Blog 10: Semester reflections and the future

When I graduate this May I plan on getting a job as a graphic designer, and I'm sure I will be using plenty of multimedia writing. For example, I will be sending many emails to different clients which is a form of multimedia writing that will help me in the future. It's possible that I will be responsible for keeping a daily blog for the company that I work at also. The skills that I have learned in this class will most likely be used by me daily in the future. If there was one assignment that I had to choose that relates the most to my future as a graphic designer it would have to be the PSA assignment. For the PSA I plan to do a lot of photo editing and some video editing. Throughout college I have learned how to use Photoshop to do those kinds of things. There aren't really any assignments that I wish we would have covered because I think we covered them all. Writing for multimedia is universal throughout all internet writing, so with the skills we've learned we are able to write for any multimedia. My favorite assignment was the printed newsletter assignment because I like to be creative and we were allowed to create a newsletter and be as creative as we want. I have done different layouts for print before, so I was already familliar with the process.
I like everyone's blogs for the simple fact that they are all different. Everyone has their own unique way of interpreting things and it's interesting to see everyone's different views on things.

Comet Branding writing for social media

Sarah Meaney was the guest speaker tonight and she talked about writing for social media. She works at a company called Comet Branding which basically writes blogs and other social media for companies. The company is very small with only 5 employees. Some of the information that was covered in her lecture was how people consume information online, things to strive for when writing online, and also things to avoid when writing online. One of the most interesting parts of her lecture was when she showed an example of eye tracking studies. These eye tracking studies provide information about what people look at when they visit websites. It's very important to grab people's attention right away when you write, especially online. She gave examples of good headlines and examples of bad headlines. You can clearly see which ones worked well and which ones didn't by looking at the eye tracking studies. When writing online it's very important to use the inverted pyramid method of writing which means you need to put your most important information in the beginning. It's all about grabbing people's attention as fast as you can when writing online. The last thing that I found interesting was the differences between print media writing and online media writing. They are completely opposite ways of writing. In print media you want to use full sentences and tell a story, whereas in online writing you can use fragments and you want to get to the point as soon as you can. All in all I think the lecture was very interesting and provided me with a lot of good information.

Here is a link to the Comet Branding website.

Blog 8: Nestle

I read a few articles for this weeks blog, and here are the links to them.

Article 1
Article 2
Article 3
Article 4
Article 5

The summary of the articles is this. Nestle uses an ingredient in some of their candy bars called palm oil. Palm oil supposedly destroys rainforests and therefore affects the orangutan population. An environmental protection group called Greenpeace is outraged at Nestle for continuing to use palm oil in their products, so they created a parody video on YouTube of Nestle's KitKat candy bar product. Nestle asked that the video be removed, but the video became viral and it was too late for Nestle to do anything about it. Greenpeace created another video that was a parody of Nestle's reaction. People visited Nestle's Facebook page and started leaving comments attacking them for destructing the rainforests. This can all be described as a social media meets public relations disaster according to one of the above articles. This just goes to show that Facebook fan pages can sometimes backfire on companies. I think you can use Facebook however you want, whether it was responsible or not I don't think there is a clear answer to that question. It's like telling your friend to boycott Nestle, only Facebook amplifies it so that millions of people hear your message. Facebook is just another way of being heard and it just so happens that millions of people can hear you. I don't think that Nestle purposely used palm oil in their products to harm the rainforest and endangered species so I don't think they are in the wrong. I do think that they should find an alternative ingredient to put in their products or come up with a different solution so that they don't destroy the rainforests.

What happens in Vegas stays on Facebook

On March 9th I attended two very interesting presentations involving the social media networking websites Facebook and Linkedin. The speaker for the Facebook presentation talked about how everything you do on your Facebook page can affect you in ways that you might not have known before. For example, when you are looking for a job your potential employer can find your Facebook page to find out things that they can't through an interview. They can look through all of your pictures and see comments you make to your friends. In the presentation she also talked about how to block people from seeing things that you don't want them to see. Nobody can see things that you block, and they can't pay Facebook for that information. I think this is all very important stuff because almost everyone today has a Facebook page, but many people don't realize how it can affect them in the ways that it can. That's probably the most valuable information that I took away from the speaker.
The second speaker talked about another very popular social networking website called Linkedin. Linkedin is a more professional website than Facebook, and it's used mainly for networking with other people professionaly. You can create a profile and network with people with similar interests as you. It's basically used to help people break into the job world and help each other out. The most valuable information that the speaker gave me was just showing us how to set up your Linkedin page so that you can look as professional as you can. She showed us a good example of the type of picture you should have on your page, what information you should post and what you should keep private, and things like that.

