Amiel's Blog

The Importance of Social Media

amielazim — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 14:58:25 +0000

Social media has become a necessity for our modern society. Most of us would have more than one social networking account, whether it’s two, three, or more accounts it all shares a fundamental purpose, and that’s to share contents and converse within different networks. The most important element of social media is in the group, the network of people which lies behind it. Without it, social sites are utterly pointless to anyone. It was for this reason that made Facebook and Twitter the champions of social networking.

Due to the fact of this so-called network effect, many organizations saw the potential of benefiting from such hype. It’s an excellent tool that will allow customers to give you feedback, criticism, and recommendation about a certain product. For instance, customers are now finding it hard to believe TV commercials that would normally give false promises to certain products. As a result of that, they would normally turn to social media to find out more information about that particular product. This also enables them to make a better judgment before purchasing it; since it’s easy to communicate and exchange opinions with other users, customers are more confident when buying the product.

Let’s go back a few years and imagine what it was like before..

The image above portrays the evolution of what it once was like not too long ago. There’s a significant difference between the response times in 1998, as opposed to 2009 due to the enhancement in technology. It’s apparent that organizations should leverage on such technologies to increase their interaction speed with customers. After all, as the saying goes, time is money and money is time.

Now are you going to be in that 1998 time line and get left behind? Or are you willing to enhance your organization’s interaction with customers?

I would like to end this blog post with a video that basically sums up the very essence of social media and why you should take advantage of it:

References

Neagu, C. 2009. Social Media, Evolution and History

Benckenstein, G. 2009. Social Media Importance for Companies and Institutions

Adding Social networking to Starbucks Coffee

amielazim — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 17:30:49 +0000

Social networking sites have become the norm of today’s business world. Whether it’s a physical or virtual business, if you limit its online presence on Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, LinkedIn, Digg and more, it’s missing out significant opportunities. This is simply because the internet provides powerful networking connections that enable companies to target potential customers, business partners and employees. On top of that, companies are realizing that the richest source of insight, ideas, data, and information are gained from leveraging the collective intelligence of public and corporate users.

Innocentive (2010) – “The horse and buggy industry didn’t die because automobiles came along. It died because it didn’t figure out how to adapt to the new marketplace.”

That’s what modern companies are doing. They are adapting to the marketplace and finding the right strategies to succeed. Companies who endeavor in such manner will surely be ahead of others.

Corporate using Social networks

Starbucks is a perfect example of a company utilizing social networking sites as opposed to the horse and buggy industry. They are literally taking advantage of some of the most trendy social sites out there and are doing exceptionally well with their social media strategy. So much so, that they have attained over 1,046,000 followers on Twitter and over 13,767,000 fans on Facebook. There’s definitely something good about that!

My Starbucks Idea
It’s a consumer portal that allows Starbucks customers to share their ideas. Whether it’s revolutionary or simple they are encouraging customers to throw in their ideas and to join the discussion of other people’s ideas. It’s a brilliant strategy that allows Starbucks to analyze what the customer really wants. They do this by allowing the public to contribute their ideas, and from that people can vote or suggest additional ideas. Starbucks is more than just about coffee and that’s exactly what they are trying to point out by getting the community involve. For instance, one of their customers posted “I don’t like the loud music at Starbucks” and someone else replied “Music at Starbucks should always be soft background music and no loud obnoxious music. After all Starbucks is not a tavern”. The more customers agree with this, the more likely Starbucks will apply the idea.

Starbucks on Twitter
Their Twitter account allows them to communicate directly and indirectly to customer issues and complaints. It’s a convenient way for them to respond to their customers as well since it does not require anything more than a 140 characters. Having such limitation will also allow their posts/replies to be more concise rather than long paragraphs of text. This enables both Starbucks and customers to communicate more efficiently. In addition, Starbucks can reach out to users who prefer using Twitter as opposed to other social sites, hence increasing their market opportunities.

Starbucks on Facebook
Similar to Twitter, Facebook is another way for them to converse with their 13.7 million fans while providing them with other useful contents such as: Videos, blog posts, and photos. They have also been using Facebook to invite fans to their part events. They had 244,000 people who attended to one of their events, but I’m not entirely sure if all of them actually attended it. Furthermore, it’s another option for Starbucks to reach out to customers who are more actively involved on Facebook.

