Jenna Priscilla Joswick

Queens University of Charlotte

COMM 658 – Creativity and Networks

Connectivity Strategic Plan

April 26, 2017

I. Introduction/Purpose

Since I recently moved back to Pittsburgh and enjoy networking and local eateries, I will

focus this connectivity project around networking events in the city and popular, new

and exciting restaurants. Through connecting with like-minded young professionals, I

aim to increase visibility of sponsored networking events, as well as create awareness

about the local restaurants that Pittsburgh has to offer. I will also work to expand my

personal reach on Twitter and LinkedIn and connect on various platforms with

professionals in the greater Pittsburgh area.

II. Project Description & Goals

A. Project Description

I want to attend more local networking events, and I feel like people who are similar

minded would also like to be ‘in the know’ about networking events that could be of

interest to them. Along with networking events, I can share thoughts and specials about

local restaurants that people, like myself, may want to try. I view networking events in a

similar way to going out to a happy hour or meal with friends, as all discussions about

work or networks could lead to opportunities for not only myself as a potential

communications or marketing consultant but also to people I know who may be open to

other opportunities. I am passionate about this project topic because I was given an

opportunity when I was fresh out of college and would love to be a well-connected

resource for friends and colleagues who are seeking an internship or long-term position.

B. Intended Audience

My intended audience is young professionals (24-36) who attend networking events in

the greater Pittsburgh area. This group also enjoys happy hour events and specials at

restaurants that they would not typically frequent – i.e. restaurant week type specials at

high-end eateries. Aside from trying new restaurants, this target population is also

interested in local events and places to see, like museums, comedy shows, performing

arts, etc.

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Young professionals, especially those who may have moved to the city after graduation

for a position may attend networking events simply to meet other young professionals,

whereas some young professionals may be seeking job opportunities. The

generalization that I am making about this group of people is that they are social and

find value in networking events, sponsored happy hours after work and other

happenings in and around the city in which they may have the opportunity to network

or meet people.

I built a network of both young and established professionals in the Pittsburgh area, as

well as grew my network of recruiters and human resources managers and staffing

agencies. Through first identifying who I wanted to connect with on LinkedIn and/or

follow on Twitter, I was able to start growing my network. There was a great deal of

time put into finding not only the type of person that I needed to connect with, but also

in finding specific people of accounts to start growing my network. Through meaningful

connections, my posts or tweets started getting likes or replies and my number of

followers or connections increased as I continued to tweet about events happening in

the Pittsburgh area.

C. Rationale

My big challenge was growing a following of young professionals because it took time to

identify like-minded individuals that would see value in the content that I was curating.

My goal is to utilize my LinkedIn account to cross promote my twitter activity, as I feel as

though I have a nice group of young professionals in my network who are a part of my

intended audience. It was important that I build this audience in order to share

information about networking events that were happening in the area. I also wanted

two-way communication with young professionals who had networking events that they

wanted to share with me.

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D. Goals

Through this connectivity assignment, I will not only expand my network through

attending events and meeting people face to face, but also through my LinkedIn and

Twitter accounts. I am going to use my personal Twitter account to continue to connect

with professionals and organizations that sponsor networking events and happy hour

information sessions. The main, measurable goal will be to track my social activity, such

as follows/retweets/etc. A personal goal is to have at least one local company that

sponsors and executes networking events retweet me. I want to have the visibility to

make a difference and connect young professionals to events and potentially positions.

III. Community Analysis

A. Values

Per an article published by Forbes, Millennial today value the following: meaningful

work, opportunities to collaborate, fun, and freedom of choice (Gross, 2012). The

values in this article are in line with my findings for my target audience, which is

primarily Millennial. The target audience values the time and money spent on acquiring

their education and wants to feel as though they are contributing to the organization in

which they are involved. This value is reinforced through the Forbes article in reference

to opportunities to collaborate and meaningful work. The community wants to be

appreciated and enjoys meeting new people and connecting over meaningful, shared

topics of interest. This group is generally tech savvy and is active on the social media

platforms that will be utilized in this connectivity project.

B. Central Discussions What is important in a current or potential workplace – benefits,

flexibility, advancement opportunities Food/popular restaurants – specials/discounts Who is sponsoring the networking event – who will be there?

