Opions taken with a grain of salt...

As a business owner, your main objective is to earn a profit. Hopefully, most customers taking advantage of your business or service will be pleased with the outcome. However, you will have the occasional customer who is displeased. Thus being so, it is your job, as a business owner to make sure that customer’s displeasure goes away and they continue to return to, and leave your business a satisfied, happy customer. I can guarantee you, Sarah, a customer at a Minnesota movie theater will not soon be returning after receiving a vulgar email in response to her complaint of a poor experience. Granted, Sarah’s email wasn’t the most polite, however it is not her job to keep the business owner happy, it’s the other way around. To read the full email exchange, visit the website for the local Twin Cities newspaper.

In response to this, two Facebook fan pages have come about; one, with over 5,000 fans, supporting Sarah and her movement to boycott the theater, and another supporting theater president Steve Payne, with only 200 fans. I do think this is an appropriate use of the Facebook fan page application, especially for Sarah and her cause. She is able to inform people on a large scale what had happened to her and allows her to get support from them very quickly. Although this is not the intended use of the Facebook fan page it is very fast and effective.

Recently, I have come across a similar fan page on Facebook in which disgruntled customers can ban together and make their point heard. This is the fan page titled “I HATE Bronze Body & Brew and I Want My Money Back!” This fan page is in response to the local Whitewater tanning salon going out of business without informing any of their customers and leaving them with numerous tans lost. In such a small town, the page has reached almost 1,000 members and still continues to grow. Many fans, of which I am one have used this page to vent and talk about plans of action to get our money back.

Harry Potter Tweets

Twitter is a social media giant, which goes without saying. It allows users to create simple status updates of 140 characters consisting of anything from a simple statement to a link to an interesting video or quote. It has become very popular since its conception in 2006, and is used by not only your average joe, but now by celebrities, businesses, campaigns, and has even been influential in recent elections. Because of the great influence that twitter has had, Warner Brothers chose to use it as one of the major promoters for its latest Harry Potter movie Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

In their twitter campaign they created an application page called “Harry Potter Tweets” that allows you to send magic spells to other twitter users. The Harry Potter Tweets website allows you to send four different spells to any twitter user you are following. The first spell is named Amortentia, a type of love potion that casts a heart shaped animation on the receivers Twitter page once it is opened. The second spell is the Unbreakable Vow, which casts an animation resembling a binding light which symbolizes an unbreakable promise to the Twitter user you send it too. Another available spell is the Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder. This spells animation clouds up the receiver Twitter homepage with “instant darkness. The final available spell is the Oppugno spell which casts an animation of birds who appear to fly at you from the screen and then burst into an explosion of feathers. All of these available spells are spells that were used in the latest Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. All in all the campaign was very successful.

Budweiser's Facebook Takeover

With the biggest sporting event in America looming over our head there is one question on everyone’s mind, “What will be the funniest Super Bowl commercial!?” The super bowl has attracted sports fans everywhere since its conception, but in recent years, has attracted a new crowd with its humorous commercials. In an effort to come out on top this year, Budweiser has launch a campaign where viewers can vote for their favorite ad to choose which one airs during the big game via the social media monster know as Facebook. According to the Advertising Age website, Budweiser is the year’s biggest advertiser with a total of 5 minutes of total air time.

How exactly do they plan on this total Facebook takeover? The advertisement to vote will first show up in your news stream, tempting you with the chance to vote for your favorite commercial. But to do so you must first become a fan of the Budweiser Facebook page as well. Once you have voted, you have the option of posting your pick on your wall. This allows all of your friends to see your pick and may lure them in to do the same. Also, now that you are a fan of Budweiser they can send you constant updates on things such as new ads and promotions.

Personally I think using social media as a vehicle of advertising is a great idea. It allows one person to see an item and gives them the possibility to share it with all of their friends. It can be updated frequently and available to millions of people. Now those of you who are the biggest fans of Budweiser, don’t worry. There are many other companies using social media such as Doritos, Pepsi, and Coca-Cola.

“It’s official: Super Bowl ads are getting more buzz that ever before — and the game has yet to begin — and it’s all because of the power of the web and social media.”

check out the article, http://mashable.com/2010/02/02/budweiser-facebook-super-bowl/

Writing for Multimedia: Blog 1, "Who am I?"

Hello again, My name is Samantha Archer and I am currently enrolled in a journalism class titled, Writing for Multimedia. I am a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater majoring in PR, with aspirations to become either a PR practitioner or an ad worker. I have just recently began my studies in the field of Public Relations and i am finding that it is a good fit for both my lifestyle and personality.

I am very interested in fashion, and styling and would like to somehow merge that into my studies. I would be very interested in represeting various designers or lablles, or in helping to plan and market large scale fashion events. The largest public event in the fashion industry is fashion week, and it would be a dream to someday be a part of that.

In this class I hope to learn how to not only present myself professionally on the web but in person as well. I also hope to increase my currently minimal netwroking skills and make connections with others to expand my horizons and my overall knowledge of the PR and marketing world.

Classrooms of the future

Twitter should decentralize

This article examines the social networking site twitter and the flaws in its operating systems. When Twitter first began it was never expected to be as large as it became and now with its growing popularity, some loop holes have been spotted. On twitter you can theoretically follow as many people as you want and thus be followed by whoever. Unlike other social media sites there is no comfirmation system on the "following" systems and no limitations on the number of people. unlike twitter, facebook limits users to 5000 friends.

The author suggests that Twitter should start charging its users to turn a profit and have their own sever much like microsoft exchange. However, how many users would be willing to pay this fee, especially if another site much like twitter opens up for free. As of now twitter have virtually no competition, so why change.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/04/twitter-should-decentralize-and-make-money-via-twitter-server/

the future of email