Starbucks on YouTube
There are over 7,600 subscribers on Starbucks YouTube Channel and as many as 5.4 million has viewed their videos in total. The implementation of YouTube has allowed Starbucks to share various commercial and informational videos explaining the origins of the different coffee blends and some of their charity work videos. This has allowed them to enhance their company’s name by demonstrating their activities around the world and how it’s not just about coffee. There’s a story behind every Starbucks coffee you purchase. Watch the commercial below:

Starbucks on Flickr
One of the many social networking sites that Starbucks has ignored was Flickr. There are quite a few fan pages such as Starbucks, and Starbucks Coffee, but it’s not an official Flickr account made by Starbucks themselves. Instead, they have decided to sponsor existing groups to encourage their photo updates.

Overall, Starbucks is definitely a company who has gain benefits from applying web 2.0 strategies and this is a significant consideration for many other companies who wants to succeed. As long as they continue to endeavor in the right marketing tools, Starbucks will definitely be far away from the horse and buggy industry.

Personal experience with Social Networking Sites
Well as far as I’m concerned Facebook is the only networking site that I’m actively on and after being a member for approximately 5 years I’ve experienced a couple of things that I would like to share. The biggest concern with any networking sites are its privacy issues. Not many are aware of the sort of information that their putting online and it becomes difficult when you’re information are revealed to anonymous users without you being aware of it. I’ve seen a couple of acquaintances who would post “inappropriate” pictures that would offend others. Pictures that would cause arguments in a relationship or even divorce and pictures that would get someone fired from their job. For instance, one of my acquaintances who worked for a bank decided to pose with several $500 bills and it was posted on Facebook. After a couple a couple of days the manager of the bank called and was fired immediately. What’s even worse is that they probably saved the picture as a record of proof for future awareness. When it heard of this incident, it was like a slap to reality. I realized even if it’s just a random photo that shows off a couple of $500 bills it would have definitely affected the Bank’s image. And based on this experience, it showed me how fragile some contents can be. I was more conscious with the type of contents I would post on Facebook and if I think it would offend someone, I would set the privacy settings to private for that particular content.

References

Gray, M. 2009. Starbuck Recipe For Social Media Success

Innocentive. 2010. The Future of Innovation

Noff, A. 2010. The Starbucks Formula for Social Media Success

Swartz, J. 2008. Social Networking Sites Help Companies Boost Productivity

Swearingen, J. 2008. Social Networking for Business

Walt Disney’s Collaboration

amielazim — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 15:38:52 +0000

It’s almost unimaginable to live without the internet in today’s era, everything we need and want is practically available on the World Wide Web. It has become a necessity to our daily activities that we significantly rely on it. What was it like when you didn’t have any internet connection or days when the internet connection was plain sluggish? Did it feel like you were isolated from the world even thought it was only temporary? I certainly know I did! It’s not something I would want to happen on a regular basis. Not having that ability to access information from a few mouse clicks away would be miserable. For instance, accessing information from a Wiki page has somewhat become an important part of the internet for many users. A wiki allows organizations to harness the collective intelligence of its users and many other organizations are realizing the benefits of what it could deliver.

So what exactly is a wiki?
Many people have different perspectives towards the idea of what a Wiki really is, but whatever it is, a Wiki is a software that handles complex problems with simple solutions. There are a multitude of readily available Wiki software’s such as, MediaWiki, DokuWiki, PmWiki, WikkaWiki, Twiki, Wikipedia, and many more. It is a Web page that can be viewed and modified by anyone who has a web browser and internet connection. This means that any visitor has the ability to change its content if they desire. Although the potential for mischief exists, Wikis can be surprisingly robust, open-ended, and collaborative. Furthermore, a Wiki page has the ability to incorporate sounds, movies, and pictures; they may prove to be a simple tool to create multimedia presentations and simple digital stories (Educause, 2005).

