Author Archives: Samantha

Final Project

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ABSTRACT 

Twitter is a multi-modal and fluid platform that allows users to generate and consume content at a rapid pace. Producing relavent content on a fast moving site such as twitter can prove to be a challenge. In researching and determining strategies that are suggest to be beneficial in producing content with high engagement, a trial testing a variation of these approaches was formulated. Though there are several different approaches one could take four mainstays appeared throughout. Several sources that offer tips and strategies to build engagement are, Forbes, Business Insider and the NY Times. Though their approaches vary they share several commonalities. By utilizing hashtags, cross posting content and sharing exisisting content the Twitter analytics project showcases how the strategies at hand played out when applied. Over a period of four weeks four strategies were combined and applied to a personal twitter account to gage the validity of each one. Combined in a short period of time the experiment was moderately successful, resulting in a slight increase in following and a notable increase in engagement views per tweet.Through the trial and error of applying these strategies it stands to reason that not all of these suggested approaches work or are viable to apply to smaller more personalized accounts. Therefor it is crucial to note that not all of the content that is popular on social media follows or adheres to the tear of strategies most often proposed. While conducting this engagement experiment several factors came into play, such as, time constraints, frequency of posts, currency of the information being transmitted. In summary of this experiment several key things can be noted. The timeline to building a solid user engagement is lengthy an cannot be determined over weeks or even months it more realistically takes a year or more, strategies are geared toward businesses or entrepenures and that without proper promotion user content is lost fairly quickly after being posted. This experiment is relevant in determining the approach a future social media composer or student may take when seeking out a path to increasing their own social media presence or engagement.

 

View my write up here

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Final Project Presentation

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ABSTRACT 

Twitter is a multi-modal and fluid platform that allows users to generate and consume content at a rapid pace. Producing relavent content on a fast moving site such as twitter can prove to be a challenge. In researching and determining strategies that are suggest to be beneficial in producing content with high engagement, a trial testing a variation of these approaches was formulated. Though there are several different approaches one could take four mainstays appeared throughout. Several sources that offer tips and strategies to build engagement are, Forbes, Business Insider and the NY Times. Though their approaches vary they share several commonalities. By utilizing hashtags, cross posting content and sharing exisisting content the Twitter analytics project showcases how the strategies at hand played out when applied. Over a period of four weeks four strategies were combined and applied to a personal twitter account to gage the validity of each one. Combined in a short period of time the experiment was moderately successful, resulting in a slight increase in following and a notable increase in engagement views per tweet.Through the trial and error of applying these strategies it stands to reason that not all of these suggested approaches work or are viable to apply to smaller more personalized accounts. Therefor it is crucial to note that not all of the content that is popular on social media follows or adheres to the tear of strategies most often proposed. While conducting this engagement experiment several factors came into play, such as, time constraints, frequency of posts, currency of the information being transmitted. In summary of this experiment several key things can be noted. The timeline to building a solid user engagement is lengthy an cannot be determined over weeks or even months it more realistically takes a year or more, strategies are geared toward businesses or entrepenures and that without proper promotion user content is lost fairly quickly after being posted. This experiment is relevant in determining the approach a future social media composer or student may take when seeking out a path to increasing their own social media presence or engagement.

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Final Project – DRAFT

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ABSTRACT

Twitter is a fast paced multi functional platform that allows users to share content rapidly. Through my engagement experiment I aimed to see if an average user could increase their analytics by applying commonly regarded strategies for building an online presence. Combining several of these strategies over a four week period I will track my engagement week by week in charts, screen grabs and progress reports. At the end of the experiment I hope to be able to decipher if these strategies are practical or not and if the time in which they are applied makes a difference. Some of the activities I will engage in will be, hashtagging, content sharing and experimenting with third party apps.

My Write up, Reflection and Presentation can all be found on my e-portfolio. My twitter profile is available here.

