Some of the social media tools can be very helpful when it comes to getting real information about companies and what people think of them.  Tools such as Twitter Stream Graphs, Twendz, Social Mention and more are useful for companies to see what consumers think of products and what they can improve on as a company.  Me and my group used these tools to find the social media patterns of Ford and Toyota to see how the two car brands do on social media.  First of all, the Ford brand can get very confused with the founders’ name, Henry Ford, or the actor Harrison Ford.  There are other Ford associations that can get confused with the Ford brand.  As far as Toyota is concerned, there was no confusions or associations with people, so the results were easy to see.

With Ford, there were negative comments and some positives, but because of the associations with the founder, actor and city, the actual results were skewed.  But mostly Ford has been talked about as one of Americas founding car brand and manufacturer.  Plus with the popularity of  the actor and the founder, there were some positive tweets and comments.  The reason that there were some negative comments were partly because of the poor responses and interaction that Ford has with it’s social media audience comments. If you do not respond to the comments that are on the social sites, then you are not doing all you can to satisfy your customers.

Toyota has this concept mastered with the way they interact with their customers on their social media sites.  The most significant event that made it very apparent that Toyota cares for their customers, is the brake recall a few years ago.  They used social media networks to connect with their customers and get their feedback on Toyota cars, problems, and concerns that customers have.  This also helps with making announcements about new products releases, such as the “smartphone” car that they are going to be unveiling soon.

In my opinion, both companies offer similar products but are very different.  Where Ford is American and has a variety of trucks, and with Toyota, they have a variety of cars that they base out of Japan.  Even though they are from different countries, they have the same goal, to sell cars to the public and to satisfy the driver with that car.  I think that the information that I found from the social media tools was quite interesting.  Even though Ford has been in America for a long time, Toyota seems to be more popular with customer satisfaction.  However, the results for Ford were skewed by the brand name also being the name of the founder and a famous actor, so I cannot completely say that Ford doesn’t have good customer satisfaction rating.  But we can say that both companies are competing for the same markets and customers.  The question then becomes, Which brand are you loyal to?  The choice is yours.

Food Network is a television network that is purely all about food, how to cook and what to cook with certain ingredients.  They have recently aired their live special about the networks top chefs giving tips on Thanksgiving cooking and preparation for all dinner categories.  For this they used not only their Facebook page to get questions from loyal viewers, but they also used their Twitter page, email, phone and Skype to have viewers bring their questions to the chefs.  Their Facebook page in particular has a few different pages on different topics.  The Thanksgiving Live special, which aired yesterday, received thousands of hits and their twitter page “blew up” with questions for the celebrity chefs.  They also have a page for their Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs competition.  This page gives profiles of the competitors and a personality test for fans to see which current Iron Chef you would be. 

I think that the motivations are that the consumers and viewers get to give their input on the various competitions and specials that is currently being televised.  It is also a way to ask questions or suggest improvements that could be made to the shows and chefs of the network.   This is a way for consumers to connect to their favorite shows and chefs, for example I could easily find information on when the next airing of the show Good Eats is going to be on and what channel/network. 

As far as their Twitter page, you can suggest topics for future episodes, ask questions instantly to the celebrity chefs, and get a response almost instantly when the chef is actually off set.  But the Twitter page also gives recipes for the day and tweets from celebrity chefs. 

I think that the metric used to measure success would be the number of twitter mentions and hits on the Facebook page.  I think that they have a tracker of the number of hits that they get and use that to see how well the show is going and what to do for the next show or series. 

I would like to make a few suggestions for the social media sites, the first being get the consumers more involved with the facebook page, it is nice that they get to view the show after it’s aired, and personality quizzes, but the consumer wants more.  Have a poll about the shows that consumers want to see, like a few people want a new season of the popular show, Good Eats (also one of my favorites).  If you take the consumers in to more consideration, then they would be more willing to get involved and help their network get more viewers. 

I hope that my suggestions and review of this networks social media will help the consumer take more action at getting involved in what they are interested in.

