This post is in memory of a dear friend who took the time to set up my computer for internet access. Then stepped back and smiled and said "There, now you can surf the world wide intenet." When I asked what does it do, he said ask it any question and you will find all kinds of information on anything. I could hardly believe it, so I asked about judo, kendo, and other obscure things, and sure enough there were whole sites out there. He then wryly said, "that will keep you busy for hours now."
He was so right. He was always kind to me, laughed at my lame jokes, buffered me and was a real friend. I will miss him, we went to work for separate companies after awhile, but I'm interviewing at the company he went to work for and thought of looking him up for a quick chat. I tried to find him through social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook before, but couldn't. That was odd, especially since he was an engineer, up on all the latest. Some people like to stay private though, so I didn't worry about it until now. I tried googling him and found very, very little information, which was really odd, but the little I did find, seemed to lead to articles, and when I opened them, they were obituaries. I had to read them several times over before it dawned on me that he really had died in 2007. No wonder my emails went unanswered and my attempts to locate him in social media was futile.
I was rocked, he was only 44, slim, tall, and rather athletic. He died of a heart attack. It just didn't seem real. There were years to catch up at some later time, when work and child raising didn't get in the way.
The lesson for today is, use social media, stay in touch with friends, especially those that matter and mean something to you. Reach out, don't be shy, and say hi to the people in your past that you are fond of. Share a little smile while you can. I just sent a few friends a note to just say hi. Maybe that's odd, but it would be a pity to not keep in touch when I feel they really do matter.
Monday, November 19, 2012
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Creativity + Charm + HR recruiting
What does that equal? A very clever HR recruiting slideshow by Penguin, the publishing company, for a "Community Manager" aka Social Media Manager. click here for the link.
This is so clever because with this one slideshow, Penguin can clearly portray what type of environment it has to offer as well as posing the question "Do you fit in to our culture?" This is a great challenge to anyone who might be interested. It sure beats filling out the same application form, with cover letter attached, and crossed fingers. Besides, the penguin is cute, I wonder if it has a name. Wait a minute, that could be the trick! A FB page for name the penguin, tweets when the penguin is named, and how about blogs about naming the penguin.
Too bad I live and work in the US and not in the UK. sigh. That's okay, it does give me ideas to pull my own campaign together.
This is so clever because with this one slideshow, Penguin can clearly portray what type of environment it has to offer as well as posing the question "Do you fit in to our culture?" This is a great challenge to anyone who might be interested. It sure beats filling out the same application form, with cover letter attached, and crossed fingers. Besides, the penguin is cute, I wonder if it has a name. Wait a minute, that could be the trick! A FB page for name the penguin, tweets when the penguin is named, and how about blogs about naming the penguin.
Too bad I live and work in the US and not in the UK. sigh. That's okay, it does give me ideas to pull my own campaign together.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Awesome perspective from the inside
I really liked Larry Wocjiak's presentation tonight. The insight he provided from a decision maker's point of view was extremely important for this class.
On the one hand he could use his limited budget of $30,000 to buy a one month billboard ad at the exit of Ohio Street into Chicago. One month. Sure there's a lot of traffic passing by the billboard during that month, but how many will buy Yes vodka?
On the other hand, he spent less than $30,000 in three months sponsoring events, giveaways, coupons, etc. using social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and multiple URL's. In addition, he was able to obtain more bang for marketing buck by paying for the initial click through, but once that person shared this with their friends, the friends click throughs didn't cost him. He was able to have various field marketing events with folks tweeting, providing likes to Facebook, and scanning QR codes. Due to many Facebook profiles containing age, sex, and interest information, Yes Vodka would be able to target specific ads for a specific demographic. Information like that is valuable and the ability to target specific ads to a target audience is a marketers dream come true.Results for this marketing campaign investment? 90,000 Facebook impressions with 20,000 Facebook followers, all at a cost of less than $30,000.
Since I did field marketing early in my career, I know and understand the types of events he puts on and must say, using social media tools is an incredibley efficient way to capture and continue to engage your target audience. It's not just giving out samples and leaving them with a coupon. Yes Vodka can continually engage that captured audience with promotions and events in the future.
Larry mentioned that the ROI results are n't definitive in social media, but he made an excellent point., the billboard can't prove ROI results either.
I really liked how Larry handled this and stays involved in the social media tools his company uses. This validates everything we read in class thus far. That the social media tools a company uses is successful when the company's decision makers and managers are involved.
