Chapter 22

Interpersonal refers to the many applications and web sites in the social media ecosphere that allow us to communicate live in real time. We can communicate live through one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many communication.

One-to-one communication includes Skype. Skype are low-cost calls that reach another person anywhere in the world at any time. Skype also provide inexpensive local, national, and international calls to phones and mobiles. One-to-many communication includes Twitter. Twitter is the most popular communication tool today as a microblogging platform. These Twitter messages of 140 characters or less are also delivered to anyone who has accepted to follow your messages. GoToMeeting is for any business a cost-effective, easy-to-use online meeting solution that improves productivity and sales. This is would be an example of a many-to-many form of communication. GTM’s web conferencing tool allows users to meet online rather than in a conference room.

The main advice of this chapter is to go explore with a lot of great social media applications that encourage communicate with your customers. This chapter put the levels of communication that are available. I feel, after reading this chapter, that all the information I want to find is right at my fingertips, I just have to go searching for it. Sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have reinvented interpersonal relationships for the digital age. Within these online communities, users share status updates, self-generated media, journal entries and other interpersonal communication. The purpose is to reinforce established friendships and form bonds with new friends. It’s interesting to see how interpersonal communication has changed with the boom of social media and these two have be able to merge to form a new kind of communication that reaches people around the world.

Chapter 21

Today’s cell phones allow people to download music, read from and write to a blog, surf the web, receive emails, take and share videos. They boast features beyond making a simple telephone call. Cell phones can now send text messages, perform Internet browsing, play back music, organize personal information, contacts, etc. The mobile phone data services are most widely used for test messaging, music and picture downloads, video gaming, and video.

With popular networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook mobile telephone web access is more important than ever. Twitter has also made a huge impact on texting, microblogging, and communicating through the use of mobile phone. The portability of the mobile telephone promotes real time, living in the moment, or life presence for its user. Internet on your phone allows users to participate in an event and share their reactions and ideas with other instantly.

The Apple iPhone has added to the advancements of the mobile web. The iPhone connects to the Internet, plays multimedia, and is a fully functioning mobile phone with text and voicemail capabilities. These basics are including in addition to a touch screen, video camera, and play MP3 formatted music. With iPhone you can browse a web site, read a blog, access traffic reports, etc. With this new phone technology a rush of developers are currently building the very best and applications, benefits, and features. Mobile marketing is expensive and companies and providers have only begun to understand how to best serve information to trusted customers using this technology. In the future, no matter how expensive, mobile marketing might become a necessity to a successful campaign.

To my dismay, I do not have Internet on my phone. Not because I am trying to go against a huge social media trend, but because it is simply too expensive. This has put me at a disadvantage socially and academically for a couple of years now. For example, my internships sends out emails to us interns offering pieces and articles that we can write on for their magazine that month. When it’s first come first serve, my follow interns with Internet on their phones usually get first grab at all of the sports articles. My last article I wrote pertained to the hype of polo matches in the United States, as I am looking over my shoulder at the person next to me writing a cover piece on the Ohio State scandal. The instant connection to discuss and share your ideas instantly is a great device for potential jobs. Internet on telephones must be convenient; I think it’s time I upgrade!

Chapter 20

This chapter answers the question of “What does SEM have to do with social media?” Search Engine Marketing or SEM is one of the most effective ways you can market and advertise your web site on the Internet. When SEO and SEM are combined on one web page, the rankings are unstoppable. SEM in part means marketing your web page’s spending per month for your campaign or paid listing.

Along with SEM also involves PPC. Pay-Per-Click advertising requires that you decide which keywords or keywords phrases you used in your SEO campaign are most important, the ones that best match those that your customer will type into a search engine. While there are many providers of PPC, banner advertising, and other pay-for-performance advertisers, Google is by far the largest. For a successful campaign two-to-four keyword phrases are the best way to launch your SEM keyword campaign. Keyword combinations should be significantly more specific than a single word and will help you connect with a more targeted and specific audience.

This chapter continued, by helping map out steps for a successful SEM campaign. After you select you keyword, you’ll want to see what others are willing to pay each time someone clicks on the word from the search engine. The next step is to indicate how much you are willing to spend on each click. It’s a bidding system, if you bid higher you might be placed higher on the search engine’s list of paid sponsors. Now you have to decide how much you are willing to spend per month.

I have further learned to experiment and try different search engines when creating keywords. It is important to determine the most effective way to reach your customers yourself and with the combination of SEO and SEM they have the potential to create a cost effective way to reach customers when the moment they are looking for you.

Chapter 19

Search Engine Optimization SEO and Search Engine Marketing SEM are techniques by which you optimize your web pages, photos, blogs, social media profiles, and even videos to maximize search engine rankings. Both of these techniques refer to your web site’s ability to be recognized by the major search engine.

Popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Bing, and Ask have three components. The first is a huge database that contains every word from every page from every web site in the world. This database can be searched and matched very quickly against any words that you enter into a search engine. The second component of a search engine is its spiders or robots which represent automated computer programs that go out and find a web site, and crawl from page to page cataloging each page’s content. The third part of the process is your typical search interface, which is what you see when you go to Google or Yahoo when you see results.