I think that privacy is slowly dying on the matter of internet privacy.  Unfortunately, with all the social media and social networking sites, people can find anything about anyone.  However, there is blame not only on the internet users themselves, but also for the people who create the sites as well.  According to the Wall Street, “Tracking technology is getting smarter and more intrusive.”  This is both good and bad, the reason that it is good is because then they can give advertisements on thing that they know you like.  The bad side is that it gets other information about people that users may not want companies to know about them.  If you think about it can be very scary to know that companies all over the country are look at information about you through the internet without your permission. If companies hire people to get this information to try and obtain new customers, imagine what hackers can get from your social networking site, more than what is on the page probably.  There should be a system in which consumers can protect themselves from hackers and other people from getting personal information from their social networking site.  These steps to protect your computer and social networking site depend on your system on your computer, since there are so many you might need to contact your computer manufacturer for how to do that.  But sometimes it also has something to do with your browser settings, we should check the internet settings as well, just to be safe.

As far as the governement is concerned, if they could delevop laws to protect the consumers, it would be very beneficial.  I think that the government is already getting very strict with a lot of issues already, but when it comes to privacy, every citizen should have their information protected by the government.  Then again, the fact that people willingly put their information on the interent is part of the problem with privacy.  Laws can be in place to stop people from hacking people’s personal information, but being educated about what the internet can do with your information can be more beneficial than any law.  It is amazing to me how many people are unaware of what the internet can do with you information. 

Therefore, for the protection of your privacy and information, KEEP ALL OF YOUR FACEBOOK AND TWITTER STATUSES GENERAL!  Trust me, the less you put up the better off you are.  I know that when I was trying to become a teacher, the department got a look at my Facebook and found that some of my friends put up “vulgar” language on there, and I had to tell all my friends to be careful what they put up.  Also you should check the privacy settings as well, to make sure that the right people see what you want them to see.

This is my opinion and suggestion as far as internet and social networking privacy, be careful what you post.

Using Google Analytics can be very beneficial for anyone or any company who has a website.  It can keep track of who’s been to the site, where they are, how long they visit, and if people accidentally get there and leave (this is called a bounce rate).  This can help all kinds of businesses reach new customers, and keep returning customers.

For me, since I put this site on Google Analytics, I have had 33 visits and of those visitors, 8 of them were new visitors of the site and 25 were returning visitors.  The site has had 88 page views and spent about 5:19 minutes on the site.  Each person views about 2-3 pages per visit.  As far as the bounce rate goes, this site has a 45.45% bounce rate.

So then were are these visitors?  According to Google Analytics, 28 of the visits were from DeKalb IL, 2 were from Naperville IL, and 2 were from Somonauk, IL.  The page that was visited the most was the home page, /asaward/with 58 views, followed by the about me page and contact info page.   Most of the traffic that was coming to the site were direct traffic with 25 visits and 5 visits were referrals from laurenlabrecque.com.  There was no top keywords from search engine sites for my website.

After reading and learning all of this, since I’m a new blogger, it didn’t surprise me that my site was not getting a lot of new traffic, I probably need more interesting topics and SEO tips to help my site be successful.

A Giant Fortune Cookie for Every Occasion

I think that the demographics for this ad would be anyone with a moderate income who wants a different kind of gift for their friends or loved ones.  My call to action would be having a cookie for any occasion with the landing page being the giant fortune cookie page on the Fancy Fortune Cookie website.  The three key words that I would use would be Fortune, Cookie and Giant.

I choose “Cookie” as my word for the GoogleAdWord tool, where there was low competition and there were 16,600,000 global searches and 9,140,000 local searches.  Two keyword idea that looked good was “fortune cookie” and “cookie gifts” because they both relate to the ad directly with what the site has to offer.  Here is what the Traffic Estimator came up with for the keyword “cookie”

SEO is also known to many computer savvy people as Search Engine Optimization.  It is important because it helps websites get recognized faster.  It does this by using keywords and descriptions to help the robots find websites relating to the words that are being searched. 

When I went to the Googlerankings website, I was surprised when I found that the most used words were, “word, search engine, googleultimate rankings tool”  I thnk that it is because no one seems to visit my blogg very much.  It’s ok though, I’m sure once I get my own domain name, it will pick up traffic soon.