You can visit Katie Felten's Linkedin page here
You can visit their website here

My general impression of both presentations was that they both had very useful information on two of the most popular social media networking websites there are today. These websites are very useful tools, especially for graduating college students like us. All in all, their information was very helpful and I'm glad I had the chance to listen to them speak.

Fanpages and Facebook

I recently read an article about a woman who had a bad experience at her local movie theater in Minnesota. She didn't have a good experience, so she emailed the theater manager. She got a very mean and explicit reply back from the VP of the company. The lady was so upset that she started a facebook fanpage boycotting the theater. The facebook page got over 5,000 members. So the question is, was she out of line in creating a facebook page to boycott the theater? My initial answer is no, she wasn't out of line because the customer is always right. Even thought I don't think she crossed the line, I don't think it was very responsible of her. If you have a bad experience somewhere you don't have to ever go back, that's all. Obviously if the theater is doing well other people are enjoying their experiences there. But then again, the fanpage got over 5,000 members so it seems to me that the lady wasn't the only one who had a bad experience at that movie theater. So maybe by her creating the fanpage enough people will boycott the theater and they will be forced to change their customer service. I work in retail, and if a customer came up to me and said that she doesn't like the store that I work at, I couldn't go off on her and start swearing at her like the VP did at the movie theater, so he was definitely out of line. The lady used the fanpage for what they are there for, which is to basically increase awareness for something. Just because the fanpage can be viewed as "negative" doesn't mean that she was out of line.

Here is a link to the fanpage that the lady made.
Here is a facebook fanpage in support of the VP of the theater
Here is more information on the incident
Here are the series of emails

Blog 4: Mashable.com

How many times have you bee Rickrolled? Its happend to me quite a bit. Rickrolling is when someone is tricked into opening up Rick Astley's music video for "Never gonna give you up." You think you're going to watch the video you clicked on, but really you're about to be rickrolled. I was reading on Mashable.com that you are no longer able to get the original Rick Astley video anymore because of copywriting issues. Will it still be a true Rickroll if it's not the original music video? What do you think?
http://www.mashable.com/2010/02/24/they-killed-rickroll/

Another article I found on Mashable.com talked about creating a Facebook landing page for your business. Social media networking websites are becoming increasingly popular these days and they can be very powerful sites to advertise on. All types of businesses are creating their own Facebook pages and then adding as many fans as they can to increase awareness of their business. Take Best Buy for example. They have their very own Facebook page and if other Facebook users like shopping at Best Buy, they add them as their friend. There are many other ways for businesses to advertise on these websites, but that's just one way that mashable.com talked about.
http://www.mashable.com/2010/02/22/build-facebook-landing-page/


The last article I read on Mashable.com talks about how much time we spend on Facebook. Everyone knows that Facebook is a timesink, but did you know that on average people spend more time on Facebook than they do on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Microsoft, Wikipedia, and Amazon combined? The average Facebook user spends 421 minutes per month on Facebook. That's 14 minutes a day. I actually thought it should be more than that. I see people on Facebook for longer than 14 minutes during class each day. Either way, Facebook is where the majority of people spend their time on the internet. Interesting.
http://www.mashable.com/2010/02/16/facebook-nielsen-stats/

Blog 3: Case study analysis summary

The case study that I chose to write my paper on was the Skittles Twitter campaign. Basically Skittles thought it would be a good idea to completely transform their website's homepage into a live Twitter feed. They made it so that every time someone tweeted the word "Skittles" anywhere in Twitter, that sentence would show up on the Skittles website on their Twitter feed. This sounded like a good idea at the time, but they soon realized that people were using the word Skittles in profane sentences, and those sentences were showing up on their website. Many people think that they failed with their campaign because the profanity became too overwhelming and they had to take the Twitter feed off of their website. I think that it was somewhat successful though, because it got people talking about Skittles. I think it was a good use of social media because at the time they started the campaign Twitter was the #3 most visited social media networking website with over 54 million visitors every month. Whether it was a good idea or a bad idea the saying still remains. "Any press is good press."

Here are some links that help explain exactly what happend.

http://www.badidea.co.uk/2009/03/skittles-twitter-campaign-turns-into-potty-mouthed-echo-chamber/

http://www.businessweek.com (type in Skittles in the search bar)

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com (type in Skittles in the search bar)