The most important thing that a search engine has to examine is the use of keywords. These are words that best describes the content on your web page. Without the use of correct keywords, potential customers might be misdirected in the search of your product or service. These keywords derive from the content you have on your web page. The content of each of your web pages is critical. Evaluating that content and the most appropriate words to describe it are an important part of SEO. Also important to have the proper keyword terms with the URL, for search engines put a lot of emphasis on the URL

Content freshness is essential to web page success. When you think about many company’s web pages, you think about how the content on the web page hasn’t changed for year. Updated web pages are the pages that are going to attract returning customers. The search engine assumes the fresher the content, the more relevant the page will be.

I know I use Google five or more times a day. I use it so much I now use Google as a verb.."I just Googled it!" Search engines are a neccessity to my day-to-day Internet browsing life. Questions that are brought up throughout the day, sites I want to find, random topics, I all need to Google. With my daily search engine use and this chapter, I learned the absolute importance of keywords. I wouldn't find what I'm looking for five times a day without the correct use of keywords to direct me to the right placeA company should want to update their information on their web page to be one of the first results on a search engine, but also to update their current customers on changes and additions to their company. You have the tools to create returning customers, use it! SEO is all about having a presence on the Web. It’s about being found exactly when your customers are looking for your company.

Chapter 18

RSS or Really Simple Syndication is a one-click solution that allows all of your content to be sent to your followers the moment you publish it. It is a way to feed your web pages, blogs, audio, video, and photographs automatically to people who subscribe to your content through a feed. Every time you create something new on the Internet and it is published, a feed goes out to everyone who has asked for an update.

Your followers are automatically notified through email, texting, or tweets and your content is automatically added to their reader or aggregator page. A reader, or aggregator is a program or web site that will check and continuously search all of the blogs, news sites, other web sites to which you have subscribed for new content. Aggregators are designed as a stand-alone software program or as a web page. Web-based or browser-based feed readers allow the user to access aggregated content from any Internet browser

With RSS you can provide a one-click solution to anyone and that will allow them to automatically view any new content the moment you publish. Also, be sure to subscribe to all of your favorite web, blog, and news sites. That way all of the updates you want to see will be instantly on your news feed. From this chapter I mainly learned how RSS benefits the readers. RSS allows users to avoid manually inspecting all of the websites they are interested in, and instead subscribe to websites such that all new content is pushed onto their browsers when it becomes available.

Chapter 17

Funny I mentioned World of Warcraft last chapter for it pertains more to this chapter and the gaining popularity of virtual gaming. Blizzard Entertainment, creators of World of Warcraft announced that as of 2008 is played by more than 11 million gamers around the world. Other gaming sites such as Xbox LIVE had more than 17 million subscribers.

Many people tend to view online video games as an activity with no business value, a waste a time in which only teenage participate. But, anytime you have up to 8 million people participating in the same place with the same interests, there will always be a business opportunity that exists in that kind of forum. On average, the people playing these games spend 22 hours per week playing these games, with no correlation with the numbers hours played and the age of the player.

An MMORPG is a genre of computer or Internet games in which a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world on the Internet. Players assume to role of a fictional character in a fantasy world. There is usually some kind of progression for the main character’s player. If this player fails a challenge, points are taken and the player is often sent back to the simplest level.

Something I’ve learned watching my brother play WoW for five years is that gaming worlds sometimes cause a blurred boundary between real life and a this virtual fantasy world. Like Second Life, MMORPGs also have thriving virtual economics. Virtual money can be earned through game play, items can be bought and sold, and wealth can be accumulated. With that sort of real life exchange, I can understand the draw some people have to these games. When you have a certain amount of progression that is built up over a long period of time, I can understand to certain amount of loyalty and tie to the game players have. MMORPGs are encouraging user-generated content including textures, building, architecture, objects, and animations, making this the best opportunity for companies to plug advertising. The number of existing games, numbers of participants, and the rate at which this marketing opportunity is growing companies will soon learn how to effectively utilize this.

Chapter 16

In addition to being funs, entertaining way to pass the time, virtual worlds give you the opportunity to browse new and unexplored domains, and visualize participate in imaginary communities. Virtual worlds began with simulators, which were three-dimensional graphic representations of a virtual environment. A virtual environment is usually an Internet-based simulated environment inhabited by avatars, or graphic representations of its interactive users. An avatar can be represented textually, by a photograph, logo, image, or a 3-D object. While not all virtual worlds are 3-D, many began as forums, blogs, and chat rooms in which communities and trusted networks were created.

There is no game-winning objective in virtual worlds because they are designed for people from around the world to navigate, and interrelate by engaging in personal, one-on-one communications. The intent is to encourage, explore, learn, interact, and make friends around the world.

Second Life is a free 3D virtual world where users can socialize, connect, and create using free and voice chat. The Second Life avatar can communicate through instant messaging type text chat to transfer the two-way communication in real time. The Second Life Terms of Service provide that users retain copyright for any content they create, and the server and client provide simple digital right management functions. There is a great opportunity for enterprises in Second Life to participate in a huge trusted network of like-minded participants.

