Melanie Wong’s Student Portfolio

Through the entire year and a half I have been using social media, I would like to broadcast my accomplishments and express my aspirations as a graduating senior at Emerson College.

What do I want to do with social media? Why am I qualified?

I know that leaving college, I want to do public relations/social media for a company or an agency. To gain experience in client relations and communications, I have started my own social media agency targeting small businesses in the local Boston area. I want to be able to work everything from submitting a company to local listings to developing a new business proposal, so I know what to expect in more challenging situations in business. This blog is going to be geared towards providing a resource for small businesses to start using social media to establish an online presence. Here are three of my blog posts that have been geared towards small businesses/entrepreneurs that detail how social media can help.

“Crowdsourcing is not a matter of looking for individuals to help accomplish a task, it is about finding the community where multiple individuals are willing to help.” (3 Benefits of Crowdsourcing for Small Businesses)

“In order to cohesive develop a brand, the brand must give content worthy enough.”(How Small Businesses Can Use Emerson College to Benefit)

“Entrepreneurs like yourself are in need of costless forms of promotion that are still effective at attracting your target audiences. Social media is seemingly the key to providing effective communication for little to no money.”(Entrepreneurs: Three Reasons To Use Status Updates on Facebook and Twitter)

My ideal position involving social media, why am I qualified?

Getting paid to use social media in my daily life would be my dream job — working as an Account Coordinator/Executive for a company that is recognized internationally for it’s digital and interactive influence. I want to be able to handle client communications and relations — developing strategies and implementing tactics to better enhance any brand in the targeted consumer’s mind. In class, I have been able to develop social media pitches to real-world companies like Nokia, Cisco and Zappos, in which we were able to implement tools like Cymfony to track the impact social media has on the brand. I have also interned at Regan Communications where I developed a social media proposal to boost their internal company-wide appearance. Working at SHIFT Communications - a leading agency in social media - has also taught me project management, strategic message development and media relations.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Tweet on How Does Social Media Matter? Social Media is about conversation. It matters to us because it is the only way to broadcast a relationship with a customer in a community.

I am looking to communicate with anyone willing to talk. Here is my Linked-In, and my VisualCV account detailing even more of my credentials. I am of course also reachable through comments below or through Twitter and Facebook and e-mail!

melanieswong [at] gmail [dot] com.

When you first arrive at my blog, you see a screenshot of me in mid-sentence glory. Snapshot of the following is dumber-looking:

I used the video uploading service Vimeo to host my little blog biography instead of the all-famous YouTube. Here are 3 things that Vimeo embodies that YouTube can learn from.

1. CUTENESS

The design of the website is simple, colorful, and convenient. Instead of wading through the sharp corners, broken links and the endless pit of pop-up advertisements, Vimeo allows the user to surf safely and efficiently.

2. Simple (lite)

For users on the go, but still want to have a say - Vimeo offers a feature YouTube does not: Like.

Although YouTube has the “favorite” feature, it is not featured on the video screen and does not compile all of your favorites, videos, and groups, channels and albums in a congregated, multi-colored space on your profile.

Uploading is also extremely easy, you don’t even need a title to start uploading your video.

There is no 10-minute limit (like there is in YouTube) and it allows for users to express their inner artist.

3. Specific Audience

Vimeo targets a specific group of people, and has a strong community surrounding it. Vimeo began with giving users the ability to upload HD content where as YouTube has started a couple months ago. Vimeo promotes people who are looking to upload and share higher quality videos versus a multitude of videos. I was looking at a forum topic in the community, and came across Jason R Johnston. He said this in a forum called “Vimeo vs. Youtube”:

Vimeo is quality over quantity.

I am a Plus member because I believe in Vimeo and what it stands for. I’m an artist, I’m not a child, and I want to be surrounded by like-minded individuals who believe in my work as much as I believe in theirs.

YouTube needs to learn about the community aspect, there are currently so many users on the site that everything is clustered. Also, the lack of segmenting the website into more sufficient categories makes navigating through it difficult. Hopefully, Vimeo will serve as a model for video uploading websites and promote quality, not quantity.

Links to prove my point:

4 Sites That Do Video Better: http://news.cnet.com/youtube-sucks-4-sites-that-do-video-better/

Why YouTube Sucks: http://www.fanpop.com/spots/web-20/articles/32/title/why-youtube-sucks

Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is tomorrow Dec 1, 2009.

Victoria’s Secret uses social media to build loyalty towards the brand by offering online-exclusive deals and web-only content. Their Victoria’s Secret and PINK lines both have a strong online presence, which serves as sources of information for current and existing customers. This information allows users to gain more knowledge about the brand, and pay attention to the news VS is sending out.

Their use of social media sticks mainly towards social networking sites, implementing Facebook in both of their Victoria’s Secret and PINK lines. Both sites have 1 million fans each, so every broadcast of news has a large outreach.They are connected to a very strong (persistent, I might say) e-mail marketing campaign (their call to action is written across every webpage) and Pink Nation, an exclusive club that designates web-only offers to those who join. Stephen Squires from Ignite Social Media comments on their social media interaction as only “email sign-ups and personalized accounts for shopping their online store.”

