Keith Houser’s Blog

Here it is the week we have all been waiting for. The final week of school is here, and I could not be more excited to put all my school stuff away for the summer. Although before I can officially say its summer, I have to take a final on Monday the 9 th . I just have to take one final this year because all of my other professors gave us our finals before finals week which was amazing. My summer break is going to be full of fun adventures and lots of hard work. This summer I plan on running my lawn care business making money. If you need your lawn mowed and you are within 20 minutes of Wapakoneta you call or text my phone number (419)-302-677five, and I would more than happy to come take care of your yard. I would really appreciate the business. Other than my mowing business I am going to be working on the family farm full time helping take care of the crops and animals. Through all of this I will be also lifting preparing for next season and hanging out with my girlfriend. If any of y...

Throughout this semester we utilized the sim function in mimic social. The sim helped us understand how to use the different platforms to promote a given business. We had to schedule post with a budget and then make sure the content we posted was useful to the public to understand what we were advertising. After the sim was ran you got the stats from each platform and you were asked questions based upon the stats from that round. Over the course of the semester we did 12 rounds of mimic social. In the last couple weeks we had to hire someone to post about our company and we had to pay them per post. Let me tell you they are not easy people to negotiate with. It took me 2 whole rounds to get somebody to accept my offer when I offered them exactly what they stated they were worth. Any ways this helped the stats by giving it more interactions and engagements due to the fact that the person was famous or had lots of expertise on the topic. Thanks again for listening in this semester!

Here we are in our second to last week of classes and let me tell you the senioritis is coming back. My classes are starting to wind way down. Last week I only had class Monday and Tuesday because my classes got cancelled for the rest of the week. This made for really easy week sort of. When I say sort of, I mean I had to go home and help on the farm. We had some gorgeous days last week and the weekend. We started to get into the fields to start side dressing end rows with anhydrous. We apply the rest of the anhydrous when the crop has emerged from the ground because it is more effective. The reason we do the end rows before it is planted is because we do not want to run over as much corn. We also spread hog manure on our field that we were going to plant our hay crop on. We then planted that field after we finished spreading. We planted till about 12 a.m. until we ran out of seed. I will say that it was a relief that we ran out of seed, or we would have been planting all night long. T...

This semester we focused our learning about social media through the textbook “Essentials of Social Media Marketing.” In this book there are 13 different chapters describing all the different types of platforms of social media and how you can use them to promote and sell the goods and services your business has to offer. Throughout all platforms of social media, the first thing you must do in marketing your business is creating a target market that you want to specifically direct your posts too. The next steps are pretty similar to all platforms because you then create your profile according to how the platform allows you to create it. You then need to schedule your posts and allow the public to view your profile and posts to get the most interactions. This book has been super helpful with giving all the helpful tips and tricks for each platform while explaining in detail how to operate the app. I would recommend this book to anyone looking into a degree in social media or really anybo...

Here we are again with another crazy week in week 13 or 14 I cannot remember which one it is, but all I know is that I have two more weeks of classes then I am done for the year. As many of you probably know, It is spring time and we are finally getting some nice weather this week. Being a farmer this time of year is very crazy and super busy. The ground finally broke the 55 degree mark this week so that means we can plant whenever the ground is dry. This week though has been crazy. It started Monday with working on the manure spreader. We have to spread manure from our pig barn and our cattle barns on the fields in the spring and fall. We do this before the cultivator goes through the field before the planter so that we make sure we work it into the soil and do not get the planter all dirty. We then spent Tuesday and Wednesday tearing the pump apart because it had a leak in it so we had to fix that. Once it was fixed we were finally able to start spreading. But today it decided to rai...

In chapter 13 we learned about Integrated Media Communications. This is the use of promotional tools and marketing strategies to help develop the best way to market your goods and/or services. Integrated Media Communications are effective because you can use different platforms of media based upon which demographic you are looking to market to. We also learned about social media campaigns. These have been more popular in the recent years due to the fact that social media is trending and getting better each year. You can even buy and sell things through Facebook on their marketplace and even Instagram has a new feature now where you can buy and sell items.

