Week 8

HTC

I thought this youtube marketing video was pretty good. It show many of the features of the new phone that is to come. The background music is decent for the video also. It's not to loud or fast, but slow and soft, which is appealing to the ears. The colors selected, like for the font, seem to work good, because of usual color of the logos of the company match the same color. The video is also pretty quick. This makes the watching the video easy, by not having to watch a long video that might get boring after awhile. This could lead to the loss of viewers and even product sales. The ending of the video shows a link to find more information of the product, which is helpful and smart.

RED WOLF PRODUCTS

To start off , the spokesperson/speaker makes this marketing video effective. He is a quick talker but not to quick to be not understandable. He has a loud voice and keeps a good form during the video. The beginning scene is pretty cool also. This makes the company seem like they are really professional, with the digital effects. This makes the company more trustable.  The details that are given through the video are clear and straightforward. There's no information given that may confuse the viewers or make them not want to watch the rest of the video. I think this is one of the most effective and professional marketing videos I've seen yet.

Sage Fly Rod "One"



This video's strongest points for effectiveness in marketing is its clips of the rod in action, clips of the rod being built, and the speaches of the people that used it/make it. The visual effects at the beginning are professional and make the company look professional even more. The background music was also soothing and fit the video perfect. This video was another effective marketing youtube vide, and would even make me want to buy the product.

Conclusion

In conclusion I found some features of a youtube marketing video that make it effective. The background music is important. The music has to fit the video and not annoy the viewers. The spoke person, if one, has to look professional, knowledgable, and speak loud and clear. This is important when the customer needs to trust what the person is telling them about the product. The visual effects are also a plus. The more professional the visual effects, the more professional the video and the company look. A video with old technology or crappy effects, won't look appealing. Finally, a link or information about where to find out more information about the product is needed. This is important if a viewer wants to purchase the product, share it with friends, or just want to look up additional information or testimonials about it.

Week 7

Troutlet is a company that is all about fishing. Their facebook page is really good with information on the deals, products, and promotions. They have contest that followers can participate in to win products that range from expensive to non expensive, to new and old products. The keep their facebook up to date about once to twice every two weeks.  They have awesome pictures that followers submit and they business employees post themselves. I rank them as effective because of what they provide and keeping up to date on their posts. The main attractant to follow them is product giveaways, which no one wants to pass up, and news up the new products.

Guitar Center has a super effective page. First they have apps. This is for contest and careers within the business. These are what most people like to see in a page. But even better is their guitar lessons link. This takes you to guitar lessons on youtube. This is pretty cool if your a musician. Musicians find this handy and fun to view when their facebooking like myself. They keep up to date constantly and tell of new products and promtions. I rank they as very effective.
https://www.facebook.com/GuitarCenter

Around the corner is a bar business. Their page seems alright, but doesn't offer alot to its subscribers. It keeps people up  to date on specials and event and shares pictures of events and people. Other than this it doesn't offer much to people. It couldv'e been more attractive if they had print out coupons or games you play to get free drinks. Id rank this as the least effective out of my three choices. They could use more information like hours, dj's, food hours, and menu.
https://www.facebook.com/GuitarCenter#!/ATCcafe

Google+ and Facebook

Google+ and Facebook are closely similiar. I just setup an account with Google+ and even the layout is similiar to facebooks, except it doesn't have any of the annoying features facebook added, like the timeline. The advantage that Google+ has is its audience. I really don't know anyone that uses it, so it's aim may be more towards businesses. When their is a marketer at a company, im sure they try to make profiles on most every social media site, and google+ maybe one of them. So this may be an advantage. A big advantage is e-mail capabilities. All the recipents that are sent in gmail, are added to your google+ account. Which helps if you have a business that email's customers, alot. This enables them to follow you easier and find you quicker.  The pages on Google+ don't have apps, atleast that i couldn't find. This may be an issue if companies put out apps for features such as products listing, or games. Other than that, i see google+ as way better than facebook. It's layout maybe similiar to facebooks, but it seems cleaner and more appealing. It's not cluttered up like facebook is since it's been adding more and more annoying features.

Week 6

Classmate Blogs

Tommy has a great blog on Social Media Marketing. He provides definitions of words that have to do with Social Media Marketing for clarity. This helps the readers understand his topic and points of view. But what is most impressive about his blog is his examples. Using an example with the president Obama creates a strong impact. This helps readers understand his concepts and deffinitions from a point everyone can relate to. He deffinetly shows that he has done some research to his topic and understands it. http://tommyf-tommy.blogspot.com/#!/2012/01/social-media-marketing.html

Jason has a very impressive blog on Social Media Marketing. He went the extra mile to include images. This deffinetly makes his blog more appealing and interesting. His images are easly to understand and have a color scheme that matches. Instead of just reading his blog, the images provide information about his blogs and and social media marketing. The one with comparisons to social media sites, makes it appearant who has the most users and viewers. I'd like to see more blogs like his.
http://ramul.tumblr.com/

