How To Master the #Hashtag

It is not always easy to use Twitter and come up with something clever and interesting to say to get people's attention. There is a way to achieve a great Twitter post and The Art of Social Media provides some great tips and tricks!

1. Pick Short, Good Hashtags

You can never get enough hashtags, but they are so important to include in every tweet! Try and keep it short and generic. Choose a hashtag that is trendy and constantly being seen by people. Using short over unique will get you farther.

2. Integrate the Hashtag Into Everything 

If you are trying to promote something, use the hashtag immediately! Once you get it out there, the more likely people will begin to click on it and see your tweets. You can also use it on things other than Twitter, like your email signature or your website. It is just something that shows that it is your hashtag.

3. Ask Everyone To Use It

Get the word out about your hashtag! Ask everyone to use it if they are promoting you or whatever you are trying to get out there. When I think of this, I think of people using unique wedding hashtags. Anytime they post about their wedding or their friends take pictures at their wedding, the hashtag is always used. This sends you directly to all of the pictures that were taken at this wedding, and I find it very personal and fun!

These are just a few of many great ideas that The Art of Social Media has shown to work for social media. I personally do not use Twitter, but I do sometimes use hashtags on Instagram, so by following these few simple steps, I may be able to enhance my own social media!

App Obsession

Happy Tuesday everyone! I know it's not always the best day of the week, but hey, it's one day closer to the weekend!

Recently, I have been in love with a social media app called The Hunt.

This app is literally the best thing ever for a girl! Guys can definitely use it as well, but when I think of it, I think of it as something that would attract a more female audience.

Have you ever seen an outfit or shoes on a celebrity and wondered where they got it from?
Well, this app tells you exactly that. All you would have to do is post a picture of this outfit you saw, and multiple people will instantly tell you exactly where to get it! It can even send you directly to the link to buy it from. It's crazy because I have always wanted/needed something like this.

Another cool thing you can do on the app is get opinions and style advice from people. Say you are going to a party and you aren't sure if the outfit you want to wear looks good, you can post a picture and you can get immediate opinions and suggestions from fashion experts. This may not sound like interesting, but trust me, it comes in handy more than you would think! I highly suggest you take a look at it.

Overall, I think this app has been very useful and helpful to me personally, and I think a lot of girls my age especially can relate to needing something like this! I hope you can check it out and I would love to know what you think about it and if you found it as useful as I did!

One Semester Down

Last semester went by so quickly, and I am sure that some of my fellow polar bears can agree with that! As I have mentioned before, I am a transfer sophomore, so no it was not my first semester of college, but it was my first semester at Ohio Northern University! I didn't know exactly how my transition was going to go considering I am coming all the way from Alabama, but I would like to share with you a few things that happened to me last semester that lead me to have a great, fast first semester here in Ada.

1.  Good Friends

Having a good group of friends is so important in college. If you come in as a freshman, it is easy to meet a lot of people at first because everyone is excited and it is all new to each of them. However, coming in as a transfer (feeling like a freshman sometimes) is not as simple. I have been through this before and have experience with being away from home unlike a lot of the freshmen I met. However, I do play tennis here, and that gave me an automatic in to a group. A majority of my team are freshmen, and so I tend to hang out with them a lot and even though I'm older, I am experiencing this school just as new and the same as them. It is so important, in my opinion, to find people who truly make you happy and make you a better person. These are the friendships that will last a lifetime.

2.  Staying Busy

As I mentioned before, I am on the tennis team. This keeps me occupied a lot of the time, next to school of course. I tried to rush for a sorority, but realized I was already so busy, that I really wouldn't have enough time to commit to all three things. It is so easy to get caught up in the lazy lifestyle of college by just watching movies and eating snacks alone in your room. I have seen many people do this, and it is because they have nothing to do. I feel like because I got so involved, I was able to be happy and stay busy therefore the semester flew by!

