A "quantifiable" conversation

A conversation shows our level of engagement to one another and our level of interest towards a topic. A good conversation between customers might further explore deep underlying issues they have of a brand. This kind of information, therefore, is very valuable. As social media becomes popular, it was easier for companies to get some insights on customers' needs and wants as well as their attitude towards the brand through their online conversations. However, I recognize some difficulties to determine which information is "quantifiable" to use for database.

Social media is useful in a way that it exposes people opinions through their online conversations; it, however, does not monitor the direction of their topics. Sometimes, people just plainly chit-chat because they'd like to. It can be quite hard to get a piece of useful information through forum chatting that might become an endless back-and-forth cycle. The problem is that most people either are not interested enough to share their information or their conversation does not dig a topic deep enough. Therefore, putting conversation with the same topic into groups might not hold up to a valid point/conclusion that can be used for research.

One of the biggest problems with online conversations is that they do not show their original influences. Social media can be topic-oriented and informative but will not qualify for research if having inadequate stimulis. That sounds a bit complicated, no? Let me explain to you. If a customer happen to get his hand on one of a few badly produced product and give complaints through social media, companies should not base on his complaints try to improve the other well-produced products. Knowing the stimuli that leads to a customer's attitude is very important. Social media, however, lacks the ability to explore these stimulis.

I applaud this way of approaching customers. A company that will do well is the one that knows how to please its customers. And how else it is able to do that without getting their opinions. Companies need to figure out how to manipulate the source to get information they want

2008 election-the win (partially) by online communication

As the election of 2008 has ended, I am thrilled that senator Barack Obama had won hands down and is now the president of the United States of America. Never Mr. Barack Obama would have had the same opportunity in my country. This important historically moment shows that raising awareness among voters and young voters particularly is extremely important in presidential election.

As a young person, I am looking for a change. And I, like young American voters believe that Mr. Obama will be the right person. But how did we know all this? It is pointed out that online communication was one of the key influence on the election. I think that Obama won partially is because his "brand" was able to connect to people through support from the Internet better than the brand of John McCain.

According to CNN report (that I watched on TV), most Obama supporters are people of younger generation and online communicating is obviously the best way to reach out to these supporters. Nowadays young people don't even watch TV any more as they busily spend time on the Internet. To raise their awareness, it was very wise of his campaign to use the Internet as an important platform. I was not allowed to vote but I was fully aware of his presentation and his policy in the 2008 election just by going to Facebook.

The reason for failure of John McCain had been speculated as the result from connecting his image with his running mate, Alaskan governor Sarah Palin. I am not sure if it is true. But if it is, the internet certain had certainly been the enemy of Mr. McCain's campaign. The association between McCain and Palin was spreaded worldwide becauseI personally have watched so many parodies about them on the Internet. This proves that the Internet could be a potential risk to an image if not being manipulated effectively.

The two facts above show how greatly people can be influenced towards a marketing campaign through the use of the Internet. It is best to take advantage of the online world correctly because it can backfire and result in great damage.

The business of cyber stalking

Nowadays, young people always want to be with their friends and they want to locate each other as fast as possible. One of the example is facebook. There are thousands of students that can't get off the website because they want to get the most updated information about everyone they know. That means mobile social networking will be a huge market undeniably. I noticed that students tend to stick to cell phones as much as they stick to the virtual world. When companies are able to combine these "best friends" of young people, I think they will definitely want that combination.

According to Time magazine, the market is already boiling up with competition. A noticeable trend is that these new "smart" cell phones often come with heavy prices and an extra of monthly service bill. This could lead to customers stepping back from purchasing the products. There are many websites to use connecting to people. The reason that Facebook is incredibly popular because it is free for all users. Young customers might not want to get the new feature on their cell phone because they could use other alternatives to connect to their friends or a destination.

Internet is now a key feature on cell phone, it is easy for consumers to take advantage of mapquest or google earth. The internet service fee has dropped over the years since it becomes available. In addition, I can choose from a lot of phones that are internet friendly. The biggest example is the Iphone. I have seen friends using the Iphone for similar purpose that is similar to mobile social networking. Therefore, companies will have to find a balanced price for the new feature.

Crew member who?

Every time I read an article about teamwork, it always talks about how to manage a team/work with your team members effectively. I have never worked in a corporate job before so I assume that in a company, a crew will get picked out by the manager or human resources. Therefore, it has never come up to me that I will be involved in the process of picking my own crew members and I should find the best way to do that.

In this article, Mindofahustler.com emphasizes the understanding of different types of crew members : the Leader, the Brain, the Anchor and the Soldier aka people that I will have to look for to complete the crew. I think the article brings a wonderful insight of dividing roles in a team. However, it does not help solve the problem of work distribution.

Yes, we all know that it will take many steps to prepare and get the work done and these steps will be connected with every team members.However the work a member did is not always clear such as the leader and the brain. Due to this, work distribution can tarnish the trust between team members.

If I have the choice to pick out my own team, I'd rather pick out those 4 different types of team members and put those with similar specialty. Then I will assign them only one step of the work and let each little team finish their work before putting everything together. In order to diminish problem of distribution, we should not let these different types of members interact too much so they can focus on their own work and stop arguing about problem of work distribution.