Class Notes 11/24

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Reminders about progress updates:

Everyone should

  • Be addressing useful comments and concerns about your project
  • Be very specific and detailed in your moving forward section
  • How will your deliverables reflect the media you’re using
  • Remember the week of 11/30 is the last week of creating content before drafts are due 12/8
  • Attend meetings with Professor Belli for guidance
  • All aspects must be completed by the 8th
  • Make the next two updates geared towards how you’ll complete the project

Ashley- Define clearly that you’re looking at peoples interaction and attitudes about the content not you personally

Pam- How can you tell how a website chose to get their content out there

Fola- Build your linkedin and add content to it, use the help tool. Visit the Professor development center on campus. Attend an open lab workshop and touch on your e-portfolio more in your updates.

Jodie- Clarify delivery aspects and narrow down focus

Sam- Define success more clearly, maybe divide content into genres, use third party app.

Progress Update 11/30

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Last week I outlined my success, shortcomings and plans for the next phase of the project. This week organization has gotten much better and so has picking and choosing content to engage with.

In terms of organizing i started screen shotting note worthy tweets as they happened rather than scrolling back. I created a separate folder on my phone as well as my desktop to store the information quick and easily. I’m finding this makes writing the progress update as well as the power point so much easier as a whole.

In terms of picking content I tried to stick to things that I had real opinions or feelings about because content with no meaning usually goes no place. I also found that evenings are the best time to tweet because they gain the most views. So i’ve been tweeting during the day but mainly engaging at night.

This weeks highlights

This week (albeit a short one) was more successful in terms of my content getting viewed. Though I haven’t gained many more followers my tweets gain more views per hour than they did last week. The most noted tweets this week came on friday the 27th after I tweeted out about Planned Parenthood in the wake of the tragedy in Colorado. I did not tweet directly at anyone or state a clear opinion I merely provided fact about the organization. In the first half hour alone these two tweets had gained 100+ views and engagements. tIMG_2751 IMG_2752

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To date this pair of tweets has been my most successful and I plan to implement this idea in the final week of my project. I thought this project would be a lot more difficult but I’m finding that its really not much different from what I usually did except now i’m doing it with an agenda or strategy and purpose. I think i’ve progressed nicely and I will have a decent amount of data to draw on for the final product.

Looking Ahead

This week will be the final leg of the project experiment phase. The last week will be about cross posting content from other sites to my twitter feed and though I have done this before I will focus on it more in addition to my hashtags and engagement strategies. Originally i was playing with the idea of using hoot suite or tweet deck but i’ve shied away from them because i want to stay genuine to the projects main focus which is twitter. I honestly did not like tweet deck and hoot suite takes a bit of getting used to and I don’t want to taint my projects results because I’m not familiar with the platform. SO! In the final week it will be a hashtagging, topic engaging and cross posting blitz. I hope to have enough data to compare to the sources I based my proposal on as well as the strategies I utilized. I will also break down my final results into categories instead of doing it by week. So far my main content engagement has been with trending topics so I need another week to balance it out.

UPDATE FOR 12/3

-live tweeting professionally (look for local event related to social media, digital, etc.) and compare to personal live tweeting, check analytics
-revisit 3rd party analytics for further insights (especially Hootsuite)
-play around with Jetpack (for analytics) for ePortfolio
-other efforts to increase engagement through social media (your work via Dept. of Education)
-analog efforts for branding, networking (e.g., business cards)

After meeting with Professor Belli I realized there are some important things i’ve been doing but neglecting to mention. So as mentioned last week and with Professor Belli I wanted to toy around with a third party app, I hated tweet deck but i’m going to give hoot suite another run and see if scheduling tweets makes a difference in my user engagement. Live tweeting is also something i’m looking to do but I havent yet found a program or event that fits in with my account or my time schedule so I may just do scheduling tweets as the last element of the project. Jetpack the plug in was pretty complicated and I havent yet gotten access to the instructions so i’ve let it be for now for the sake of time.

Other related elements that i’ve been creating are, business cards to promote my accounts and my brand and i’ve been asked to help manage the NYC DOE district 21 twitter account, which I created for them last week. By applying some of the strategies to that account i’m hoping to be able to get them decent recognition and foot traffic.

