Week 14

Measuring Social Media Success
How to Gauge your Social Media Campaign Success 
This is a pretty good article on gauging your success using social media. Some good ideas on how to plan for your success, how to improve your success, the main idea I got from this article is to just stay on your toes, use competition to gauge your success, be better than the competition.

Social Media: Measure What Matters
This article emphasizes on the idea that you may be getting the "numbers" with your social media environments, but are you getting the positive interaction with your customers? A big aspect with measuring social media is how well your customers interact with your business in your environments.

Measuring social media sentiment without keywords and smiley faces
This article goes into actually using tools to measure success. They criticize the klout score saying that "sentiment is not an individual number" I agree with this, impressions can't really be measured with machines and graphs, not at this point in time at least.

 Conclusion
Social media success has a few pretty straight forward concepts. You need to be able to use the most popular and upcoming websites effectively, make sure customers are aware that your company is apart of these websites. Being active on these websites is key, but not active enough to seem annoying, there is a fine line but it's easy to get a feel of how much you should be posting to a website. Interacting with customers is also a big key part of being successful with your social media marketing, customers want to have a more personal feel and will be positively effected by these interactions, bringing them back. 

Week 13

Case Study for Razer Computer Products
Razer is a company that engineers and produces high end gaming products, mainly focusing on PC gaming. The quality of their products are very much comparable to an Apple product, but for the windows enthusiast. Like Apple, Razer describes their following like a "cult" and has the right to do so because there are some very hardcore fans that will use Razer only peripherals. As a user of Razer peripherals I can vouch for the fact that the quality and feel of their products are next to none.

Like most companies, Razer has their brand in all areas of social media from Twitter to Facebook. They also have a YouTube channel where they showcase and demo their products.

Razer Twitter
Razer's CEO has his own twitter account @minliangtan, as well as a company twitter account @cultofrazer. The CEO is pretty good about talking with the customers and fans, and the company twitter is good about responding to fans, they are both very engaging.

Razer Youtube
The youtube channel they have showcases and demos all of their products. This is good for a company because it reaches out to so many people and it is a pretty cheap alternative to buying commercial time on television. A smaller company like Razer, who's target audience is obviously on the coputer a lot, can benefit from this, and I think they do a good job at it.

Razer on Facebook
The Razer facebook page https://www.facebook.com/razer is pretty average, there are giveaways, polls, and advertising of product. This is a pretty good place to check new products, the people that run the Facebook will respond if a customer has issues also. There is not as much engagement from the company to make it feel personal, but there is engagement which is better than nothing.

 Conclusion
I really think non-everyday name companies like Razer really benefit from Social Media and word of mouth. You never hear about Razer on TV but the audience is not as large as Apple or Nike. The usage of social media for them is key and I believe they have done a very good job at utilizing it. I am unaware of Apple's new CEO using twitter and personally responding to people there, or Nike's CEO using twitter... I think that reflects greatly of the company.     

Week 8

Effective Social Media Marketing Videos

Video 1

This video is effective because 1. It is aesthetically pleasing and inviting. I didn't feel the need to find a different video right away because the video captured me from the start with inviting music and an inviting voice. 2. The video covers good points on branding, keeping customers, and attracting customers using social media marketing. 3. The video is very well edited and animated, it looks professional and it improves the experience all together.

Video 2

This is more of a presentation but it covers a lot of the same points as the previous video, except in this video the woman presenting mentions a service called Yelp. I think it's good to see negative feedback about your company from your customers because it will show you where your business needs improvement. It can also be a double edged sword though because although you are learning from mistakes, your mistakes are always shown to the public on that website. The presenter also talks about ways to improve business by advertising sales, different tricks to get business (bring a friend and get a discount on your haircut)

Video 3

I chose this video because the social media website this video refers to(Google+) is up and coming and it digs deep into what kinds of things you can accomplish with it. As a company, knowing everything there is to know about popular social media websites is key, you can unlock the full potential of the website and I think this video accomplishes what Google+ can do so far. The video also introduces a few tools that can be used regarding Google+ that will help you find contacts and other positive things that can improve your marketing strength.

Conclusion
In conclusion, I think videos need to be aesthetically pleasing, clear, informative, and relevant to the technology that's being used in the present. Tips and tricks regarding each website are also a great plus to the informative content of your video. Companies utilizing every aspect of a social media website will have better results than somebody using default settings.

Week 7

I picked 3 companies that I was particularly interested in and I ended up choosing, were Apple, Razer, and Newegg. They all had Facebook fan pages with hundreds of thousands of fans obviously.

My top pick is going to go with Newegg because 1. right after you like the page, it sends you to a welcome screen that you can enter your information to enter a contest to win things. This is good for them to get a hold of your address and information 2. they are always posting things on their wall about sales and deals they have going on, plus sometimes they will give you special deals if you have their Facebook page liked. I got 20 dollars off on a video card one time because I followed a link they had posted on their wall that was only available to Facebook friends.

