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.

Can we go Virtual?

According to Jessica Lipnack and Jeffery Stamps of the Net Age, virtual team will be the next solution to business conference. In their article for Milestone Group, Jessica and Jeffrey suggested several the pros and cons of virtual team. From my understanding, virtual team has two pros and one cons.
Pro: effective for storming
a highly efficient way to transfer information on a non face-to-face level
Cons: require the leader's hard work
I personally do not disagree with their opinion. However, I think that companies will need time to be able to take complete advantage of that kind of team work.

Yes, diversity is crucial for storming ideas, and virtual team certainly can help bring that characteristics to the team and team members. Well we have to remember that virtual team is a non face-to-face way of communication and diversity might not play a good role for the team.

In my opinion, it is harder for team members to communicate with each other online as effectively as in person. Therefore, I think it is still uncertain that a diverse group of people can work well together in a virtual way. Yes, you might argue with me that advanced technology will solve that problem by connecting people through conference calls, webcam etc... Technology, however, has not been able to let team members communicating in a virtual "face-to-face" way.

Why do I insist on the aspect of "face-to-face" communicating?

I experience the problem when I enter a private chat room with friends. Once we start the chat, the conversation might go completely unorganized and it is really hard to control the topic. We experience less the same kind of problem when talking to each other in person. As much leader's work need to be put in as the article mentioned, there is also no proof that team members pay 100% attention to the conference because the leader/organizer himself is not in the same room with these members. Therefore, the leader can not completely control such unexpected elements that occur throughout the conference.

Virtual team is such a new and interesting way of communicating. I think there will be more technology being developed to cater to this kind of communication. One day leaders might not need to put in as much hard work or have problem with organizing conference any more. Why? Because they probably can pint-point the crucial topic and who the lazy guy is. :)

The future of journalism: the online way

These days I don't read papers any more. It just feels lazy when you have to get up and go outside in order to get a news copy, especially in the chilly fall weather of Washington D.C. Therefore, I enjoy staying inside and reading online articles.

There is a certain element of convenience that attract so many people to the online world of journalism. After just a click, readers can get directly to the article without any hassle. The online world is a generous source of information, and I found that sometime the information are completely free. Since marketing companies team up with websites and bloggers, readers don't have to pay to watch/read/use online articles a lot of the times. Because web users are encouraged to look up information online, they found that they can get any particular information of their interest in a much easier manner. Therefore, they appreciate its variety and low cost over print journalism. As a result, newspapers experience their suffer due to the shift in the industry. Lets hear what the expert say:




As mentioned in the video, online journalism faces the lack of credibility as anyone can publish their personal posts. I think that there is probably a chance of getting biased information but it is the choice of readers to determine which websites or blogs to visit. For example, Perezhilton.com is notorious for its juicy tabloid information. Although Perez is a highly opinionated blogger, readers can't help but come back and read his websites. He has no qualification whatsoever for journalism but he is doing it and making profit from it through advertising. According to the above video, we can explain that he speaks with a strong voice that sometimes is hard to find in general publication. In my experience, his writing style has something that I can relate to as it is always fresh and funny.

Evidently, there is a decrease in profit but many people are still interested in reading papers. It will take a long time for them to completely switch to having only online reading habit. For me, I still have strong influence over their established credibility. However, it is hard to imagine the future of these print journalism companies. A lot of them have switched to releasing news from their own website through online subscription. These companies, therefore, need to find a balance between their online and print publishing.

Business online network = The new "Connector"?

As a marketing major, I think that it is very important for job seekers to market themselves in today economy. Finding the right "connector" that links you to the job opportunity is crucial. In order to improve the chances, many professionals are going the online way for job hunting. According to ABC News, websites such as LinkedIn and Ryez.com are helping customers strengthen weak ties with their professional colleagues and getting noticed in the job market. I think that these ideas are very practical and have bright future impact on the job finding path.

A good job opportunity in many times is the result of effective networking. The online way of networking requires users to be presented popularly among professionals in very similar manner of networking in real life. Therefore, they will have to establish a good reputation and makes their name trust-worthy on the market. In order to help consumers present themselves in such sense, online networks for job hunters should be able to provide big pool of professionals and companies. According to the ABC News, online networks for professionals have no problem attract new users but in trouble of keeping users revisit their websites.

Unlike a social network such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Ryez.com do not give consumers the thrive to check back daily. The less time users spend to stay connected, the weaker the ties with colleagues and companies will be. So as job opportunities. The network, therefore, will lose its core users and fall flat on the market. In order for these websites to become the new "Connector" for professionals, they need to keep their network broad and strong. In my opinion, they should find positive job-related tools to gain consumers' excitement. Once the problem is solved, there is no doubt that these websites are new ways to find jobs