Here we are in another week closer to summer break. This week is a shortened week because of Easter. I do not have classes Thursday or Friday. This week has been a pretty laid back week for the most part except for Monday. Monday was a challenging day because I forgot we had an exam in business ethics. I spent most of the morning and an hour in the afternoon doing my homework. Little did I know I had an exam at 2 p.m. that day. I remember that I had an exam at about 1230 or 1245. This led to me to lose my mind and start stressing. I spent the next hour and a half studying for my exam. I was doing practice test after practice test just trying to retain the knowledge, I needed to complete the test. Once I got to the test my computer had really low battery, so I thought I was screwed but luckily I had my charger in my bookbag ready to go for the test. I then took the test and think I did pretty well but we will see in the coming weeks how I did. What has been your craziest moment this pas...

We are on the discussion about Vlogs and Podcasts this week. Although these are not your typical social media platforms, they are very effective. It allows you to talk to anybody and everybody that is willing to listen and hear what you have to say, or you can listen to lots of other people as well. This week in class we did a podcast. We interviewed Coach Brandon Burge who is the strength and conditioning coach at Ohio Northern University. We asked Coach Burge a lot of questions this week. Our questions varied from- What made you want to become a coach? What is your favorite memory since becoming a coach? What is your favorite quote and why? Who is your idle or the person you look up to the most? What is your dream coaching job? Who is your favorite player Keith or Josh and why? I selected these questions to ask Coach Burge for my 5 minutes of the assignment. I am doing this assignment with Josh Andrews so he is going to take the other 5 minutes to ask Coach Burge some q...

Here we are in our last month of classes. After this month is over, we only have a few days in May to take our exams and then we are off on summer break. I will be spending my weeks leading up to these exams studying a lot so I can keep my grades up. We just started our second week of spring practices this week. Things are starting to come to me quicker as I am still learning all the tag words and signals but overall, it is going well. This week my family and I have been planning our vacation that we are taking this summer and needless to say I am ready for summer. How is everyone else’s life going?

This week we are learning about Tik Tok. Tik Tok is a huge platform of social media right now. I would have to say that I probably spend more time on Tik Tok than I do studying for exams. Tik Tok is being used by people of all ages but mostly in the age group of younger people. On Tik Tok you can post funny videos or inspirational videos or really any kind of video that is no longer than 3 minutes. One thing about Tik Tok that is different than ither social media platforms is that everybody can see your videos on the for you page as long as your account is not private. Tik Tok has some huge benefits for marketing your business. You should first make an account using your business name and then put some things about the business in your bio this should include a website, phone number, or some other way to contact your business. Once you create the account you need to start posting videos about your business. You should make your videos according to the type of customer you are looking f...

Here we are in another week of school. This week has been nothing short of a wild week. This week we started spring practice. We have practice 6-8 Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and then Saturday mornings from 845-1045. We are starting to get towards the end of the year, so the stress is starting to pile on. I am studying for exams, writing speeches, as well as writing my research writing paper for writing seminar. On Tuesday I might have accidentally missed social media class because I could not access zoom. Sorry for the short blog this week but I also forgot to turn in my blog on time. How was your week?

This week we are talking about YouTube. YouTube is a very diverse platform that mainly consists of males of the younger demographic. You can market your business on this platform by using it to post interesting videos about your business and all the things you offer. You should post interesting videos that are not too long but long enough to get your point across so people know about what your business is about. This has been another interesting week learning about a big platform like YouTube.

Here we are in another week of school. This week has been kind of crazy as per usual. The week started off on Monday forgetting my bookbag at home causing me to show up late to the lift Monday morning. Later that day I decided to go back home to Wapakoneta to watch my brother play his first baseball game of the year. I got home just in time to ride over to the ballpark with my family but little did I know I forgot my lawn chair.  When I realized I had forgotten my chair it was too late to go home and grab it because I would miss the beginning of the game. Tuesday finally rolled around and let me tell you it was a long one. On Tuesday I had a job introduction day where I had to watch hours upon hours of certification videos so I could operate a forklift for this company. After I finally got out of the videos I had to take a test which was pretty easy so that made me feel like it was not a complete waste of time. Now here we are mid-week on Wednesday. On Wednesday I had to help my da...

This week we are talking about LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of the most used professional platforms of social media. Majority of people that have a LinkedIn find their future employer or find their employees on there. It is a platform that you can put all your awards that you have received and titles you have earned through your schooling. The first thing you need to do when you make a LinkedIn account is to customize your profile to best market yourself as a potential employee for a company or to best market your business to hire potential candidates that find your account interesting. Once you have the profile customized you need to make connections with people to get your name out there. LinkedIn offers the opportunity to connect with both primary and secondary connections. For example, it will try to connect you with people that went to the same school as you. In summary LinkedIn is an effective connection and collaboration tool for employees and employers.