Examples of central discussions from both Twitter and LinkedIn below.

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Discussion about food/restaurant opening

My post about upcoming networking events and a reply from @PghHappyHour

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Tweets and replies about open positions by @NetwkPittsburgh

LinkedIn post to search for work from home positions

C. Network Map

As mentioned in a previous section, I believe that my target audience for this

connectivity project can be reached through LinkedIn and on twitter. I have a current

twitter following of more than 200 currently and will be expanding this through

meaningful tweets and information shared to my target audience. People love to share

pictures of their food when they are experiencing a new, fun restaurant. I want my

target audience to share fun thoughts and pictures about networking events, as well.

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Please see below for my network map.

D. Key Influencers

A list of the initial influencers is below.

Eventbrite Network After Work Meetup (app)

Aside from the websites and app featured above, I targeted industry leaders who often

shared and promoted networking events and happy hours in the greater Pittsburgh

area. I connected with the influencers in order to reach a larger audience and expand

my followers on Twitter and my connections on LinkedIn.

A list of the influencers that I had interactions with is below.

@PghHappyHour, @NEXTPittsburgh, @NetwkPittsburgh, @Jobs4Pit, @PIT_PA_jobs

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Although the names are descriptive to the content shared on the Twitter accounts, I’ve

included a few brief notes and key discussion points below.

@PghHappyHour – The account owner visits a different happy hour every Thursday and also tweets about other events, grand openings, specials and happy hours in Pittsburgh. This account has 1700+ followers and is interactive in responding to questions and retweeting about events.

@NEXTPittsburgh – This account is the online magazine for NEXT Pittsburgh. The content is focused on events and general info. on Pittsburgh. It’s a great account to scroll through if you want to read up on Pittsburgh.

@NetwkPittsburgh – This is an account for professionals, by professionals. Although the account doesn’t post original content often, it retweets upcoming events in the city and has a following of 13K.

@Jobs4Pit – This account tweets multiple times a day and shares not only job openings in Pittsburgh, but also resume tips, job posting tips, etc.

@PIT_PA_jobs – This is a sponsored account by Beyond and The Career Network. They post job openings in the greater Pittsburgh area a few times a week.

IV. Strengths & Challenges

I would like to consider myself connected to a range of young professionals in the

greater Pittsburgh area, since I attended Point Park University, which is located in

downtown Pittsburgh, for my undergraduate degree and am now back living and

working in the city. A challenge of this connectivity project was growing my network

and followers, as well as getting young professionals to attend networking events.

Through getting a small group of my friends and colleagues involved and encouraging

them to bring friends along to other, upcoming events, this project connected young

professionals to HR managers and allowed both myself and other young professionals to

expand their networks. My geographic location, current network and interactions with

popular Twitter accounts mitigated my challenges in this project. By word of mouth and

LinkedIn messaging, I reached out to some colleagues and friends to get people involved

and interested in attending the first event that I went to.

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V. Theoretical Framework

I analyzed Goffman’s Theory of Interpersonal Communication that looks into

“relationships between interpersonal meanings and social structure, paying attention to

both symbolic value of what is said and done and the more abstract forms of social life”

(Ihlen, et al., 2009, p. 119). Goffman’s sociology is broken into the development of the

following: impression management, framing, footing, and face. These concepts help to

show the steps to "relationship building, identification, and image construction," which

were are all strategic communication goals for this connectivity project (Ihlen, van Ruler,

Fredriksson, 2009, p. 119). The breakdown of Goffman’s Theory of Interpersonal

Communication below shows how analyzing this connectivity project through this

theory adds value.

Impression Management - Ihlen, van Ruler, and Fredriksson (2009) state, “Impression

management signifies that people use communication deliberately and strategically to

create desired impressions of themselves. In interaction with others, a person uses

communication to manage other people’s impressions of him- or herself (Goffman,

1959).” This reminded me of the importance of a good first impression. Sometimes in

networking our resume is our first impression but when we have the opportunity to

meet a potential employer in a casual setting we should take the opportunity to make a

good, lasting first impression. This can also be done via social media posting and having

a professional social media presence.

