Surviving School

Matt Wilder, your lacrosse student-athlete with this week’s blog. Today I will be talking about our game against Capital University. This game was a must-win if we wanted a shot at getting a bye-week for playoffs. We needed to not only beat Capital but also beat Baldwin Wallace the following Wednesday. We came into this game a little nervous, but deep down we all knew we would beat them. If you don't know Capital lacrosse, then let me enlighten you. They take a bunch of cheap shots; they yell and curse at you and even disrespect our coaching staff. Hearing that, I bet you know how the game went down. We came out of the gates slow and allowed them to score a decent amount on us early. They even were up 1 goal at the half which was not good because we let their shooters heat up. Luckily, our coach yelled at us in the locker room and put into perspective how important this game was because we were the better team. When we came back to the field we went to work and slowly beat down Cap

After finally finishing the textbook, I can say that I have learned a lot about all the different social media platforms, including how to use them effectively for promoting a brand and a business. Each chapter focused on a different platform, and went into detail about the age, gender and how many people use each, including how the reaction during Covid. It also gave us a thorough understanding of how to create a profile, get acclimated on proper use and navigation and showed us how businesses could use these various platforms to promote themselves. It taught me the differences and techniques of how to grow an audience, as well as how to publish ads and post promotions to reach a larger audience. This background also aided me in completing my mimic social assignment. That assignment required finding the right audience, posting promotions and non-promotions for certain products in the BUHI line, negotiating and contracting with influencers, and competing against my whole class to see w

  Matt Wilder, your lacrosse student-athlete with this week’s blog. Today I will be talking about our game against John Carroll. This was an important game because John Carroll generally finishes first in the OAC. If we beat them, we essentially become the best team in the league. Our coaches chose to have us stay the night before on this trip so that we could be well rested and healthy. After practice on Friday, we headed to our hotel and arrived at 10:30 p.m. The plan was to give us some time to relax and eat before going to bed. Sleep was not what I got that night because my housemates were my actual roommate and our next-door neighbor. This arrangement was doomed from the start and we probably got to bed only around 1:00 a.m. Unfortunately, one of my roommates lost his tie and the other forgot to bring his full suit when we woke. This is a huge deal, because when we don't all match in our suit and tie before a game, our coach becomes furious and will not let that person play. T

In Chapter 13 of the textbook, I learned about social media campaigns. I discovered that they can be used to raise brand awareness, encourage consumers to respond to calls of action, or simply intended to spark the interest of the consumer. The goal of most social media campaigns is to persuade followers to do something, and they usually have a set time limit to act. Businesses utilize social media-only campaigns to keep customers coming back to buy more things. They do this primarily by employing the AIDA model, which stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. They will attract people's attention, spark their curiosity, satisfy their desire, and urge them to act. When it comes to campaigns, this strategy has shown to be the most effective for businesses and is recommended for future ones. When it comes to creating a campaign, the process is rather simple. First you want to set goals, determine a campaign topic, identify the target demographic and budget, choose incentives

Matt Wilder, your lacrosse student-athlete with this week’s blog. As I have stated in my last few blogs I am still injured and being forced to wear this waxy splint cast around my thumb. Let me just tell you, it is the most frustrating thing to deal with, but I am doing my best to deal with it. Just imagine not being able to write with your dominant hand or having to eat food like what must look so weird because you’re not a lefty. That last part might just be me, but you get to the point. On the field, it is frustrating too, but I am still trying to participate. Even though I am not allowed to do physical contact, I can still improve by continuing to run a lot every day to stay in shape. I have also been using an agility ladder which is now my favorite thing in the world. I have not used one since I was playing youth football. It is a crazy good tool for midfielders because it really helps improve footwork which is important whether you play offense or defense. For example, I tried do

As the school year is winding down and we have started to reach the last chapters of Social Media, I find the chapter we are learning about now are podcasts. When it comes to what podcasts are, the best way to describe them is a way to build a deeper connection to an audience. They can also be used to discuss current news or even a podcaster’s opinion on things like video games, books, movies, etc. Basically, anything an audience would find interesting can be a podcast. When it comes to how many people are a part of a podcast, it is usually two or more people that lead it or host it. However, there is a podcaster named Joe Rogan who has risen to be the most listened podcaster today. What he does is have very famous people to go on and talk about themselves while he picks their brain about what they think about current events or gets them to reveal things they may have done in the past. Now if you had asked a bunch of people a couple of years ago if they ever listened to a podcast, I wo

In this chapter we learn how to market with TikTok. In just the past couple of years, TikTok has become one of the most used social media platforms ever. As of January 2022, there are at least 1 billion active monthly users. This has put TikTok’s user base over some of the other social media platforms like Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat. At 69%, the primary age group of users for TikTok are between the ages of 13 and 24. Our chapter also tells us that 60% of the users are women. This does not surprise me because I am on TikTok throughout the day. That might be a problem by itself, but I can say that every time I open the app, the first 20 TikTok’s are of girls dancing. Male users make up only 40%, which is a lot higher than I initially thought but after paying more attention, it makes sense as I have started to see a lot more male TikTok users, especially ones that are trying to market their company or product. When it comes to promoting a business on TikTok, there are many ways to d

  Matt Wilder, your lacrosse student-athlete with this week’s blog. Just like last week I found myself being more student than athlete and mostly an observer because I still have a fractured thumb. You already knew that, so I will pick up from where I left off. Our first conference game against Mount Union was awesome. The energy was so high. We knew if we beat Mount Union that people would understand we were legit. We were slow to start and risked them getting into a good rhythm which wasn't good. Thankfully, our team picked it up later in the first half and pulled ahead. It was awesome to see our team click on all cylinders. We were moving the ball extremely well and our defense was locking down. Before I knew it, we had won the game and even beat them by double digits. The locker room was ecstatic. Even our coach was dancing and laughing. The only problem, I wasn’t feeling as excited as the other guys. Don't get me wrong, it was an awesome moment, but the fact that I had to