Using Wikis within an enterprise

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the infamous Walt Disney Company. It’s been around for a hundred years now, and today it has made an annual revenue of approximately U.S. $35 billion (Walt Disney, 2010). Throughout its development, communication plays a vital role in its ever-growing company. As a result, Disney has implemented their very own DisneyWiki to enhance their collaboration towards their work. The DisneyWiki allows users to search, create and edit articles on Disney and its subsidiaries: theme parks, film companies, television networks, films, characters, and more. This sort of collaboration has allowed not only employees, but people from all over the world to contribute ideas towards their Wiki page. DisneyWiki encourages people to work together to create a comprehensive database for its Disney fans. There are no limitations on the articles, everyone has the ability to access and add value towards it. Disney wants their database to grow and evolve with the involvement of academics such as, student involvement, group activities, and so on. Already, they are as many as 3,354 articles since May 8, 2005. Additionally, Walt Disney has other Wiki pages that cater specifically for different divisions of their entertainment channels, some of which are, PixarWiki and DisneyChannelWiki.

What’s so good about wikis?

The administrator of DisneyWiki has a record of the document histories. If any mistakes or vandalism was to occur the admin has the ability to recover specific contents back. In fact, many Wiki pages have the function to conduct a comparison of the changes. It will show the admin the exact changes that editors have made to their articles over time.

There are heaps of Disney characters and listing their specific characteristics can be daunting task. By having a public Wiki, users are able to add or edit information to various articles while having a discussion on whether certain information is feasible.

It’s versatile in such a way that everything about Walt Disney is on its Wiki page. Most of its entertainment shows has its own detailed page. Basically this allows them to keep everything in one place, which is the key to staying organized. Employees within the company can use this page as well in order to remind themselves about certain films or characters.

Most importantly, it’s very simple for users to add contents on a Wiki page as it does not require any sophisticated HTML codes. It uses Simple Markup rules to do all your formatting.

What are the downsides?

In general, it’s hard to distinguish whether the information on a Wiki page is reliable because anyone is able to edit the contents. It may be written by experts, and sometimes written by not-so-much-experts. Verily, DisneyWiki provides excellent information; however it can be a good idea to verify it. Obviously, not everything is unreliable otherwise Wikis wouldn’t be a great source of information. On the contrary, if the information is between life and death, then it’s obviously a wise idea to verify.

Vandalism is another problem; viewers might deliberately edit certain words of a sentence, manipulate the information, or even clear the whole Wiki article.

Here’s an interesting example:

It requires internet/network connectivity to collaborate or access the DisneyWiki, but users are able to save the article in case of any unexpected incident occurs.

(Nations, 2010)

Personal experience with Wiki
I’ve never really experienced anything significant with using a Wiki really, but it did prove its collaborative capabilities. It’s an excellent way to accomplish a group task because it enables the team to track changes, share valuable links, review each other’s work, and monitor team performance. Personally, this saved a lot of time as physical meetings was reduced to once a week, instead of 3-4 times a week. The hassle of constantly organizing my emails was eliminated thanks to the Wiki page. Initially, conversations of group members would annoyingly stack up in my inbox. Thanks Wiki, for being helpful!

References

Educause. 2005. 7 Things You Should Know About Wikis

Nations, D. 2010. The Downsides of Wikis: The Dark Side of Community-Based Wikis

The DisneyWiki. 2010. Welcome to The DisneyWiki!

Walt Disney. 2010. Walt Disney – Wikipedia

Social media at its best!

amielazim — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 19:53:47 +0000

Now, ever since we were kids, our parents would always encourage us to share our things. Share your toys, share your games, share your food, share your clothes, and the list goes on, you get the point. So because of that, we’ve evolved into very courteous beings when it comes to sharing. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always apply to us in the competitive business world. We’re naturally very competitive and we try to gain as much information over our colleagues. Luckily, our culture is rapidly moving towards a mentality that encourages people to share and be open in order to be successful. It’s all about sharing information and working together to successfully achieve something. That’s what blogging and micro blogging are enabling us to do.

Companies are realizing the importance of what social media applications could offer to them in both internal and external environment. For instance, the internal purpose could improve communications on projects, update employees via RSS, discuss about timely issues, sharing insights and developments, and more. Whereas the externally part could be, marketing their business products to current and potential customers, and at the same time improve their relationship by engaging with their customers and communities (Watson, 2010). It’s a cheap, cunning, and clever way of doing business effectively.

Key differences between Blogging and Micro Blogging
Length - Well, I’m sure that most if not all of you are aware that micro blogging sites such as Twitter are limited to a 140 characters. It’s no rocket science – it is a simple system that sets a limitation on the input field. Whereas, blogging has no limitation to how many characters you want to have. Write up to a gazillion words you won’t run out of space. Though, it might be a little tedious when it comes to proofreading.

