My Blogging Experience

For the social media project, I chose to set up a Blog Spot using www.blogger.com. My Blog Spot address is http://thejriesbergzone.blogspot.com/. I found it to be very useful, where I posted different activities and subjects that we had covered in our E-Commerce marketing class over the previous months. Creating and using the Blog Spot seemed to be more personalized than Facebook, and it would be good for posting information and pictures about myself and would be good for people to follow me like family members, friends or co-workers. My sister has a very nice Blog Spot that she uses to update people on things her and the family have been up to, along with many pictures of the baby girls as they continue to get older. The Blog Spot is also useful if you are searching for a post or picture from a certain time period, documenting blog posts by month and year on the right side of the page. I also like the feature of being able to monitor and see who is following your Blog and linking to other followers Blogs. I will continue to use my Blog Spot page, changing the information from the E-Commerce subject to a more personalized page with info about myself and pictures. This project was beneficial in helping me learn more about Blogging and how I can use it to publish information about myself or whatever subject matter I want people to see.

Jenn and Jess SMproject!

http://its-about-time.typepad.com/its-about-time/2010/11/this-is-it-the-last-post-fall-2010.html

This is it the last post fall 2010

In starting a blog on TypePad, we learned that there are so many details and so much more to think about than just writing something down. We didn't think that it would be so difficult to think of what to talk about and make it interesting enough to make others want to read it. Since our blog was about other social networking sites, it was very beneficial to join these others sites and learn more about them. My particular favorite was Soup.io, I had a lot of fun adding a mixture of things to my Soup page. The biggest thing we were surprised to learn on our quest, was that there are fewer social networking sites out there that are suitable for companies than we previously thought. The biggest benefit we got from this project was learning about many of the different social networking sites out there and it will really benefit both of us in our careers as marketing has become more social.

After signing up for Flickr, YouTube, digg, twitter and using blogger for our class project, we quickly learned that there are many tools out there for communicating but with these tools come great risk. As I apply for internships and jobs I have to watch what its said on each, even Facebook. It can be very detrimental if what you blog about is negative about anything really.

I found Flickr to be a lot like Facebook without the silly games just post pictures for family and friends! Digg and blogger are just for personal journals, experiences one wants to write about and if they write it right then people want to read it. Its more like for writers who have opinions or great imagination that just need a venue to get their ideas out there.

Now YouTube is one of the most popular and for a reason. You can YouTube anything and learn from it. You can post videos that can work like commercials without payments, increase traffic to websites with YouTube viral that get shared on social networking sights. Though it’s a little odd and you have to play around with it a bit. I used it for the class project and you couldn’t hear what I was saying but when I played it back it sounded fine at home.

So after this semesters project Jess and I have definitely learned more ways to advertise, network, and communicate but also as we both graduate and go on to find jobs we have learned that we have to watch what we say because it can be seen by every one!

Second Life Drew Collins

For the social media project I decided to do the second life option where you create an avatar and customize that person and everything that they do. I really liked how easy and interactive the game was. I made a total of 14 friends during my time in second life but I found that people did not just friend you because you asked them, people wanted you to chat with them. This really was a second life and people did take this very seriously. I enjoyed visiting all of the different towns. In some places I met people that would be playing concerts or doing stand up comedy certain nights of the week. I also saw people that actually bought land in the game and put their logo on the house. Other than that i really didnt see second life as being somewhere that you would strive to promote your business. I think that this is a great way to meet new people and get your name out their or be nvolved in a more interactive source of social media

Second Life

Second Life is a virtual world created by Linden Lab that was first launched in the summer of 2003. Second Life uses entities that represent users called Avatars. Avatars can range from people to animals to even plants. It is free to register however to really get involved in the game can cost some money.

My experience with Second Life started with the registration process. Registration requires downloading software and creating a profile. Not everyone can have optimal performance when using second life because it does operate as a pc game which does require minimal operating graphics and computer speed. Once I created my profile and had my Avatar I was free to roam the Second Life world. Second Life feels much like a video game although there is no real objective other than to perhaps communicate with other Avatars through local chat or instant messeging. Other actions include building a house, seeing a concert, or just walking around building you Second Life network.

