End of the Semester

Writing for Multimedia is a great class to teach you skills for the future. We learned how to do many things that will help me in the future. It was a great way to learn how to write newsletters in paper form and newsletters thru e-mail. Other skills we learned was how to use social media sites more effectively and how to network with people in your field of work. We actually created a website that helps us network with the business world and it is called LinkedIn. I think a lot of these skills will be useful for me in the future.

I think my favorite assignment was the Facebook Fan Page. It was because it wasn't to hard to do it and it was nice to learn how to actually make a Fan Page on Facebook. Also it was for my mom's small business that she is starting and it has actually worked to sell a few of her products already. I think it was a great assignment because it was more than just a small assignment that you did and then after it didn't matter much. Here is a link to the Fan Page I made for her. I don't think I had one favorite blog from our class. I commented on random blogs each time and everytime I think that diffrent people had good things to say. An assisnment that could be added to this course could be a somthing on the basis of making a website, but focus on the writing on it and the posistioning of everything on the page. Overall I think the assisnments we had touched on a lot of good topics in writing for multimedia.

We had a guest speaker come into our class to give a presentation. She was Sarah Meaney from Comet Branding. This company writes blogs and does social media things for other companies. The presentation was very informative. She explained to us better ways to write for social media. She explained how people that read things online do a lot more skimming than if they were reading a newspaper. She gave advice that the shorter the text is the more likely it all will get read. Also that the bigger text is more apealing to people that are online becasue it catches there eye. She brought up the point that you want to keep readers on your page becasue then they will be more likly to read more of the content and not just skim over it or skip it completly. You need to have relevant information on your pages that will entertain your readers. Also ads and other things on a page can lead people to get destractied and you may want to keep those things down to a minium.

It's crazy how social media has become such a huge thing that there are actual businesses out there now that just do social media things for businesses. Her business is fairly small with only about five people working for them but they have some larger accounts and seem to do pretty well. This presentation was very informative and definatly had information in it that will be usefull in the future. Here is a link of what Coment Branding does.

Nestle

Nestle has a big problem on their hands. They have many protesters on their hands because of the oil they use to make KitKat bars and some other products. They some of the palm oil that they purchase is made at a factory where they have deforested a lot of the area in rain forests in Indonesia. They say it is contributing to the extinction of orangutans and the loss of our rain forests. This has exploded on in the social media world. Protestors had posted a video on YouTube making Nestle look negative. This was obviously not a good thing for Nestle so they had it token down. The video has been continuously popping up on other video websites so they can't really stop it. Also on their Facebook page the protesters have been leaving comments saying negative things. Nestle tried to be defensive about it and explain themselves but the protesters ignored them and stayed strong. Nestle then tried to hide these comments and delete them all but this just made the fan base of protesters rise at an alarming rate. This is an example of how social media can turn ugly for companies quick. It makes it easy for protesters and people trying to put a negative image on your business to get information out their that is hurtful to your business. Most times social media is a good idea but at times it hurts businesses if they don't use it properly. I think the protesters were acting in a responsible way because they disagreed with what was happening so they made it known. Facebook and Youtube are out their to get information and people's ideas out their. So if its positive or negative it doesn't matter, it's how Facebook was made to use. I think the protesters have a point because they are contributing to the extinction to species and to rain forests but there's probably a lot of other businesses that do the same thing or maybe even worse. So I think the protesters have a point but Nestle needs to do what they need to do to make their product and make money. The numbers that they presented that said how much they actually get from this company was minute so I don't think it is that big of a deal.

Links to articles about this are below:

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Mashable Articles

The first article I looked at I found under the Trending group. It was a marketing campaign that Heineken set up. It was over seas in Italy and they set up a fake classical music event that was at the exact same time as the Champions League game: AC Milian vs Real Madrid. This game involves two powerhouse teams and over seas soccer is life. So they had to recruit many girlfriends, teachers, and bosses to make this event successful. What they did was they had them convince their boyfriends, make the event mandatory for class and bosses telling them they had to go. Everyone there was most likely furious that they had to miss the game because of this concert. The concert started and they slowly made it obvious that it was a fake concert and then the game came on the big screen. Everyone went crazy with applause and were realeved that they were going to see the game. It got huge publicity with over 1.5 million people watching their response and over five million people visited the Heineken site to watch it afterwards. This was a huge success for a marketing campain. The link to the video is below

Fake Concert

The second article I checked out was under the Lists. It was about March Maddness and diffrent ways people were going to be following their teams this year. The web and social media ranked amound the top three ways people were going to follow it this year right behind TV. There are many diffrent ways to check it out. Facebook has the Facebook fast break, which gives you scores and stats. Mobile Maddness does the same but its on the phone. Other websites like ESPN or Yahoo does the same type of thing with updates on the games. There is also a website put on by CBS where you can watch all games live and their is also an ap so you can do this via and Iphone. The link to the article that goes deeper into eachone of these medias is below.