3.  Positive Attitude

Okay, I know I sound so cliche right now and that I am trying to sound like my whole life is together, but from personal experience I know how important it is to stay positive. At the previous college I attended, I was so unhappy with being at the school in general. I just knew it wasn't the place I should or wanted to be. That's where I fell under the trap of feeling lonely and negative about everything. I got my fresh start that I wanted here in Ohio, and I knew as hard as it seems, I needed to maintain a positive attitude whether it be about school, tennis, or the cold weather that I wasn't used to! 

By following just these few things, I got to have a great first semester, and it was over in a blink of an eye! If anybody feels the same way, I would love for you to share your thoughts!

Here is a picture of the ONU tennis team!

Every like matters

Let me just start out by saying I am a huge social media addict. I would have to say I spend about 5-7 hours a day just on social media. Okay, that probably sounds like a lot, but I spend a ton of time checking all of my platforms. Sometimes, I can be a bit hypocritical when it comes to social media. I always laugh at the people who are obsessed with how many likes, retweets, favorites they can get. However, I am the same way whether I want to admit it to myself or not.

The social media platforms that I use are:

• Snapchat
• Instagram
• Facebook

Snapchat
It's funny because I remember the exact moment that I heard about snapchat. I was in chemistry class my sophomore year of high school, and this girl started to take selfies and received them really fast, but could only view them for 10 seconds at the most. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. However, from what was just sending a picture really fast to someone, turned into having "my story" and showing you who viewed your story. This starts to become an obsession. Wanting everyone to know what you're doing and be jealous of it. Come on, admit it. It also began to cause many problems in relationships because you could view people's top three friends that that they snapchat. There is a fairly new feature called streaks. This means that if you have been snap chatting a person for three or more days, it will tell you how long you have been. My own sister didn't talk to me for a couple of days because I "lost our streak."

Instagram
Now Instagram is a whole new game. I heard about this my freshman year of high school, but I'm sure it came out a little before that. Instagram went from being just a fun way to post pictures and show you're friends what you're doing, to being obsessed with how many likes you get. People think that the more likes you get, the cooler you are and the more you are accepted. Believe me, I have this problem too. I worry so much about my likes and how many likes I get each minute. Another problem with instagram is filters. Specifically with girls, they want the perfect picture and to never show many flaws. Filters are a way to change the colors in the picture around to make it look better. So honestly, you don't know what is the original picture and what is not.

Facebook
Facebook is more of an older generation like baby boomers thing. Of course, I did have it when I was a teenager and still do, but it has slowly gone away. My 15 year old sister and all her friends do not use it, so I think it many have cut off close to my age range. Facebook is a more complex platform, and I feel like you can do so much more with it than Instagram. It is not usernames, it is full names and I feel like it's a more personal platform to reconnect with family and friends.

I think that social media is clearly taking over our world, and opening up so many more opportunities for people for social reasons and business reasons. Even though it is doing so many great things, it is also hurting people's self confidence to feel perfect. And this is all because of a simple "like" button.

Alabama girl takes on Ohio

I am from Alabama, as you probably know, and I get asked on multiple occasions about where I am from and I can't even tell you how many times I hear that a day. Especially the first day of classes. I knew what I was getting into as I packed my bags and headed up to little Ada, Ohio to attend Ohio Northern University.

"So, why are you in Ohio?"
Yes, this is probably the most popular question I get asked. I never really know how to approach it sometimes, actually. I usually respond with "I play tennis and wanted something different." That's honestly the truth. I am actually a transfer from a small school in Mississippi. I was very unhappy there and knew I wanted to transfer, just didn't know where. One day, I honestly just kind of woke up and thought to myself that I wanted to move up north and experience something different. I am for sure getting that difference.

"Why don't you have a southern accent?"
This is also a very common question that I get. I really don't have an answer for that. My theory is that I binge watched the Kardashians, and it changed my voice. But really, there is no explanation. When people think of Alabama, they usually think of rednecks with three teeth that live in trailers. Of course, that is so stereotypical and not even close to how it actually is. Don't get me wrong though, they do exist.

