Are you a Verizon customer?

If you are currently on a Verizon plan, you are in luck for some Cyber Monday deals. Verizon has bought the hashtag #Cyber Monday , and if you tweet or post a status on Facebook that Verizon supplies, then you are able to unlock a series of discounts. Every time you use their status you unlock a new discount. For example: Today's deal, you can receive 15% off a new blackberry. 

I wasn't aware that you could even buy hashtags, but it is an awesome idea for a business. This may be a useful technique for our shenanigans project. Shenanigans could buy a hashtag that mentions their name, and in return the customers could may get a 5% discount of some sort. 

Social Media has really opened up new techniques for businesses to give out discount and other promotional items. Think back to 10 years ago when we didn't have any of these sites, technology has moved our generation to a new era that is more customer savvy. What would we do if we didn't have all of these social media sites? How would people be aware of the discounts? I guess we would have to go back to just the paper ads that come along with you local paper. How awful/ non eco-friendly that would be. 

A Picture is Worth a 1,000 Words

As we currently discussed in class, whatever picture of you in on the internet will ALWAYS be on the internet. In the article 5 Facebook profile pictures that will make you look like a tool , from CNN.com. It discusses five different sorts of pictures that shouldn't be displayed on your Facebook page. With most of us either currently looking for a job or will be looking for a job within the next 6 months, we really need to take into consideration on how your profile picture perceives us.

The 5 profile pictures it says that we shouldn't display are as followed:
1. "The Myspace Shot" which is generally a picture taken of yourself. Often sometimes people will look seductive and this gives off a bad vibe to friends and future employers.
2. Pictures of your pet or baby, yes these may be cute but when an employer is looking for someone, how are they suppose to know what you look like, if the picture isn't even of you.
3. "Liquoring Up," I think the title enough sums up why you shouldn't have these pictures as your profile picture. It shows a lack of responsibility.
4. Group Shots, when having a group shot as a default, an employer may be confused as to who you are.
5. Holiday or Wedding pictures months after they have already passed. These pictures just aren't professional and yes they are okay to use for a week or two but you don't need to use them for a long period of time.

Hopefully these five profile picture types can help you choose the right picture for when you are looking to be employed in the future.

How Location Based Social Media Can Help Save You a Buck

With tough economic times people are always trying to find ways to save a dollar. In the article on mashable.com it discusses how stores on black Friday are offering discounts to people to check in using location based social networking sites. Once you have checked in and you can prove that you checked in you are sometimes awarded a badge that will allow you to get the discount or you can simply show that you have checked in and you are awarded the discount on the spot. Sears also awarded discounts to people who had like a certain product of theirs

By promoting these special discounts to people I believe it brought more people to the foursquare website to join, in return raising the awareness of the site. I know personally that I have seen in multiple places lately the little foursquare logo, either by the cash register, seeing it on their website or Facebook page or being told about it by a sales associate. If more stores would make it aware I believe foursquare would be a little more popular.

The stores who did promote their location based service properly probably will have a successful return rate on black Friday. So if you are looking to save a buck then make sure to check out your favorite stores websites, facebook pages, and foursquare announcements.

An Advance in Twitter

Ever wonder how popular you tweets are? Well you will soon be able to track that, when Twitter launches their new analytical service . The new service will allow you too view the popularity of your tweets, your own popularity on the service, number or retweets and replies and favorites each tweet has received.

For businesses and marketers I believe this is a wonderful and useful tools because you will be able to track the popularity or items, such as if you have a new picture of a new product, you would be able to see how many people were curious to see what it looked like. This could give you an idea of how many of your followers would be interested in purchasing the product. I am surprised Twitter hasn't offered this service sooner considering newer sites such as Foursquare has already had this service available. 

Calling All Small Businesses!

If your a small business you NEED to be on a social networking site and you NEED to learn how to use it effectively. In the article Why Twitter Is a Big Win for Small Businesses , written by Erica Swallow, she interviews three small business owners that have successfully used Twitter and have gotten positive results from it. She asked each a series of nine questions and even used examples from their own Twitter accounts. The article was a great idea and could be of reference to other small business owners.