Whenever I think of virtual worlds I think of my brother’s obsession with World of Warcraft, but this chapter helped me realize the advertising and public relation benefits of a virtual world. There is something appealing about participating in an online community. I went online to learn more about Second Life and the first thing it reminded me of was the Sims computer game. A place to connect, a place to shop, a place to work, a place to love, a place to explore…” With this message the video introduction video at Second Life successfully relates real life desires to their virtual world.

Chapter 15

Online information is all about creating live content that uses Internet to distribute that content, leading to livecasting. Livecasting falls into two main categories of audio and video. The first groups to actually broadcast audio live over the Internet were existing commercial radio stations that were already producing audio content. The next step in Internet broadcasting was for individuals to take advantage of this new and free technology, so people began to create their own radio show content and transmitting it over the Internet from everywhere.

Livecasting was made possible by the evolution of smaller, lighter, more energy-efficient hardware, including portable laptops, longer-life batteries, and wireless Internet connections. There are many forms of livecasting such as the earliest form of webcasting or broadcasting video live over the Internet was called web conferencing. This particular method used conferencing software that connects two or more people or computers, giving them the ability to speak and see one another simultaneously. While a webcast takes place when a live broadcast or prerecorded media file is distributed over the Internet using streaming technology. Ustream won some acclaim during some recent political campaigns for its usefulness in campaigning allowing political candidates to address a larger number of voters’ political questions in real time. Livecasting would be beneficial if you wanted to build a community of trusted followers, or if you wished you your own talk radio or television show. If you discuss issues important to your prospects, this will really humanize your company and like other social media tools, it only takes a little creativity.

One of the most creative ways I think livecasting has been used is the example the book uses as well, the example of Justin.tv. Califorinan Justin Kan began streaming his life in a continuous, live video, giving the process the name lifecasting. He gained a lot of attention when he announced he would wear his webcam on 24/7, broadcasting his life live and nonstop. When I first learned about Justin last year I was so intrigued I went to his live broadcast, and then I followed up again today. As I am typing he is currently playing Starcraft and listening to classical music. From his site and the links that are attached to his site, it is clear that he greatly influence live broadcast with almost 3,000 live video broadcasts connected to his.

Chapter 14

Microblogging lets those who participate create small, intimate communities that are centered on topics such as politics, technology, or medical issues. It lets your friends know where you are and what you are doing. It includes the ability to send messages, audio, video, and even attached files and can be as effortless as sending a text message from your cell phone to select group of friends. Microblogging began with the emergence of the web log or blog. People began to post more condensed, convenient, portable, personal versions of their conventional blog posts into microblogging. It is easier, faster, and immediately accessible.

One of the most popular microblogging, social networking services is Twitter which allows users to send and receive brief 140 characters or less text-based, micropost instant messages that are referred to as tweets. A positive advantage of Twitter is that if you feel that information on someone’s Twitter is irrelevant, you simply just “unfollow” them. The most common criticism of microblogging is the trivial nature and the mundane information of most posts. That’s way the ‘unfollow” button is so appealing.

While blogs are considered fairly simply to write and maintain, a two-sentence update is still easier than regular blogs. Microblogs are also significantly less complicated to digest than conventional blogs, especially when you are following several hundred or more twitters. But how are advertisers becoming profitable with microblogging sites? The main point is that it is free, but advertisers can’t reach everyone that they want. Tweeters have to choose that particular companies twitter and choose to “follow” them for their message to be delivered. Finding companies a profitable options on Twitter is something Twitter itself is still trying to manage.

I love microblogging! I get easily frustrated with blogging and with the emergence of Twitter, I discovered the convenience of microblogging. I am an offender of the mundane updates at times, but I think for companies or organizations such as Southwest Airlines and NASA that have embraced Twitter, it is important to have those trivial updates to maintain realness to your prospects. In my Twitter experience, consumers will “follow” who or what company they can relate to. A good balance of content and sincerity is important for a company wanting to take on a Twitter.

Chapter 13

The common point that The Social Media Bible has been trying to get across is that social media is now. If you don’t embrace social media now, you never will for it is constantly changing. The book states this in the words “just do it!” Video sharing is the easiest and fastest way to start building our social media portfolio. Like much social media, uploading is free and it makes your message accessible to all of your prospects and customers.

The only prerequisite for uploading videos is that they need to be in digital format and not exceed the host’s maximum file size. Once you have gathered all of your videos in a digital format you can go to YouTube and start uploading. It’s that easy! Another advantage of post

Another form of file sharing for music, video, e-books, movies, software, and other digital data is known as peer-to-peer or P2P. P2P takes place when many computers on a network, connected through the Internet, all share digital data in the form of files. P2P was made most famous, when it argued that 87 percent of all music on Napster’s download servers was copyrighted. Because Napster allowed people to easily copy and distribute MP3 files between one another for free, it led the music industry to accuse Napster of huge copyright violations. Peer-to-peer and Napster technology allowed music fans to easily share with each other song files in any format.

