Wrap it up

This past weekend was definitely a lot better than the first half of the week. I went to a training conference for Circle K on Saturday, which was actually a lot of fun, and super informative. I was able to relax a bit and spend some time with friends, which was great, because I haven't really been able to do that lately.

Although I did mention above that I was able to relax this past week, it wasn't very much, but that's because of the HCP that was due Sunday night. I spent all weekend revising and adding to my final draft, but I think I did an okay job at balancing the time to hang with friends and work in the paper. The most challenging bumps on the road was definitely finding sources to use. This was something completely new to me, and so I had some serious problems getting started. This became easier as time went on, because I was able to find sources from sources I already had, it was like a big web of connected sources. The genre of literature review was also very new to me, so I did struggle a bit with that, but I feel like I overcame that easily once I took the time to really understand what was being asked for.

A part I was particularly proud of was a paragraph where I mentioned how bee cognition could play an important role in modern technology. I think this fit perfectly with the genre of essay because it was about the research done on bees in today time, and potentially in the future. So I was able to make connection between the discovery of bee cognition in the early 1900s and how bee cognition is being used today.

The SMC was in the end actually a lot of fun, even though it got a but repetitive at times. I really enjoyed using different tactics to gain followers, which is an important part of any social media campaign. On Instagram, our @Animalsarentactors account ended up with just over 600 followers, a pretty good result considering we only had a week. Of course not all the followers were "active" but that is exactly what you have to expect when it comes to social media. The fact that a portion of those followers viewed our posts is what's important in the end.

For the campaign, I started off by creating an Instagram and Twitter account specifically for the campaign. Then Kathy created the Weebly website. We all shared log in credentials so that we all had access to all the mediums. Once then, it was time to get started on gaining followers. First of course, we needed some posts, which we all did the first day. Then, we started following accounts with similar purposes, and followed their followers. We did this to very many accounts, and started gaining followers by the minute. The fun part about this was that the people who followed back genuinely cared about the cause we were promoting.

Once we had a solid follower count, we got started on making our three posts per day, which at first was pretty difficult, but definitely got easier over time. My first three posts were original snippets of infographics that I made. These were my favorite because they used facts that I personally researched and graphics that were completely free. For each post I made sure to tag #39canimals, #animalsarentactors, and #leavetheactingtothehumans. Then we added more tags depending on the subject of the post. Without surprise, our Instagram got more attention than our twitter, by a long shot. We averaged around 30 likes per post and at least one comment. Our Weebly site was also fairly successful, we got 440 visits to the website, and 62 signatures on our pledge.

Personally, I created the Instagram and was responsible for more than half the followers, as well as getting most of the signatures on our pledge. I used my connections with clubs on campus to promote my campaign, which got us a big following. I created most of the infographic myself as well, with some input by my group mates. I created the most popular posts on our Instagram.

After wrapping up our campaign, I think my team did a great job overall, based on our following and signatures. We could've done better by increasing the quality in our posts, a lot of the time I waited until the last minute to post, which meant less thought out posts. Overall however, I'm proud of our team and our campaign.