 Here we are in the final stretch of the year until summer break. My spring break was filled with lots of fun adventures and long workdays. I worked on the farm all week hauling grain with my dad to the ethanol plant in Lima. After these long workdays I was able to spend time with my buddies and my girlfriend. As most of you know I usually have something crazy happen to me each week and let me tell you spring break did not disappoint. It was Saturday morning, and I was at my mom’s house getting ready for a day of work I hear my mom yell, “There is a cow lose in the yard.” This struck me in a way where I was very unsure of what she said because my mom lives in the city. I then walked upstairs and saw the show steer that had gotten away from somebody at the Auglaize County Fairgrounds. I went out to help catch the steer and at first one of the police officers had caught the steer, but the steer had other ideas. The steer dragged the officer across the field until he quickly let go. A...

 This week we are learning about the marketing value of Pinterest. Now I am not very good on Pinterest because I have never used it before so, please bear with me. Pinterest is a very different platform than last week’s Snapchat. Pinterest is a platform that was created in 2009 by college friends Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp. They wanted to create a platform for people to show collections of things that they are interested in. Pinterest is another social media platform that allows you to market your business. As per usual you will need to create a target audience first so that you can create a category of business that you want to do business in. Next you want to create a profile using the business name and the businesses email. You will next want to create some Pinterest boards. Pinterest has a lot of different boards that you can pin to your profile. For example, for your business profile you can create product pin so people can add them to their boards and spread...

Hi guys! Here we are the week before spring break and although my week has been a little crazy, we are going to switch up todays blog. Today I am going to be talking about my live tweeting from Tuesday night. On Tuesday I live tweeted the Ohio State men’s basketball game against the Nebraska Cornhuskers. I was watching the game and updating my followers on twitter with the action going on throughout the game. I gave score updates and updates on how the teams were playing along with the energy inside of the stadium. The Buckeyes came out striking first but as the game went on, they lost a key player in Kyle Young then they could not stop the Cornhuskers when they were driving the ball. Then they were not able to score, and the Cornhuskers took their biggest lead of the night of 11 points and the Buckeyes could not recover from that deficit. The Cornhuskers came out a little slow, but they capitalized off the injuries and mistakes of the Buckeyes and built up their momentum until they ju...

 This week we are learning how to market with Snapchat. Snapchat is a very popular social media platform that users use to send pictures and videos to their friends and add words to them. There are millions of users that use Snapchat every day. Most people view it as only a social media site that you can just talk to your friends on, but you can also use it as a platform to promote your business. Promoting your business is a lot different on Snapchat then other platforms like Facebook or Instagram. As per usual you are going to add your name on Snapchat to create the profile. Once you have created the profile you will make your tweets public so that everyone can see them and send the brand snaps. You will be in your settings and make sure that everyone is selected for the people that can see and interact with the brand’s story. Once you have the profile set up you will want to post. Make sure your snaps are good images of the business and can get people to interact with. You do not...

  Hi guys! Here we are in another week of classes getting ready to wind down to spring break. This week has been better than the past couple of weeks. It started off with a very productive weekend getting tons of stuff done along with helping out on the farm. I live on a farm that raises lots of cattle and pigs. We also farm a little over 2000 acres growing corn and soybeans. This weekend involved a lot of prep work getting the equipment ready to work the ground and plant the crops this spring. You wouldn’t think that there would be much to do in the off season when you aren’t in the fields all the time but thinking this would be wrong. In the off season we have to wash, wax, service and fix and replace all of the broken parts and pieces. Along with these things we have to market our grain and purchase the seed, chemicals and fertilizers that we will need for the next year. We are always looking to improve off of our previous season. We want to always gain a higher yield off of the...

  The platform we are learning bout this week is twitter. Twitter is another very popular platform that millions of people of all age groups utilize. Twitter is unique because it is more of an up to date form of social media meaning you can keep up with things such as sporting events throughout the entire game getting the play by play action. Today we are learning the business values of twitter. On twitter you should have the username be something related to the business like normal and have the profile picture be yourself at the business or the logo of the business. In the bio make sure to tell the people what you are and what you are about. You should tweet about upcoming events and important things happening in the business. The thing about twitter is you have to kind of summarize what you want to say into 280 words or less. Most of the time you will not ever use the 280 word limit to post about your business because that would bore the potential customers. Using twitter can be ...