Reading this chapter makes me realize that I have never fully utilized YouTube. I have been sort of invisible on YouTube, viewing video I wanted to view, but never commenting, forwarding, or tagging. I have posted videos promoting events from high school and college and wondered why they views weren’t as high as I wanted them to be. It was because I was not properly advertising and video sharing to YouTube’s maximum. This is probably along the lines of what some advertising companies are experiencing. You to do more than just create the video, you have to share it and put it in front of people so they have no choice but to click it! Video sharing in a great way to get your company and product names out there. The more “What’s in it for me?” value that the video has, the more it will be watched and passed along.

Chapter 12

Vlogging or Video web logging, if engaging ensures that your viewer will watch it to its conclusion. The more sense that are engaged with people are mentally gathering information, the better. This is why video blogs and site like YouTube have become so successful.

When two people want to communicate with each other, half of the communication is through body language. Is this could be why sometime letters and emails are sometimes misconstrued and why vlogs are successful in this aspect. With the release of Quicktime users were able to view reasonably good quality color videos on their computers for the first time. With greater improvement in compression technology and increasingly faster transfer rate from modems, the video that the Internet is delivering constantly becomes better and better.

YouTube, a video sharing web site, allows users to upload, view, and share video clips. This became successful with more people being connected to the Internet. Vlogging and YouTube become so appealing because it removes geographic boundaries and creates a global community through personal interaction. Like with podcasting, if you wanted to start vlogging it is best to start out with a simple script consisting of main ideas and bullet points, but directly reading of our the script you created is the worst thing you could do as a vlogger. Viewers want to see sincerity and a realness to the vloggers. Being able to share your expressions, inflections, and body language with sincerity is what will make your vlogs successful. Although, sincerity is the first step, once your videos are created and edited, it is your responsibility to drive traffic to your video.

When I think of video blogs, I think of the celebrity’s video blogging about their touring adventures on the road or to simply tell their fans what they have been doing. I have always been frustrated with the video blogs of celebrities that have no point. If you have that amount of power and you are that successful, wouldn’t you want that viewing to video blog about something with substances? This chapter helped me realize that the most important thing about video blogging is the content and that, that content is relayed with sincerity. The viewers have to believe you. This comes important with advertising and selling a product or service over video. While video blogging should be creative and fun, it needs to deliver a message by relating to the consumers watching the blog.

Chapter 11

Podcasts are essentially a vehicle for many other types of media that individual and businesses can in realm of social networking. Podcasts allow you to add music, digital photos, animated company logos, or colorful videos. A podcast is an audio or video recording that a person can subscribe to, receive, download, listen to, or watch using a personal computer, iPod or iPhone. A podcast is similar to a television program or radio show, but easier to create and distribute. The process of audio sharing requires that you first create an audio file and then make it known and available. One of the ways you can make it known it is available is distributing it on iTunes.

iTunes is used for playing, organizing, downloading , and publishing audio and video files. iTunes enables users to connect to the iTunes Store through the Internet, where they can purchase and download music, music videos, television shows, along with buying apps for iPhones and iPods. iTunes allows you to create playlists, edit file information, and record CDs, copy files to digital audio or video players, essentially allowing to become an artist or an advertising straight from your personal computer.

Podbean opened in 2006 providing podcast publishing tools for users to begin creating professional podcasts. It allows them to do so in a short amount of time, with a bloglike environment that requires no technical knowledge, you can manage, publish, and promote podcasts from your computer. Podbean is used in a variety of ways such as for education, religion, music, etc. while allowing users to personalize with selecting themes or “skins”. The most important feature of Podbean is its ability to measure the website traffic, allowing you to know how you are performing. Measuring Internet traffic is one of the best features of online advertising.

Podcast is the social media that I know the least about so far, so I was intrigued when there was a second chapter describing audio podcasting and how they can be used in iTunes and Podbean. I think this chapter successfully continued the main idea from Chapter 10. The definitions and histories of podcasting, iTunes, and Podbean are important to get started, but if you don’t know how to effectively use them and distribute your audio podcasts to where consumers know they are available, then you efforts won’t be worthwhile. Creating your new podcast is one thing, but making it available to your customers, prospects, and employees is what will make it successful. This point goes back to all of the social media options we have discussed so far, it can be simple, but if you don’t use it up to it’s potential then you are not using it correctly.

Chapter 10

Historically, in-car audio programming has been the exclusive domain of radio, an industry that was built upon finding ways to entertain or inform and then sell stuff to a captive audience of drivers during the highly lucrative drive-time hours. But automakers today know that people bring iPods with them into their cars. How do you make podcasting apart of your business strategy?

Podcasting is an effective way for you and your business to be heard-to capture the valuable mindshare of customers, prospects, and employees. The more interesting you make your message, the more likely people are willing to hear it. Audio podcasting is a simpler (than video) expression of user-generate content, and all of the tools you to create your own audio podcast inside your computer. The essential tools that you need to create are your own audio podcast is a microphone, the free audio recording and editing software and your creative imagination.