Second Life has grown to be a media forum that different industries can use. For example, Second Life is used as a platform for education by many institutions, such as colleges, universities, libraries and government entities. Second Life residents can express themselves creatively through virtual world adaptations of art exhibits, live music, and live theatre. Secone Life also gives companies the option to create virtual workplaces to allow employees to virtually meet, hold events, practice any kind of corporate communications, and conducting training sessions.

In addition to these industry applications I also had a first hand experience to how businesses are using Second Life for advertismenst. While walking this virtual world I came accross different advertisments for well known comopanies such as Sony, Nissan, and Coca Cola. They had billboards and flyers set up around the Second Life community.

My overall experience with Second Life was interesting but I dont think it is a big enough media forum for smaller companies to want to invest in advertising. Second LIfe also has some major drawbacks such as having a minimum system setting to work properly.

LinkedIn Project Summary

We have spent the past month or so familiarizing ourselves with LinkedIn. We had much success creating an account and figuring out how to use LinkedIn, however we were unable to find people we know on LinkedIn to follow us. We did join a bunch of marketing groups and received a lot of notifications updating us with marketing events and news. We did not have much luck networking due to the limited time but we were able to learn the ropes of LinkedIn. It is something that we both plan to use on our own and create personal accounts so we can start to network. We also created a blog that follows our progress on LinkedIn. Again, we did not have many followers on LinkedIn so there was nobody to check out our blog. Everybody should check out our blog though to get some feedback on LinkedIn. We definitely recommend using LinkedIn especially if you are looking to professionally network. They just partnered with PwC and released Career Explorer which helps graduating students find careers! So check it out, and check out our blog for more info at http://socialmedialinkedin.blogspot.com

Julie S. and Sarah K.

Have you heard of Gowalla?

Sarah Radke and I had initially chosen to try to understand the world of Second Life to get an insight into the innovative form of social networking. As soon as we registered as new users, we found several immediate problems. In order to become a part of Second Life, the program needed to be downloaded to our laptop hard drives. Neither of us had enough space on our computers to support the program so we had to alter our initial curiosity.

I had first learned about Gowalla in another marketing class and suggested it to Sarah. Not a lot of people have heard of this site so we decided to investigate further. We began registering as new users and started using the services.

For those of you who haven't heard of this site before, Gowalla is a social networking site linked to your smart phone. You "check-in" to different locations to rack up points and badges. If you have the most amount of check-ins in a particular spot, you become the major of that place. It's a great way to share the places you've been with your friends. Gowalla serves as Foursquare's primary competitor. (Foursquare is another social network in which you can "check-in") Foursquare has more popularity than Gowalla but I don't think it's as interesting.

We suggest that you all create accounts and add us as friends! It's a great way to stay in touch!

We decided we wanted to do our Social Media Project in Twitter. Neither one of us had ever had or used twitter before so we thought it would be a really good idea to learn about it in this project.

Our twitter account is:  JE_UCCSMKTG4700.
 We have 2 followers and we are following 7 others to the date. Our tweets are about what we have been learning on e-commerce class on Social Networking. Creating an account with Twitter was not a difficult thing to do. This makes it easier for people that don't have much knowledge about Social Networking to be interested in trying out Twitter.

Creating a twitter account has helped us understand how social networking works and the benefits that can result from using it.  Among those benefits of using Twitter we learned that is a great networking tool, information sharing center and communication medium. Twitter's possibilities are endless. All businesses can really benefit from having an account and sharing information with their followers. It is a great way to be open to suggestions and comments from people that are interested in your tweets and business. On the other hand, the downside of businesses using Twitter is that all the tweets are public and sometimes can be negative. Businesses need to turn negative comments into possibilities and positive comments into strengths.

Overall, creating and using a Twitter account has been a good learning experience for both of us.

Facebook

My social media project was using Facebook to promote my  photography business. I had a Facebook page started that I keep up with to post events and promotions. There were a few clients I gained from using the site, but they were more through family and friends on the list.Sadly it remains that way. There is a way to create a business or community page which I wasn't familiar with. Something else I didn't think about is that people may not search for local businesses on Facebook. When I search for a business I use Google first. I follow businesses through recommendations from friends.You have to let customers know they can follow you on social media sites using chicklets on your site. The photography sites that I found succesful used Facebook incorporate their page on their websites.I learned that Facebook is great way to network with other proffesionals in the field and have clients leave testimonials. For me this was a great learning experience. It is something I can definately put into practice today.