Framing - In The Art of Framing, Fairhurst and Sarr (1996) state that, “we manage

meaning because we assert that our interpretations should be taken as real over other

possible interpretations”(Ihlen, et al., 2009, p. 131). Although companies may believe

that it has a positive, responsive social media presence, it is important that the brand

makes an attempt to reach not only the collective but also the individual in order to

create a meaningful interaction. If the company is spending money on a networking

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event but it’s social media and marketing isn’t reaching the intended audience, what is

the value in the event?

Footing - Per Goffman, “Footing implies both verbal and nonverbal signals representing

participants’ attitudes toward the issue of communication” (Johansson, 2009, p. 124).

Footing, as it relates to my connectivity project, is all about how the message is being

conveyed and by whom the message is being shared. Companies and local eateries

need to do their part to be social and share events and information with the public. It is

then up to influencers and interested attendees to share the information with their

networks.

Face - Dr. McArthur (2014) defines face as, "the negotiation of positive and negative

face between communicators," (p. 42). This idea ties into the connectivity project

through reputation and image. People are interested and excited to try a new, trendy

bar or restaurant that locals are raving about. If companies can get the same

influencers to promote about and retweet event information, the event will have a

positive face to social media users.

VI. Content Curation and Key Message Experimentation

Communication Tactics – Since my topic was focused around restaurants, networking

and happy hours, I feel as though my target audience was easy to reach and engage

with. People like being in the know about popular events happening in and around the

city. Through original content on Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as retweeting and

sharing posts that were both in the scope of my project and general information or fun

facts about Pittsburgh, I do believe that my target audience was reached. Social media

in general is becoming very visual, so I attribute some of my success to sharing photos of

food and drinks and colorful event flyer PDFs. I also noticed a trend in cross-social

media platform engagement. By this, I mean that my LinkedIn connections were

following me on Twitter and some of my Twitter followers found my LinkedIn and

connected with me. I tried to post and share different content on each – both still

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having relevance to the project – as to not bore or annoy my network. Along with

sharing varying content on the different platforms, I tried to test the times of day that I

would follow, tweet and retweet. I don’t believe that I have the proper analytics to

definitively say if the time of day affected my interactions and network growth.

Analytics – A large portion of my connectivity project goals was to expand my network.

Through tracking weekly activity, I can share the following analytics.

Twitter - I gained over 100 followers during this project. This may not seem like

a big number at first, but I believed that a great number of followers were real accounts

that had genuine interest in my topic. I decided to review the accounts and got the

following statistic: Out of my new followers, 65% are real people or active accounts in

the greater Pittsburgh area that were reached through my content and/or my follow. I

received four direct messages during this project about the content that I was curating

or retweeting. The data that I collected from Twitter showed me that gaining followers

who have a similar mindset and are interested in the same things that I am is more

important than gaining random Twitter followers or ghost accounts. Since starting this

project, I added more accounts that seemed relevant to my topic and deleted accounts

that were old or no longer shared relevant content. This, in my opinion helped me to

sift through and find the content and accounts that I wanted to see.

LinkedIn – I gained 34 connections during this project. My posts, likes or

comments on posts lead to 7 private messages that were about events or jobs/job

posting advice – nearly 20% of my new connections reached out to me privately. I

found that it is harder to make meaningful connections on LinkedIn if you don’t know

the person and/or if their account is private and requires their email address to be

entered to send the invitation to connect. Although I was introduced to a few young

professionals at work and connected with them, I believe that the majority of my recent

LinkedIn connections were through networking events, happy hours or attending fun

events like the 21+ nights that I attended at the Carnegie Science Center. It was

interesting to see how many connections I made throughout this project and how my

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interactions at events lead to connections that I can reach out to in the future if there is

an event or a potential position that I am trying to connect someone to.

Learning – I briefly touched on a few learning takeaways from each social media

platform that I engaged with in the paragraphs above, but I will review them further in

this section. One key takeaway is quality over quantity. I would rather have a smaller,

focused network that is interested in what I am posting about than have a large

following of ghost or spam accounts that follow accounts only for follows back. Another

takeaway is that building a network, no matter the platform, takes time and work. Not

only did I post, repost and retweet content, but I also took time in researching popular

accounts in Pittsburgh that I wanted to target and engage with. Finally, I analyzed my

connectivity project through Goffman’s Theory of Interpersonal Communication in order

to view the relationships among the target audience and the companies who

communicated via Twitter and LinkedIn.