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(POWER POINT NOT YET UPDATED 12/2)

Progress Update 11/25

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I began my project a week ago and to be honest I lacked confidence in myself and the success I could bring to it. I combined and tweaked some of my strategies due to time constraints but they’re all still of the same genre. So my updated timeline looks more like this,

Week #1- Leverage trending topics. I will explore the moments and trending sections of twitter and engage in the conversation for at least 2 of them per day. Boost visibility by tweeting with at least three content based hashtags that represent a call to action.

Week #2- Fuel my profile with shared content. I will share and comment on popular stories to attract or raise questions about the content.Branch out. I will locate and attempt to engage with three professionals in my desired career field (marketing).

Week #3- Cross post. In the last week I will share my content from linkedin and open lab on my twitter to show professional work on my twitter feed as well.

Week #4- For the last week I will gather and assess my data, see which week had the largest engagement and overall by how much (if any) my engagement increased.

I mainly combined similar strategies and will be continuing to apply all strategies as I incorporate new ones. I started out with 27 followers, less than 50 views per tweet, 5 or less mentions per month and had never been added to any lists.

What i’ve done to date

So far, as I touched upon in class last week my tactics have been rather successful. As of 11/23 (One week since I began) I have,

  • Gained 6 new followers
  • Been retweeted 4 times
  • Been favorited 7 times
  • Added to two lists
  • Mentioned 2 times
  • Had an all time high record of 101 interactions per tweet

I actually surprised myself with how much my tweeting and interactions took off by using hashtags and joining into trending conversations. I chimed in about Charlie Sheen, Heart Health, Obama, Womens rights just to name a few. It was actually pretty fun and interesting, because I got to read all these people’s ideas on the subject to scroll through a category.

The biggest obstacle so far has been without a doubt keeping my content up to date with the ever fluid topics of twitter. I go to class or work for a few hours and now what’s on my timeline is eons old. So thats a challenge for sure. Otherwise I haven’t had any major roadblocks that I see as a threat to my project.

Critically though I need to be more organized and write down the results over every day instead of scrolling back through my timeline as thats really time consuming. I also want to sit down and really read through hoot suite and see how I can get that to really work for me because right now I still end up back on the twitter app because I’m so versed in it.

This week I think I did a good job of being on more regularly and reading through content instead of scrolling like a madman. Moments without a doubt makes it easier to see stories but harder to interact with individual tweets so I have to move away from using that and stick to the trending topics tool which is a little harder but necessary for this project.

Moving forward and looking ahead I look forward to trying the next strategy and implementing it in addition to week ones. This week I am sharing content like crazy, news stories, blogs, journal articles and more and then commenting or interacting with it by asking questions or giving feedback. I hope to have an even keel of both informative news sources and op ed interest pieces to balance out the kinds of interaction I get.

E-portfolio .. The Beginning

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Creating a perfecting my e-portfolio was a process, having OCD made me super detail oriented and I poured over making it just right. Though it will never be “done” I will say I am happy that it’s on an upward path. I have changed the theme half a dozen time moved and reorganized content and played with all the settings and widgets I could find. After toying around myself and getting rather frustrated because I kept wrecking the home page I went to seek some help, first in the Itech lab on the sixth floor and then with Professor Belli.

The tech lab had some helpful tips to making the pages easier to manage when you’re brand new to the site and he was also able to reset the menu bar which I managed to mangle. The lab is good for quick tips and fixes but as Professor Belli mentioned it’s probably better to seek out the open lab team for all the widgets and plug ins because for I for the life of me could not get the twitter plug in to work right.

Today I went and met with Professor Belli to discuss content revision and placement and she also tried to help with the elusive twitter widget, to no avail though so ill be visiting the open lab team. I also learned how to customize my menu bar and make functional categories so my content can be grouped similar to how our class page is. Learning a few tips and tricks were helpful but I want to learn more about open lab and the features of it so I am able to maximize its benefits.
(added 11/17)When creating my about me I aimed to highlight my background info, where I came from, the important things about myself and my academic and career goals and then finally my hobbies. I aimed to make my professional stance known but also give myself a human side. By adding hobbies it shows what I enjoy and what balances my work and school life out.

