While perusing the Slideshare website as part of this week's assignement, I chose to look at several of the presentations that were considered to be their featured presentations. The one that grabbed me quickly was titled "Pinterest: How will it change social media?".

One day while sitting waiting for a class to start I had overheard two people chatting about this website and how great it was. While I made a mental note to check it out, I never did make it there. However, after looking at this presentation, I will certainly be checking it out!

http://www.slideshare.net/socialfresh/pinterest-how-will-it-change-social-media

The presentation was put together by a company called Social Fresh, which is a Social Media Marketing training company. Up until today I had no idea that there was a such a thing! The presentation does several things that agree with the information that Professor Zellers has provided for this class. Here are a few:

1.) Pinterest has identified their main users - which is 80% female!
2.) They have determined what makes Pinterest unique to other forms of social media.
3.) The items/subjects that are most poplular with their users has been identified.
4.) The company has tracked the patterns of their users to determine the times of the heaviest traffic - to potentially use this information in the future for promotions.
5.) They hold contests for their users which is important and could keep your customers returning.

As I sit here and review the semester project, to come up with a marketing plan for the LCCC Business Division website, I am having great difficulty coming up with anything to improve the assignement. I have looked through the project and compared it to some of the various sites I have vistited an previous notes that I have taken from assignments. I can't seem to come up with any form of improvement. I made a few notes, then went back to the assignment before posting my thoughts and found that those items were there. I think the semester project is well thought out and should prove to be an interesting assignment for those of us newbies to the field such as myself!
 
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Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian philosopher of communication theory who was way ahead of his time. He was born 7/21/11 and passed away 12/31/80. I am particularly amazed at the paragraph from his book published in 1962, The Gutenberg Galaxy, where he basically predicts the invention of the internet:

“The next medium, whatever it is — it may be the extension of consciousness — will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual’s encyclopedic function and flip it into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind.”
 
(http://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/marshall-mcluhan-predicted-the-internet/)

Did I mention the year 1962! We did not even see the internet until the early 1990's, at least 10 years after his death.

Marshall McLuhan also came up with a tetrad of media effects. The tetrad looks at any technology's effect on society and divides them up into four categories. He viewed the four categories formed as questions:

  1. What does it enhance?
  2. What does it make obsolete?
  3. What does it retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
  4. What does it flip into when pushed to extremes?

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/innis-mcluhan/030003-2030-e.html

When I think about this and apply it to social media and social media marketing, I come up with the following observations:

What does social media/social media marketing enhance? It enhances communication and speed. Things are done so much quicker via this method. A few clicks of a mouse, taps on some keys and you can communicate with tons of people in a matter of second.

What does it reverse? When it is pushed to its limits I think the reverse would be real people communicating with real people instead of via the internet, people going to actual stores to shop in, a direct experience instead of a virtual one.

What does it retrieve? From a personal perspective it retrieves connections between people who may have lost touch, from a marketing/business perspective it retrieves product information easily.

What does it obsolesce? To name a few things that become obsolete with social media/social media marketing we have: actual personal interaction, the need to go to a store, greeting cards or handwritten letters, the telephone.  




 
There are many things that a company should do to be effective and there are also many things that a company should not do.

Here are some of the things that I feel a company should do to be effective:

1.)  A company should make sure that they communicate with their customers. The company should not just 'push' their products. If a customer asks a question or makes a comment, the company should respond (the response should also be a timely one). This individualizes the communcation between the company and the customer.

2.)  A company should pay attention to their audience and use the forms of deilvery that would fit their clientele. A good recommendation that I found while researching this topic is for the company to watch their customers and their competitors and see where they tend to gravitate to.

3.) Fill your sites with information, industry news, reviews, videos (possibly how to's) or photos ~ anything that could be useful to your customer. This will keep the customer interested and coming back for more!

4.)  Keep things up to date! Don't let days go by without updating, answering questions, posting new information. If the site stays current, chances are you will hold your customers interest. Your site could end up being a daily pit stop for your customer.

5.)  Measure the efforts. The company should know where to put more effort and where to focus less by what you are getting out of it. The key is to not spin your wheels on something that is not working. You'll end up losing money in the end.

Now...on to a few things that a company should not do:

1.) A company not having adequate help to maintain the sites. Somebody needs to be there to maintain the sites, answer questions etc.

2.)  Don't ignore your followers/customers. Listen to them :)

3.)  Don't abandon your accounts, leave blank pages. This makes it appear that the company does not care. If this is the case, delete your accounts and have nothing. Having nothing looks better than an 'un-maintained' site.

4.)  Don't make it all about the sales pitch. You must give you customer something valuable as well. They appreciate that sort of thing!

The following sites were helpful in my research of what makes social media marketing effective:

http://www.business2community.com/social-media/5-philosophical-rules-for-effective-social-media-0230365

http://www.webadvantage.net/webadblog/10-keys-to-more-effective-social-media-marketing-3200

http://www.webadvantage.net/webadblog/top-10-scariest-social-media-marketing-sins-2862

 
Well, according to several websites, social media marketing is the process of gaining traffic or attention
through social media sites. This is the definition by http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-social-media-marketing and also Wikipedia. (I am thinking that they use the same dictionary!)

In reviewing several websites, I have discovered that this can be a highly effective yet inexpensive way for advertising for companies. Just by simply having a business Facebook account, a business can reach an enormous amount of potential customers just by having their own customers 'Like' or 'Fan' them. The fact that the customer has done so forces the action to be moved to their own Facebook page for all of their 'friends' to see. I know when I see that my friends like something, I typically trust their judgement and would be inclined to look into or try whatever it is that I see that they like. Brilliant!

As I read '10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips', it made me believe that the key to social media marketing is the business being able to keep up with it and make sure that it stays new and fresh. Contrary to what I previously may have thought, Facebook is not the only way to keep up, some other options are Twitter (for quick, small jolts of advertising), LinkedIn (could be used to encourage recommendations from your customers to be posted on your site), Company Blogs, YouTube...the possibilities are extraordinary and seem endless.
http://mashable.com/2009/10/28/small-business-marketing/

    Author

    Holly M. is a part time student at LCCC taking a social media marketing class.

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