Final Project Presentation- HINTS!

In this class you had an opportunity to develop your personal branding marketing campaign using social media.  The purpose of the final project is for you to reflect and analyze this marketing campaign to determine its effectiveness, what you learned and what you would do differently.  Yes, your presentation should be a reflection of your hard work and you should be sure to cover all of the main components, however this is an overview and should not be comprised of countless “screen prints” I will be going in to each of your profiles to make sure that you meet the requirements but this would like make for the most interesting class presentation, so for your presentation you should focus on showcasing your work and analysis of each tool in light of marketing strategies:

Part 1: Showcasing your blog.  How many final posts did you end up with?  How many total comments?  Did you find that you got more comments or views when you posted on certain days?  What was the post that got the most views?  Why do you think that is?

I would like to see you also discuss your video.  How easy was it to do?  How long did it take you?  How many views do you have up until now?  What would you do differently?  Now that you’ve had to see how others have done it, how could you improve it or how would you do it differently?

Lastly, do you think that you will keep up a blog?  Why or why not?  How might you use the blogging strategy in the future?

Part 2:  Facebook:  What did you learn about FB?  How have your perceptions about FB changed from the first day of class?  How effective do you think this tool is?  How might you use it in the future?  Analytics:  How many friends do you have?  How many brands and or groups do you follow?

Part 3:  Twitter:  What have you learned about Twitter?  Will you continue to use Twitter regularly?  How do you follow and why?  (Name at least 3).  What are your perceived strengths and weaknesses of Twitter?

Part 4  LinkedIn:  Were you already using Linked In before the class?  If so, what have you learned about it that you didn’t already know or how has your perceptions of it changed?  How can you use this tool to leverage and build your personal brand?  Which groups do you now belong to?  Why did you choose these?  Will you continue to follow these after the class?

Closing thoughts:  (a) Comments on any of the other tools, such as online communities, knowledge sharing, etc.  (b) What are your biggest take-aways from this class?  Why/how might this be valuable to you in the future?  How could you utilize these tools for your business?  Which ones do you think you will use versus which ones are you NOT crazy about?—Why? 

Thanks for all of your work!  I’m looking forward to seeing your final projects.

More on Facebook Fan Pages

Hello again!

Well it seems that I run into so many interesting articles about Facebook that it is hard to keep up with it all. 
While a large part of our FB topics in class have been centered around personal branding on FB I would like to shift our focus to FB Fan Pages.  I will be talking more about this in class, but in the meantime, I really like this nice tip sheet for managing a company Fan Page.

http://www.socialbakers.com/how-to/top-10-biggest-mistakes-you-make-on-facebook-pages/

What do you think?
Dr. G

Twitter Stats

Ever wonder who is following your Tweets and how often others re-Tweet your stuff?  There are several different options for how you can check out your Twitter Stats.  This is a nice blog post that offers some options.  I especially like to check out the comments from others indicating which tools they prefer and why.

http://www.bloggingtips.com/2010/02/12/4-ways-to-check-your-twitter-statistics/

Take a look!
Dr. G

Search Engine Optimization- (SEO)

Hello Class

I hope everyone had a Happy & Safe Halloween!  This week we will be discussing “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO).  As I have done most of the class, I will approach this from the Google perspective as Google is considered one of (if not the most) powerful search engine for navigating the web.

I hope that you will take a look at the following article called Google Basics for a sneak peak into what we will be discussing.  

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=70897#1

It is important that you gain a basic understanding of some terms.  Especially the terms:

Crawling

Indexing

Serving

SEO can be very complex, especially since we are Marketing experts and not everyone has a strong IT background.  It is very common to hire a SEO expert, however as managers, it is important to have some basic understanding of how we can improve our content so that it is more effective and attracts the greatest amount of traffic.  For more on what to look for in an SEO expert, check out this info on Google http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291.

On this same page you will also find a link to the Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide by Google that will help you better understand how Google works.  I will be using this in my lecture tonight. 

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone in class tonight.

Dr. G

Understanding ROI for Social Media Efforts

Hello Class

Hopefully everyone has been enjoying getting to explore all of the various social media tools we have covered so far.  Today, we will be discussing how we can measure the effectiveness of these tools and hopefully determine if our efforts to utilize them, is actually paying off.

If you find yourself thinking, "oh no, that doesn't sound very fun..." you are not alone.  There are many surveys and reports out there that suggest that more than 80% of businesses using these tools do not have precise return on investment (ROI) metrics in place.

I will be covering this in detail today, in the meantime take a look at this article
http://mashable.com/2009/10/27/social-media-roi/

What do you think?

Spreading the Knowledge

Hello Gang

I'm looking forward to another great class with you this week.  We will be focusing on "knowledge-sharing" and collaboration through social media.  One growing trend that you may be aware of are "Wikis".  Wikis facilitate collaboration and working together.