Overall I think it’s a good way to keep track of your work and what potential employers may want to see or be looking for. I will add that i got my content to be featured on my twitter so thats pretty cool and i’m hoping it will gain some exposure. I think it would be helpful though if categories came pre populated and we were able to rename and use them so we don’t have to muck through so many different settings to get them to work. Meaning similar to how the pages come set up the categories should too. AND like i’ve said since practically day one I would love it if this site had its open app or at least was able to be signed into via the word press app. Being able to move and view content mobile would be huge! I plan on adding content both for classes as well as my own preference to showcase the best abilities i have both academically and personally and i’m hopeful that in conjunction with my twitter project that I will be able to share my content more freely.

Annotated Bibliography Reflection

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Rampton, John. “25 Ways to Grow Your Social Media Presence.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 29 Sept. 2014. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.

The overview of this article is apparent by the name, the intended purpose is to provide users with strategies and concepts to increasing their online presence. Rampton highlights the need to produce relevant content, post often and with engaging tags and to remind users you are human. By staying up to date on current events and what’s online you’re more likely to have your content noticed. In reading this article I thought it was utterly perfect for the proposed experiment I am doing for my final project. I think the strategies are useful but are geared more towards a business or corporation than for an individual. I choose the best or most universal ideas and reshaped them into what I felt would best benefit my goals for the project.

Works, Bernadeen. “HootSuite: Maximize Your Social Media Efforts.” Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 26 Dec. 2012. Web. 17 Nov. 2015. <http://www.businessinsider.com/hootsuite-maximize-your-social-media-efforts-2012-12>.

This article is built around the features and purpose of an app like hootsuite. It characterizes the ways in which a user can maximize their online presence using the service. However focusing mainly on the analytic section of this text it clearly highlights the ways in which a user can track their engagement, their exposure, ability to reach an audience and more. Being able to track your statistics is helpful in planning future content, understanding your market and gearing your content to those results. While reading this it is very easy to understand and comprehend as the text is tailored to a specific purpose and audience.

Cohen, James, and Thomas Kenny. “CHAPTERS 2 AND 7.” Producing New and Digital Media Your Guide to Savvy Use of the Web. Independence: Taylor and Francis, 2015. Print.

In chapter two of Cohen and Kenny it is stated that everyone with a user account is a content creator. Making us all authors, photographers and reporters may seem like a powerful tool however in such a large sea of creators one needs to stand out, which correlates to the idea of branding present in chapter 7. It is important when producing content to remember whom you’re talking to, remember who may see it and what image of you that will portray and what content you would like to be associated with. When preforming the ” google yourself” search a user is able to quickly tell what is tied to their name and what misconceptions it may cause. While completing my twitter experiment I plan to turn a close eye to detail and the content i feature on my newsfeed.

Kricfalusi, Elizabeth. “Twitter vs TweetDeck vs Hootsuite: Which Is the Best Twitter Client?” Tech for Luddites. Tech or Luddites, 3 Apr. 2015. Web. 17 Nov. 2015. <http://techforluddites.com/twitter-vs-tweetdeck-vs-hootsuite-which-is-the-best-twitter-client/>.

Kricfalusi provides a quick and realistic view of the various apps available for managing twitter content. While critical of twitter itself not being able to sort newsfeeds (written prior to moments) she notes that these apps enable a user to separate what content they see. TweetDeck, Hootsuite and Twitter itself revolve around fast paced content. Being able to sort through such content makes the site more user friendly and in turn allows select content to be viewed by a target audience. Meaning when posting it is important that a producer of content realize some people prefer to only view certain things. Here it will be important for me to remember this when using hashtags to spark interaction.

Prattler, Adam. “How to Use Twitter Hashtags to Get Noticed.” Social Media Today. 22 Oct. 2013. Web. 17 Nov. 2015. <http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/how-use-twitter-hashtags-get-noticed>.