MARCH MADNESS

The Third article was found under HOW-TO-Talk. This article was very informative and it was all about how to add captions to your you-tube videos. It goes into depth about how to do this and things that you should put up. It's pretty complicated so it's hard to describe it on here but if you have a youtube video and want to put captions on it here is a how to on how to do this. The link is below.

HOW TO PUT CAPTIONS ON YOUTUBE VIDEOS

“What Happens in Vegas stays on Facebook.”

What Happens in Vegas stays on Facebook was a presentation that we attended that was on Facebook and Linkendn. The presentation was pretty informative but it seemed like a lot of the things on Facebook were things I already knew. She talked to us about how to watch what we put on Facebook because of professional reasons. She showed us how to make certain things, like pictures or statuses, only viewable by certain people that you want to have access to them. This makes it so you can be friends with people that you might not want to see all of your Facebook stuff. She also made a big point on how Facebook should be used as a proffessional tool and that it helps to make connections. I disagree on that point. Facebook was made as a social site so you could connect with friends. I think that once businesses see websites like this start to get populated with millions of people they try to take advantage of it and start advertising all over. I hate that people try to do this because it starts to be to much. Look at myspace, almost all of us used to use it at some point and it started to get populated with all kinds of stupid advertisments and people trying to promote things on it, and now everyone has quit using it because it started to get annoying and became to much. The second lady talked about using the social media website Linkend. I think this is where all the proffessional social networking should take place. It is a great way to connect to other people in your field and to make connections with people that may be helpful to you in your carreer. This is the site where you can post all of your proffesional information and positive things that you have done. I think she was very helpful on showing us how to use this site because when I first made one I was kind of lost on what to do and now I have figured out how to use the site more to its potential. This presentation was alright and I learned some things from it but I think that I could of used my time more productivly doing somthing else.

Links to the speakers websites are:
MKE Live
Wired WI

Facebook Boycotting

This story starts out with a couple going to see the new movie Shutter Island. They were going out for a nice night but didn't know that there experience wasn't going to turn out good. They first had problems paying for the tickets because the ATM was out of cash and they didn't bring enough with them. Then there were interruptions throughout the first 30 minutes and missed the whole beginning of the movie. The lady (Sarah) emailed the company complaining about her experience and in turn received a explicit email from the vice president saying to basically go fu*k herself. She was furious with the response and made a Facebook page to boycott the movie theater. There are over 5000 fans of this page and in response a Facebook page was created to support the vice president but they only have around 200 fans. I think these pages is a fine way to use Facebook becuase there's not any laws on what you can do or can't do on it. I think she went overboard with the group and having 5000 fans. I also think the vice president went to far with the comments even though I thought it was kind of funny but being in his posistion that is totally out of line. I have seen many pages boycotting or hating on things so it is kind of normal to see these kind of pages on Facebook. I think the Facebook execs would approve of it because it is just making Facebook bigger and bigger and that means more money for them so I don't think there complaining at all. There is also a case of a fanpage that relates to this that has come right our little city of Whitewater. It is a fanpage of how the owner of the local tanning salon has screwed everyone over and people are trying to get him back from all the things he did. The link is here.

Also if you would like to read the emails that were sent between Sarah and the Vice President the link is here.

BMA Event

About a week ago we attended the BMA Lighting Round Interviews and Networking Event. It was in Milwaukee at the Eisner Museum. It was a very interesting event and I learned a lot while attending. The event consisted of different stations. They were resume critiques, mock interviews, social media advice, and a time to eat some pizza and talk with other students. I was surprised on how many people attended the event. There were many students and a solid amount of professionals that showed up to help. The first station I was in was the resume critiques. I talked with three different people. They all had great advice that was all very helpful. Each person had a little bit of a different idea on what I should add or change to make it better. I think it has helped me to make my resume much better for when I go to apply at jobs. The next station I did was the social media. I talked to one guy and we looked at my Linkenden account. He had many suggestions on how to make mine better since I had just made it and didn't really know where to go with it. It was very informative and I am making some changes because of it. We also talked about my Facebook and Twitter accounts and things to do and not do. I then had time to eat some pizza and to talk to some other students at the event. I then had the mock interviews. This was probably the most beneficial. I had around 4-5 interviews and each one had different questions and advice on how to better my skills. I met one lady that was very nice and it became a conversation about my future and a guy she knew that moved out to California and has a very successful business there. Her name was Yvonne Morrissey and I followed up with her and she gave me a link to this mans business. I was very impressed on the work he did and a link to his website is here. Another lady I talked to took a liking to me and she runs her own business in Milwaukee and a link to her website is here. She does a lot of web art work for things and makes websites. Overall this event was a fun and intriguing event to attend. I learned many things that will benefit me in the future and will hopefully help me get a job.