Month: April 2014

Personal Learning Network Reflectioin

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Through out this semester the personal learning network I put together for Andrea Whaley of Wardrobe Interventions really helped me learn more about the business and marketing world. The professionals I follow on Twitter, Diigo, and bloglines really provided me with great social media knowledge and information that our group was able to pass down to Wardrobe Interventions during our training session. During our training session we used several examples from Rachel Zoe’s Twitter and Facebook account because she is in the same business of Andrea Whaley and does a great job of promoting her brand all across the Internet.

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Rachel Zoe’s Twitter homepage has a great cover background, profile picture, and biography. She does a great job on consistently posting relevant content and interacting with her audience. By studying her Twitter and Facebook page over the course of the semester our workshop group was able to provide Wardrobe Interventions with helpful hints and suggestions that could boost her social media presence and could help build up her followers on Twitter and “likes” on Facebook.

If I was given the opportunity to start the social media for a new business I would definitely create a personal learning network for myself to follow. Making “lists” on Twitter and tweeting at different professional relevant to your business is a great way to attract new followers and hopefully get you noticed by other businesses and marketers. I would work on posting up-to-date information and content on my social media platforms in order to keep my audience involved and interested. I would also consider starting a blog relevant to my business and work on building up a following on that platform in order to reach potential new customers and clients.

Overall, I had a great time working with our client Andrea Whaley of Wardrobe Interventions. Even though I learn a lot doing regular school projects I feel like actually putting together a training session someone will actually use made me think more critically about the subject. I definitely used this opportunity to work with a “real-world” client in order to grow and learn more as a student. Since Andrea runs her own business I think we provided great tips to help her engage, brand, and manage all of her social media accounts and even some potential new ones. By putting together this training workshop I learned a lot about the positive and even negative effects social media can have on a small business or even a huge international corporation.

How Social Media Can Change the Business World

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I started writing this blog at the beginning of the semester as part of a class assignment and have learned so much through researching and also viewing other professional blogs to search for new tools and ideas that could continue my learning. In today’s society social media is now a must-have if a business wants to make money and reach new customers. Virtually everyone is online in some way and people rely on the Internet more then ever to go about their daily lives. Keeping up with new social media websites and platforms are important if businesses want to stay ahead of their competition and keep the customers they currently do have.
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The way we are using social media now has definitely been effective in promoting and marketing business’s goals and ideas. If we continue on the path we are on now, I think we could come up with even more creative and fun ideas to reach customers through sites such as Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and any other platforms I have mentioned on my blog over the semester.

The great thing about social media is that is doesn’t just have to be used for business. I know through out my blog I have focused on how it could help Wardrobe Interventions, but it is a great tool that people use to connect to each other with. People have found long lost relatives and friends through social media sites which would have never happened just a couple of years ago. Social media is continuously evolving and the fun part is that we can have a huge influence on how it grows.

Once companies realized how effective social media was, they really started to get involved and take charge in how they wanted to brand their image. Even though it is important to be creative and fun when posting things on social media, it is also important to be aware of what you are posting and the lasting effects it could have. The one downside to the Internet is that whatever ends up there, stays there. Even if a business or company tweets or posts a photo for just a couple of seconds and then takes it down, more than likely someone saw it and has already spread it across the Internet. Social media can either make or break a company and I think businesses have started to realize how crucial it is to stay on stop of all of their social media sites and make good decision on what they post and even when they post something.

Thanks for sticking with me this semester and I hope you all enjoyed reading my blog posts about incorporating social media into business!

Using Pinterest to Market your Business

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Pinterest is another great bookmarking tool available on the Internet. It is a fun way to upload, save, and sort images, known as pins, onto your virtual pin-boards. Users can browse their friends pins and then choose to save the ones they like, or they have the ability to go to a specific category and browse other people’s pins from around the country.

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Since we are working with Andrea Whaley from Wardrobe Interventions, I feel like Pinterest would be a great way to grow her business and market herself even more. The majority of users on Pinterest are women and since Wardrobe Interventions focuses on image consulting and personal shopping, Pinterest would be a great way to market her business to a specific target audience.

By creating different boards, users are easily able to organize their pinned images and name their boards according to what pins they contain. This makes it easy for people to go to different users sites and view specific boards they pinned. This picture is an example of what someone’s “fashion” board might look like on Pinterest.
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Businesses, such as Wardrobe Interventions, can create a Pinterest page and then post pictures of products or accessories they like and even pin other people’s fashion ideas to show people what they suggest and what they see as “in-style.” In order for someone to trust you enough to change their wardrobe, it is important that they like your styling choices and feel comfortable enough to work with you. If you connect your Pinterest site to your business website, it gives potential customers an opportunity to view your work and see if they like what you do.

Pinning and commenting on other people’s pins is a great way to gain new followers if you are just starting up and it is also a good way to market your business. Styling and fashion is a huge part of Pinterest  so I think it would be a great social networking tool for Andrea and her business. Posting her own models and styling ideas would be a great way to really show off her style and connect her to her followers even more.

Pinterest is a great website to really let your creativity really shine through. This bookmarking website is a fun and fresh way to share your ideas or products with literally thousands of people. I definitely think Pinterest is one of the top marketing and networking sites on the Internet today!

Using Social Bookmarking Tools

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Last week I talked about HootSuite and how it can be a great tool for small business owners to use in order to interact with their followers. This website provides a great feature that allows its users to schedule when they want to send out tweets or posts without having to actually click a button or even have Internet access. I have been using HootSuite for the past couple weeks now and it is one of my favorite websites because it has all of your social media sites in one location and it makes it easy to check out your Facebook newsfeed or even your mentions on your Twitter page.

Today I am going to talk a little about the social bookmarking website, Diigo. This website allows users to bookmark and tag web-pages on the Internet. In order to easily bookmark a page you can install a little icon in your web browser that makes it easy for the user to click on it and it provides a drop down menu with actions you can take.

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The drop down menu allows the user to share, annotate, screenshot, and save to their Diigo library

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Your Diigo library keeps track of what websites you save and the annotations you can make in them. My library is mostly focused on social media, marketing, communications and blogging because our client, Wardrobe Interventions, is an up-and-coming small business that focuses on style and fashion.

It is also easy to find Diigo users with similar interests as you because Diigo has a search engine feature that allows users to type in a specific keyword and it then generates a list of Diigo users with similar tags.Screen Shot 2014-04-03 at 5.41.17 PM

When you type in a keyword such as “marketing” a list of users pops up who all used the tag “marketing” for at least one of their saved websites. This is a great tool because it makes it easy for the user to find similar websites that talk about marketing without having to spend hours on the Internet searching through irrelevant information. Many of the websites users tag in their library are extremely helpful and provide great research and information on a variety of topics.

This website can benefit business owners because it can be a huge time saver. People are constantly busy and don’t always have endless hours to spend on the Internet searching for new ways to improve their marketing, blogging, or any other type of skill. Diigo allows you to save all of your websites in one area while also being able to search through other people’s tags and websites.