Planning, recording, editing, and publishing all go into creating your own podcast. Gathering and importing information and then writing the script goes into planning. The script should include your introduction that may include a a verbal opening explaining who you are, what your subject matter is, and what you will be talking about. GarageBand is a get tool to get started with this. With recording it is important to create bullets about your main ideas and then speak spontaneously about that subject without being too rehearsed. Connect to your audio editing software, plug in your USB microphone and begin. Editing podcast will most likely be necessary which will including basic editing tools such as the ability to cut segments, mix tracks, convert formats, and spilt tracks. The final step is publishing. Podcasts are meant to be shared, to share thoughts and idea making this the most important step.

Special effects can enhance your podcasts. By adding a little creativity you can make your content exciting and entertaining. The easiest effect that you can enhance would be boosting the volume and the bass to add fullness to the podcast. You might need to install the proper software (such as GarageBand and Quicktime) as well as include the proper hardware (microphone, handset, recording docks, mixers, etc). Check and see what type of audio recording and editing software you have!

This chapter makes me feel excited that I could podcast from my house. At first, the audio recording details reminded me of my film major days and how much I disliked cutting and editing the audio at the beginning of my projects. I think it was because it was always the first step for me and it signaled the beginning of a long editing process, but this chapter made me see audio and podcasts in a different way. This chapter made me see audio podcasting as an easy, free and unique way to reach consumers. For me, it takes me a half hour drive to work, a half hour back. That is an hour of potential advertising that advertisers and companies could reach listeners and make an impact in a different way. This also applies to media buys and when media planners buy units of advertising. This chapter made it clear that radio drive times and podcasts are impactful in advertising. The more you podcast, the more quality content and contribution you will provide to your follower, listeners, and customers.

Chapter 9

The first great thing about photo sharing is that is provides high quality, low-cost exposure.

Photo sharing dates back to the very first web page, but the real rise of photo sharing web sites grew with the popularization of the digital camera in the late 1990’s. Digital cameras allow you to go directly from your camera to the Web without any additional hardware or software. The emergence of email continued photo sharing’s popularity which was soon followed by photo management applications such as iPhoto proving that sharing photographs has grown beyond the digital camera and Internet.

To gain an understanding about photo sharing, it is important to understand the process of a digital camera. The standard digital camera has options to auto-focus, auto-aperture, and to provide digital display. Quality of the picture is measured in megapixels or the total number of picture elements, the higher number of megapixels, the better the quality of image. A lower quality picture will appear grainy or fuzzy if not taken at a high enough picture quality.

To be successful at photo sharing is first to take the picture. The most common to do this is with an point-and-click camera. The second step is to transfer your photographs from your camera to your computer and edit them if needed, followed by uploading them to your photo sharing website. Businesses have acquired these steps and are using technique to share images of their products, tech support, employees, assembly lines, etc. You can help this process along by uploading as many photographs as you can, using the product names, application, and the company name.

If there is something I have learned so far in The Social Media Bible, it is that every new social media that is introduced, it is all about two way communication. Without this communication social media has no chance to be successful. For photo sharing, sharing your photos with global communities, friends, family coworkers, prospects, and customers and encouraging them to comment on your photos is what makes social media so effective. With photo sharing, you have the potential to become a photographer, an creative artist. Websites allow you to efficiently show your work to others that would usually not see it. Photo sharing can create a career for some or just enhance the positive publicity of the job you already have. I have recently seen this with business websites, attaching pictures of their employees and positive customer experiences. Photo sharing is a great way to utilize free advertising!

Chapter 8

I knew very little about wikis before this chapter so the fact that wiki stands for “fast” or “quick” in Hawaiian was important for me to define. It alludes to the pace at which wiki content can be created. Wikis are web sites that allow people to collect and edit their intelligence in one place at any time. A wiki is a browser-based web platform that lets volunteers contribute information based on their expertise and knowledge and permits them to edit content within articles on specific subjects. Businesses can incorporate wiki by creating a company wiki, many firms can gather the collective knowledge of their employees on subjects such as policies and procedures.

Wiki is as simple as edit, write, and save. It has become an extremely valuable, easy-to use free resource tool. Although Wikipedia provides easily generate pages there are some security issues because wikis are very open set of documents and accessible to the public.

With this we have to mention the most popular wiki, Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a nonprofit organization that provides a platform for the world’s largest online user-generated content encyclopedia, containing 15 million articles. Despite the criticism concerning Wikipedia’s potential bias and factual inaccuracies, many of the site’s critics have agreed that the information contained is actually quite accurate

Going through school a negative outlook has always been attached to Wikipedia, but what I’m sure teachers and professors already know, is it is students main resource for basic information. I don’t know what happen in the French-Indian War? I google-search it and a Wikipedia link is the first thing that pops up. While yes, there is a lot of inaccurate information on Wikipedia, I think it is up to the Internet consumer to be smart enough to be able to decipher the right information from the bias. The secret to using Wikipedia is to use it as the starting ground to acquire the basic knowledge on a subject and nothing more. Because of the acquiring of just the basic knowledge I rarely site it as a source for it is other online journals and sources where I gain the more detailed information that I derive quotes and paraphrases from. It took me almost a full four years of college to fully understand the purpose of Wikipedia and to realize its power in creation. Wikis are great ways to collect the wisdom of the masses while creating your own information management system.