My second pick is going to be Razer. This company makes professional quality PC gaming peripherals, they also just put out a top of the line, high performance gaming laptop. These guys weren't my number one because they don't ever offer deals on their products. A lot of their items are over priced, but they are much better quality than the second best which is usually not much cheaper. They are also good about communicating with their fan base on Facebook, you will always see posts asking what the customer thinks about x product. I think this is good for a company because you want to put out a product that the consumer wants, and asking the consumer directly is the best way to do it.

My third choice was Apple. This one is much bigger than the other 2 but the actual Page is not as impressive and interactive as the others. They do a fan of the week contest and promote their online store a little, but all in all the layout is bland and boring. I was suspicious that I might've picked a page that wasn't official, but it has 700k+ likes so I'm pretty sure that's the right one. I really agree on communicating with customers and fan base. I think in Apple's case though, they have a large enough following that really doesn't care what they do, and they will still buy their products.

Facebook vs. Google+. Right now, Facebook wins hands down, Google+ is very very new and honestly, I'm not sure a majority of people even know it exists yet. I've been on Google+ since the closed beta and it is now fully functional. It still reminds me of an old western ghost town with tumbleweed rolling across the ground. Don't get me wrong, it's great, I wish I could replace Facebook with it, but there is hardly anyone on it. Now 2 or 3 years from now, it has a great possibility of being a different story, hopefully. From a business standpoint, obviously Facebook is better. There are millions more people on Facebook, but it would be a good idea as a business to hop on the Google+ train. 

Week 6

1. Classmate's Blog
The 2 blogs I picked were Kathryn's and Tommy's
I picked Kathryn's blog because it is very well put together and had some had some good insight on the topics. I especially liked her thoughts on the McLuhan tetrad regarding the receiving aspect. Facebook makes it incredibly easy to find people we might have had to part ways with at one point in our lives, and it can bring us back together. I had really never thought of that, and I am happy she pointed that out.

I chose Tommy's blog because even though a company needs to have good information on their blogs, they also need to have an aesthetically pleasing and original looking design, I really think Tommy's blog, and the way he puts together his ideas, does that. It's very creative.

2. Social Media Marketing Blog
There are a plethora of blogs regarding social media marketing. The one I ended up choosing is called Flowtown. The specific blog entry I chose was Facebook's Timeline and the Evolution of Social Media. I chose this entry because it gives some good observations on Facebook's new timeline and the general direction our social media interactions are heading. The 2nd blog entry I chose was Should You Buy Twitter Followers?. This is a good post because it lists the pros and cons of buying followers and ultimately paying for your own popularity on one of the most popular social media websites, Twitter.

3. 3 Blogs used by businesses
 The first blog I chose was not so much a blog, but a Twitter account for the popular video game "Battlefield 3". I'm pretty positive it is ran by DICE, the company that developed the game. I give this account an A because although it is simple, whoever runs it takes good care of the customers that @ reply and mention the @battlefield handle. I know just by looking at the feed that the company is keeping in touch with its customers, It's good to keep a personal connection like that.
The second blog will be Tiger Direct's facebook. When I had facebook I used to "like" Tiger Direct and when you have them liked on facebook you could have access to special deals on some of their items. They also ask questions to fans and have contests and what not, I give the page a B because the relationship between the customer and company is still cloudy and has room for improvement.

Week 4

After going through the material you provided, the slideshare link you provided about not needing a social media marketing plan really stuck out to me. Social media marketing honestly does need to be combined with traditional planning.
"Stop looking at social media marketing as an add on and embracing it into your traditional planning"
I feel that is a very McLuhan-esque statement. I believe that this will become best practice or social media marketing.
I didn't really find anything else comparable to that slideshare but I did find this
Developing a Social Media Plan
This agrees more to the second slideshare link you provided (Creating a Social Media Plan)

Regarding the project, I honestly wouldn't change anything about it. It covers all aspects that I could possibly think of. The part I might suggest is part about reviewing what similar companies are doing and do what they don't do. My main reason of choosing this is because although they might be successful doing what they are doing, but there are things they aren't doing that could make them even more successful. I think our institution should take advantage of that and use it to our benefit.

Week 3 - Marshall McLuhan

McLuhan's tetrad, at first, was hard for me to grasp. I'm slowly gaining understanding and I can confidently say I have a basic grasp of what he is trying to say. He wants people to go beyond what there is that is plainly visible, and get the more subtle ques and responses of people.

When McLuhan's tetrad is applied to something like the internet, we can say that it
1. Enhances speed data can get to one end to the other. No longer are we putting mail in envelopes, and giving them to the pony express which takes many days to reach its destination.
2. We can say that the internet can reverse how thorough we are with data. It's so easily accessible that we aren't really analyzing as much as we would when all we had were books and not wikipedia.
3. With easily accessible data, people are becoming (more so than normal) obsessed with information, like in the renaissance era, people were innovative and inventive. We can say we have always always like that, but right now technology and the need for information is booming, just like in that era.
4. The biggest thing the internet has taken away are borders. No longer do we have to travel across the sea to see somebody that's in Europe, we can use Skype and we can see and hear the individual, at the same time, it's also making physical interaction obsolete. There is a certain vibe you can pick up on from a person when you are physically standing in front of them that you can't pick up from a video stream.