Less Time – You can probably type as many as 20 tweets in the time it takes you to write/edit up a whole blog post. Twitter is very natural to adopt for bloggers who have no time on their hands to seriously post. All it takes is a random thought and you can spontaneously post it up within a few seconds.

Visitors - The number of followers on your micro blog would probably be more than the number of visitors on your actual blogs. For instance, Twitter users can easily follow a random topic that they might come across. By viewing a friend’s profile you might find a topic that you might be interested in and all you have to do is click “follow” and vice versa your followers could do the same thing (Yourdon, 2008).

Companies who are using it
JetBlue is using Twitter to advertise their products to their 1.6 million followers and it’s crucial that they do it right. While promoting their products, it’s important that they don’t over do it by acting like an annoying product pusher because people are subscribing to their site. Looking at their Twitter (@JetBlue), it’s obvious that they have effectively reached out to their customers in a subtle manner. Here is an example of one their tweets:

“JetBlue has landed on eBay. We wanted to try something different. We’re auctioning off some great packages on eBay http://jetblue.com/ebay/.”

On the other hand, Kodak, which has a chief blogger (@kodakCB), wrote about how the company uses it’s product rather than giving subtle product pitch:

“Spent the weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival. Saw some great movies shot on Kodak film.”

In a nutshell, it’s important for companies to avoid marketing speak by indirectly pushing their products. For instance, saying things like, “Come check out all out great deals on eBay!” or “Go buy our newest film!” Instead, be up front and honest with customers and reveal exactly what you’re trying to achieve. It’s also a good idea to be casual with your followers on Twitter rather than being too formal and boring.
(Lynch, 2008)

Morgan Johnston – Corporate Communications Manager of JetBlue talks about how they use Twitter:

Other than their Twitter account, they also have a Blog site called BlueTales which basically publishes timely news and commentary about the happenings at JetBlue and in the wider airline industry. It’s a place where JetBlue is able to talk about things in more detailed as apposed to their Twitter page. The blog is more of a central gravity of their social media universe. They have effectively adopted apps such as, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr for the sole purpose of assisting their valuable customers and crewmembers.

For instance, recently they partnered with the Cancer Treatment Centres of America and Reality Cares – a non-profit organization. As a sponsor, JetBlue promoted their products by giving away JetPaws carriers to celebrities which was an excellent method of exposing themselves. It was a great way of marketing their products because the public will get the idea that they are not only focusing on their business, but they are also supporting charities.

What’s even more interesting is how JetBlue records their customer’s testimonial and post it up on their blog. One of their flights to JFK was two and a half hour late and the pilot personally apologized. He was very upfront, honest and most importantly kept the customers updated. That’s the kind of customer service that people want. Here’s the full video:

Potential pitfalls that they might face:

Need to keep things constantly updated otherwise you will lose potential customers.

It’s easy to start, but hard to maintain. You need interesting and relevant contents to post. It’s also not as easy as saying something and walking away because customers will question.

Blogs are fairly a spontaneous medium, and as a result of that, contents might offend some readers without you even knowing it.

The blogs might seem disorganized to some customers, with multiple tones and opinions.

References

Lynch, C. G. 2008. Twitter for Business: Four Ways Companies Use Microblogging

Watson, J. 2010. Blogs and Micro Blogging in the Enterprise

Yourdon. 2008. More on blogging vs. micro-blogging

BP’s Oil Spill Reputation Catastrophe

amielazim — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 03:07:50 +0000

Throughout the history of mankind, whoever thought that oil and gas would be such a necessity to the way we live today? It has brought numerous of both good and bad to our environment and civilization. It has provided us the comfort of going from one place to the other, without a drop of sweat. It has given us the ability to advance into today’s state-of-the-art technology. And as a result, the benefits of such resource have caused many staggering consequences to mother nature, such as the increase in greenhouse gases and other catastrophic mishaps. Nevertheless, the world still depends on it, since it’s one of the most efficient energy source.

About the organization
Let’s move along. Today’s post is basically about one particular oil company called British Petroleum (BP). It’s one of the many oil companies who make hundreds of billions every year. BP is one of the world’s largest energy companies, providing its customers with fuel for transportation, energy for heat and light, retail services and petrochemicals products for everyday items (BP, 2010).

