Category: Various

So the reason for this website, the reason for these blogs, and the reason why I am writing this right now are coming to an end. My Introduction to Digital Communications class at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University is pretty much over.

To tell you the truth, the class, which was history focused on how the Internet and social media became a mandatory necessity, was really dope!

I never knew that the time that I was a kid, watching Mighty Morphing Power Rangers, and drenching my little brother and sister with my super soaker, was the same time that the world of digital was being created.

The amazing thing about the class was that I really learned a lot too. Not only did I learn a lot from the curriculum, but also from my classmates.

This is what I know for sure:

• Professor Emily will always be called Professor Emily to me. This is mostly because I had difficulty pronouncing her last name which is “Kulkus”.
• Don’t do your Asynchronous work on a cruise ship. The WiFi was so bad that it took me hours to download a 10-minute lecture.
• LaTron loves his tech toys. He’s always talking about buying the latest thing or buying his third Amazon Echo.
• Nate’s favorite thing in the whole wide world is his Baltimore Orioles hat.
• Bria has a passion for the ones that she loves, and they are really lucky people too!
• Lilli’s husband always likes to walk in front of her computer camera as if he wanted to participate in the class.
• Megan loves to talk about her new husband, and I hope that never goes away!
• Jelyse needs to be a paid spokesperson for Fit Bit! I’ve had the wellness device for several years, and she was able to tell me things about it that I had no idea about.
• Media literate victims are all around us!
• All you have to do is ask. An example is when I was researching for my case study for my final grade, I took a hail mary to ask my shero, Chairperson of Urban One, Cathy Hughes, for an interview and she said yes! I might try that on asking Dwayne Johnson to marry me next lol!
• Melina has a passion for dogs and animals in need which is something I commend her for!
• Sha’Mira is Kohl’s most loyal employee and hopefully, an executive at the retail store is reading this now and will give her a big-ole raise for it too!
• Joe’s girlfriend likes to drop hints of marriage on her social media. Her plan to share her Pinterest with him which had pins of different wedding ideas was genius!
• Abe has a different perspective on social media and the Internet than I do, and having him expose this to me will make me a better person.
• Eric laughed at my jokes the most! And he has a sparkling white smile which I loved putting on his face!

Of course, I learned a lot of other stuff, but these are the things that I’m gonna take with me for the rest of my life!

I met so many people that have embraced my weirdness and never let me feel guilty about it either. I am proud to say that my classmates have turned into my friends, and that was always a struggle for me. Don’t get me wrong, I can get along with people just fine, but I just always felt like I never fit in until now.

So thank you to Professor Emily and my classmates for an enjoyable experience with all of you and may we continue to progress in this program together!

As I continue to learn more about communications, and how it’s bettered the world, I have now come to the part of the lecture of having advertising tell a story to consumers. This is true, there’s lots of great examples to prove this, but then I started dangerously thinking that there are other forms of communication that uses storytelling to others too.

Thinking… Thinking… MUSIC!

Of course it does! Music has defiantly told us far more stories than any car commercial ever has. Going deeper into thought (POINT OF NO RETURN), music tells general stories about being happy, being sad, or being in love. Yeah that’s cool (yawn), but what about the telling of story that music plays when someone has a passionate request?

*HINT: starts with a S- ends with an X-*

Have you ever noticed that many of the songs that we love to sing at parties, concerts, and weddings give a very vivid description of the “Mommy and Daddy dance.” Deny if you want, it’s true.

Examples:

R&B: 

Obviously, the entire genre talks about sex, but a few lyrics that everybody knows and loves are:

• “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gay

Don’t you know how sweet and wonderful life can be?

I’m asking you baby, to get it on with me.”

• “If I Was Your Girlfriend” by Prince [I know lots to choose from]

Would you let me kiss you there

You know, down there, where it counts?

I’ll do it so good

I swear I’ll drink every ounce.”

Hip Hop:

• “Shoop” by Salt-N-Pepa

If looks could kill you would be an Uzi

Or a shotgun: bang!

What’s up with that thang?

I wanna know, how does it hang?

Straight up, wait up, hold up, Mr. Lover

Like Prince said you’re a sexy mother…”

Rock:

• “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails

I want to F*@$% you like an animal

I want to feel you from the inside

Country: 

Yeah, cowboys get freaky too!

• “I wanna make you close your eyes” by Dierks Bentley

You can make me work for it girl if you want to

Just leave a trail for me to follow you into the bedroom.

• “Need You Now” by Lady Antebellum

It’s a quarter after one

I’m a little drunk and I need you now”

 

So those are  just a few of tons of examples to chose from, but honestly I’m starting to blush 😉

Other than the very obvious, they all have something in common. Each lyric gave a great description of the storyteller’s wants and desires.  If that you didn’t pick up with that in any of the lyrics, I will point you in the direction of the nearest convent.

 

 

 

When I was much younger, I use to write everyday! It was more than just essays and book reports, I first started with writing in journals and then progressed to writing in a more journalistic style while falling in love with news writing.

When I was unable to do get a job in the field of my desires, I moved back home, staring working in the family business again, and had little to no time for writing anymore.  My passion got buried below and life continued as a “grown up.”

June 3, 2015 floats in as being the worst day of my life. The most horrible day of the year will always be the day my Daddy, Albert Joyner, left this earth, and went home to the Lord.

I was his shadow and he was my superhero. Nothing became the same anymore, and I fell into a deep depression that  was very well hidden behind a smile for all to see. Several days later, I experienced that with great loss comes great discovery.

