The side you probably didn't know about Twitter

Being brand new to Twitter, I was curious to see what the hype was all about. After signing up and following my favorite superstars/personal interests such as ESPN and CNN news I noticed why it was so popular.

But what if I told you that you can use Twitter for analytical purposes such as following statistics on tweets for free?

How Can I Do This?

After reading the article "3 Ways Twitter Analysis Can Enhance Your Marketing" http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-ways-twitter-analysis-can-enhance-your-marketing/ from the social media examiner, I realized it was possible to see how successful your tweets actually are.

Simply adding a + sign at the end of the URL linking consisting a bit.ly and you are in business. Popping up will be a window showing how effective your tweets are as the total traffic appears for your tweet.

The traffic details include the total number of clicks, referrers (where the reader found the tweet) and location of the reader.

As an example check out this link http://bit.ly/efhl5I+, but be sure to include the plus sign or you will go straight to the original tweet.

What I've Learned

Although not all tweets use a bit.ly link, it is possible to track the effectiveness on those which include them by simply adding a plus sign. This can be used as an effective technique to determine the target audience and where to reach them.

In addition, bit.ly offers a modified service called bit.ly Enterprise for $995 a month which is an advanced version of the bit.ly Pro. With the bit.ly Enterprise you can view more in depth data from the tweet such as real time analytics feed and an advanced dashboard.

Sean Conklin

Facebook shut down pages !

Imagine finding out at your surprise that our class blog, Innovative Marketing @ Kean University, was shut down and then later reinstated after couple of days by Google.

And there you were asking questions like - what really happened? “I mean, what did we do to deserve this?” asked the other guy. Of course, we couldn’t wait to get some answers from our master of social media - professor Perri.

As we waited to hear from the professor why our favorite class blog was treated like a thing of less value, a classmate alleged that Google received complaints from Kean University that our class blog had engaged in an activity that wasn’t within the sites rules.

Wow! This must be the craziest thing to imagine you would like to think. But here’s the point: can an institution like a government gets Facebook to close down pages of political or social activists?

That was the question I asked myself when I read the article “Egypt Facebook vanish before vote: members”, and I thought I should share it with the class. Were the pages shut down and then reinstated before or after investigation by Facebook?

But wait..., it could be just another proof of how effective social media has become and that sometimes some big institutions can’t stand it. Please let me know what’s your take on the article.

Abaya Sannor

AlumWire – Facebook Meets LinkedIn.

AlumWire is a new social network designed to create professional opportunities for college students, alumni and faculty members. As far as I’m aware, you need a .edu email address or an invite to sign up. You can also log in with your Facebook account details – another good use of the Facebook API. The service began at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, and over 1000 US colleges are supported. Employers can use the network for recruiting, and students can use it to connect professionally.

Simply put, Alumwire is Facebook with business networking: you create a profile, add a resume and join business-related networks. There’s also a calendar and messaging. But the problem it faces (and the main reason it definitely won’t take off, aside from a lightweight feature set) is the same as many of the services that support the Facebook API: it would be trivial for Facebook to add this stuff if they wanted to. What’s more, Facebook is already being used by employers, whether the students like it or not. That said, the growing number of services adding support for the Facebook API can only be a good thing: perhaps one day we’ll see a killer service built on it that Facebook decides to snap up and integrate into the core product.

Saheed.

Boy Meets Girl: How Facebook Functions In Modern Romance.

There’s no denying that Facebook has had an impact on the way the younger set flirt, fall in love and break up. Now,Seventeen magazine has released a study that depicts just what kind of repercussions the social networking site has had on modern courtship.

“Teens are incredibly social, and Facebook plays a huge role in their love lives,” says Ann Shoket, editor-in-chief of Seventeenmagazine.

According to the study — which polled 10,000 guys and girls ages 16 to 21 — Facebook plays an important part in how amorous teens make a connection. Within one week of meeting a new person, 79% of people click “friend,” and after adding a new friend; 60% of people stalk their crush’s profile once a day (40% check in on their would-be soulmate several times a day). Moreover, contrary to beliefs that social networking is erroding interpersonal communication, 72% of those surveyed said that talking to someone online brings you closer to them IRL.

After Presenting my case study the last class, I found all the opinions and thoughts interesting on the subject of how teens use facebook to find love and stalk one another.

Saheed.

News Commentary Sign-up

I am signing up to bring in news commentary for -11/29 and 12/6. Already done with my "case preview" (Ref: Old Spice)

Thank you

Alexander Mathew

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to take a few minutes to wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving.
I hope that all of you have a wonderful day in company of family and friends and
surrounded by love, laugh and prosperity!!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

Mariana Alfonzo

Who's Tracking My Social Media Posts?