Other Blog

The Landscaping of Social Media: Tactics vs strategy
   This blog is very interesting and easy to understand. Yotes explains social media strategy and tactics in an easy understandable way by using lawn service as an example.  This really takes out the confusing jargon used to explain some of the tactics and strategy of SSM. He explains the positives and negatives of keeping up with your SSM by referencing to the same with lawn service. As in hiring someone else to do the work for you or keeping up on it yourself. The post might have not go into deep detail but the blog is broad enough to get the simple understanding of what hes talking about.
http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/tactics-vs-strategy/

Enterprise Social Networking is More Than Facebook Behind a Firewall
 Solis bring social media to a different step in which is enterprise. I have never heard of this subject before and it may be on a different subject than marketing, but it still involves social media and the way it can be used for a businesses benefits. When introducing enterprise social networking, it allows the employees to collobarate among each other and have new goals and ideas come forth and overcome. This helps the business/enterprise communicate more easly than ever before.  It helps employees engage in communication and experiences among the workplace. With more social networking technologies coming out, goals arent clear and neither is communication among them all the time. A leader/decision maker should be used to push it forward and make it work among the employees. This blog deffinetly brings a different aspect of Social Media that i have not thought about. It seems to be beneficial in a workplace that has many employees like an enterprise.
http://www.briansolis.com/2012/03/enterprise-social-networking/

RATINGS

Sony ericsson has a blog that talks about its phone new improvement/addition. This blog I think is a little weak and so i give a rating of C.There is not much detail about the product as in why the change is being made, when , and how it may effect the customers. The was comments left by followers that were not all so pleasing. This blog could have also made an attempt to tell of new features that may be coming out or phones/products to look forward to. This blogs post deffinetly needs more work and detail.
http://blogs.sonymobile.com/products/2011/04/13/sony-ericsson-on-android-market/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed2Fproducts+29

Rio products has an awesome blog page. I give them an A. They have post about their products and upcoming releases. The products have as much detail in them as needed. Not one thing is missed in the blogs. Customer reveiews are also available to view and so is images for showing the products. A small overview of the company is summed up at the bottom too, which helps the reader learn more about the company also. I would deffinetly subscribe to this blogging.
http://www.rioproducts.com/blog/?p=669#more-669

Bonar Custom fly Rods blog is a great example of a mom and pops shop hitting the blogs. They cover many good tactics and strategies in their blogs. The coloring of the page is nice and appealing to the eye. A summariziation of the history of the business is shown and short in length. This helps not to make the reader want to skip it. The pictures of the custom rods are high def which adds to the appealing of the blog. There are many images of all different kinds of rods that were built, this adds to the reputation of and effectiveness of his blog. I give bonar Customer Rods an A+.
http://bonarcustomflyrods.blogspot.com/

Social Media Market Planning

The slide show i viewed had some concepts similiar to the ones of Mr.Zellers slides but also a bit more. One of the strategies that i viewed and understood was to listen, understand, and engange. This kind of strategy seems basic and makes alot of sense. This has to do less with business jargon like the other slide shows. It pretty much makes sense and can be understood from any point in my opinion. But this concept is not for planning i think. Planning has alot more involved than just this. This is more of just a concept to follow to keep social media marketing moving for a business.

The devices that are used have an emphasis placed on it unlike the other slideshows. This comes to me as a technological view of marketing social media. When it comes to planning for a social media market, technology should always be considered in my view. If more people are viewing SM sites through phones and other handheld devices, maybe a direction or plan should be made for these. Maybe like an app that can be used on a SM website, or statistics that show which platform was used and why. These could contribute to understanding the consumers and their actions towards SM and branding.

When it comes to actually planning for marketing in SM, this slideshow didn't have much value in my opinion like others. Definetly planning is important, especially for disaster.  I understand that the marketer should understand, listen and reply to users/consumers, but planning maybe should be considered first. Or is actually second? This is what confuses me. If you don't plan and listen and understand about your business/firm from online social media, then would you have material to understand plan for or should a plan be made first before hitting social media. I see pro's and con's from each. How can you plan for something that you don't know what the result maybe from? Maybe a plan for disaster should be always made in social media marketing just in case, but to start in the market, maybe a simple plan can be made, and after in the pools of social media are established, than comes the complex plan. After learning and understanding the followers/users, than can a plan be made to interact with them to gain positive results in the market.

Overall i found this slideshow informative on what to focus on when using social media marketing, but deffinetly not for planning.

http://www.slideshare.net/djc1805/social-marketing-listening-and-engagement

Project Marketing Plan----

After viewing the slideshows I think what you have given us is pretty concrete.  I have no considerations to give. You have included what i think is the most important in the planning which is objectives/goals, content and metrics of the plan.With the plans you have given, the marketing should be easy to follow and understand and get results. If anything that is needed, would be found during the marketing on a social media site. Then it would be incorporated into the planning.