Many of my earlier points can be applied to social media marketing. We see adds on social media websites that are making sunday add flyers in the newspaper become irrelevant. We are seeing this marketing virtually everywhere. Social media marketing tactics are strategically targeting people on websites like facebook and twitter to buy their products, no boundaries and instant access. Another thing I've noticed with twitter, that is greatly applied to the tetrad, is how twitter reverses the need to convey your thoughts in more than 140 characters. You can (I believe) put as much text, or maybe it's a 1000 characters, on a Facebook post. I believe we are seeing (or saw) social media evolution when the hop from Facebook to Twitter happened. Now a new social media website just came out called Path, instead of text, it's just pictures. Those are just some of my thoughts on the subject, and I was probably thinking a little too much about it.

links I used
http://www.horton.ednet.ns.ca/staff/scottbennett/media/index.html
http://www.digitallantern.net/mcluhan/course/fall96/tetrad.html
http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm

Week 2

1 Companies need to have access to multiple social media websites, it's the only way to stay up to date and be relevant.
-All of the people in the interviews you provided us with are using at least Facebook, second most popular would be Twitter. They are both awesome social networking sites to have because you can reach out to the masses with them. Twitter for example, you can find a company similar to yours, go into that companies followers, and follow them. Usually people will follow back, it's that easy.

2 Before a company even starts out on social media websites, they need to know what they are trying to achieve.
 -What are you going to create adds and videos for, if you don't know what your goal is? In one of the podcasts I listen to, one of the hosts were talking about how Sony advertises for the Playstation 3. He said that when it first came out, a PR person from Sony was speaking at some convention, I can't recall, but the PR person really wasn't sure how to promote this product. The PS3 does a lot of different things, Sony is just confused on how they should promote. Do we promote as a video game console? a computer alternative? a blu ray player? It does so many things that it's hard to draw the line on what job it should promote the PS3 for.

3 Posts and advertisements need to be relevant to what the company is currently striving for, example, adds about an older item are not as effective as adds about the newest up to date item. Management and media need to be in sync. Another example that I got from the pro wrestling interview, is that company probably does better on youtube because people want to watch videos of wrestling, not look at pictures on facebook(I'm aware you can watch videos) or read text about it on twitter.

4. Make sure you are using the most popular social networking site to it's full potential.
-For example, using myspace, a dead social networking site, to host your adds, is not as beneficial compared to showing them on facebook, which has 800 million+ users. If I recall, only one of the interviewees used myspace still, which some people do use that, bands in general are still a big player with Myspace right now.

5. Last but not least, always have good interactions with people you associate with online.
-About a month ago, a game company called N-Control, makes a microsoft xbox controller add on, that is intended for people with disabilities to use the controller, was using a company called Ocean Marketing for their PR. The owner of a well known gaming website called Penny-Arcade (they run convention called PAX Prime and PAX East) had ordered one of the products, and somehow it never got shipped to his house. Long story short, the PR guy from Ocean Marketing said some very unnecessary things and he ended up losing his chance to have any kind of promotional booth at any PAX events, it was also posted on the penny arcade website, which gets hundreds of thousands of hits a day, and before the day was over, big name gaming companies were talking about it. Here is a link to one of the articles covering it. Here it is

Week 1, Assignment 1. It Begins

I took this course not really knowing what to expect. The world is so connected with socially (via social networking, the internet, cell phones) that everybody knows what everybody is doing. It's kind of scary. I recently deleted my facebook because I was just wasting too much time on it. I was disappointed in myself. I still have google+ and twitter though, which I really only follow/are friends with people I actually know. That wasn't the case with Facebook.


Anyways, I'm going to be providing a couple of links, which I think are great, regarding social media and information on the subject.

a big one, right off the bat is mashable
this website sort of like yahoo, but for more tech savvy people (in my opinion) It has all your general news topics and needs.

another good one is off of yahoo news
some people criticize yahoo news. I've used it for years and it tends to have content that's relevant to the moment. Any news website will have this trend though really, I just prefer yahoo. 

Some examples of companies using social media for advertising, one that pops in my head right away is Youtube. Adds all the time before you start to actually see your video. Hulu does this too. I remember when Youtube first became a website, it wasn't like that. Just adds on social networking in general are examples, twitter has promoted accounts to follow, Facebook has promoted companies in their add bar. The only social networking site that I haven't seen any corporate promotion on is google+. They will get there soon enough, though.
Obviously, these are very effective tactics. You have some 800 million users on Facebook, seeing these adds, giving add revenue to whomever.
Another tactic that's pretty sneaky and very effective, are the adsense cookies that you get from browsing sites like zappos or tigerdirect or anything. You'll leave that site and start seeing sidebar adds for things that are relevant to your interests. Very, very effective, almost unethical in my opinion.