed out some aspects that I did't know about the platform. I learned things like companies do well on LinkedIn if their employees are on there interacting with other business people. In this way McDonald compares LinkedIn to a team sport when looked at compared to platforms like Facebook. LinkedIn requires companies to rely on employees because of the inability to use a "top down"...