On the one hand he could use his limited budget of $30,000 to buy a one month billboard ad at the exit of Ohio Street into Chicago. One month. Sure there's a lot of traffic passing by the billboard during that month, but how many will buy Yes vodka?
On the other hand, he spent less than $30,000 in three months sponsoring events, giveaways, coupons, etc. using social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and multiple URL's. In addition, he was able to obtain more bang for marketing buck by paying for the initial click through, but once that person shared this with their friends, the friends click throughs didn't cost him. He was able to have various field marketing events with folks tweeting, providing likes to Facebook, and scanning QR codes. Due to many Facebook profiles containing age, sex, and interest information, Yes Vodka would be able to target specific ads for a specific demographic. Information like that is valuable and the ability to target specific ads to a target audience is a marketers dream come true.Results for this marketing campaign investment? 90,000 Facebook impressions with 20,000 Facebook followers, all at a cost of less than $30,000.
Since I did field marketing early in my career, I know and understand the types of events he puts on and must say, using social media tools is an incredibley efficient way to capture and continue to engage your target audience. It's not just giving out samples and leaving them with a coupon. Yes Vodka can continually engage that captured audience with promotions and events in the future.
Larry mentioned that the ROI results are n't definitive in social media, but he made an excellent point., the billboard can't prove ROI results either.
I really liked how Larry handled this and stays involved in the social media tools his company uses. This validates everything we read in class thus far. That the social media tools a company uses is successful when the company's decision makers and managers are involved.
Not sure what to do.
Due to my computer/mic issue, I wasn't able to participate in the Hangout with Margaret and Jeb. They really wanted to obtain the bonus points for using Hangouts, which is understandable. However, not only was I missing from the presentation, but the voice quality was not the best. This concerned me, but not them. I suggested to just post the script and wrote it out, but they insisted it would be okay. I'm still not convinced. Well, it's a team project and I've been outnumbered. Still....
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Computers!
Last night I tried to participate in the Hangout session with my group. I set up my computer with headphones and mic, and waited for the invite. When the invite came through, to my horror, the mic did not work. So I quickly switched to my netbook to log in. For some reason, the netbook, which I had set up with Internet Explorer, wouldn't recognize the Hangout invite. I tried switching back to the regular computer, set up with Mozilla Firefox, to see if the mic would work if I played with it.
Nope, nothing. I switched back to the netbook to see if setting up with Firefox would help, but it was taking too long and I had become impatient and a little panicked, so I switched back to the regular computer and tried to email both Margaret and Jeb to describe my problem. They were already in the midst of the presentation, so it was too late. I felt badly that I was letting them down. They did a fine job, but there was a little weakness in the voice quality on Jeb's part of the presentation.
I did get a replacement mic, but it's too late now. Who knew my mic would die the day I needed it most.
Nope, nothing. I switched back to the netbook to see if setting up with Firefox would help, but it was taking too long and I had become impatient and a little panicked, so I switched back to the regular computer and tried to email both Margaret and Jeb to describe my problem. They were already in the midst of the presentation, so it was too late. I felt badly that I was letting them down. They did a fine job, but there was a little weakness in the voice quality on Jeb's part of the presentation.
I did get a replacement mic, but it's too late now. Who knew my mic would die the day I needed it most.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
The blog I followed
Dan Zarella titled himself the social media scientist. Yet in his latest blog he ran a metric on popup success on himself. That is so far away from any scientific methods that I almost laughed out loud. How can anyone run a metric on himself, on a population of one, and then say that it is representative of all populations? I stopped following his blog because it lacks credibility and I don't have time to waste. There are so many more informative blogs out there.
A classmate pointed us to Lori Taylor's Social Caffeine. I'm liking it already. She has loads of great articles that will take some time to read through, and she is credible.
A classmate pointed us to Lori Taylor's Social Caffeine. I'm liking it already. She has loads of great articles that will take some time to read through, and she is credible.
Presume status
Presentations are time consuming, I know that from experience. So far, I'm not sure what the advantage of using Presume or Slide Rocket is compared to Slideshare. I still don't like Prezi.
I wanted to create a Presume for my career collateral to put on LinkedIn, but this is cumbersome and I'm not sure I will stick with it. We'll see.
I wanted to create a Presume for my career collateral to put on LinkedIn, but this is cumbersome and I'm not sure I will stick with it. We'll see.
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