Peter's stuff

Archive for April, 2011

This class has taught me how little I really know about social media and what kind of amazing technologies exist that I should familiarize myself with to better succeed after college.

A time when I participated in viral marketing was in high school when I worked as an independent distributor for Herbal Life. The way the job worked you pay a certain amount for the starter pack which has material that you need to learn, free samples, and marketing plans. After that you use additional material they have posted online to sell Herbal life products and receive a percentage of every sale. You also get a certain percentage of sales made by people whom you referred to the company. This is a perfect example of viral marketing also known as a pyramid scheme because the upper management of the company is making money while people are paying to market for the company.
I think using viral marketing on a product with network effects is very risky because the product is only valuable if it is used by a large number of people and viral marketing is a system that spreads information on a very small scale from person to person. If the marketing campaign is successful and the viral marketing begins to spread quickly it would be especially good for the company because the value of the product will increase at a very quick pace. Conversely if the marketing plan is unsuccessful very few people will want buy the product because it won’t be valuable if a large number of people don’t use it.

Step 1: Find the button – The button is hidden pretty well but if you look hard enough you can find it. It is located all the way at the bottom of the page with the privacy information and all the other stuff nobody really looks at.

Step 2: Select a type of Organization and Name – It is pretty strait forward. I named mine “Peter and Partner’s Freelance Consultation Services” and made myself a consultation firm.

Step 3: Add a profile picture: Pretty standard just upload a picture from anywhere on your computer. I used one of me in a suit so it looked like I may be qualified to give consultations.

Step 4: Import a like button – This is very important so people can like my new page and begin to draw attention to it and this increasing my clientele.

Step 5: Post a status – You need to create some initial activity on the website so other people become interested in your page. I posted “All big things start with a small step”. Figured it was true and would foster some commentary.

Step 6: Place the information including where you are located, site description and your contact information. I didn’t really go into too much detail in this step, but I did put by real email to see if anybody will actually contact me.

This was my first time doing this and to be honest I am pretty impressed by how simple it was. In about an hour anybody can create a very detailed and functional page about an organization or hobby or anything of that sort. Now that I have learned how to do this I will most likely use it to create some sort of legitimate page for myself assuming Peter and Partner’s Freelance Consultation Services doesn’t work out.

Here is my page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Peter-and-Partners-Freelance-Consultation-Services/192444327464892?sk=wall#!/pages/Peter-and-Partners-Freelance-Consultation-Services/192444327464892?sk=wall

Social media is something new and different from ordinary media because it is a form of media that everybody has control over. This is very different from traditional forms of media such as television, newspaper, and radio where on organization or person has control over the information that is being presented. True there is room for new entrants into the market but it is not something that any regular person can do at leisure. This is also new and different because social media is much harder to regulate then regular media because it isn’t controlled by organizations but rather used by everybody and thus is much harder to silence.

In a way social media is also something that has always been around because people have always had methods of networking. Even before the invention of computers and the internet people gathered in market places, diners, and pubs doing basically the same thing they are doing now from their computers. Although the scope may have increased social media sites like Facebook only allow you to interact with people who are already your friends so in a sense it is no different than meeting people that you know and telling them what you’ve heard and the happenings of your day.

Social media does require new skills and capabilities for organizations because it forces them to be more computer knowledgeable. It is true that even before the rise of social media computers were already a necessity in most organizations, but they were used for different purposes such as tracking information and logging activity as appose to advertising and marketing. Another skills social media forces organizations to learn is how to sell their brand not only on television and on posters but also in online interactive forms.