This project is a strategic online media proposal for aBloom Salon. In order to provide the salon with a successful social media proposal, there must be an analysis of the current situation informed by secondary and primary research. aBloom in Latin means transformation; this salon specializes in holistic beauty. At this salon all the products are organic, natural and raw. They use a non-toxic ammonia-free color line and have a Raw Beauty Bar where clients can create all-natural custom products. This proposal aims to increase aBloom Salon's brand awareness in the most effective way possible. The project started by analyzing the salon's website, Facebook page and Instagram content and following-up with recommendations for improvement. In addition to that analysis, research was conducted on current clients to gage their social media habits and purpose for using social media. Salon owner, Alejandra Martinez, currently averages 20 to 30 clients a week and said she would like to increase to 25 to 35 clients a week. Martinez was promoting her salon through her website, word-of-mouth, Facebook, Yelp, Instagram and cross-promoting efforts with likeminded businesses.

The purpose of this study is to examine how social connectivity in a collaborative business environment translates to online social communication, namely to social media. Not a lot of academic research focuses in-depth on how startups and entrepreneurs within the technology industry perceive social media, or how their work environment can influence the ways they see the role of these platforms. Gangplank was chosen as the subject of this case study based on the emphasis they as a coworking space put on connecting to others in order to accomplish mutual goals. Initial research showed that entrepreneurs using social media did so with a collaborative focus in mind. However, it was unclear if, by developing their businesses in a space devoted to fostering social relationships, entrepreneurs would be more likely to engage and interact with other users on social media platforms. Furthermore, it was unclear if their attitudes toward online and offline communication would be affected by spending time in a dedicated social workspace. In order to find how some entrepreneurs that started or worked closely in the beginning stages of a collaborative, connection-driven workspace used social media and see whether or not they used the platform to establish and build relationships and connect with others, three entrepreneurs from such a workspace were personally interviewed. In these interviews, each entrepreneur gave their personal feelings and opinions on the space itself, their view on the role of social media, and whether or not they connected their space to their social media use. The study also examined each entrepreneur's social media profile on one prominent social network to see how each was practically using the platform, and to analyze how each entrepreneur's use of the platform compared to his perceptions of social media as a whole. The study found that entrepreneurs who became established in a collaboration-oriented space definitely interacted frequently on social media. Each entrepreneur interviewed expressed the importance of working closely with others and forming valuable connections through both online and offline means. These entrepreneurs were established to have followed all the best practices of social media use outlined through research, and to have had a large number of personally engaging interactions and conversations on observed social media platforms.

With social media rapidly expanding and evolving throughout the years, a new door has been opened to allow instant, two-way communication between an organization and its desired audience. The days of force-feeding information to mass audiences are diminishing as a consumer's quest for identity and connection is driving organizations to engage with specialized audiences through online conversation, where information can flow in both directions. Through research and analysis, an organization can identify which media platforms and communication strategies work best in successfully reaching and engaging the target audience. Content marketing in conjunction with effective messaging strategies can increase an organization's success by raising awareness for the brand and inviting the audience to spread the word both online and in person. In the following pages of this document, three successful marathons in the Greater Phoenix area are analyzed: the Phoenix Marathon in Mesa, the P.F. Chang's Rock 'n' Roll Marathon in Tempe, and the IMS Arizona Marathon in Glendale. Each analysis provides examples of how strategic messaging and campaigns are used via social media to build relationships with current and prospective race participants. In addition, demographic and psychographic information specific to athletic event participants is analyzed in order to provide an understanding of the target audience and their motives for participating in athletic events.

This researcher set out to determine whether small businesses can achieve considerable business success by utilizing social media as a public relations tool to create a brand image. There is a substantial breadth of research regarding the social media successes of large companies, but the same is not true for small businesses. This researcher aims to add to the existing pool of literature dealing with small businesses and creating social media success. First, relevant literature was examined to determine the state of the small business landscape online and to identify best practices for social media. Then the researcher analyzed three published case studies that detailed social media campaigns from three different small businesses. The researcher used the information obtained in the literature review and case study analysis to create a comprehensive social media strategy for Crosswim, a small business based in Tempe, Arizona. The culmination of this research showed that small businesses can indeed create success and brand equity by implementing a strategic social media plan. It was uncovered that social media gives small business owners the tools to create a strategy that works best for them in terms of their business and in terms of the time the owners can devote to monitoring social media.

This study investigates the use and perception of communications efforts among 197 animal-related and human services nonprofit organizations. Several facets of nonprofit communication such as traditional communication usage, social media adoption and usage, and the overall perception of the organizations' communications efforts were examined using a survey and Form 990 analysis. More in-depth analysis was conducted on the participating organizations' Facebook and Twitter accounts as well. After analyzing this data, the study found significant differences in how these two types of nonprofit organizations conduct their communications efforts. Animal-related organizations were much more active and saw higher levels of engagement on Facebook than human services organizations; however, there were no differences in how both types of organizations used Twitter. This study also found that human services organizations are more likely to have full-time or part-time staff members in charge of their communications, while animal-related organizations were more likely to assign this responsibility to a volunteer. These findings contribute valuable insight into how different types of nonprofit organizations are communicating with their stakeholders.

The People's Republic of China's inexorable ascendancy has become an epochal event in international landscape, accentuated by its triple national ceremonies of global significance: 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, 2009 Beijing Military Parade, and 2010 Shanghai World Expo. At a momentous juncture when the PRC endeavored to project a new national identity to the outside world, these ceremonial occasions constitute a high-stake communicative opportunity for the Chinese government and a fruitful set of discursive artifacts for symbolic deconstruction and rhetorical interpretation. To unravel these ceremonial spectacles, a public memory approach, with its versatile potencies indexical of a nation's interpretive system of social meaning, its normative framework of ideological model, and its past-present-future interrelationships, is contextually, conceptually, and analytically diagnostic of a rising China's sociopolitical constellations. Thus employing public memory as a conceptual-methodological matrix, my dissertation focuses on the prominent texts in these ceremonies, excavates their historico-memorial invocation and sociocultural persuasion, and plumbs their discursive agenda, rhetorical operation, and sociopolitical implication. I argue that the Chinese government deliberately and forcefully strove for three interrelated communicative objectives at these three ceremonies--re-imaging, re-asserting, and re-anchoring its national identity as an ancient, emergent superpower. Yet in contemporary Chinese context, its discursive (con)quest to recast its leadership as a historically continuous, culturally orthodox, and ideologically legitimate regime has always been compromised by its mythologized historical representation and hegemonic rhetorical reconfiguration, countervailed by its political and ideological fragility, and contested by domestic and global publics. Besides its contributions to the current conversation on the PRC's ceremonial phenomena, discursive formations, and communicative dynamics, this dissertation further offers its diagnosis and prognostication of this projected leading country in the 21st century.