Chapter 7

The term blog derives from web log, which is simply another word for an online journal. To visualize it better: WeBLOG. A blog or web log is a web site that is maintained by an individual with regular entries or posts that include commentary, thoughts and ideas, and may contain photos, graphics, audio, or video. A blog can be personal or business related. Business blogs can be used for internal communication or a public blog. Blogs can also be used for sales, marketing or PR purposes.

Types of blogs: Question Blog, Video Blog, Link Blogs, Spamming blogs together forming the blogosphere. While most blogs are created just for fun, some are supported by advertising. Most support by this advertising are popular, higher traffic blogs. All of these different blogs spread out over the entire globe had to create the opportunity for blog-specific search engines.

To understand how blogging became so influential today it is necessary to review its history. The earliest blogs were simply continuous updates of a standard HTML web site, a process that was difficult, and which required a certain level of technical knowledge to maintain the HTML code.Back in the mid 90s before the personal blog became as popular as it is today there were online communities such as Genie, BiX, EarthLink, and Prodigy, all of which were the earliest Internet Service Providers providing bulletin board systems and forums. Early bloggers called themselves “journalers”, but people weren’t just blogging about their personal lives and daily activities. In 2001, several popular political blogs emerged in the United States.

The year 2004 saw blogs becoming increasingly widespread. News services, political consultants and their candidates used blogs as outreach and opinion polls for their campaigns, and just to bond with their constituents.

I didn’t realize the political impact blogs could have until this last presidential campaign against McCain and Obama. These blogs were mainly targeting, as some bloggers saw, the ill-equipped vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. It was amazing how opinions and ideas could spread like wildfire. Palin aside, it seemed that news analysts, celebrities, young people were using blogs to create a voice, those blogs becoming public and displayed throughout the media. I learned that your blog can be a powerful as you want it to be. It can be a place to be heard or a personal journal to jot down daily thoughts, but the potential power that blogging has can’t be denied as seen through recent political tactics. When it comes to advertising and reaching out to your customers, blogging is the easiest way to communicate to them through social media. Ironic that we’re discussing blogging, while blogging!

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 establishes the basics of Internet forums and the bond and trust build around them. The forum was the name for one of the first Internet-based networking and online communication tools and still is a great way to engage people in an interactive ongoing conversation on a particular subject. It can also be described as a web site application that manages and provides a medium for ongoing online discussion on a particular subject. My first thought at this description was to think back to when chat rooms where popular, but a chat room differs in some aspects. A chat room differs slightly from a forum because a chat room participation requires the member to actively read and post to the conversation in real time whereas in a forum, you can reply days later. Forums also differ in their makeup including moderators, administrators, registration, posts, members, and subscriptions while a member of a forum member who repeatedly breaks etiquette is referred to as a troll.

Why have forums been able to be successful? Forums build strong community ties, loyalty, and its ability to build a trusted network. Forums are meant to be read, and share ideas and concerns and as long as you fully participate. By participating in this type of idea sharing and opinion sharing, the group members’ passion on a specific subject forms a bond between them, and this bond is what makes the trusted network as effective and as loyal as it is.

I have personally never participated in an internet forum that wasn’t a part of an already present social media such as Myspace or Facebook. There were groups in Facebook that contained threads, members that all shared a common interest, and administrators, but members didn’t have to register to Facebook to specifically discussion this interest. I do know that the beginnings of Internet forums were also the beginnings of photo sharing, something that further progressed through MySpace and Facebook. I think Internet forums will always be useful because of the fact that it bonds people with a common interest. Common interests and passionate causes will never fail to bring people together. While forum is one of the oldest technologies on the Web it still is a great way to easily create a trusted community around your company, product, brand, service, or subject matter and it’s free!

Chapter 5

This chapter discusses the beginnings and foundations of the Web. Although the first website emerged in 1990, the Web didn’t become main stream until 1995. The use of advertising through the Web developed the use of the sales funnel which is a metaphor to describe the customer from the moment they realized they need your product or service to the time that they actually purchase. This cycle is especially important with web pages because it doesn’t simply dictate the design of your home page. It required that you have a specific web page designed to accept the types of questions that your prospects have at any moment during the buying cycle. The buying cycle includes awareness of a product, the search for that product, research of which companies to buy it from, and then the actual purchase.

Through the development of the buying cycle advertisers were able to establish the dos and the don’ts of home pages. Most believe that home page is the only place where there should be advertisements, it is the cover page of a web page and does not provide any of the information most are looking for. Designing a web page is unlike any type of advertising you can do, for the prospects that visit that particular site, do it voluntarily. It is important when designing a web page from an advertising point of view to establish where that potential customer will look first on the web page, you must then work the page around that point. Main points to a successful web page include, keeping the message above the fold.