Ralph de la Vega,  has been rewarded with the honor of receiving the 2011 Beta Gamma Sigma Business Achievement Award.  He is a graduate of an Executive MBA from Northern Illinois University.   He starts by thanking NIU for preparing him for all the challenges in his life, even the one he was not expecting.  Then, after hoping that we have his book, he does the one thing that most presenters would be scared of, he went off his script and talked to use from the heart.  He talked about his family having everything with his fathers’ grocery distribution business, and the struggles that his family faced in Cuba when the Revolution took place.   “only the boy can go” were the words that changed his life forever.  first 4 years in america were the hardest years of his life.  The human spirit is incredibly resilient; was told he should be a mechanic instead of an engineer.  ”don’t let anyone put limitation on what you can achieve, not even yourself”

you have to learn to how to adjust, a plan can only do so much until you hit a wall.  His experience with Hurricane Andrew, stuck to his plan and it turned out well for him and his company.  elecrical company;

Bell South in Latin America, Argentina peso lost value 1peso = 25 american cents,

amazon kindle, nook, sony, garmin, tomtom, dog collar and even a pill bottle that keeps track of when you take your medicine and let’s your pharmacy and doctor know when you need a refill.  Beer kegs with internet connectivity.  Dirt….well, farmers need to save water and money so they have probes to let the sprinkler know where and where it needs water.

Big dream: develop a winning game plan, take risks, overcome obstacles, recognize opportunities.  Principals: Teamwork, Integrity, Credibility, Attitude, Vision, Excellence.  BELIEVE IN YOURSELF! ( in his book, Obstacles Welcome ) most important is INTEGRITY. You have to do the right thing and have integrity everyday of your career.

I thought that he was a great speaker, one of the best one’s I have heard.

At the McDonald’s website, it took my only about 3-4 clicks for me to find relevant job information, so it was very easy.  I just clicked on corporate jobs, choose an area of focus, and which state I would like to find a job in and the site came up with a lot of relevant jobs with descriptions and requirements for the job.  Plus, the career benefits were a breeze to find, because it was given its own tab on the website listing all employee benefits.  However, it doesn’t state the specific benefits of the particular job.  The website is well organized; however, the site may be compelling, but not enough for me to consider working for McDonalds.  The navigation of the website is very easy, that layout and spacing of the site is well organized and smooth.  I like the fact that they have a breadcrumb trail for users so that they can go back to a part of the site for something similar.  I thought that the colors were bold, but they bold colors were only on the navigation bar, and titles of the sections of the site.  There were no other colors used except red and a small amount of yellow, which means they probably need to expand their color palate a little more.  The video and pictures are there and it’s appropriate for the use of the site.  I think that the overall use of the site is very easy, smooth and user-friendly for anyone who would work for McDonalds.  There are a few things that I would change about the site for McDonalds’, the first thing would be the use of color, they need to use colors a lot more in there site other than just the navigation bar and titles.  The next thing that I would suggest improving is the video/image usage, there are not a lot of images, so finding more videos of employees working and having a good time at their job or more pictures on the site would help. 

At the Walgreens website, it took me almost 6 clicks to find any relevant jobs, and another click to find job information.  It does a good job with giving relevant information, but it takes longer here to find job information.  As far as user-friendliness, Walgreens needs to improve their ease of use for users trying to find information about the company and job benefits.  And it doesn’t have the breadcrumb feature that works nearly as well as McDonalds.  Walgreens also used only one color for their site and they need to use more colors on their site as well as more pictures on their site, because there were no pictures on the site.  The site is also not nearly as compelling as far as me thinking about working here, I honestly would not want to work at a Walgreens based on their site.  I would only go there if I need something from the pharmacy or because the location is convenient for me.  Both sites are ok, but needs improvements in the same areas.

 I designed thises ads using photos of the real dogs from the shelter I volunteered from petfinder.com, Then I used photoshop to put in the message and the button.  I would use the volunteer overview page as my landing page because then the people would have a good idea of what volunteering at the shelter is all about.   As far as metrics would be concerned, I would use the CPC or the CPA metric because the shelter needs volunteers and the more would be better for the full time workers and the wonderful dogs that are there.  I think that both of these ads would be great because they appeal to two different audiences, the playful kids and the caring adult.   I volunteered at the Humane Society of York County in Fort Mill, South Carolina. 

Click on either picture to go to the volunteer page of this wonderful organization.