Working for Apple

I wish more than anything I had invested in Apple before they were so successful!!(think Forest Gump) It would also be interesting to work for Apple. I think as far as marketing, the focus is not there. If I wanted to go into research and development, I would aspire to work for Apple. They are so far ahead of other companies. It still would probably be a fun company to work for in most areas though. The advice I would give them is to just keep doing what they're doing! Maybe introduce a similarly cool line at less expensive pricing on the laptops though!

Customer Service

This week I learned that I don't know a whole lot on Customer Service online. In a meeting this week, the question on whether live chat was a good idea or not made me realize I should study different Customer Service tools available through social media. I tend to study it now from the perspective of building a dialog and a relationship, but of course Customer Service is a huge part of that when it comes to a corporation.

One example of good Customer Service I have seen utilizing social media is http://www.textbooklink.com and their twitter account. They target their tweets to certain people based on their relevant tweets. I think that is a very good, proactive way to promote the site based on people having textbook issues. I'd like to educate myself better though on alternate ways social media can be helping businesses, any ideas?

What I learned from a social media presentation

Yesterday Mitch Canter came and spoke to us about social media. It was an excellent presentation..really interesting and all about things we're studying and using in class. Mitch even gave us a look at his twitter account and brightkite(which WAS new to me). Today I browsed his tweets only to find that he didn't think much of us as a class!

First he criticized the class full of college students for not having an iphone. As college students, most of us don't have the budget to spend our money on the newest technology out there."It's so strange coming from Nashville (social media savvy) to Murray (0 people in the room have an iphone). Very surreal" was his tweet. I have to disagree with his post, just because you have no iphone doesn't mean you're oblivious to social media.

Second, "@MatthewsChick it's funny, i went to speak at a Social Media class... it was like their minds were blown and oozing on the floor. LOL" and "@laura_jeanette college kids... I went back to my alma mater to speak on social media to a social media class. I think I blew their minds" and "@Surf_Records I was using it as a litmus test. They didn't know technologies like flickr and stuff existed" and "And I am the first to admit I just assumed by now people knew twitter... or at least flickr. I am proven wrong."

All of those comments were made, wrongly assuming, that we wouldn't read them I suppose. The first comment assumes we knew nothing until he enlightened us, the second assumes we're just kids and don't know anything about social media...and the third is just wrong. We have been talking all semester about different kinds of sites mentioned in these posts. Just because we didn't speak up doesn't mean we don't know. I am offended at the comments that were made, especially since I enjoyed the presentation so much, only to then be made fun of through Twitter, which I do regularly use.

So what I have learned again from these posts made about us is don't type something that you wouldn't want someone else to read. (For example, if I didn't want Mitch to know my feelings on the matter, I wouldn't take the chance on blogging). Maybe he doesn't care if we read his impression of us, which is fine, but I personally wouldn't have gone that route! This is not as bad as the Fed Ex employee example of course, but still, I am not left with a good feeling about this social media "expert"!

Facebook & Twitter...at work!

Friday morning at work, I was on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for a good portion of the day. Not a bad day! Let me go back to Thursday first. Thursday afternoon I accessed the Camex Facebook Page. This is a conference I am going to for work this week in Anaheim, California. On this page, Twitter is advertised as something you should be on during the show. I of course had mine already set up and was following Camex. However, when I looked at the number of people already following Camex, I noticed that some of them are textbook managers, key customers we need to engage in my business. I then set up a Twitter account for my company.

At this point, one of our customers added me on Facebook, and then invited me to join his state's textbook association. Further, I found our competitor had a Facebook page, and we do not. That is now in process! We have alot of clients that are actively using Facebook to connect to each other, and now we can give them a good place to do that. After this week, I will not only post our party pictures to our website, but also use that as a way to unveil our new Facebook page!

Do you Know?

Slideshare.com

This WSI Social Media Marketing - Learn How To Use Social Media Marketing to Grow Your Business

Twitter in Plain English

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o&feature=related

This is Twitter in Plain English, also presented by Ron Adelman.