Check out this nice article on a few "free" wiki platforms that you might consider using.
http://www.cio.com/article/445813/Four_Free_Wikis_Worth_Trying_Out_

We will cover these and several other tools including how to leverage group discounts, music streaming and "meet ups".

See you soon!
Dr. G

A sneak peek ahead

Hello Class

In the coming weeks I will spend some time briefly introducing you to a list of "cool" social media tools.  These are tools that you will NOT be required to join but that I want to make you aware of.  While not everything is for everyone, I'm sure that there is something for everyone...

One of these tools that I will touch on is Pinterest, the best way I can describe it is that it is a "virtual" bulletin board.  I personally love bulletin boards so I'm looking forward to making the switch to a "virtual" board which surely will help reduce my cluttered "real-life" bulletin board.  I recognize that this may not be of interest to everyone, and that is ok too!

For my creative/design/visual students who might want to check it out, here is the link for you to  - Request an Invite http://t.co/7S051aFQ

This was a fairly new start-up and previously a beta but it is now quickly growing.  If you fill out the request for invitation in the link I provided, you should get a reply back within 24 hours or so.  Personally, I'm trying something new with Pinterest so I will show you how I use it in class.  In the meantime, I hope that it might help inspire some of you!

If anyone doesn't get their invitation activated within a timely manner, send me an email and I will personally invite you right away.

Thanks
Dr. G

Implementing Video into Blogs- VLOG

Hello class

I hope that everyone has had a great week.  I'm excited for our class today, as I warned you... we will be discussing media tools especially the use of videos.  In preparation, for you making your own video introduction this week,  I want to introduce you to another helpful website that can provide a lot of information on social media topics, especially pertaining to blogs. 

Please read this brief article that outlines the pros and cons of incorporating video into your blog. 

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-using-video-in-your-site-or-blog/

We'll talk  a lot more in detail today in class... see you soon!

Dr. G

Twitter for Micro-blogging

Hello gang

Happy Friday!  Hopefully by now you have all opened a Twitter account and you've had an opportunity to explore this unique tool which we also refer to as micro-blogging.  In my experience, it seems that people either love or hate Twitter.  It is a unique tool that may not feel entirely intuitive.  On a personal note, I believe that this tool is only as helpful as our ability to select relevant organizations and/or people to follow.  Being completely utilitarian, I prefer to follow those organizations that will provide me relevant and useful information.  Since I am very busy, I don't have too much time for celebrity updates and the like.   Think about what is the information that is useful to you and what organizations you are very loyal to.  Being selective about who you choose to follow will help you to make the most of this tool, especially as you begin to get familiar with it.

Well, as hopefully you’ve noticed I have been trying to familiarize you with some useful blogs.  Here is another one with a nice article on Twitter.  Please read the following:

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4034/How-to-Use-Twitter-for-Marketing-PR.aspx

Notice the amount of comments after the article… I encourage you to join the conversation!

Lastly, I want to remind you that you don’t have to follow all of your classmates on Twitter.  But please DO follow me!  My Twitter name is UCRXSocialMedia my link is
http://twitter.com/#!/UCRXSocialMedia

Have a great weekend!
Dr. G

Are we having fun yet?

Hello gang!

I hope everyone has been doing well on this being the "first rain of the season"! 

So are we having fun yet?  I see some great feedback on your experiences joining a community and participating in the discussion.  It sounds like some of you found interesting communities that related well to your interests.  Did anyone find TOO MUCH information?  Did anyone find that they accidently spent hours browsing the internet?  Personally, I think that there is so much wonderful information out there.  By enlarge there is a lot of interesting people that are willing to share their insights and experiences with us so that we can learn from each other. 

However, it can also take up a lot of time!  Some of you may be asking yourselves, "how do we manage all of this and how the heck can we find the stuff that we came across and really liked and now it seems to have disappeared?!"  That will be the focus of our discussion today.  Mainly, I will be focusing on RSS feeds.  What is an RSS feed you ask?  Well, please read a little bit about it here:

http://www.problogger.net/what-is-rss/

If you are still not clear, don't worry we'll be talking more about this in class today.

The other tool we will be exploring is social bookmarking.  Again for a little preview of what that is about, check out this great blog post:
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-use-delicious-social-bookmarking/


Oh my, isn't this so much fun! 

See you soon!
Dr. G

PS.  By the way, who figured out how to link your blog with your FB page so that everytime you post on your blog it will automatically make a post on FB?  There are a couple of ways to do this in the meantime save these links and we will talk about today as well.

BLOG 

http://www.facebook.com/editnotes.php?import

Twitter

http://apps.facebook.com/selectivetwitter/