VII. Communication Strategies

Twitter

A. Recommendation – While continuing to curate original content, I will experiment with tweeting and retweeting at different times of the day to see if there are trends in relation to interactions and time of activity.

B. Support for Recommendation – This would be important to track, so I can hit my target audience when they are most active on Twitter. There is a fine line in tweeting often and spamming your followers, so I need to find the balance, as well as engage more of my followers. One recommendation would be to do a #followerfriday to engage with a few new followers from the week and ask that they tweet back their weekend plans. The time of day that I post this and the response it yields will show me when my target audience is online.

C. Communication Tactic – Since I organized my communication strategies by social platform, I will outline my Twitter tactics in this section. The specific messages that I want to share with my growing audience is that there are networking opportunities and events available to young professionals. I also want to share other fun events that are happening around the city that my network will attend and enjoy. Visuals, such as food or drinks or event digital

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ads, will get the target’s attention. My intention would be that the visuals are strong enough to encourage the target audience to retweet about the event and then take action to attend the event.

D. Timeline for Implementation – This tactic can begin immediately and will continue on as long as I am promoting local networking events. There is no point in posting if my audience isn’t consuming my message, so I need to strategize around what time I am posting.

E. Required Resources – N/A.

F. Metrics – Connectivity can be measured not only through the number of new followers but also through reviewing the number of likes, comments and retweets each week. From there, I can make small changes to my posting schedule and review the following week.

LinkedIn

A. Recommendation – Through connecting more business cards at events, I will be able to connect with more professionals that I don’t have current permission to connect with.

B. Support for Recommendation – Through more connections, I will expand my network and be able to reach my goal of connecting your professionals with opportunities. Getting business cards at events is important to those who have a private profile and require an email address to request that they connect with you.

C. Communication Tactic – Since I organized my communication strategies by social platform, I will outline my LinkedIn tactics in this section. Since I see more personal posts on LinkedIn for those looking for positions and companies that are posting jobs, I would like to try to connect people with opportunities that I see fit. Through keeping in mind what my connections are looking for, I can quickly scroll my feed to see if there are any opportunities. I could also try to post and ask my connections to comment and share what type of opportunities they are seeking. Aside from a visual pulled from the job application site, I am not sure how powerful visuals would be for this tactic.

D. Timeline for Implementation – I could start out with a goal of posting once a month and track the progress of my interactions. If I start to see more and more interaction, I could review the frequency of this type of post.

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E. Required Resources – The only resource I need is people. I need to continue connecting with professionals in order to connect the young professionals with the right contact.

F. Metrics – I can track the number of people who comment on my post. Success will be tracked by the number of people that I am able to connect with HR or those posting opportunities on LinkedIn.

VIII. Conclusion

In conclusion, I believe that I achieved my goals of expanding my network, connecting

people to events in Pittsburgh and even had a company reply to one of my tweets when

I was looking for an upcoming event to promote. This was an interesting project and I

believe my takeaways will help me to continue to grow my network, as I would like to

continue with this project since I am genuinely interested in networking events and

other fun opportunities, like happy hours or special events at local restaurants that

provide me with the opportunity to meet and network with other young professionals in

the greater Pittsburgh area. As I continue to grow my network and attend more events,

I believe my reach will be greater and people will be more responsive to my tweets or

posts. Through analyzing my connectivity project with Goffman’s theory of

interpersonal communication, I was able to gain a deeper understanding about social

interaction and the study of interpersonal relationships between companies and the

public. It is important to track progress (analytics) and find what type of messaging

yields the most response and how to best communicate with the target audience.

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Sources:

Gross, T. S. (2012). The New Millennial Values. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Fprospernow%2F2012%2F07%2F05%2Fthe-new-millennial-values%2F&refURL=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

Ihlen, O, van Ruler, B., Fredriksson, M. (2009). Public relations and social theory. New York. Routledge.

McArthur, J. A. (2014). Planning for strategic communication: A workbook for applying social theory to professional practice. Printed manuscript.

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