Like emails, described in the last chapter, web pages must also answer the prospects main question of “What is in it for me?” in order to achieve conversion of that prospect. In marketing a conversion occurs with a prospective customer takes the marketers intended action. The most effective way to get someone to convert is to have a strong singular option for the prospects to choose. The success rates of conversion bring up points that we discussed in previous chapters, how the Internet is one of the only media vehicles that are able to monitor traffic of their conversions, making web pages of a very powerful outlets for advertisements. Points to create a effective web page include using keywords that make sense and will easily pop up in search engines, avoid using frames, use Flash sparingly and correctly, create a unique Page Title and always refer back to your marketing strategies.

Just for the sake of this chapter I went to frequent web pages that I usually visit, one included is the JCPenney website. First entering, the website is not as visually appealing as it could be with a white back ground and only a few splashes of red color within the banner. If I was not already going to this website for a specific purpose, I would likely not go past the home page. The multiple brand names under the main header as well as the many click options in small font make the site frustrating to look at. For me, an easy to use web page that is organized is the main aspect for me moving from a potential customer to an actual customer making a purchase. I get frustrated maneuvering my way around the Internet and if a web page is not clearly organized I am easily discouraged. I associated this chapter with the previous chapters that discussed the power of the Internet, for this web page are subgroups of this powerful media vehicle. It is the headers, visually appealing banners, and organization of the site that should draw the prospect in and make them stay on the web page, but it the content and the message that follows that turns the potential customer in an actual customer. I can agree with this, I may not always like the JCPenney’s changing website, but their main message of customer service and guarantee of a good product is why I have continued to online shop with them.

Chapter 4

In Chapter 4, the book discusses turning potential customers into actual customers through the correct use of email. Email if used correctly has the power to exceed the results generated by conventional direct mail, newspaper, and magazine advertising. The Internet is one of the very few media formats that actually allow advertisers to count how many impression and responses their advertisements receive, allowing their success to be measured.  Email can be considered the oldest form of social media, first beginning in 1971. It is a free form of marketing that is usually not used to make sales, but to build the trust of customers by forming stronger consumer relationships with existing customers.

It seems as long as there has been email there has been SPAM that has coincident with it. It has been researched that email users spend about one hour each week deleting spam, potential time that consumers could use opening emails that are targeted to them.  Spamming is the act of sending unsolicited commercial email implying that someone has sent a message that has no value or substance inside for the recipient. Spam filters are online tools that are used to constantly survey and identify spam, and trigger these spam filter. Because of the potential of these spam email the content of the email becomes the most fundamental part of an email and that it’s answers the recipient’s question of “What is in it for me?”

That question that is subconsciously asked by the recipient must be answered within the first seconds. If the headline does catch the eye of the consumer it becomes the five second rule for them to open the email to view the content. Every time a customer opens an email a transaction happens, almost like a sale to where they evaluate the offer and compares the product or service to the total cost of the transaction. Interesting to think that all that happens in the head of the recipient in about five seconds. It is through those five seconds that the advertiser must achieve their primary goal to convert that message from a click through to a web page, while maintaining or building a trusted network.

For me, in the past four years I have had to create three new emails based on the fact that my other two were receiving too much SPAM. Now as an advertising major I am a little more understanding to receive these emails, but at times I can’t help but think about the effectiveness of some. While some emails target the right audiences, there is a lot of SPAM that does not. For example, I received three emails today from Lenscrafters, I don’t wear or need glasses. Or the other day when I received a couple of promotional emails for a tropical vacation to the Caribbean for two, the emails probably not realizing that I am college student with limited income. The emails just listed are ineffective and didn’t serve their purpose of grabbing the attention of the recipient. For this reason, I understood that book’s section on an effective headline and related it to my own experiences with promotional emails. Unless I see the words “Big Sale” in bright red letters or “Free” in all caps, I will most like not click open the email. I feel like email could be a great way to reach consumers if attempted properly, but it unfortunate that whenever we think of advertising through email, we think of SPAM in a negative way. Because of this I think advertisers and art/creative directors of campaign and brands have to now find new and innovative ways to reach people through this vehicle.

Chapter 3

This chapter expresses everyone’s ability to be a publisher and the fact that anyone can publish anything from text, to audio, to photos, to video and make it instantly available to millions of people around the world. I think it was a pretty cool how the book went in depth about the history of publishing, dating back to cave painting and the invention of the printing press. Publishing’s history goes back before the written and spoken word, back to cave paintings to describe the hunt through picture writing. Then came Sumerian script followed by Egyptian hieroglyphs which became an important to maintain their empire for writing at least time was used as a communication device as well as a way to distinguish authority for only the elite were educated. Many of these cultures would use papyrus, or an early form of paper, to write down these words. The most famous collection of papyrus scrolls was the Hebrew Bible, a testament to the power of documentation. Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press led to the first mass production of books in history and made bookmaking a reality in the 15^th century. His invention allowed rapid creation of metal movable type in large quantities.

This history of communication through writing and the many forms of publications have led us to the self-publication we have today. With the emergence of the Internet, sharing information and documents is as easy as clicking ‘Send’. The ease of today’s printing has led to print-on-demand and self-publishing. Print-on-demand or instant printing has become beneficial in educational areas, specifically for teachers and professors at university, making teaching easier and more efficient. Self-publishing to a writer is a powerful concept for it spreads their thoughts and words to a wide audience and also allowing them to be in control of the physical aspect of their work.