Unfortunately, on April the 20th 2010, a disastrous event occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. One of BP’s offshore rigs exploded (Yes, you guessed it right!) and gusted out a thick smoke that was unbearable to watch. Soon after the blazing fire, the oil rig sunk beneath the sea and started spewing crude oil at the rate of about 1,300,000 litres per day (Wikipedia, 2010). Many animals are now in danger and people around the Gulf area are suffering the consequences. Click here to view pictures of the oil slick on the water’s surface.

Coast Guards Battling Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Fire[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qbB-Ga0rh8]

After the incident, BP suffered a lot from the media. They were bombarded with questions as to how and why the disaster happened. Several investigations were administered to find out the real story behind the incident (Jones, 2010). To make matters worse, BP has received numerous amounts of lawsuits and is believed to be one of the most expensive legal battles in history (BP Lawsuit, 2010).

Social media disaster
Already, BP’s oil spill accident was a catastrophe to their reputation. However, it didn’t just stop there. BP’s nightmare was getting worse by the second and it was a top story that escalated dramatically on the internet. The social media was bombarded with BP’s oil spill issues. So much so, that the company was being discriminated and insulted in so many ways.

Search for BP on Facebook and you’re more likely to find “Boycott BP” pages, one of which has more than 850,000 people liking the page, rather than BP’s official site. And on Twitter, a phony BP account that makes fun of the company has more than 191,000 followers, while the official BP Twitter account has less than 19,000 (Gaudin, 2010).

Below are some of the video examples on Youtube that defames BP’s reputation:
●Robert Redford calls for Clean Energy Now. Watch Now

●BP – Bringing People Together. Watch Now

●BP’s Mike Williams was one of the chief electronic technicians and one of the last survivors who escaped the burning inferno. In this video he explains his experience of what really happened. Watch Now

Mitigations to minimize reputation risk
BP should have started a social networking campaign way before the accident occurred. They could have used social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to update the public about the oil spill and how they would overcome the problem. Instead, BP missed that opportunity by not implementing such tools earlier. This would definitely be a way for the public to stay updated with BP’s efforts in the Gulf (Buskirk, 2010).

References

British Petroleum (BP). 2010. BP Global

Buskirk, E. V. 2010. BP’s Social Media Campaign Going about as well as Capping That Well

BP Lawsuit. 2010. Over 200 BP Lawsuits Filed So Far in Federal Court

Gaudin, S. 2010. BP, In Crisis Mode, Misses Social Networking Target

Jones, K. 2010. Independent Safety Investigation into BP’s Gulf Disaster Requested By Congress

Wikipedia. 2010. Deepwater Horizon Explosion

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Enterprise 2.0

amielazim — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 06:25:39 +0000

Benefits
There are always risks and benefits of implementing any new technology into an organization, and Enterprise 2.0 is no different. Enterprise 2.0 offers the benefits of increasing business productivity, encourages participation, captures and shares knowledge more efficiently, attracts high calibrated people, and the list goes on (E20Portal, 2010). It’s evident that Enterprise 2.0 is indicating a positive value for many organizations, especially for high tech industries. This is somewhat due to the fact that these companies are full of techies, but it’s also because that the company operates in a dynamic environment that encourages the sharing of information. Therefore, it’s not surprising to know that they would be the earliest to adopt such technology (McAfee, 2010).

Risks
On the other hand, it’s crucial that Enterprise 2.0 is carefully planned before implementing into an organization. Rushing to be involved in such implementation will only escalate the chances of falling into a pitfall. According to a research study conducted by Forrester, the vast majority of organizations that utilizes enterprise 2.0 neglect the importance of dealing with security risks that comes along with it. The prevention of security threats is the biggest challenge because the majority of companies out there would predominantly focus on improving their efficiency instead of security. Some of the risks that companies are worried about are, losing control of information, compromising sensitive data, opening their networks to security breaches, and encouraging distractions to employees (Smagg, 2008).

Although there might be different perspectives towards such implementation, enterprise 2.0 has a promising future. Let’s look at a story of how one of our all-time favourite, fast food restaurants has utilized a software called Awareness in their organization. Basically, Awareness is a social marketing software that controls and intertwines a mash up of various web 2.0 applications. It allows a person to publish, manage, measure and engage in social media sites such as, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, WordPress, Foursquare, and your own personal site.