For our Social Media Project we decided to create a blog on Blogger.com. Getting registered and setting up a blog was surprisingly easy. Even those that are not tech savvy can create their first blog in under a half hour. Setting up the blog was the easiest part of creating and maintaining it. Our blog was up and running is a matter of minutes and ready for interested readers to begin following us.

We decided to focus our blog on current events that related to topics that we were covering throughout the semester in eCommerce class. Each blog entry began with a summary of a topic, then our opinion of the matter, and ended with questions for our readers. We wanted to engage readers in our blog by asking them thought provoking questions at the end of every entry. We tried to cover topics that would be fun or entertaining to our readers (aimed at other college students) while also being useful and interesting.

One of the most difficult thigns that we found was creating enough interest in our blog to gain new readers. It was also challenging to retain the interest of current readers. Writing the blog was simple, but we maybe should have focused more on getting readers and followers to interact with us. It is a tricky balance though because you won’t get new or engaged readers without having interesting blogs. Another challenge we found was keeping our blog active by updating it regularly. We found that a blog requires at least one author who puts in a significant amount of time managing the blog – something that can be tricky for a college senior getting ready to graduate.

Though the blogging came with its challenges we felt that is was a valuable learning tool. First off it allowed us to learn the creation steps of forming a blog and gain the basic knowledge to structure one. It also gave us a better understanding of how the blogging community works and areas to focus on and learn more about before starting another blog. It was certainly more demanding then we would have expected but it is great to know that now as we continue down the eComm road…

Blogging Social Media Project

For my social media project I created a blog account with Michelle Bryant. It was a difficult task, I found. One of the hardest things about blogging is that there needs to be information that people find interesting. There are so many blogs, which makes it hard for our blog to stand out.

For our blog, we wrote about information relevant to our class. The information on each blog was useful, but may not be interesting to people. Overall, blogging is difficult in terms of getting it out there and being recognized. I learned a lot from this project. Thank you everyone who followed Michelle's and Emily's blog!

Thanks for reading.

Emily McCoy

Rachael and Will's Twitter Experience

Our Social Media project involved opening a Twitter account and using it as a tool to inform others about popular topics revolving around social media. We both were new comers to Twitter and were using it as a learning tool for ourselves, anticipating our future use of it in the business world. We searched online for interesting social media articles that were related to the content we covered in class and social media information that interested us. In addition we found re-tweeting to be very useful and convenient. For example, we re-tweed “5 Tips to Grow your Twitter Presence” by @ProBlogger. Besides just tweeting about social media topics we used it to create awareness about our final project relating to Google Adwords and provided links to our classroom blogs and book recommendations. There was also room for fun, where we would tweet about our entertaining occurrences throughout the day. There are so many backgrounds and unique design elements that you can incorporate in your Twitter account, and that is something we didn’t approach until the end of our project; but we thought others might want to do so and provided a link for them to explore the possibilities.

There were several problems or inconsistencies we encountered when working on our Twitter project. First, we had a difficult time finding followers. Initially, we received 2 or 3 right off the bat when we signed up and followed 3 people. One of the underlying problems was: do we want quantity or quality? In terms of this project, we thought it would be more useful to have followers that we knew, recognized, or focused on our topic of interest. We didn’t want just any followers talking about social media, but we looked at the content of their pages before requesting them. We connected mainly with people from our class.

Another problem we encountered was the inconsistencies between tweets. We didn’t have time to constantly monitor our Twitter account and often when we would post tweets, they would be within a certain time period. For a business, or to connect with other people, we understand that this takes a lot more upkeep, postings, as well as comments to other’s tweets. We could have also explored the hash tag tool more and provided links to our personal facebook account.

Overall, we learned the value of using Twitter and how it can help promote and create buzz about a business/organization and specific topics. Twitter can bring people from all around the world to communicate on mutual topics of interest. We will both use Twitter in the future and hope it provides us with the benefits that we learned from our project.

Thanks to everyone who followed us! Check us out @Rachael_Will

My Blog Project

Hey everyone,

So I originally started my project by doing a Twitter page, where I tweeted about different kind of music as well as music news and basically anything related to music entertainment. Needless to say it wasn't very popular or that fun to maintain and after about a week and a half of very few followers, eventually turning in to none I simply abandoned it.

