Part A: Use of social media
Social media plays an important role in awareness creation. It provides the best mode of communication to many organizations in the present world. It involves the use of social networks such as Televisions, face book, websites among other broadcasting techniques. Social media build an idea environment for interaction where people can meet and share their idea. Communication in the social media covers a wide area since many people are accessible to the information, for instance, many people can access information posted to a Facebook page. Information posted can be spread to many people over a short period of time. Advancement in technology has played an important role in improving social media communication. People who are a distant apart can communicate to each other as if they are close to each other. Many organizations have utilized the social media to communicate their agenda to the mass. This text will focus on Acorns Children’s Hospice, one of the social care organizations by analysing how the organization utilizes social media to create its awareness (Firth, Luff, & Oliviere, 2005, 58).
Acorn children hospice trust is one of the registered charity organizations that offers network of care and support to the life-threatened and life-limited children and their families across the entire central England. The organization constitutes a well community team that offers support to families in their homes. Aware creation is important since it helps the family to mobilize resources and seek for support from various organizations in order to support the charity work. Social media enhances the acknowledgement of the organization and its activities globally and therefore, anybody willing to support the organization can do it from wherever they are (Firth, Luff, & Oliviere, 2005, 56).
The organization uses various social media to communicate on their values. These include advertisement through the television. This provides an ideal method of awareness creation since most people are accessible to television in the present world. The advertisements are made at a given interval period of time repeatedly so that many people can acquire the information communicated on the advertisement. For example, the North West hospice club jointly came together to launch a joint TV advertisement. The main aim of the advertisement was to raise funds and creation of awareness about their existence
They also use Face book to advertise their services and terms of operation. For more emphasis, they upload the group photo of the children supported by the organization and post it on face book. Through these, anybody who accesses their page will see their existence. Face book forms one of the most used social media today. Studies show that most youth today are addicted to Face-book, approximately more than half the youth population in the world access Face book every day. They access Face book through chatting with friend and in the process they can come across the adverts made via the Face book. They have form their Face book link and twitter link that people can follow to access their information
They also have a website where they post their activities and news. Anybody can access the information posted on the website when he or she visits the website. They have a well-organized website where they description. They have pages and links on the website that people can follow in order to partner with them in their activities. One can reach their site by clickingwww. acorns. org. uk. Websites are not very popular compared to the Facebook and twitters. The advantage in the website is that they provide a deep description of the activities of the company and therefore, one can get full details about the company from their website. Advertisement on the website is conducive for the current digital world, the advertisement can be read by any person in the world. The only disadvantage with this kind of advertisement is that the analogue people may not get the information and therefore they may not get accessed to the information. This mode of awareness creation only favours literate people and this that the information is limited to the learned people who can access the internet (Brown & Warr, 2007, 35).
The organization also uses social interaction and engagement in social activities to advertise their existence. This provides one of the best way of awareness creation, however, it is only limited to the region where the firm is located. The children home is the official charity of Aston Villa. They have the acorn’s day where they engage in so many activities. Since people like football, the association of the organization with football enhance the knowledge of people about the organization (Tuten, 2008, 68).
Internet is used by people of all ages and therefore it forms one of the major medium of communication and is used to replace the TV advertisement, magazine and newspaper advertisement because of their limited coverage and lack of standardization. Online advertisement does not limit the volume of information that can be posted on the net and therefore, it allows the organization to give a full description of their activities. The organization can improve their awareness creation campaign using the social media by forming a link that link that can allow people to access the information using the phones via the text message. The information presented in this manner will reach the biggest percentage of people in the whole world including people who are not accessed to network.
Communications on the social media are usually communicated in English which is a common language of the social network. This limits people who cannot understand English from acquiring the information. The information can be structured in that it is communicated in various language that at least many people if not all can understand. The information posted should give a detail of their programs, their ambitions and visions as an organization rather than just communicating their existence. People will get attracted to the company and be willing to visit their social websites and social Face book accounts after learning of the organizational visions and operational strategy.
Evaluation according to appendix 3
- Does your agency use social media? (since when, in what ways)
Yes, the urgency uses social has been using social media since the period when it was formed. The group uses TV, and social networks such as Facebook to create awareness.
- How successful do you think it is?
The use of social network has helped the organization to get donors who support the program.
- How many of your staff have social media skills?
About a half of the staff members have some skills in social media
- Do you use social media in direct service delivery?
Yes
- How might your agency/organisation use social media in the future?
The organization can advance in its use of social media establishing a data base that will be used to update the organization’s program to the interested people.
- Is there anything else you would like to say on the use of social media in social care?
Social media plays an important role in awareness creation about the social care organizations.