For current events like the Victoria’s Secret Fashion show tomorrow, Victoria’s Secret leverages their social media presence to promote this event to their followers.

Their current use of video live streaming of the event has also attracted a strong following, with their use of live streaming in the video below:

Crowdsourcing is the when a task/question is outsourced to a group of people. Individuals from all around the world use crowdsourcing to develop a new business idea, complete a design task, or just answer a question.

Crowdsourcing has been one of the hot-button topics in the social media world. The Wall Street Journal featured an article in August about technology’s impact on innovation. Technology is giving us all the ability to access information that previously we would never have been able to because it was either too difficult or too expensive.

For small businesses, crowdsourcing can be used a lot more effectively and inexpensively if used correctly. Crowdsourcing is not a matter of looking for individuals to help accomplish a task, it is about finding the community where multiple individuals are willing to help. I was able to interview Edward Boches, Chief Social Media Officer and Chief Creative Officer of Mullen via Twitter about how he felt about crowdsourcing for smaller brands.

I asked: Do you think that crowdsourcing requires an influential brand to become successful?
He replied: Not if there’s a reason to participate, or value for the crowd. Crowdsourcing has to be as good for the crowd as the brand.

So to all small businesses, crowdsourcing is your tool. If used effectively and if the audience is right, crowdsourcing is an extremely effective tool to get customers paying attention to your business.

Here are three ways crowdsourcing can benefit your business.

1. Design Work

Looking for logos, business cards, any sort of stationary that will start the branding of your company can be an expensive task. Looking for a designer on Craigslist, Facebook, or newspapers can be extremely expensive. They may quote you thousands of dollars. However, we shall leverage crowdsourcing. A great resource is CrowdSpring.

Submitting a request and offering a reward of however much money you choose, designers from all over will attempt to design something for you for the cash. This is a great resource to see designs from different designers. You are the one who is reaching out to a community to help accomplish a task - on top of that, you can determine how much you want to pay. LG used CrowdSpring to design their new phone. They offered a 20k+ reward for the first prize.

There are other crowdsourcing design websites as well: Denook, BootB, and Kluster are there just to name a few.

2. Get some new insight

As a small business, there are only so many creative minds in your company. When staff meetings have gone to a standstill, or if the company is just you and there is no one else to share another opinion, there are plenty of resources that will come to your aid. Yahoo Answers , Wikipedia, even Twitter is an excellent resource of information.

3. Create some awareness

Netflix in this situation, created a campaign to improve the accuracy of predictions about how much someone is going to enjoy a movie based on their movie preferences. They offered a $1 Million grand prize to whoever submitted an algorithm for it.

Of course small businesses are unable to dish out $1 million for contents, but take from Netflix the idea that people are willing to listen to you if you get their attention. There are many things you can do to grab the attention of a community.

Here is a resource for crowdsourcing examples, it is divided up in 4 broad themes. (Very cool that it is in a wiki, which is another resource of crowdsourcing)

1. Individual businesses that channel the power of online crowds

2. Brand - sponsored initiative or forums that depend on crowdsourcing.

3. Brand initiatives that allow users to customise their products

4. Brand sponsored competitions/challenges focused on crowdsourcing.

So according to your small businesses budget, these themes will either be of influence, guidance, or reference to your marketing.

It is always difficult to get awareness, and work towards a company that will become well connected in the community. Crowdsourcing is a wonderful aid, but always remember that

Helpful Links:

Crowdsourcing: 5 Reasons It’s Not Just For Startups Any More by Dion Hinchcliffe

5 Tools a Small Business Can’t Live Without by Bradford Shimp

A collaborated post with Max Luster over Google Wave

___

(haha just kidding.)

To Early Stage Consumer Service Entrepreneurs:

You’ve just gone through the hardship of building early infrastructure and a quality team to lead the way to your future growth and profitabillity. In the process, you built a service you know your prospective customers would love. The only problem: they don’t know about it!

The cost of starting your company was likely significantly higher than what you initially expected (Who knew that licensing and permits would cost over $5000?). The advertising budget for your grand opening just went from a lavish full color ad in popular newspapers and magazines to a limited campaign on Google Adwords.

Entrepreneurs like yourself are in need of costless forms of promotion that are still effective at attracting your target audiences. Social media is seemingly the key to providing effective communication for little to no money.

The first two social media networks that pop into mind would be Facebook and Twitter. Since the websites draw in around 124 million and 23 million respectively - the amount of outreach for any successful marketing campaign would be monumental.

So keeping potential clients and friends updated to your company’s news comes differently with each of the social networks. Danah Boyd, on her blog, writes about the differences between Facebook status updates and Twitter updates.

Here are 3 reasons to use Facebook statuses and Twitter Updates to better promote your company:

Facebook:

1. Establish Personal Connections

• 2 way connection accept/deny: Facebook is about having a connection with a “friend”, not a “follower”. Boyd writes that Facebook “is about people at a similar level of status interacting”. When @replying a person, you are featured both on your own wall and their wall. You have gone through a selection process of whether or not you want to be their friend.