After that I started a blog and it was quite different and a way more fulfilling experience. Feel free to check it out at, http://theblogsandbrightideasofbogo.blogspot.com

The blog was a really cool outlet for me to share my insights with strangers, friends, and family. They are very fun outlets and public journals where the audience is actively participates in what you are writing and can  really connect the readers directly to the author.

Although my blog was not as successful or even professional as the majority of other blogs out there in the ever expanding world wide web, the lessons I learned were valuable enough. First things first is consistency is King. In order to maintain and keep followers you need to make blogging a hobby. The hardest thing about blogging is finding or even carving a chunk of my time out of the day to sit down and write something.

With that comes content which is a very close second King. Coming up with content is very tricky, but the easiest way for me was to just keep a journal and write down ideas that came to mind. My entire blog was basically wacky insights to things I noticed in life, with the sole goal to get a chuckle out of my readers. In the end I only had three followers which still makes me pretty happy, but I definitely want more. Through the whole experience I plan to continue blogging and to be more efficient at it. Winter Break is right around the corner so who know the possibilities. Thanks for reading and for those who checked the blog out this semester. All in all it was a good time.

Thanks for the love and good luck with the rest of your semesters :)

Tom

Foursquare

For my social media project I decided to get involved with Foursquare. For those of you who aren't familiar with Foursquare, it is a mobile application that was created as a tool to explore cities. According to the Foursquare website, it was created to be used as a friend-finder, a social city guide and a game that challenges users to experience new things, and rewards them for doing so. Foursquare lets users "check-in" to a place when they're there, tell friends where they are and track the history of where they've been and who they've been there with. If you've checked into a place the most amount of times within a 60 day period you will be crowned mayor and could be offered special discounts from the business for being the mayor.

As a business owner, you can engage Foursquare to engage customers with discounts and prizes when they check into your business. You can offer mayor specials (offered to the person who has checked in the most to your location within the past 60 days), check-in specials (offered to anyone that checks into your location), and frequency based specials (offered to people after they check in x amount of times).

I began my project by creating an account and uploaded my picture. They tell you that you can't become a "mayor" unless you have a photo uploaded. Then I downloaded the Foursquare application to my blackberry and began checking into the businesses that I visited. After every check-in you receive points and badges based on different criteria, I received a mayorship for Paninos, however they did not offer any mayor special. I also received an adventurer badge which was awarded for checking into 10 different venues. I found that it was hard for me to remember to check into places on a regular basis. Since this is still a fairly new thing there are not a lot of businesses that are actively participating by offering specials.

Since it is free to participate, I believe all retail businesses should be participating because it is a great way to reward your loyal customers. In addition, it is a great way to do geographic marketing. I noticed that when you check into a location if there is a business offering a discount in the area an icon will appear in the corner saying there is a deal in the area and you can click on it to find out details.

Another aspect of Foursquare is that you can link it to your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts. I didn't link it to my Facebook account however because I'm not sure how I feel about everyone knowing where I am all the time, it is a safety issue in my eyes. You can also write feedback on your experiences and post them so that your friends can view them.

Overall my experience with Foursquare was good, I just wish more businesses were participating, if there were I would probably continue participating on a regular basis.

If you would like to get involved check out Foursquare at http://foursquare.com/.

Social media project

Connecting with Constituents

For my project, I wanted to tie in a project for work with this class.  As of now, I'm interning for Congressman Doug Lamborn (our congressman for our district).  After talking with numerous constituents, I learned that one of the biggest complaints people have is that they don't know what's going on in Washington and what Congressman Lamborn is working on.

Now I spent two months in Washington this past summer.  I attended hearings, met other politicians, watched bills pass on the house floor, etc.  I had then, and still have now, a pretty good connection with what's happening.  But the people in general I believe are often left in the dark about what's going on.  The media itself can only ever report on a handful of bills, and many other laws slip through under the radar without much if any media coverage.