"How did you hear about ONU?"
I've talked to quite a few people who have lived in Ohio their whole lives, and didn't know what ONU was until their junior or senior year of high school. With my case, I knew I wanted to continue to play tennis, and I was majoring in graphic design at the time, so I needed a place that had both. I wasn't necessarily just looking in the north, but I knew that's ultimately where I wanted to be. So, I googled a bunch of schools, and that's where I found ONU.

"You are crazy for leaving the warm weather!"
Now this is something I may have a little regret with. I knew what to expect when I moved up north. I knew it was going to be very cold and snow a lot. However, I miss my warm Alabama weather so much When I was home for Christmas, it was mostly in the 70s or 80s. But, I am starting to get used to it.

Altogether, I arm really enjoying ONU. I am so much happier now than I was at my old school. I have made good friends, and have a great tennis team. Even though I am an outsider to Ohio life, I feel like I have been fitting right in and am looking forward to the next couple years!

Social media is more complex than it appears.

As I walk into my social media principles class on the first day, I had a very open mind about it, but also considered myself as the "social media expert." This meaning, I thought I knew everything there was to know about social media considering I am a 19 year old girl who is obsessed with any sort of social media whether it be Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, you name it.

I begin to read the first chapter of, The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users, and realize that I clearly have so much to learn. I then began to realize that I really needed to change around my own social media pages. According to the first chapter, optimizing your profile is key. These are just the basics that I'm realizing I need to learn, and I think a lot of the millennials like me should look into as well!

1. Pick a Neutral Screen Name
I feel like this is something I should probably work on. Fortunately, I have a unique name which is Ashley Ochsenhirt, and I know that nobody will have that screen name. However, it is very hard and long for people to try and type in if they are searching for me, so I use "ashleyox_". My reasoning for this name is actually pretty interesting because my last name is pronounced like "ox-en-hurt" so I figured if I used "ox" in my username, people will start to pronounce my actual last name right. I do have my whole name on my profiles as well just in case somebody did want to look me up by name.

2. Optomize for Five Seconds
This was a very short, yet interesting paragraph to look at. It is also something that I have never really thought about. Our mindset is simply looking at appearance and not really content. However, I personally think I need to work on my own Avatar, Biographical text, and Cover as discussed here.

3. Focus Your Avatar on Your Face
Now this is something I actually think I have gotten right on my social media. My profile pictures are always close up of my face and I am usually the only one in the picture. On my cover photo, like on Facebook, I have other people in it, but on my profile picture I like to use a professional looking picture of just me. I think it really tells a lot about how a person portrays themselves.

4. Stick with One Picture 
Here is just another example of something I would like to fix because now that I have read about it, a little light bulb in my head goes off. The picture I use for my profile picture should be the same throughout all of my social media sites. This will help people and even companies be able to recognize me on social media.

5. Craft a Mantra 
The tagline should always be added to a profile. By adding a few words to explain why someone or someone's organization exists, makes a mantra. For example: Nike, FedEx, Google, and Canva do a good job of portraying a mantra.

6. Tell Your Story
I agree with this paragraph because I think that social media really is a story of someone's life whether it is in writing or pictures. You get an idea of somebody's family, dog, friends, etc. As I mentioned earlier, a cover photo can be used to display another picture in a bigger form than your profile picture. This is a good place to show off more of your story, and I think I have been successful with that part of my platform.


These are just some of many things that make up social media. Things that I have never even thought or heard of. Honestly, I didn't realize how many things I really was doing wrong with my social media until I read this chapter. Thankfully I have a better understanding now and can change it to look more professional for future reference. So no, social media is not as simple as it seems and I am for sure not "the social media queen." Social Media is growing stronger and stronger each day, and is taking over everything. By having this good understanding of the fundamentals of social media, I can help myself in the future.