In preparation for my Daddy’s funerals (and yes I said funerals with a “S”), my cousin who was helping with the programs told me to write a reflection about my relationship I had with him. As much as I resisted, I painfully did it. Believe me it was hard, but when I saw it published in the programs,it gave me comfort that I express how much I loved and appreciated my Daddy.

Since you didn’t get a chance to read it, here it is:

To my Dearest Father:

The time will never come that I accept that you are not around. I’ve gone from my hearing your voice everyday, to not hearing your voice at all, almost overnight. Every time we were together, I always learned something from you (I may not have wanted you to know it, but I did). I’m so thankful that you and Mom chose to be your daughter. Thank you for allowing me to be the Allison that you see today. 

Thank you for attending all of my plays, games, and concerts that I participated in. Especially those times when I didn’t have the lead, didn’t hit a home run, or didn’t get to sing the solo.

Thank you for being a constant example of what a positive role model is supposed to be, and what I strive for every day in my life. 

Thank you for giving me the gift of mentorship, and what I attempt to do with the young people I am involved with at work and in my spear time. 

Thank you for exposing me to my culture, and helping me be a proud African American woman. I will always appreciate the early Saturday morning that you woke Danielle and I up to see Nelson Mandela being released form prison in South Africa.

Thank you for teaching me the words to every Earth, Wind, & Fire song.

Thank you for teaching me how to run a business.

But especially, thank you for being my Daddy! 

After that excerpt of honesty, requests for me writing started to trickle in. Several months later, my Uncle asked me to write a blog about a weekend adventure we had, then I had another request for writing another blog for my women’s service group, Links Inc., and my love for writing regrew from there!

I wanted to keep going, but I knew I was really rusty, so that’s why I decided to enroll in the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications for journalism innovation. Ever since I’ve had to start this blog site as one of my first assignments, I feel like a professional writer!

As the second anniversary of my Daddy’s death is approaching, I feel that my new life of writing came because of the ending of his life. Even in his death, he is still teaching me things that were inside of me that have been long forgotten.

I miss him so much, but now I feel more comfortable to live my life to the fullest. He knew that I will always be his daughter, always be his shadow, but I know he knew that I would always be a writer too.

I was very young when my Mamma and Daddy instilled in me to “treat everyone the way you would like to be treated,” and that is still the case today. But as for others in this world…

Plenty of businesses try to include this in their internal training procedures today, and yet one disgruntle employee or one hungry customer later, and the niceness goes right out the window. So how can this be recovered? The digital gods have come up with the concept of Big Data.

So what is Big Data(glad you ask because I was gonna tell you anyway)? The Statistical Analysis System Institute, located in Cary, North Carolina, came up with “a term that describes the large volume of data- both structured and unstructured- that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis.” Data, not referring to the lovable android in Star Trek: The Next Generation, is being accumulated everyday, all day, and every second of the day. My computer is collecting data right now as I write this eye opening post, wondering “what did she eat for dinner tonight?” [Pizza to answer that question. But don’t tell my boot camp instructor. He will probably make me do 20 more burpees if he knew this] When this data is collected, it is sold to your advertisers, local businesses and national corporations to find out what makes their customers tick.

A way that this happens, and you have no idea how, is by those surveys you are asked to complete after every visit. If you are that person who immediately throws away their receipt after you receive it, you would not know that there is a kind request for you to fill out  one of their surveys located on the top or bottom. As I dig down the bottom of my Michael Kors pocketbook, I find tons of receipts asking me for the same task of answering a few questions in their survey.

There are several ways to take a consumer survey: the telephone survey, the online survey, and the social media rating survey. These surveys helps businesses in several different ways:

1. Improving Customer Engagement and Increasing Customer Loyalty: Contrary to belief, these surveys are very helpful to businesses and retailers in an effort to see why you like or dislike them so much. With retailers having to see their favorite consumers going to those web based superstores instead, or your favor burger joint being less appealing because of the newest niche foodie concept opening in their neighborhood, competition is getting fierce and farce. Surveys and other forms of data collecting tools help your old favorites to be your returning favorites. If well established businesses  do not work with data companies, then you and all of their customers will go to their competitors, and local patrons will have little to no way of getting them back.
2. Personalizing the Customer Experience: The way data is collected is through your convergent devices (smartphones, laptops, tablets, and even your video gaming consuls). Your IP addresses installed in all of your high tech inventory is the portal to all of your dreams, fantasies, and desires, and you had no idea this was happening. An example of this are those annoying ads that pop up on all of your search engines. You can not see what is on the entire page until the sponsored advertising finish downloading. It’s not by coincidence, the data that has been collected by you tells the website you might have interested in one of their sponsors. Personalizing the customer experience helps businesses generate customer based offers on each individual’s buying habits.
3. Return on Investments: Data collection agencies provide a service. They are in the business of keeping promises. These promises try to guarantee that their potential clients will see an increase in sales volume and customer traffic in any given period of time. This will trickle down to more money coming into your communities and stimulating an economy that is increasing work force and employee moral in you local neighborhoods. But this information doesn’t come cheap, it could end up being a large majority for their marketing budgets for their fiscal year. With that said, this has to work. Small local companies need this. They need to make sure that these agencies that are promising them the moon and the stars see a return of their investments, or we could come to the reality that we will look up and our favorite childhood shopping destination is no more.

 

So next time you get a polite request to give a service company your input, do it! FILL OUT THAT SURVEY! GIVE THAT FIVE STAR RATING! and most importantly LEAVE THAT POSITIVE RESPONSE WHEN AN EMPLOYEE GOES OUT OF THEIR WAY TO MAKE YOU HAPPY!