Week 8 EOC: Small Business Saturday

Small Business Saturday is a holiday recently established by the credit card company, American Express on November 27^th 2010. It is a day that is dedicated to small businesses across the country. Originally, the holiday was supposed to land on any Saturday. However, this day is now set for every Saturday after Thanksgiving. During one of the busiest shopping periods of the year, Small Business Saturday is the counterpart to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. While shoppers were encouraged to pursue big box retailers and e-commerce stores, shoppers now have an incentive to hit the small and local businesses head first. American Express initiated the campaign in 2010 through radio and television advertising. That same year, their Small Business Saturday Facebook page received about 1.2 million Facebook likes in just one month and nearly 30,000 tweets on Twitter. By 2011, the United States Senate officially recognized Small Business Saturday as a holiday. By this time, millions of consumers continued to participate in the event. By 2012, consumer spending on local and small brick and mortar businesses beastly reported about 5.5 billion dollars. What this means for everyone is that the holiday that first started out as an advertising campaign, is now exceptionally boosting our economy while sustaining employment for small businesses and the rest of the country.

“Small businesses create half of the jobs in the private sector. [They] have created 65 percent of the net new jobs over the last 17 years. And so, what small business is all about, is where the individual can help our economy because we need to create jobs. And if people support independently owned small businesses in their community, they can make a difference.”

- CBS Evening News

"Two out of every three new jobs created in our economy are in the smallest small business, the Main Street-type businesses that do our dry cleaning, repair and service our automobiles and often serve us dinner. What’s more, about half of the U.S. workforce is employed there — which means you likely work in one of these businesses."

 - www.desertnews.com

"I think what started out as a marketing campaign has actually grown into a very important "holiday" for this country, in that small business owners now have something they can all rally behind, promote and then (hopefully) reap the monetary benefits of."

- www.boston.com

 

Week 7 EOC: Privacy issues on the web, Two companies that can spy on you

Whether people like it or not, marketers are spying on internet users every single day. They are tracking people’s clicks, activities, interests, etc. The two companies I found out that spy on me are Dictionary.com and Comcast.net. Apparently, Dictionary.com sends my browsing data to 234 different trackers. Here is what their policy reads:

 "Through cookies placed on your computer, third-party advertising networks may recognize you when you visit other sites and properties where they also place advertisements."

While other websites may plant a few cookies in order to browse my data, Dictionary.com has been known to plant over 3,000 cookies at one time. Aside from browsing data, the website can also collect demographic, financial, and health data. All this data may also be kept indefinitely.

The second company that can spy on me is Comcast.net. Just like Dictionary.com, Comcast.com has the ability to collect data such as browsing history, demographic, financial, and health data. Here is what their policy reads:  

"The third parties that provide Web Log services for Comcast may use cookies to uniquely distinguish your web browser and to keep track of the Websites that your web browser visits across the service provider's network of Websites. These companies may combine this information with other information they have independently collected."

The threat at hand is that websites such as Dictionary.com and Comcast.net can send my information to marketers which they can use to spam my phone or email inbox with deals and offers.

Week 6 EOC: There's an app for that

An app that I wish I had would be able to save lives. There are several occasions when I am driving and am tempted to respond to my text messages on my cell phone. Too many people have had the same issue. According to textinganddrivingsafety.com, 23% of auto collisions involved cell phones in 2011. I wish there was an app that would be able to translate my voice into text. Not only would the app be able to turn voice into text, but also respond to specific voice commands. For example, when I am done saying what needs to be sent, the message would be sent out by saying something like "user send". The goal of the app would be to keep minimal physical action from the user and maximum usage through the use of voice. An example of a step by step process would look something like this:

1. User pushes established hot key on phone (Similar to accessing Siri on Iphone)

2. User speaks into microphone, "user messages"

3. User speaks into microphone, "read message from ______"

4. User speaks into microphone, "user response: ______, user send"

Week 6 BOC: 5 Tips to increase traffic to your website

5 Tips for increasing web traffic

1.       Twitter – Use Twitter to pump information to your viewers. With increased traffic in Twitter, will follow increased traffic to website

2.       Join A Forum Group – Depending on the business, a forum group can be a platform where customers can talk about a certain subject matter. This keeps the activity of the website at a higher rate

3.       Shameless self-promotion – It is important to at least have business cards on hand. If you hand out several business cards, and only one customer visits the website, it is still considered a success

4.       Make best use of Google product services – Being able to understand the importance of use of key words in your search will give your website a better chance of being viewed 

5.       Build An Email List – Establishing a good email list keeps a good base of contacts for exposure

EOC Week 5: The process of YouTube project

The assignment that was given to my partner and I was to create and upload a video on YouTube. The goal was to use different marketing strategies in order to attempt to achieve at least 5,000 views on YouTube. My partner and I decided to find videos that were already viral and attempt to imitate them. From extensive research, we found that videos that imitated other videos that are already viral hits usually received a high number of views as well. The challenge that we had to face was that we both had no experience in filming or video editing. On top of that, only one of us owned a working camera. We both decided to choose a genre that would require the least amount of resources and hardware, but still give the desired outcome. After scrounging through several viral videos, one genre suited our needs. The genre was ping pong trick shots. We ended up spending several hours at home perfecting separate trick shot scenes on camera. I did my shots at home and my partner did his shots at home as well. Afterwards, we both separately edited our perfected shots. I decided to be the one to combine both edited videos where I was able to add a title page, ending credits, and music. Once I uploaded it on YouTube, my partner and I began spreading the word. We started by sharing the video by embedding it in all our social medias. Then we asked other friends and family to do the same. Once we contacted as many friends and family we could, we began going to other viral trick shot videos and advertised on their channels. Within 2 weeks, we were able to get over 600 views. Although we did not meet the 5,000 view challenge, I am still proud of what we accomplished.

5,000 Hits YouTube Challenge