So for my social media project, and for work and the benefit of the people of our district, who deserve to know what's going on with their government, I decided that our office should expand on our social media platform.  My idea was to create an ongoing youtube series where Mr. Lamborn would provide updates with legislation that's moving around the House.  He'd also read some constituent mail, generally the topics which we receive the most correspondence on.  Two other representatives which I like do something similar - Ron Paul (Texas - R) and Jason Chaffetz (Utah - R).  Mr. Paul has an ongoing series called "Texas Straight Talk", and Mr. Chaffetz has a series called "Cot Side Chats" because he actually sleeps on a cot in his office in Washington.  And of course the president has his own campaign going on called "Your Weekly Address".  All of these can be found on Youtube, so it's incredibly easy for people to access.  I'm trying to come up with a name for our series, and I think we're going to call it "Colorado Common Sense".  For now I simply have "Your Weekly Address" where the title will go.

I discussed this project with him on the way back from an event in Denver one night, and he seemed to really like the idea.  I know at this point he's on board for the project, and our press secretary and communications director also think it's a great idea.

I went ahead and put together two versions of the video opening for the upcoming series, a blue version and a red version.




Which do you think looks best?

So far the project has been running smooth enough.  But I ran into some problems.  The main problem is his schedule.  I've been wanting to get our first installment filmed and posted up here before today, the due date of this project.  I've spent weeks trying to get some time, but with the elections and all, he's been incredibly busy.  It doesn't help that he's sick this week as well.  I was actually hoping to film yesterday, and might be able to tomorrow if he's up to it.  Otherwise I will definintely post our first video here when I do get that chance, which I think will be pretty soon.  But it's put a real damper on my plans, especially for this social media project here.

I really wish I had more I could post now, but it's out of my hands for now.  I'll post up any updates I receive.  For now, please subscribe to our youtube channel and our Facebook page!

http://www.youtube.com/user/CongressmanLamborn

http://www.facebook.com/CongressmanDougLamborn

Colorado Farmers Markets Twitter bound

For our social media project we chose to publicize Colorado farmers markets via Twitter. Our main focus was to draw visitors to local markets and generate public interest. We addressed the social media aspect of content creation by establishing a bio including key terms that average consumers ‘think of’ to find information via twitter and makes them decide to become a follower. We’ve also tweeted messages containing those key terms such as, Colorado Springs Farmers Market, fresh produce, organic fruits and vegetables, recipes, Colorado Farmers Market, etc. so in the event folks search they can find us. One of the major drawbacks we quickly discovered is the timelines between posting messages. We found that our inconsistency in posting messages (beyond 7 days); our previous tweets became non-visible via twitter search. Another discovery is relevant to Google organic first page, the same applies to twitter where you are able to pull up relevant older posts which are not frequently browsed by the average user. One of the biggest barriers we’ve experienced right out the gate was to maximize the 140 characters allowable via Twitter. So upon following topic specifically we found that several used URL abbreviations. Thankfully the Twitter help center had a thorough article on the topic, as follows: “There are a variety of websites that can shorten your long links, making them easier to fit into Twitter's character limit. These services can provide you with a shorter version of any URL you want to share. Then, you can use the shorter version in your Tweet, and anyone who clicks on it will be redirected to the longer URL. It's that easy”, and so awesome! The one we used is http://bit.ly. Thus far we’ve been able to follow 13 relevant tweeters and been able to entice 2 to follow us. Come check us out: @farmersmarketCS.

Erika & Amanda's Twitter Project Wrap Up

For our project, we decided on utilizing Twitter to create, share and publicize content. We decided to put our main focus towards trends in social media as well as share progress updates from our class. We figured we should do about 25% personal content posts such as info about class guest speakers, project updates and links to our class blog. The other 75% would retweets by social media experts we were following and finding our own content online (i.e. articles, blogs etc) about social media and share those. Once we started our Twitter account (@UCCS_Mktg4700) we began to search for media experts and business experts to follow on Twitter. As it turns out searching based on categories is easy but not specific enough for what we were looking for. Luckily, we did know of some people and companies that were icons in the social media and business news world to follow such as Amber Mac and Mashable. We also utilized Twitter’s suggested people to follow based on the content we wanted to post. As time went on we also tried different tools for Twitter such as bit.ly, which shortens URLs so they fit into the 140 character space, TwitPic to share photos, phone applications such as Peep and Twitter for Android to post content on the go and finally HootSuite, which allowed for us to schedule tweets and also make one update that would be posted on several of our social media accounts (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Foursquare). We also learned about hash tags (#) for subject matter when searching Twitter, mentions (@username) to mention people or companies we were referring to, and trends such as Follow Friday (#FF)  and Marketing Monday (#mm) where you post suggestions of people to follow using mentions. By the end of the project, we learned a lot of basic tools to run a successful Twitter page. We ended up following 35 people, had 19 followers and made 60 tweets. We learned that the more you tweet and the better use of appropriate & interesting hash-tagged subjects, the more followers you will get. I think as time went on, we learned to tweet more and find original content, rather than retweeting mostly everyone else’s content. Overall, we consider our project to be a success in our ability to create, share and publicize content from Twitter.