Prattler discusses a crucial part of the twitter universe, the hashtag. Over the course of twitter evolution the hashtag has become a dynamic part of starting a conversation and millions of users all over the globe engage. Using a hashtag is a great way to stand out and get your content noticed, remaining relevant, staying engaged and tweeting to provoke response are key ways to increase your twitter base. In week two of my twitter experiment i will focus on hashtags to stay visible, the content of Prattlers article provides interesting ways to do so.

Armstrong, Russel. “Marketing Pros and Cons of Twitter.” Linkedin. Linkedin, 1 Feb. 2015. Web. 17 Nov. 2015. <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/twitter-marketing-pros-cons-russell-armstrong>.

On his personal blog Armstrong is quick to highlight the bright aspects of twitter but more importantly also remembers to cite the drawbacks. One of the most globally agreed upon downfalls of twitter is it’s ability to easily bury content or loose it as spam under millions of other tweets. He notes it often takes years to brand something and get it noticed as more than typical content. This information is important to understand while attempting to build a brand on twitter. Content strategy takes time and consistency is key.

Olanoff, Drew. “Twitter Debuts Moments.” TechCrunch. 6 Oct. 2015. Web. 17 Nov. 2015. <http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/06/project-glacier/#.cxicwgi:TMDC>.

In october 2015 twitter launched a new feature which it hoped would draw back in the skeptical user base it had lost. Twitter, known for its fast paced and rapid environment scared off many users because they felt it was too confusing to use. Olanoff quotes the CEO of twitter as saying ” it’s not a new house, its a front door”. Which gets to the main point that a fresh tool of organization has been added to the apps main screen making it easier to see the most talked about topics, it enables you to join the conversation, reply to other users and retweet stories. This information will be a starting point while i engage in current content for my project.

Cave, Andrew. “Will Twitter Be Dead in Three Years.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 2015. Web. 17 Nov. 2015. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewcave/2015/01/31/will-twitter-still-be-around-for-super-bowl-lii-in-2018/>.

Cave is blunt in his findings about twitter, claiming twitter lacks value for its users. Famously being limited by 140 characters twitter users are often frustrated by having to commit grammatical woes while typing or create multiple tweets to relay one message. Knowing there is opposition or wariness around your branding tool of choice is a factor to consider when attempting to get your content notices, not all people may share your platform. It is clear to see that some people seriously dislike the platform and that limits an audience to some extent.

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Reflection 

While writing a bibliography is not a new concept by any means for me it is totally alien and confusing to me. Though it may seem shocking I have never had to create one outside of listing websites and having just learned about citation machine I was thrown for a loop. I won’t beat around the bush i strongly dislike, possibly even loathe citing, and sourcing thing it is so tedious and boring to get through.

Though in the end I do see the point vaguely, in order to effectively use the source the writer should have a clear and quick understanding of the content and how it fits into the mainstay of their project. If i had to do it over, I wouldn’t.. I’m kidding I would but i still wouldn’t like it. Personally i would rather draw solely from my project over the sources but I understand it needs objectives and reference points to not be biased. Overall I am glad thats over with and I can move forward with my project.

Revised Final Project Proposal

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My focus for this final project will be framed around twitter and user engagement. I originally wanted to observe two very popular and active twitter accounts for their user engagement but now I’m tailoring it to build my brand on twitter. I am basing my strategy on the textbooks and material we’ve read in class as well as outside sources. My objective is to see if by applying these concepts I can gain a larger following. After looking through the material and realizing I would like to have a larger twitter presence I propose to apply one strategy a week and in the end seeing if they have increased my user engagement or following.

On twitter there is a feature that allows you to track the engagement of your tweets, it tells you how many users have seen my content. So I would in turn be able to see if the tactics are working.

REVISION: The deliverables i will be providing will be in the form of the analytics bar on twitter, i will be screen shotting and posting the weeks results on my e portfolio and then reflecting on the experience and then comparing the results to the sources suggested outcomes.

First I will average my current user engagement to compare to the engagement at the end.

I have broken down into 5 weeks the strategies I plan to apply and at the end of the week I will see by how much, if any my engagement increased.