Here’s a short preview of how it works:

McDonalds, is an organization that has globalized over 31,000 restaurants and employing over 1.5 million people worldwide, has emerged in the enterprise 2.0 space (McDonald, 2006). A senior executive at McDonalds, has utilized blogging through the Awareness platform because communicating with a large number of employees in an organization can be a very challenging task. Blogging has provided a more efficient way for him to speak directly to his employees and receive customer feedback. They were also able to leave comments on the blog and he was able to respond promptly. The blog has also encouraged the communication to flow both ways, enabling the employees to share information and ideas. There’s also another community blog called Open for Discussion that caters specifically for their customers. This is where McDonalds leverage essential feedback from their customers by text, pictures or videos. By being open, the customers will be able to feel like they are making a difference, which will encourage them to participate in the community. However, despite it’s benefits, there are risks involve in such implementation, such as preventing malicious files from entering the blog, inappropriate comments, and spams. For that reason, moderation of the contents is crucial to McDonalds (Ives, 2007).

For more stories of implementing enterprise 2.0, visit:

Enterprise Wiki Increases Collaboration and Connections at Janssen-Cilag

Making Wikis Work at Novell

An Enterprise 2.0 Poster Child in the IT Department

Reflections on Business Impacts of Web 2.0 within and beyond the Enterprise

Enterprise Blog and Wiki Success Story from traction software

References

E20Portal. 2010. Benefits of Enterprise 2.0

Ives, B. 2007. Enterprise 2.0 Success Stories from Awareness

McAfee, A. 2010. Andrew MacAfee’s Blog: The Business Impact of IT

McDonald. 2006. McDonald’s: Our Storys

Smagg, C. 2008. Enterprise 2.0 Fear Factor: Overcoming Risks, Uncertainties and Doubts

Enterprise 2.0 in Action

amielazim — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 15:36:20 +0000

What is enterprise 2.0
In our highly competitive global economy, businesses are striving to be on top of each other. Today, Enterprise 2.0 is a rapidly growing hype for many businesses. It is an ingenious integration of web 2.0 technologies being utilized in a business environment. It revolutionized a dramatic change to many CIO’s philosophy about IT. Instead of having a single trend taking the lead in corporate computing, Enterprise 2.0 employs all of these new technologies and models (Rangaswami, 2006). In order to fully understand its principles, let’s take a closer look at how a company is implementing it.

Using Web 2.0
Old Spice products were founded in 1934 by a company called Shulton. It has a range of fragrant products ranging from body wash, aftershave, deodorant, perfumes, and more (Khan, 2009). The products were a hit back then and was mainly targeted at older men with “experience” (Experience Is Everything Commercial). However, Old Spice needed a way to boost its market for younger men and women. So they turned to social media and rapidly utilized all of the web 2.0 tools like, YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter. Already, the Old Spice YouTube channel has 75 million total upload views.

One of the most popular Old Spice commercials (featuring ex-football player Isaiah Mustafa):

Check out his fan pages:

Business Model
As a result of its new and trendy commercials, the Old Spice that made people think of that old guy down the street is once again a “cool” brand to have. Furthermore, they were being open to allow customers to participate via Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter to generate ideas. They even allowed customers to send silly questions such as “How do I get women to stop chasing me after I use Old Spice body wash?” And Mustafa would normally video-reply them on YouTube with humorous answers (Bradley, 2010).

It’s all about getting the customers input.

Overall, the company learned that it’s important to provide some control to their customers. Traditionally, commercials would normally take months or even years to complete. However, by leveraging the collective intelligence of their customers’ input, Old Spice was able to produce a more successful commercial than ever before (Gaudin, 2010).

References

Bradley, T. 2010. Old Spice Man: Campaign Your Marketing Could Look Like

Gaudin, S. 2010. Old Spice Smells Like Social Media Success

Khan, R. 2009. Old Spice History

Rangaswami, M. R. 2006. The Birth of Enterprise 2.0

How to blog successfully

amielazim — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:05:54 +0000

You’ve probably blogged a couple of times before; maybe because your life or job depends on it, maybe you’re forced as it is a school requirement, or maybe you’re just blogging because it’s cool and everyone’s doing it. Well, whatever the reasons may possibly be, I hope this post will give you some useful insights about blogging and not just plain malarkey.