Follow us: @UCCS_Mktg4700  Thanks!

Twitter Marketing

Hey Guys,

For my social media project I looked into companies that have had success using twitter as free marketing. Sorry I got a bit late on adding the twitter account but its @sweettweet_mktg. I found some very interesting ideas from different companies. I am updating my account to include information about successful twitter campaigns. It is very interesting to see how social media has evolved marketing for companies.

I started the the account to really look into Web PR. I liked how companies were using their accounts to make posts and videos to reach more customers. Twitter has helped many companies remake their public relations. One example I have found is the Old Spice page. They have taken something raw and really used it to further their company. Through twitter you can find many ways to find new layouts to better promote your page.

Thanks,
Carl Lum

Twitter

Hey everyone, like most of the students in our class Bryan Asher and myself created a Twitter account. Neither of us had really used Twitter before so we really needed the classes help to get off the ground. We started off slow, a few tweets each a week; after a few weeks we started following people and making more tweets. we picked some business people to follow such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs along with some other business programs dealing with material we had covered in class. we added the UCCS Twitter page and surprisingly enough they instantly started following us and asked if they could help. After that we decided that our page was to simple and needed a personal touch to make it our own. We uploaded a picture and thanks to a link to a Twitter profile editor we were able to change the background and layout and text colors. Our page was starting to look like a normal page. we then noticed that some others were following us, however we didn't know any of them. This prompted us to look for some fellow students from our class, and we found a few but we couldn't prove that they were really the students in our class due to default pictures. after some more people post there link on the blog we hope to share with others, so please visit our site and we will return the favor.
http://twitter.com/Ecommproject

Matt and I chose to create a Twitter account for our social media project. We chose Twitter because neither of us had ever used it. An ulterior motive was to use our new twitter account to help contribute to the research we’d need for our viral marketing group project.

We started by creating the Twitter account then looking for people with an interest in viral marketing. It was very easy to locate other Twitter with an interest in viral marketing via the Twitter interface.

During the first week or so it was very interesting to see how many tweets some of the people were posting throughout the day. We initially thought it must be some sort of spamming but when we started (reluctantly at first) clicking on some of the links, we found that most of the tweets with website links were legitimate websites that other Twitter users had found and were sharing.

We started noticing that as we were following other users that they would in turn follow us. We felt a little guilty because our usage was definitely more take than give. We shared a few websites we found interesting but nothing that compared to the amount of information that some of the users were sharing.

Social media is always changing and there’s always new information – Twitter is like a first-hand account of the changes that are happening every minute of the day. It’s great to be able to follow and in a way associate ourselves with people who have similar interests.

Be sure to follow us!!! We’ll return the favor!

www.twitter.com/Viral_Ecomm

Creating Simple Tutorials On Youtube

Hey Everyone!

It seems like the world revolves around some sort of social media now a days. Whether it is a friend's status update on Facebook, a product release tweet from a clothing company or a hilarious viral video release on YouTube the point is no one can really escape the reaches of social media networks. Thus, Martin and myself decided to try and make a video on YouTube on a simple topic: Making a how-to YouTube tutorial for absolute beginners.

YouTube is a powerful tool for self-promotion and sharing of all types of multimedia content on the web. Being so, we decided to make a simple how to video to post on YouTube and what better than to make a simple video on how to make and upload video's on YouTube. This video we made is short step-by-step instructional video for absolute beginners to the web and YouTube.

Creating a how to video is not an easy task. To be able to thoroughly and thoughtfully guide and describe even the most simple of processes in a short video is not easy. For us, we had no idea where to begin, what software to use and how to make it worthy of YouTube. Here we will offer a few tips from what we learned from this project.