Week #1- Leverage trending topics. I will explore the moments and trending sections of twitter and engage in the conversation for at least 2 of them per day.

Week #2- Boost visibility by tweeting with at least three content based hashtags that represent a call to action.

Week #3- Fuel my profile with shared content. I will share and comment on popular stories to attract or raise questions about the content.

Week #4- Branch out. I will locate and attempt to engage with three professionals in my desired career field (marketing).

Week #5- Cross post. In the last week I will share my content from linkedin and open lab on my twitter to show professional work on my twitter feed as well.

Week #6- For the last week I will gather and assess my data, see which week had the largest engagement and overall by how much (if any) my engagement increased.

My objective for doing this project is to better learn how to management my content online and build a profile to reflect that of an emerging professional. At the end and in the final version I want to answer these three questions.

  1. How did I apply each strategy? What was hardest and what was easiest about doing so? Which did I feel worked the best?
  2. Which one statistically had the largest engagement increase and over all by what percent did my user engagement change?
  3. Did I accomplish my goal? If not how do I plan on continuing to do so and what do I think my twitter profile now reflects of me as a student, professional and person?

My sources potentially would be:

Digital Literacy Text

Writing with new Media Text

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton/2014/09/29/25-ways-to-grow-your-social-media-presence/

26 Tips to Strengthen Your Social Media Marketing

http://mashable.com/2011/12/15/branding-and-social-media/#j_qJ42Q0haqM

I plan to add additional sources as I go into depth about why people are drawn to certain content, what makes content engaging and what is the best time of day to publish content.

 

Response 10- Digital presence and identity

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Cohen &Kenny (Page 205/06)

For this exercise I looked through my two most used social media sites, Twitter and Facebook. My facebook is completely private only friends are able to view my posts, twitter however is an open door it is totally public. I also used timehop, which is an app that shows you what you posted years back on this date, so one, two or even as far as six years back can be viewed (presuming you’ve had the account that long). I will also add that upon preparing from graduation from my Alma matter my adviser suggested that I clean up my media presence and make a professional accounts and recreational ones. So I did just that, making a twitter handle and facebook page which i could share on my linkedin (I did not make a “professional” instagram I just cleaned up my current one) and then keeping my recreational ones private and free of my real name and email address. For this exercise I will be analyzing the social media pages I created to “brand” myself as an emerging professional.

Does your online identity convey to the audience your future goals and ambitions?

My twitter handle @pezz718 does in some ways convey my goals and ambitions, if you click the link you can see my bio lists that I am a tax preparer, manager, student and mother. So it lists the three main focuses of my life. If you then scroll through my tweets you’ll see that sometimes my activity can be infrequent but the theme is overall the same. I like to share current event articles from various news outlets, sometimes with commentary sometimes without. I will only retweet or post things that are of interest to me or that I have opinions on but I am always careful to word things diplomatically. Last but not least I include tidbits of my personality, my life and what I might be up to at the moment.

My facebook however is somewhat opposite, I post infrequently on facebook and when i do its mainly to update my family or friends in other states on what Ava and I have been up to. In the last year my cluster of posts came around holidays or other milestones, like the first day of school or a personal achievement. Though I don’t post often on my views or beliefs I have posted about going back to school and what i am going for.

Does it tell the audience what you do for a living or hope to do for a career?

On both my twitter and facebook it is fairly easy to tell what I currently do and what I aspire to do. On twitter as I mentioned above my header (right under my profile picture) states what I do, that i’m a student as well as a mother. If you read my tweets going back you can see when I got accepted and signed onto the major here at NYCCT. On facebook it’s easier to see because it lists the school and the major as well as how far along I am. However you have to rely on my status updates to understand where I plan to go with this degree.

What assumptions would someone make about your personality?

I would hope that people would assume that I am, organized, educated, motivated and unique. I share a variety of things on all my pages, current events, entertainment and just my own quirky observations that I would hope there is enough insight into my life to be helpful but not too much where it clouds the line of professionalism.