Make It Your Own
If you didn’t already know, I studied abroad last spring in London and it was the best semester of my life.
Flash forward to Wednesday of last week. It’s been a year since I flew to England to start a new chapter in my life and I miss it every day. It doesn’t help that now, a new group of JMU students are living in my flat, sleeping in my bed and experiencing every fun thing that I experienced first. It seems childish, but even though I know thousands of people do those same things every day, I somehow feel like they’re mine, and only I am entitled to experience them.
After a four day pity party, filled with looking at friends’ pictures on Facebook and thinking about how much fun those people there now are having, I realized the wallowing was getting me nowhere. What is the point in living vicariously through others when you’ve lived it yourself?
So here is my tip for you: Don’t compare your experiences with those of others. Not only will it depress you, but it will discount your own travels, which, no matter how much you think they might, can’t be made less exciting just because someone else is experiencing them.
And just for my own emotional reassurance, here are some really great pictures from the super fun semester I had!
ESPN Gets Connected
Earlier in the week, as I sat with my dad watching Sports Center, I told him how I was researching how ESPN used social media to connect with their viewers. “Good luck,” he told me. “ESPN is a man’s network- we don’t use all of that Twitter stuff.”
I was excited to tell my dad that he was absolutely wrong. ESPN has social media down pat. Their understanding of how to use the internet to their advantage definitely impressed me.
You might remember from my preliminary research that several ESPN shows had their own Twitter page, as well as many Facebook fanpages. While ESPN itself doesn’t have a profile, it is good that people from the individual shows want to be connected. It doesn’t end there, however.
I began my research, obviously, on the ESPN website. The first thing that caught my eye was a link to Bill Simmons’s podcast, “The BS Report,” on Sports Guy’s World. “OK,” I told myself, “Podcasts are good.” Besides this podcast updating regularly and providing episode summaries, I found something even more interesting. You can download a widget of the podcast right to your blog, Facebook profile, or dashboard! You can actually download a widget for EIGHT blogs, podcasts, and columns. This is such a good idea! What better way to ensure that people are keeping up to date on your publication than allowing them to put it exactly where they want it!
Simmons’s Podcast is not the only one featured on the ESPN website- they actually have a whole PodCenter! I immediately noticed that they have a Twitter icon for you to follow them, but this was not one of the accounts that came up when I searched ESPN. They might learn something from doing a little research in SEO! Anyway, the PodCenter has an impressive three pages of podcasts, all which discuss something a little different. Podcasts range from Nascar with “Jayski’s Podcast” to well known shows like “Mike and Mike.” You can also find links to a few videos on this page.
SportsNation is also an area of ESPN’s website that embraces social media. This pages, that is like a blog/chat room, features answers from players, writers, and fans to questions, as well as polls and links to numerous other blogs and websites. It is such a hybrid of social media at work that I am having trouble classifying it. It is definietly a huge connection between sports fans and ESPN.
So, as it turns out, ESPN makes a huge showing in the Social Media world. Contrary to my dad’s belief of it being a “man’s network,” ESPN knows how to harness the power of social media and allows sports fans world wide to connect with their favorite sports network.
