Social Media Project

The Social Media project was definitely an interesting take on Social Media, that's for sure.  My group chose Chick-Fil-A as the company that we would follow.  Here is the link to our Wiki site:

  https://ism3004socialmedia.wikispaces.com/Chick-fil-A

Chick-Fil-A is a fast food restaurant that employs a Facebook page and Twitter account.  The first thing you get when you Google Chick-Fil-A is the company home page and the next thing, if you have your location set in Google, is local Chick-Fil-As in your town.  This is excellent marketing for Chick-Fil-A in its own right.  I've never used Bing, so I don't know much about it other than that it's a search engine.  I prefer Google, personally, and I was not in charge of this portion of the project, so I can't give you much other than what's right there on the Wiki.

The Wikipedia for Chick-Fil-A was filled with the company's history and religious and political views, plus the homophobia controversy that has been spread in recent years.  Chick-Fil-A doesn't have an official YouTube channel, but you can find their commercials and parodies on YouTube.  You can also find rants, praises, settings, music videos, and anything else anyone can do with a restaurant in a video.  I'm sure there's probably someone breaking into a Chick-Fil-A on security footage some where on YouTube.

I think I found TwitrRatr to be very interesting.  The idea of being able to launch a search for a company (or your company, even) is very neat.  The results will give you a look at what people are tweeting about your company and how much is positive, negative, and neutral.  If Chick-Fil-A has never heard of this, they should.  If any company is never heard of this, they should.  This is easily the neatest feature I've seen on the web this semester.  Most of the feedback for Chick-Fil-A seems to be relatively positive.  I mean, they're food is rather delicious.

We also decided to add Pinterest to the list of Social Media sites to look around.  I thought this would be a good idea because I know my fianceé and her friends are on there looking up wedding things and funny pictures all the time, so why shouldn't this be a great avenue for Chick-Fil-A?  It seemed like it was a good call because there was plenty of stuff to find on Chick-Fil-A on there.  There wasn't an official Chick-Fil-A account, except for a couple of localized restaurants, but there were plenty of pictures promoting the product from other users.

I think the only fault that we found with Chick-Fil-A's Social Media was that they had no official Social Media Policy.  This doesn't seem to be harming their advertising and perhaps it's not published anywhere, but just something that's "known."  Who knows?  But I think it would be an excellent idea for them to write up something and post it on their website and perhaps their Facebook page, also.

All in all, I found this to be an interesting project all around.  It was definitely interesting going to all the different social media sites (I still get headaches every time I go on Twitter, though) and seeing the different opinions of businesses.  It was also interesting in that I was working with a group online.  I have never done that before and it seemed to work out well for us this time (other than one person not showing up at all, but 6/7 isn't bad!).

Week 13: Clear: Social Media

Social media is such a rapidly growing thing and everyone is trying to jump on it that it's easy to forget that you actually have to actively think and engage in setting up a social media site for your business.  I only joined Facebook because all of my friends from MySpace went there instead.  This definitely shows how the network effect takes place.  I have no urge at this moment to go to Google+, but that's what I said when I was on MySpace and Facebook was exploding.

I can definitely see the positives for having a social media presence for your company.  I already have several business that I've liked on Facebook (Blizzard, Circle K, Rock 104, and others).  Most are actively posting almost once a day about their products, specials, and news.  A good business will post at least or twice a day (if not more).  Rock 104, on my page, posts rock music news almost hourly.

Social media is the new form of advertising.  Marketing research is delving more towards social media than it is television advertisements, it seems.  On my Facebook page, I get advertisements about Military Gamer Discounts, Verizon Military Discounts, Facebook War Games apps, Military Social Work, how to win a gift certificate to OPGI.com (I have no idea what this even is), the "Best Star Wars Game on FB," and Lingenfelter Engines.

Two of those don't even apply to anything I have any remote interest in.  I've never posted my love of cars or... whatever OPGI.com is, yet they somehow have made the connection that I would be interested in their products.

Luckily, Facebook has made their advertisements seem out of the way and non-intrusive.  This is brilliant on their part because if they were intrusive, I would quit Facebook quick, fast, and in a hurry.  One thing I can't stand are pop-ups, advertisements, and anything of that sort.  They're plagued with viruses and spyware and are always trying to get some sort of credit card information from you by some point.

Here's an image of my Facebook profile with some of the businesses I like and the advertisements listed above:

Week 12: Clear: Telecommunications

This week seemed a lot like an A+ Certification class.  I remember going over this several times while in the Army.  How TCP and IP sent data from one location to another.  TCP would break it up into packets, IP would send the packets across the network, and the TCP would collect the packets and rebuild them in the correct sequence.  How UDP was much faster, but less efficient and that's why your webcam feeds are always stuttering.

It's always good to get a refresher on them, though, just so you know you haven't forgotten your stuff.  I believe the thing I found the most interesting, though, had nothing to do with Telecommunications and everything to do with William Kamkwamba.  I find it amazing what type of people there are out there.  I know this wasn't really a part of the class, but the ability for a young man of 14(!) to build a windwill to create electricity for his family all from reading a book is ASTOUNDING to me.  I like to think I'm a smart person, but I could never, EVER do something like that. EVER!  This young man is a real genius and I have to at least put a small paragraph in here in respects to this man's genius.

Moving back to telecommunications, though, I find it to be a great way to learn about the Internet and how it works.  I've known for a long time that IPv4 was going to be going to the wayside (since 2003, to be exact), but I'm still amazed that I've only seen a few devices that use the new IPv6.  I'm sure there are probably several devices around my person right now that use it, but I have no way of finding out (or, to be more honest, I've yet to look up how to find out their IP addresses).

I also found the image of breaking the Internet down into numbers to be rather impressive.  5 million terabytes of information... I can't even comprehend that.  I've owned three different types of Terabyte hard drives.  One was a RAID drive, with four separate slots.  It weighed roughly 70lbs and had 8 separate hard drives that you plugged into it.  The next one was an external hard drive.  It was about 8 inches tall, 6 inches wide, and 6 inches long.  It was significantly smaller than the RAID and could fit on a desk.  It weighed about 5lbs.  The final one I owned is now what most people see in Best Buy: about two inches wide, 5 inches tall, and 5 inches long.  It weighs about 2lbs and I have it hidden behind my monitor.  To imagine 5 MILLION of any of those items... that's incomprehensible.   The number is too large to actually visualize.

I now present you with a picture of a parrot for my visual aid:

Image created by Chris Guderian

Week 11: Clear: Data vs. Information

It's hard to distinguish between data and information.  I almost always have a dyslexic moment and switch the two around.  I know one means raw facts and the other means something you use to make decisions.  The former is data, while the latter is information.  I try to distinguish the two by using "raw data" = "raw facts and figures."

Data you can put onto a graph.  Information you can't.  Information aids you in deciding what to do.  Data aids the user by providing information.  Data BECOMES information.

Image created by Chris Guderian

Another way is "databases."  We input numbers and items into a database.  This we use as a means to glean information for our company's profit or structure or any other number of things.  Data becomes information.  The cycle is complete *cue 'Circle of Life' music*