I found this article at the right time for me to post this as the final blog post for evaluation purposes.

Throughout my time in #sauder464, I’ve been wondering why we should be blogging page after page after page when social media trends seem to suggest that posts should be kept to a minimal set of words or characters. Twitter, for instance, has a 140 character limit. A glance through my Facebook profile also tells me that I don’t normally read posts that extend beyond a few sentences. In 2014, most people access social media platforms via mobile devices on the fly. The only time I find myself surfing Facebook on a desktop or laptop is when I’m being distracted elsewhere like, say, the classroom.

Given that blogs were the first form of social media to exist on the Internet of Things way back in 1994, then why are we still blogging?

This question was pretty much answered by this article.

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/the-benefits-of-business-blogging-ht

Amongst all the reasons that this article states about why we should blog, I like the fourth one the best – blogging drives long term results.

Most enterprises plan for the long run. And I found the solution to a long term eMarketing strategy here. The use of blogs create content that can bring up web traffic and increase the site’s current leads. It is also said to increase Search Engine Optimization.

All it takes is for ONE post to be viewed a couple of times and the post gets ranked higher and higher on search engines. Visitors who find the content useful might subscribe to the blog and hence, regular web traffic is developed. Meanwhile, the rankings in the search engines continue to rise.

Of course, having said all that, content is ultimately what the visitor is looking for and it is the prerogative of the business to generate content that can generate meaningful engagement with the online community.

According to the article, “one hour of effort today can turn into hundreds of thousands of views and leads in the future.” The author also mentioned that 70% of his web traffic in each month does not come from posts that were published in that same month.

So it seems to me that blog posts last way longer than social media posts. Nobody would look up a Facebook post or Tweet about a topic that was posted way back two years ago, but compared to contemporary social media platforms, blog posts that were published back in 1994 are still standing.

Conclusion: Tweets and Facebook posts disappear, and they disappear fast; they get drowned out by the millions of posts coming into our  in each coming day. But throughout this time, blogs are timeless.

This post was inspired by Julio’s class on the 13th of November.

So far, we’ve been taught about how to create a stronger image for our clients on the Internet, how to extend our client’s reach on social media and what not; but what about boosting our own image online?

The first step is to create a LinkedIn account.

As they always say, your network is your net worth. This cannot be more visible on social media where the number of people you know are all transparent and easily searchable at the click of your LinkedIn account.

The second step is to fill up every field where applicable, in detail.

Again, we are out to boost our online image. A detailed profile is a strong profile.

A word of caution here, though. DO NOT LIE ABOUT ANYTHING. Even though each field should be filled up, each field must be authentic. The last thing we would want is to be flagged online for lying about our work experience. This would seriously undermine our credibility and lose the trust of people in our network.

Also, USE THE RIGHT PROFILE PHOTO! Remember, this is NOT Facebook. Our profile photos have to portray the professional side of us.

Next, after ensuring that all fields are filled up accurately, the next item to take care of is to customise our LinkedIn URL. By default, our LinkedIn profiles will consist of random alphanumerics. This can be replaced with our names which will make our profile look so much more professional. The above customization can be done by going to Settings > Edit Public Profile > Customize Your Public Profile URL. This is something that I realize not many people know about.

After this is completed, be sure to be proactive in LinkedIn Groups. Personalizing LinkedIn Email Requests are a good way of showing that we are sincere in connecting with the person that we are connecting with.

With that, say goodbye to mediocre LinkedIn pages! Not from us #sauder464 students at least.

For this post, I revisited one of the webpages that I’ve posted about recently.

Perhaps even five years ago, this would have been dubbed impossible.

From my own experience, many companies that I have applied to are relying on mobile interviews to replace face-to-face interviews. This is something that has been catching on in many HR departments, especially those in Hong Kong. In what is now known as a one-way interview, interviewers post their questions online and candidates like myself would record ourselves on video answering the questions before posting them onto a file server created by the company’s HR department. Candidates usually have three to five working days to complete this interview.

Personally, this has benefited me by saving me time and money by not having to fly back to Hong Kong for face-to-face interviews. It has also given me a greater amount of flexibility to conduct the one-way interview. Now, I can record myself at my own time and space, without having to fly back home to meet the interviewer face to face. I can also take as much time as I want to calm myself and submit my best response.

This is only made possible by new technology that can transmit larger packets of multimedia files over the Internet. With almost everybody carrying a phone equipped with a camera, it makes it all the more convenient for interviewers to conduct such interviews via such arrangements.

Adopted from:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-tolan/4-ways-technology-is-chan_b_2736375.html

Gone are the days where companies can simply operate without bothering about the sentiments of its customers. The revolution of social media has affected large businesses in a way where they are now brought off their high horses and back to the ground where they must learn to provide two-way communication with customers or risk facing a serious online backlash. At the same time, it has also provided small and medium sized enterprises with the ability to extend their social media reach in the same way as large companies do.

One has to recognise that in the realm of the Internet, physical size does not matter. A large chain operating many different restaurant branches may have the same number of social media accounts as a small or medium sized food outlet. In terms of costs, most social media apps are free too. As such, this levels the playing field for eMarketing. A small company who is able to engage netizens has the ability to perform just as well as, if not better than a large corporation who might not be able to engage the online community with meaningful conversations.