One business owner named Lev Ekster, stated when asked, "What's the top reason your business uses Twitter?"  that “It all just boils down to having a face and a voice to the company, where the customer feels that you’re reachable. With a bigger company, you don’t know who the owner is, you don’t know how to reach them, you feel like beyond the suggestion box in the store, there’s nothing else you can do. But [with social media], you get an instant response.”

I personally think that's a great response because it is true how many times have you been some where and had bad/good service or just wanted to make a comment about it and all they had was a place like a suggestion box. I always wondered if they even looked at what people put on a suggestion card, because you never get a response back like you would on Twitter. Also, other customers may never see what you put into a suggestion box but they would see what you tweeted about. Twitter makes me as a consumer feel more comfortable with communicating with a small business. It makes you feel like you have a voice and someone is actually listening to you.

I think this article could also apply to our project with Shenanigans, because it talks about how some businesses aren't using Twitter effectively so it isn't successful. I think we could use the responses of these business owners when thinking about how Shenanigans need to approach Twitter, if that is something we would even consider using.

The small business owners make good points in their responses, including how you shouldn't use an outsource to update your Twitter because they aren't they to know what is going on. They also recommend to take lots of pictures of everything, from  the chef making cupcake to a new dress that just arrived in your store. Then you can monitor how many people actually look at your pictures and they would give you an idea at how many active followers you have. 

This article should be read by all small business owners who are looking into using Twitter!

Change your Status to Change the Statistics!

Have you or anyone you know ever had cancer? I am sure everyone has been affected by cancer in some way shape or form. Everyone everywhere hopes that someday their is a cure for cancer so we can put an end to this awful disease. In the article #BeatCancer Aiming to Set World Record for Most Social Mentions , by Vadim Ladrusik, it discuss how Livestrong is trying to beat their own World Record of most mentions on Twitter and Facebook. Last year 209,771 mentions in 24 hours and this year they are looking to beat it.

Would you like to help? If  so, all you have to do, starting at 12 p.m. on Friday until 12 p.m. on Saturday, is mention the hashtag #BeatCancer in your Facebook status, Blog, or Twitter and $0.05 is donated to cancer charities. How simple is that!

I think this is such a creative/innovative idea to donate to cancer charities. Since social media is so popular, I think more organizations should use this technique. It's simple, they just need to pair up with a large organization or two that would be willing to donate money on behalf of the people who are spreading the word or awareness. I know I will be posting the hashtag on one of my social media accounts, will you?

Are Naive Adolescence Doomed?

Last week in class, we got to talking about what comes up on Google when you type in your own name and it really got me thinking about how a potential employer would perceive me. I Googled my name and nothing bad came up but it got me wondering what I would have done if something bad would have came up. What if something I did in high school, made a future employer have a bad opinion of me. I can honestly say that when I was in high school, I was not thinking about what I wanted to do in life and I wasn't thinking that future employers would be tracking me down on social media sites.

After wondering about all the things that I could have potentially written on my Facebook and others pages when I was younger, it made me want to research and see what adolescents were writing on their own pages right now. I have a lot of cousins and many of them are younger than me and I know that they are unaware that the things they are publishing on the internet could potential affect them in the future. So I started my research by simply looking at all the pictures, wall-to-wall posts, and status updates to see if I could find anything that I personally wouldn't want an employer to see and just as I suspected, my little cousins aren't afraid to put anything on their Facebook pages. It blows my mind at the things that I found and I'm sure that there are worst things that others have published. It makes me want to tell them to watch what you do or say on the internet because you never know who may see it.

Do you think that because they are so naive about their future employer that they are possibly doomed when they decide to enter the workforce? I believe they might actually be in a little bit of trouble because once something is on the internet, it is there forever. But you never know Facebook or other sites might not even be popular in 5+ years, so maybe they will have nothing to worry about with employers. This is just something that I began to wonder about and I wish someone would have warned me about when I first started using Facebook and other social networking sites.