Like the other chapters, this chapter emphasizes the power of the communication tools we have available to us at this time. The content that we have the potential to distribute with self-published and print-on-demand could be compared to the speed of light. Sometimes I don’t think we completely comprehend the power of the media and that it is frequently underestimated. Vehicles that this chapter didn’t touch on were distributing your words and thoughts via Youtube and videoblogging. These types of channels completely cancel out the need for print-on-demand distribution and are able to spread work through a click of a button. Youtube and other creative outlets like this have once again made it easy for everyone to become an author and be published on print or via video.

Chapter 2

The first thing I learned in this chapter is the power of social networking. A trusted network is not a new concept; it can be defined as a group of like-minded people who have come to together in a common place to share ideas, thoughts, and information of themselves. These networks, which today contain more than 100 million people, have been utilized by advertisers to develop trust and create influence among consumers to increase their sales. By embracing social networks, digital connections, and the online experience the advertisers are taking advantage of a new way of selling and there has the potential to become bigger than the product they are selling. The ultimate goal for social networking is to build trust within a given community and the advertiser must utilize this through newsletters, blogs, comments, telephone, email, instant messages, audio, and photographs. These things must be used collectively for social, professional, and educational purposes to build that level of trust.

The chapter continues by comparing the three big social networks: Facebook, Myspace, and Linkedin. Facebook has 425 million members, Myspace with 76 million users, and Linkedlin with 60 million users. Facebook is by far the most popular and most widely recognized but is similar to Myspace in that it is an interactive international web site that allows its members to create a network of friends, personal profiles, groups, and photos. Reading through this chapter is the first time I learned the details about the functions of Linkedin. Linkedin is a professional contact database emphasizing connections. Different from Facebook and Myspace in that you can view friends, of friends, of friends profiles as long that they are all connected through their profiles.The point of this is to emphasize that we are all interconnected and we can use social networking to build trust and provide effective social contacts.

You can see companies using social media in the example of Southwest Airlines who used Twitter to their advantage. The engaged customers on Twitter, built a following, cultivate relationships, and monitored activity. They launched a 48-hour fare sale using nothing more than social media and public relations to promote their airline, with no paid advertising. The result, the airline achieved its top two sales and website traffic days in the airline’s history

For what I’ve seen of social media, it sometimes can get frustrating for other forms of advertising. The consumers no longer hear advertising messages as clear if it is not surrounded by social media, this almost forces advertisers to fully embrace social networking. As a consumer I was initially annoyed with advertisers using social media to get in contact with me, I thought it was just another way for them to spam mail. But now, as an advertising major, the use of social networking is unbelievable to me still. I first started as a 7^th grader with Xanga, blogging about my middle school feelings. There was a limited amount of networking, with the use of groups being the only thing I utilized. I think it’s amazing to see how far social media has come since then, it only seems to be getting bigger and more powerful with each new feature and with each new message. Companies and advertisers not fully embracing this social networking movement with their public relations attempts would be a bad move for their business. It is a powerful moment that isn’t disappearing anytime soon, only growing. The key to networking is to participate.

Chapter 1

The first chapter begins with clearly defining social media and it works within the advertising world. Social refers to the instinctual needs we humans have to connect with other humans while media is what we use to make all of those connections. The book explains how we can use social media and other technologies effectively to reach out and connect with other people to create relationships, to build trust, and to be there when those people in those relationships are ready to purchase the product we may be offering. The social media that has emerged in the last decade is effective because it is two-way communication and the new way to sell is to not sell at all. Social media is all about listening first, understanding the conversation, and then creating a dialogue last. The most obvious use for social media is for marketing sales, public relations, and communications.

The book gave an example of Pioneer Electronics Inc. and their attempt to increase their click through rate during the holiday season. They became successful through PostRelease and online forums. They found that consumers visit discussion forums to discuss a product and are therefore more open to relevant sponsored messages and they’re more likely to respond.

In my opinion, social media could be successful if the service the company is providing over the media is successful and provides a good service, but if that service is received negatively the customer’s reaction could spread like wildfire. Advertising started with “word of mouth” advertising, and that form of advertising is still present today. It used to be if some released a bad or good service they would spread their experience to about 10-20 people, but now with social media customer’s experience with a company can be spread to thousands of others. This is an example of when social media can be either positive or negative, it all depends on the approach of the media vehicle that the company uses. I think social media can be very effective to build the trust for customers, for example airlines now use twitter to reimburse customers and address complaints (see JetBlue twitter http://twitter.com/#!/JetBlue!). In one instance JetBlue addressed a customer about a mechanical issue while the customer was still on the plane. These company’s uses of social media allows them to address customer’s quickly and directly which further contributes to their brand image and reputation along with positive advertising. The use of Twitter that these airlines have started using is an effective form social media that I believe other company’s should invest in for further customer service opportunities.

-Caroline