So sit down, relax, grab a cold beverage and share your thoughts with me.

Insights
Almost anyone can create their own blogs with various free blog publishing tools on the internet. Blogger for example, makes it simple to post text, photos, and videos without the need of any particular technical skill. Although creating it may seem simple, making it standout from the rest of the crowd is a battle. A successful blog is when it has loyal followers who read, interact and share the post that you have created on a regular basis (Langdon, 2010). The reason for their success is based on several ingenious practices that the bloggers themselves have implemented.

For example, the header of a blog is critical because it’s most likely the first thing a visitor would see. Another words, it’s the first impression of your blog. So it’s worth spending sometime to create something that will attract your audience (Knight, 2009).

According to Technorati.com in 2008, there were up to 133 million total blogs indexed since the company started (Kirkpatrick, 2008). That’s excluding other blog sites that are not recorded! So just imagine the competition involve in order to be discovered on a search engine. This all boils down to the importance of keeping a highly searched keyword as your blog title which is essential for attracting visitors.

Make use of other web 2.0 applications like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and more. Linking your blogs to some of these social networking sites of your choice could potentially improve your blogs branding and therefore increase the number of visitors. Additionally, this has influenced a lot of businesses who are rapidly leveraging the technology which is also known as enterprise 2.0.

Here’s a short clip of how enterprise 2.0 could enhance your business:

Here are some excellent blogs that I’ve found interesting:

1. Sacha Chua

It’s a very simple blog with clear icons which links to different categories of the blogs. The posts are mostly short, concise and very easy to read. It’s obvious that the writer is a passionate blogger who writes purely about her interests.

2. Tutorial9

Tutorial9 is a very appealing and high detailed website that conveys its purpose clearly. All of the navigations are obvious tabs with icons included to catch the attention of the readers. It encourages the readers to explore more because it’s easy to navigate.

3. Home Design Find

The blog’s title clearly describes the whole idea to its readers and its eye-catching design makes it unique form other blogs. The images on the right provide a positive mood to targeted audiences and encourage them to explore if they are interested in the blog’s topic.

For more fascinating blog examples, visit Technorati.com that rates the top 100 blogs.

Personal blogging experience
Honestly, I don’t blog that often, but from my experience blogging has a lot of benefits. For instance, it provides the extra exposure to the public, wherein readers from all over the internet are able to interact with your blogs (e.g. comments). This would allow you to get different opinions that might improve your knowledge about a particular subject. In my opinion, blogging is a way of sharing my thoughts that may help others, it also allows me to express myself more confidently, and it allows me to record relevant moments of what I’ve been through.

Checkout the links below for more successful blogging tips:

5 Elements to Start a Blog Successfully

How to Blog Successfully

Top Ten Blog Tips

Daily Blog Tips

References

Knight, K. 2009. Blog Headers: 20 Great examples and best practices

Kirkpatrick, M. 2008. State of the Blogosphere 2008

Langdon, L. 2010. 50 Examples of Great Blog Engagement

Hello World

amielazim — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:28:23 +0000

This is only a test.
This is only a test.
This is only a test.
This is only a test.
This is only a test.
5db62130dcb54a5ea53f342f50793087

Lightweight Models and Cost Effective Scalability – YouTube

amielazim — Sat, 08 May 2010 06:41:10 +0000

Overview

Web 1.0 to Web 2.0

During the earlier stages of the web developments the information that you see was very static. Users’ were only able to read and view pictures from the webmasters’ site, which was also known as “Web 1.0”. However, in today’s era, the emergence of Web 2.0 has revolutionized the way we use and view online information. This development has attracted a lot of organizations to incorporate and take the advantage of its potential to leverage a cost effective business scalability, which is applied to business models as well as technology (Watson, 2010). In addition, organizations are being influenced and actively investigating in the innovative ideas to learn from major web players such as Amazon, eBay, Live, Google, Yahoo and many of the social networking websites.

When applying web 2.0 in a business model there are two primary areas that online organizations focuses on; this is the improvement of the organizations efficiency and productivity, and its service to customers to improve revenue and customers satisfaction (Platt, 2010). A great example of this would be an application that we have all probably have heard and used — YouTube. It is an ideal application that demonstrates the use of scalability in an online organization. According to Watson (2010), the motto for web companies before was “get big fast”, now it’s “small is the new big”. To put it into scale and better clarification, YouTube has approximately 4.8 million users which was developed by a pre-google team of 2 system administrators, 2 software architects, 2 feature developers, 2 network engineers and 1 database administrator (NumberOfNet, 2010).