Tips We've Learned:

1. Use a good video editing software - Editing for content, quality and material is crucial to making the video good and useful

2. Make it interesting - Add some funny/informal clips to add some personality to the video

3. Keep it short - Try to keep the video's under 5 Min. If they are longer split the clips into 4-5 Min. Individual clips and make a YouTube channel instead

4. Choose the right format - YouTube is picky and sometimes tricky in which formats it allows to be published on its website. If the video is still processing an hour after you have uploaded it don't hold your breath - the video's not going to load

5. Manage your time well - Making & editing video's takes a lot of time so don't procrastinate. Make a list of what you want to do, how to do them and schedule yourself accordingly

So, please watch our video and give us some feedback/comments/suggestions. Thanks!

Best,

Cj & Martin

Kids on Bikes Colorado Springs

For my social media project, I chose to become further involved in Facebook from a business stand point. Specifically, I enhanced the Facebook site for Kids on Bikes Colorado Springs (KOB). Kids on Bikes Colorado Springs, is a Non- Profit Organization here in town that brings joy to under privileged children by providing them with bikes. KOB in general, encourages child of all ages to get out and ride while living a healthy life! Prier to this project, KOB had a Facebook page, but they were struggling with the daily upkeep and involvement of the site. Therefore, I had the opportunity to enhance the organization of the site. A few things I did to improve the site was; increased the amount of “like” participants, engaged more with the audience on a daily bases by increasing amount of posts, connected KOB Facebook with KOB twitter, and created a KOB Facebook username: http://www.facebook.com/KidsOnBikesCS. I also created business cards that promoted the site and encouraged individuals to “like” Kids on Bikes Colorado Springs. These business cards were handed out at the “Raising a Champion: The Lance Armstrong Story as told by his mom Linda Armstrong” Luncheon. The Luncheon took place on September 28th @ the Cheyenne Mountain Conference Resort. To encourage recipients to “like” KOB we offered all fans a chance to win a signed Lance Armstrong as a thank you for liking KOB Facebook page, as long as they “liked” the page prior to November 1st. Listed above where just a few strategies I used, additional posts and promotions offered can be viewed at http://www.facebook.com/KidsOnBikesCS. My goal was to not only engage more with audience, but to make it more of a community where loyal followers can come and share or gather information. As a whole it has been successful. We went from 40 “likes” before I started, to currently 144 “likes”. As well, the monthly active user rate increased by 1.2% and daily posts interactions increased as a whole. I really enjoyed this projected and had fun coming up with different strategies. If you haven’t already, please check out KOB at http://www.facebook.com/KidsOnBikesCS and become a follower!

Marketing in the Age of Google

For my book review I read Vanessa Fox's instruction manual on search optimization "Marketing in the Age of Google". There were a lot of direct ties between what's in the book and the presentation we received in class regarding the industry and its benefits. I highly recommend this book one for all marketing majors because this is the direction in which a majority of successful marketing strategies and campaigns are headed, and two for anyone wanting to either start a business or a website. This book gives you direction on how to make your website value-added to both Google and most importantly you customers! It isn't a very long read in that it's only 218 pages filled with large font and a plethora of images and graphs. I initially read the reviews which not only praised the book, but commended it on it's readability and I must say they were accurate for sure! So on the smallest level if you want your website to be in the crucial top 3 spot well this book can help but there may be better suited books, however if you want to optimize your site so that you gain more customer loyalty than anyone wasting money on adwords? Then this is the book for you!

Twitter

Hey Guys,

I've had a Twitter account for a few months now, but have never really used it, I've gotten to learn more and more about it every time I log in and its pretty sweet, I've made some tweets already about topics relating to social media, if you would like to follow me, my name is @Rico0626, I'm really excited to see what other things I can learn and benefit off of from Twitter.

Thanks
Rico Rosario

Twitter Account

Hey Everyone! We have been working on Twitter for a little while now, but we are looking for followers! Anyone working on Twitter for their social media project or who has a Twitter account, our username is Rachael_Will. We would love to follow more people also! :)

Before opening a Twitter account, we didn't really understand the value of Twitter, but after using it for several weeks, we are now understanding how crucial Twitter is to stay connected. The many options we now have for social media marketing because of Twitter; and now we can learn so much from so many other people with similiar interests. Everytime we sign on, we discover something new, and we now we still have much more to learn. We will keep you posted on how it is going and the many new lessons learned from Twitter.

