students - Tag Archive

How to start a career in social media

19 Replies Techscott

Social media has turned into a multi-billion dollar industry and opportunities to build a career around it are becoming increasingly common.

If you’re looking to start a career in the competitive world of social media and digital marketing, setting up a blog is a great place to start.

A blog not only allows you to express your personality and offer your opinions, but also gives future employers an insight into your knowledge, skills and experience. Pick a subject that you are passionate about and blog regularly to attract readers and establish your credibility. Aim to be a unique voice in the ‘blogosphere’.

There are a variety of free online services available that can help you with the technology side of setting up a blog. Then it’s a case of attracting followers by creating interesting content, updating it regularly and promoting it through other social networks such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter's LogoPursuing a career in social media however is not just about knowing how to send a tweet, post a blog or set up a Facebook page. At the end of the day all businesses are looking at the impact social media has on their customer relations, business strategy, marketing and product positioning.

Demonstrate that you are serious by enrolling in a diploma in digital marketing and social media such as the one offered by the University of Middlesex. The postgraduate course combines theory and marketing practices to teach students how social media is contributing to entrepreneurship and innovation in modern businesses. Students attend guest lectures by professionals from some of the major organisations in web and social media including Google, Twitter and Groupon.

To have a competitive edge in social media, keep up to date with the latest developments. Understand the importance of monitoring, evaluation and analytics. You need to be familiar with the main social media sites but also the less popular ones as well which may have the advantage of providing a more targeted audience for the services or products you are promoting. You need to be able to spot trends and differentiate between up and coming sites and ones that won’t last the distance.

More than likely when you enter a career in social media you will be expected to be a good all-rounder and take responsibility for all areas of digital marketing. Job roles include social media officer, digital marketing manager or even director of social media. However larger organisations may allow you to specialise, so you could find yourself with a job title such as blog editor, analytics manager, designer, social media developer or content manager.

See Anyone You Know? Face Recognition Comes Of Age

12 Replies Jonny Hankins

The National Academy of Sciences are about to publish an article in their proceedings entitled ‘Privacy In The Age Of Augmented Reality’, co-authored by Alessandro Acquisiti, Ralph Gross and Fred Stuzman. It is about developments in face recognition software.
How 2D facial scanners record identitiesTo use the authors’ words the document

“investigate(s) the feasibility of combining publicly available Web 2.0 data with off-the-shelf face recognition software for the purpose of large-scale, automated individual re-identification.”

They are also working on an app that can do it all from your phone! See the FAQ section here for more information. The article reports a series of experiments conducted over the last year or so during which the researchers try to identify a person from their photo using an over the counter face recognition software using information that is freely available over the internet.

The results are interesting. The experiments are as follows:
Students walking through the university campus were asked if their photo could be taken and to complete a questionnaire. As they were answering the questions the computation task was carried out, looking for a picture match on Facebook and requiring only seconds. In this case more than 30% of the students were immediately traced.

Because the faces were the same but the photos taken from different angles, humans had to decide which of the possible matches were the most appropriate, but that is not always the case. Some photos are replicated and therefore the computer can give a 100% guarantee that the match is correct.

For example in another experiment the researchers used an online dating agency that provided anonymous photos. In this case they could match names to the photos in about 10% of cases. In several cases the same photo had been used on different sites.

In a third experiment the knowledge gained was used to search for further private information, all freely available on the web, such as details of sexual preference, date and place of birth and this information even allowed them to generate the first five figures of the individual’s US social security number.

So it seems that we can draw a simple conclusion here, either now or in the very near future, as these technologies are improved and made freely available, anybody will be able to recognize anybody they see on the street, identify them through an app in their telephone, and find out about their interests and other personal information, if they have ever posted (or had posted for them) a photo of themselves on the internet.

For more information, please read my face recognition article on the Bassetti Foundation website.