Part B: Reflective Summery
Effective communication is fundamental factors in an individual’s life. It is the key interpersonal skill and learning how an individual can improve communication skills is an important value in life. Communication involves the sending of the message and receiving of the message. Engagement in activities in these modules has enhanced my communication and interpersonal relations in various ways. Proper communication and interpersonal understanding enhances the individual’s relationship in the social area (Donnelly, & Neville, 2008, 37). It helps in avoiding misunderstanding and possible conflicts that may arise between two individuals. People conflict over issues because of misunderstanding that arises from poor communication skills. Eloquent speech shows maturity and organization in an individual’s thinking. Through the module, my way of information presentation has improved in that I can now present information in a way that it can be understood easily.
One of the important aspects in communication that I learnt is the art of listening. Listening is a critical element in a communication that involves more than one person. It mostly affects the verbal communication. Poor listening leads to misunderstanding in the communication and this may result to disagreement between the parties involved in communication (Donnelly, & Neville, 2008, 39). There is need of using clarification and reflections in order to understand the meaning and the intention of the communication from the other party to avoid confusion.
Interpersonal skills help us to communicate effectively and interact with people in our daily activities. People with strong interpersonal skills are usually successful in both the personal and professional life. Good interpersonal skills bring out the perception of calm, optimistic charismatic and confident in and individual and these qualities are usually appealing to others. Through the module I have acquired confident to relate positively with every person I interact with unlike in the past where I could segregate myself and chose people to communicate with. Effective communication is a communication that is bias free and does not tolerate prejudice.
Some of the interpersonal skills learned in the module include verbal communication, non-verbal communication, negotiation, listening, problem solving, decision making and assertiveness. I can now express my ideas in an organized manner and in a scenario where there is need of negotiation; I know the approach to take. The study about communication skills and interpersonal skills is an important study that should be encouraged in any learning institution. Many people lack proper communication and interpersonal skills and therefore, they cannot address matters affecting them in the best way. This is the reason why there is a lot of wars and conflict in many parts of the world today. These skills are also important in the development and success of any business organization (Koprowska, 2010, 128).
Building good communication skills help in reducing stress. Proper communication builds friendship and strong social support to an individual. One can easily vent out issues affecting them to the people they trust. On the other hand, interpersonal skills enable an individual to make appropriate decision on matters affecting him or her (Whitcomb, & Whitcomb, 2013, 190). People usually face problems and challenges in the daily life and the major problem comes when an individual has to make a decision on a given matter at hand. This is the point where many people fail and because they don’t know the decision making skills, they end up making poor and informed decision that causes a lot of problems in their life. The module enhanced my decision making skills in that now I can take time, analyze the problem and eventually come out with an appropriate decision.
Proper communication needs experimentation and practice. The skills are learned through experience and they improve along the course of life. Communication requires application of ethics and etiquette. In communication, I have learned to be honest and never to criticize anybody during the conversation. Communication involves allowing oneself to be challenged by other people’s idea. One should focus on the conversation during the communication process and avoid any form of interruption that may deter effective communication.
Some of the ways in which an individual can improve the interpersonal and communication skills are as follows. An individual may seek an opportunity to lead in order to improve on the communication and interpersonal skills. Leadership provides a god ground for training individuals on their interaction with other people within the organization. To improve on the interpersonal skills, one ought to take up proactive initiative in any position they are. For instance, in a business setting, one may bring up fellow co-workers together to solve a problem within the institution or develop a concept that will help improve the performance of the business organization (West, & Turner, 2011, 25). Through such activities, one learns how to effectively communicate with other people and at the same time he or she develops the interpersonal skills.
Interpersonal skills are also perfected through practice. For example, people may learn to express themselves by engaging in writing activities since through it, it train it help a person to think before speaking out. Writing requires control and therefore, it helps people to communicate to themselves. Internal communication precedes the interpersonal communication; consistent writing can help a person improve on the interpersonal and communication skills. On the other side, practice can also be conducted by rehearsing communication skills by recording tool. Learners can record can record themselves and later on listen or watch themselves speaking. In the analysis, the person analyses the effective use of body language, language command, and tone of voice and the level of confidence.
Acting is an art that offers a good opportunity to relate with various groups of people. It can enable a person to build on language command and confidence. Through acting, a person gets a chance to communicate on the stage in a manner that the audience can understand and appreciate. Through this, a person is able to build on his or her communication and interpersonal skills. There are several leaders in many spheres of life who expresses good communication and interpersonal skills. Taking time to watch and listen from speeches made by such leaders may also guide an individual to enhance the interpersonal skills. Communication and interpersonal skills determines how far an individual may go in terms of social related activities. This means that it also dictates personal success, poor communication and interpersonal skills result into failure in life (West, & Turner, 2011, 23).
SMART action plan
