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.