I do think it is a good idea to solicit ideas from the students. Students may have ideas or experiences that a teacher may not have. This could help build the planning more concrete and effective. It also makes the student feel as though they have a say in what the planning, giving more motivation.

One thing i dislike about the project is what it's for. Using the business division isn't practical i think and makes the project boring. I can't emphasize on how boring it makes it. I know you give the option for students to use something else, but i think it should be mandotory. Why not just have students use their creativity and make up their own business and a product, then make them use the planning for that. This seems more fun in my opinion.

McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan had great views on media and its growth.  He explains how media is a type of extension of a person in form of a function. If you think about this and something such as a cell phone it makes sense. A cell phone is like an extension of a person that extends the communication boundaries of themselves. Now a person can communicate miles away without even having to be near someone. Same with television. To tell someone a story verbally is not needed since it can be sent to millions of people worldwide at one time. So many examples can be given with this theory and be obvious.
 In one of his quotes he tells about the power of advertising. This i have never thought of and now has come to mind as one of the strongest influences in our culture that changes us. If most advertisements on media is about a girl and a structure that attracts men, this can shape our culture into believing and applying it. Women see this and shape themselves into what is thought that men seek and men may seek this because of the thought it is norm or what is wanted.  The power of advertising is tremendous. Think about products you own. How did you first hear of them? Guarentee is was through media or someone that had seen it through a type of media. Media has the power to change much of anything in a society and culture.
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/mcluhan.html <Qoute

McLuhan's tetrad is an unbelievable logic. The tetrad ask questions of what does a medium enhance, obsolete, retrieve, and push to the extremes. After answering these question about a new technology or medium, it can be seen what is happening in technology. A HD 3d Tv is a good example. It enhances standard CRT tv's and graphics. This makes the standard tv's obsolete at some point. This brings back the usage of TV instead of computers all the time , especially with the 3D. When the tv was pushed to the limits the HD and 3D capabilities were invented. I can see the limit being pushed further and maybe becoming TV that appears as holograms maybe. This tetrad can make people think about what advancements have came and what can come at the same time. This tetrad  can be see as a tool for technology and media enhancements and evolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrad_of_media_effects

SMM Assignment 2

After reviewing the interviews with the group of people that use Social Media Marketing and other classmates blogs, i have found a few things they all share in common.

1. Always have fun with social media marketing. Many of the people that you social media sites do it for fun and connections. If people start to take it to seroius it becomes less fun and less people will visit it or read peoples' feeds. Firms should do the same. If they take to it to serious and put much pressure on people with their feeds and updates, people will be pushed away more and less attracted. Many of the reviews I have read state this and seems to be a basic principle to follow.

2. Keep your companies page/post updates with current news and products, but don't flood people with to much. Many firms will post updates about information that are really important, like leagues, products, news, updates, sales. Sports especially put this as a high value. They keep people update to date with stats and players just like Eva from Flat Track Derby. http://lccc-ciss-mzellers.blogspot.com/2011/07/social-media-marketing-interviews-eva.html

3. Get people to participate into the company or product. Maybe by asking them to participate in naming a product or trying for a contest. This gathers much interest. Maggie did this for one of her cupcakes and drew lots of attention. By having followers help name a cupcake they felt as if they help made it and will remember the cupcake. This provides almost a kind of attachment and feeling with the company and people, since they "sort-of" have a say in something the company does. http://lccc-ciss-mzellers.blogspot.com/2011/07/social-media-marketing-interviews_25.html


4.Do not offend people in anyway. This can be religon and polotics. The purpose is to draw in peoples interest and not push it away. This i find as a basic rule everyone should follow. I first read this in another classmates and understood it. No firms that want to attract and retain customers won't try to offend them. http://benb72.wordpress.com/

5.Provide feedback to people's questions or comments. This gives a good impression and creates people to spread the word around about you in a good manner. This can draw much attention to your site. The more attention that is drawn can lead to more sale of products, goods, or site traffic. If people don't keep up with updates or feeds, people may find them not as informational as they should be or a waste to have on there, which will lead to them being removed.

Social media marketing

Social Media Marketing is a kind of network among people that can be used for marketing. Facebook is a good example this. Firms can create a profile and network themselves among other firms and people. This opens up a network of people allowing others to discover and find out about a firm/person. With this kind of network for a firm, more customers can be gained easily. Customer reviews are right in front of people who discover the person or firm, and these are the people that are networked. Social Media Marketing is a marketing concept that i can see a requirement for the future to be sucessfull in a market, especially an online market.

Some useful links ~
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_marketing
http://www.socialmediamarketing.com/  -- case studies