Therefore, it is imperative that business owners and executives alike must understand the importance of social media and the tools to enable companies to do well in this realm. It is an environment where word of mouth travels at speeds previously incomprehensible. This makes it a double edged sword where a post in praise of a company and a post complaining about a bad product or service can travel further and faster than before.

Size no longer matters. Engagement does.

Ever heard of the Twesume? Neither have I. Not until this article at least.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-tolan/4-ways-technology-is-chan_b_2736375.html

It has become widespread that companies are beginning to screen potential employees based on their Twitter posts. 140 words are enough to determine if an applicant is a good fit for the company or not.

According to this article, a Twesume is a condensed “140-character resume transmitted over Twitter.” It is concise. Imagine shrinking your entire one-page resume and all that you’ve achieved into 140 characters. That’s essentially what’s going on in the job hunt right now.

After all, Twitter is a great place in the online sphere to connect people. So why not employers and job seekers?

At this time of writing, there are already a number of companies releasing job openings and brief description over Twitter via relevant hashtags. With the limitation of 140 characters, it saves time and effort from both the employer and the potential employee. Each party merely has to read a simple line on Twitter before making a decision to go a step further in the job negotiation process.

From the point of view of an employer, it definitely beats going through a long list of resumes and cover letters. From the angle of a potential employee, the ability to summarize everything into a Twitter feed is going to be a challenge.

If not for #Sauder464, I wouldn’t have known a thing about MailChimp. So what is this application program all about? That was the question running through my mind in class.

In a nutshell, MailChimp is an analytics tool to track emails. It is usually used by companies who frequently send out scheduled newsletters via email. Before this program came about, companies would blindly send out their newsletter to a list of email addresses without knowing if the receiver on the other end has even opened the newsletter or merely tossed it away into the trash can at the click of a button.

Now, with MailChimp, eMarketers can acquire more information about the effectiveness of their newsletter campaigns.

After having experimented with MailChimp for our client’s newsletter, I am now familiar with the three basic tasks of how MailChimp can help us fulfill the three basic tasks of email marketing, namely:

1. Managing Subscriber Lists
2. Building Email Campaigns
3. Review Campaign Reports

MailChimp can even tell us how many receivers have opened the newsletter and how long they have stayed on the newsletter before closing the email.

This is the dream come true for email marketers.

I’m now Hootsuite certified! Just completed the HSU exam not too long ago and it is certainly one of the most tangibly-satisfying moments of this course. Coming from a point where I’ve no clue about how Twitter works to this moment where I’ve become rather savvy with both Twitter and Hootsuite, this certification is definitely a testimony of how far I’ve come in just under 3 weeks! I now look forward to helping small and medium enterprises achieve their eMarketing potential with this extremely useful dashboard.

Today, my group went to visit Thomas Haas, one of Vancouver’s finest chocolatiers and pastry chefs. He has kindly accepted our request to do our eMarketing plan on his company. The location of his company could be found on the Google Map embedded above.

We spent about a good 30 minutes interviewing him about his business and what his processes are.

A quick look at his website shows that he is relatively active on three main social media platforms, namely Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. His website also seems to be rather detailed. Lots of information for consumers who want to find out more about the chocolatier. Basically, everything could be found there.

It is, indeed, an honour to be working with him. Hopefully, in the coming days and weeks, we can provide him with credible recommendations to turn this website from what we perceive as mediocre to one that give his competitors a run for their money.

In my mind, I thought that this would be a good time for us to put Hootsuite to the test. He mentioned that he does not use it. So, we shall find out for ourselves if it works wonders in due course.

When this video was published at the beginning of 2014, Facebook already has more than 500 million active mobile users all over the world and Twitter has 107 million users in the US alone. This definitely gives companies the the incentive to to invest more time in into social media than any other marketing medium.

The investments are relatively low. Nowadays, all one needs is a computer to download various social media platforms and he/she’s ready to broadcast his/her mind to the masses. Even if the message does not manage to reach out to everybody, chances are, it has found its way into a substantial number of other users.

This calls for the importance of managing social media platforms effectively. In short, the better we manage it, the more “reach” we achieve.

In class today, we had a practical session with Julio on Hootsuite, a local-based start-up. It is a social media dashboard that connects various platforms i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and what not.

I am utterly impressed with the functions that this dashboard can perform, especially the one where we can time our messages to be sent out via a particular platform to reach a certain sector. I am also amazed at how are able to monitor tweets in a particular geographic radius.

After opening my world to Twitter just about a week ago, my eyes are now open to yet another amazing tool. This is one amazing class indeed!

I’m so excited to be part of this class in Sauder’s brand new classroom!

It’s the third class now and honestly me (being a non-marketing student) rather worried about being surrounded by 90% of my classmates who are marketing enthusiasts. Not to say that I’m not enthusiastic, but somehow the dynamics of this class is simply different from the rest of my HR classes in Sauder and this has taken me by surprise.

So far, I haven’t been able to answer many questions thrown to the class by Paul and Julio. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I haven’t been too savvy with social media platforms other than Facebook. I only downloaded Twitter on the first class! Quite honestly I’m still wondering how to use it.

So, this post is for people like myself who just downloaded Twitter. I have attached a link that I found while Googling what is Twitter and how it works.

Hope it was useful!!