Changing Projects

Sarah and I tried really hard to make Second Life work but the program needed to be downloaded and neither of us had fast enough internet connections. Fail!!! On the bright side, now we get to play with Gowalla. Foursquare's arch-enemy!

Twitter Project

Hey everyone! wrapping up our social media project using Twitter. Still looking for followers www.twitter.com/UCCS_Mktg4700. Postings about social media news, class updates and other Ecommerce related topics. Utilizing phone apps (peep), Hootsuite, TwitPic and links to other social networking sites to make posts. On Twitter? Follow us!!

Blogging

One thing that I am learning about blogging is that you have to write something interesting and/or compelling enough that inspires people to respond. So far with our social media blog we have not been very successful at this. Does anyone have good tips on topics or getting people to respond? (If anyone wants to follow our blog, it's http://www.michelleandemily.blogspot.com/)

The other thing I have recently realized from my own experience is that it's hard to know who finds blog information useful. For instance, the other day I entered a search and one result directed me to a blog. I read the post and used the information but the blogger has no way of knowing that. It seems that it would be hard for the common blogger to measure its usefulness. I know that bloggers can use free trackers to count the traffic, but how do they know if their information is relevant and useful to readers?

--Michelle Bryant

Win a Lance Armstrong Jersey!

Bring Joy to Kids on Bikes and "Like" us on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/KidsOnBikesCS by October 15, 2010 and you're entered to win a Lance Armstrong Jersey.

Kids on Bikes, is a Non-Profit organization dedicated to providing brand new bikes and safety equipment to under-served children in the Colorado Springs Area. For my Social Media Project, I am enhancing Kid on Bikes Facebook page, so help support me and this wonderful organization by joining today!

Jess and Jenn's Blog

Hello all,

We are writing a blog on TypePad on a lot of different networking and social networking sites. Check it out at http://its-about-time.typepad.com.

Thanks!

Follow our blog!

Emily and Michelle are doing a blog for our social media project. Please follow our blog! http://www.michelleandemily.blogspot.com/  Our first blog talks about last week's guest speaker presentation--CodeBaby CEO, Patrick Bultema. We would love to find out what other people thought about it!

Join us and follow our blog on LinkedIn

Join www.linkedin.com/in/socialmediaproject2010 to follow our blog and connect with us!

Sarah and Julie

Colorado Farmers Markets on Twitter

The social media project will be surrounding Customer Relationship Management via Twitter. Business large and small are making great use of Twitter, however, many are still trying to figure out how to harness its power to communicate with existing and prospective customers. Twitter is also a great tool for entrepreneurs to utilize in their attempts to 'break' into a market as it brings 'real-time' customer comments and perceptions to light.
While there are companies that are well under way of becoming too technology driven, some try to apply traditional marketing techniques to social channels with little success. However, for many companies, the opportunity to listen, engage, collaborate and enter into partnerships with their customers have successfully turned to Twitter as a platform.

As a result, Joshua & I will publicize Local Farmers Markets via Twitter.

Changing Tracks

So I abbandoned Twitter in place of a blog and I couldn't be happier. I was giving Twitter a second shot at being fun/ interesting, but not surprisingly it has failed to surpass my interest. Maybe I just don't get it and maybe I am just to impatient with it.

However, I am really happy to have a blog now an so far it has been a really fun outlet. It's called "The Blog and Bright Ideas of Bogo" and basically chronicles my train of thought. Here is the link http://theblogsandbrightideasofbogo.blogspot.com/

please please check it out and please please participate :)

Thank you

The purpose of the Social Media Projects Blog

This blog serves as the gathering point for the social media class projects for the MKTG 4700 e-commerce course at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs for Fall 2010. Students are required to use this blog to share the learnings of their social media project, and they may also use it to publicize their project within this project to the class.

If you "stumble upon" or otherwise find this blog and you are not a member of the class, I hope you learn something from it. Keep in mind that all 42 registered students of the class are contributors to this blog, so while I (the course instructor) read and monitor the postings and comments, I don't control the creation of the content. Feel free to join the conversation and leave a comment on the postings if you would like.
TG, the e-commerce prof