YouTube’s business model basically revolves around its users. People in general love to be entertained and YouTube is very good at delivering that by allowing video uploads. It harnesses the collective intelligence of the users’ talents by allowing them to produce contents, which is used for generating revenue through online advertisement (Sain, 2010).

Comparison with other web 2.0 applications
Like YouTube, there are several other online video sites out there which are trying to compete. Some of the top 5 video websites are; YouTube, MySpaceTV, Google Video, Yahoo! Video, and Veoh. However, YouTube has the largest market share standing at 75% among all its competitors. According to Kirkpatrick (2008), YouTube’s dominance in online video was bigger than Google’s dominance in search. This caused the nearest competitor, MySpaceTV to suffer a dramatic decrease in its market shares which fell from 44% to 9%.

Critical and strategic implications
Technology has assisted people in performing their tasks more efficiently and to get results more quickly. The internet has allowed us to do this by spreading information fast in many ways; you can upload your text, pictures and most all videos. YouTube has given that advantage to its users and many are making use of it by advertising their videos (e.g. commercials and trailers). It is also a way for businesses to save money by uploading their advertisement on YouTube because it’s free and accessible by the public. An old saying goes “A picture is worth a thousands words”, hence by having a video that shows multiple images you will be able to expand its meaning dramatically (Wong, 2010).

Here’s a Beautiful Coca Cola Commercial:
Other than that, the convenience of having an online video has allowed other organizations to look at it as a new mode of business communication. Since YouTube videos are easy to distribute companies are using them to reduce the training costs, and the costs of customer support. Instead of calling or physically meeting up with employees videos can be distributed within an organization. This is also another way for YouTube to improve its revenue. If the prices are reasonable – $5 or $10 for a few thousand views of a 20 second bit, people will pay. In addition, YouTube will be able to leverage this advantage over existing organizations as a video solution because it’s fun, easy, and appealing for people to use it (IC, 2006).

Legal and ethical issues
One of the biggest issues with YouTube is the copyright infringement of videos being uploaded. Its rapid growth and network effect has caught many consumers and marketers to use videos as an advertising solution. One of the main reasons why people love to use YouTube is the ability to watch previous television shows such as CSI or watch segmented documentaries from Discovery/National Geographic. However, YouTube never had the permission to actually air these recorded videos and they are making a lot of money off them for FREE! Furthermore, some of you might have experienced unavailable videos on YouTube that has been deleted due to copyright infringement. People are positing videos without the right to do so, leaving YouTube to clean up the mess before the video-sharing site finds itself involved in another legal mess (Jones, 2007).

Future directions
According to some analysts, YouTube has a promising future, but it might also face a dreadful unforeseen future like the original Napster. Either it’s going to be sued and will lose, or the company will be forced to take down much of the contents that users like. YouTube is hoping to convince the Universal Music Groups of the world in order to show a promising future for everyone to make money. As an example, companies like NBC have already begun to upload promotional clips to advertise their shows like Prison Break. In addition, YouTube has done an excellent job in providing great services to its users in order to maintain a strong traffic. The contents are very interesting, advertising is minimal, and the contents are readily available for a multitude of online devices (Bangeman, 2006).

References

Bangeman, E. 2006. YouTube’s Future (or lack thereof) (accessed May 8, 2010)

IC. 2006. A YouTube Business Model in the Enterprise (accessed May 8, 2o1o)

Jones, A. 2007. YouTube’s Legal Issues Grow (accessed May 8, 2010)

Kirkpatrick, M. 2008. YouTube Continues to Destroy All Competitors in Declining Video Market (accessed May 7, 2010)

NumberOfNet. 2010. Number of YouTube Users (accessed May 7, 2010)

Platt, M. 2010. The Architecture Journal: Web 2.0 in the Enterprise (accessed May 7, 2010)

Sain, L. 2010. A look at YouTube’s business model (accessed May 7, 2010)

Watson, J. 2010. Week Ten Lecture: Web 2.0 Application (accessed May 7, 2010)

Wong, R. 2010. The power of online video (accessed May 8, 2010)