In this situation, my Status update was on both Max Luster’s and my wall.

This allows for you to mention a person on your Facebook Page. Thank them for writing a good review about your product, for coming to your event, for writing a blog post about your company etc. The mention will be broadcasted to both the people that are Fans on your Facebook Page and also on the user’s wall.

2. Make Your Fans Feel Exclusive

Offering fans exclusive information about your products/services gives them an incentive to stay. Pizza Hut’s Facebook Page isthe perfect example of exclusivity.

Their “Order App” Tab on their Facebook Page allow for Facebook users to order pizza off of Facebook. Offering your customers/fans the ability to do something solely on Facebook also establishes loyalty for your company.

3. Develop Community Around Your Product/Service

The option of keeping comments out in the open allows for open dialogue between not only yourself, but also your fans. Likeminded people are able to connect with each other, and at the same time, you have feedback that you are able to gain from your product/service.

Motorola builds community by allowing their Facebook fans to comment on each other’s wall posts. Getting organic comment from fans is a good way to develop community. Posts should not only be coming from you.

Twitter:

1. Join In On Existing Conversations

• By using twitter tracking services like Tweet Beep your organization will be able to conveniently monitor what people are saying about your product, and your competitors products. By monitoring what general audiences are saying, you’ll be able to write status updates that smartly respond to consumer sentiment. This can create excellent opportunities to offer insight, and establish credibility as a thought leader in your space.

2. Drive Traffic

• One of the simplest, but arguably the most important function of twitter is to promote content that you’ve created and hosted on your website. Letting your customers know that you just added a of content to your page will be  a great way to drive traffic to that content.

3. Crisis Management

• Since updates are limited to 140 characters on twitter, information spreads fast. What happens if your traffic spikes and your server crashes? Without twitter, getting message out as to why issues have occured would travel a lot slower. In crisis situations like that, often times consumers are simply looking for a reason why the content they requested is unavailable - but without that simple status update on Twitter, they may never find out - or find out too late.

I’m always hearing scary stories about employees getting fired from their jobs because of things their bosses find on Facebook. I’ve never had an issue where I was hiding something from someone on public profiles. I think of the internet as a public pool, if someone pees in it, WE ALL KNOW.

So I have compiled a list of 7 things that you can do to protect your facebook privacy and to just become smarter in general about what you do online:

1. Change your password frequently.

Just a security measure for yourself. Before you go changing your own personal information, make sure that people who you don’t remember giving your password to or people you don’t want getting their hands on your password don’t get it!

Change your password every 3-5 months and make sure that they aren’t silly things like “happy” or “password” or “12345”.

This is your personal image we are talking about here, make sure that no one has control over that but you.

2. Your Privacy Settings!

If you haven’t been here to change your privacy to settings, do it.This is probably the first thing you should do after you get a Facebook personal page. I personally would not want anyone poking around my photos whom I don’t know, no matter how much fun I had in “Summer ‘09”, I would not prefer it if my personal details were just out in the open to random men in Albuquerque.

BBC News writes an interesting article on how malicious software out there can steal your identity, no matter how private your settings are. Read about it here.

3. Check how different people can see your profile.

Right on top of privacy settings, Facebook can show you how your friends can see your profile. For me, no one can see my wall if they are not part of the Emerson network. If you want to share photos to people that you went to college with but not your employers (BEWARE OF THIS) you can do so by changing the privacy settings. But just a note of warning, if it’s on the internet, its probably not only in the one place you think it is.

4. Leave unnecessary networks.

I am currently in the Boston, MA, Emerson College, and Shanghai American School network. They are all applicable to me, and I live in Boston. Don’t join networks because your friends are on it, don’t try to stalk other people in a network because if you can see what they have on their profile, others can see what you have on yours.

Make sure you are making the correct choices. People are watching.

5. Be smart about your updates.

Facebook updates pose the question “What are you thinking” before you update your status. A good idea is to post a link to something you found interesting, or a remark upon how far/close the weekend is. NOT “My job sucks, I want to die” - those are the sure fire ways to get you on the streets my friend.

If there is any advice that I would say take away from this list is to take a second to think. Facebook, like any other online tool is shared by hundreds of millions of people. Don’t think that only the people you want to see it will see it.

6. Periodically sort through your friends

In the beginning when I had facebook, I would just friend everyone (even the people who I didn’t know). Months later, I have random people commenting on my photos, writing on my wall — eek! Never.

So make sure you are cleaning out your friends. It’s not that great to have 1000+ friends but 800 of them are random people from India, Nepal, or Finland. Facebook is about connecting with the friends that you have, not having creepy ones you will never meet like your statuses.

7. Google yourself!

If you haven’t done this yet, do so! Google is the best way that people can search for you. What is being said about you? Look at the photos. I personally have random people from San Francisco come up on my google search — weird I know. But at least they aren’t photos of me throwing up on my couch, slacking off during a work day, or doing other embarassing things.