YouTube


Having used YouTube over the last 4 years I have noticed the changes the video search engine has gone through. But none more than what stood out with the YouTube analytics. We always hear about "Oh, such and such video got a million hits!" I wondered too and then it just passed as a thought. We all moved on to the next "YouTube phenom" with two million hits.


Who's Watching?


Well- who's watching that video? What countries is your video being watched in? Who likes it and who dislikes it? What demographic of users are watching your video? When onwards did your video start getting attention? These were all questions that remained unanswered till YouTube inserted the "Like and Dislike" button under every video be it user generated or sponsored ones. So now we know how much of an audience our video has. Congratulations,buzz has been created!


YouTube Analytics

That was a small step. But, YouTube being smart took it to the next level. All hail analytics. The analytics on today's YouTube page is a tiny button (see picture insert below) that allows any user with a click to have all those previously mentioned questions answered in an instant. Not to mention, for corporations it comes as a huge tool to see how effective their social media campaigns are and who they might be missing.

Alexander Mathew

Blog with Kean University

Kean University offers a wide range of courses which will allow Kean students to have a better understanding of social media tools.

During my experience here at Kean University, I have learned the meaning of social media along with digital writing skills.

For example, I never knew that blogging relates to social media.

The marketing and social media classes available here at Kean University are considered to be a great learning experience especially for the upcoming generation.

Personally, I would recommend this marketing course as a requirement because of how useful social media is today.

Kashanna Johnson

GeT ALL THE LATTEST NEWS ON HIGH SCHOOL COLLEGE AND NBA BASKETBALL

One site that i follow almosrt religiously is Rival.com It keeps me alert with all the latest news that are going around through basketball whether its is from high school at the way to the pros.

it follows the early procces of thousands of prospects as they go though the process of recruitment to colleges and the ultimately being drafted to pro teams. the web site allows users to rank these prospects and blog comments on them.

The page uses great ditigal writing to draw good attention by putting Eye-catching headlines. for example "RODLIN PIERRE HAS WHAT IT TAKES TO BE THE #1 PICK IN THIS YEARS DRAFT" just an example but the editors on this site do a great job on that. i first was involed with this website when my cousin became a national prospect years ago. then more and more of family members and friends i knew became prospects with a rivals profile. this site does a great job in tracking elite h.s. basketball players in the country and follows them though out the years on their college recruiting process and if good enough their professional playing process

over the years the site have become bigger and bigger to the point that it was purchased my Yahoo a few years ago..

Rodlin PIERRE

increasing SEO to our blog

2 ideas that i have on increasing SEO to our blog site are

1. Using FaceBook.
Using Facebook can increase the blog SEO because of the popularity of the Facebook site. By increasing the SEO using Facebook we can set a group about our blog. (Ive seen that by doing so it comes up once you have type it on Google. i see that it comes very useful as a promotional tool for up and coming companies).

2. More Visits More Popularity.
based on my experience during my time playing basketball here at Kean University, and on our game recaps and box-score that are sent out throughout the internet i notice that the game that were more searched for was the game results that were more popular and a lot easier to find as the day progressed. So it would be wise to visit an edit our blog as mush as possible.

Rodlin Pierre

Social Media Mkt Class@Kean University!

Facebook Ad?

So I have been reading everyone's post and thought I'd try out something a little different myself. Having been on Facebook for a while now I have many a time clicked on ads that showed up along the side of the web page everytime I refreshed the page. So I said, maybe I'd try and put one up for our blog too! Here's a snapshot of what could be the potential "look" for our ad were it on Facebook.

However, what I was impressed with was how Facebook gave me "market reach" for the ad:

The only issue with a Facebook ad however is that Facebook charges a rate to post on their site. You can choose how much to budget but there is a fee involved. Thus my search to optimize and boost our blog's searchability stopped! :( Sorry, I am a student and maybe Kean's Marketing Department could take up charge to try marketing to its students via Facebook.


Tweeting Kean U Talk 2 Me:


I took the time to tweet our blog's link on toTwitter. I plan on leaving it up there till I find something better to tweet about :)






The Result?

I am not claiming credit for this Google ranking. No, not at all. I believe our combined efforts "as a class" helped boost our blog to the top of a Google search.


Type in "Kean University Social Media Blog" and we have the top 2 rankings in Google's search. I say this is a significant boost from back in Sep-Oct when we had to browse past page 6 on Google to get to one of our posts and the blog. Good job class!!

Next stop- Putting our blog online on to Kean's homepage (or) the Marketing Department homepage. That's for my second attempt! :)




Alexander Mathew

Increasing the SEO of the Social Media Class at Kean University

To increase the SEO of the social media class at Kean University in order to boost its online traffic volume I changed the title of my last blog and I came up with a more searchable title.

In addition, I shortened the description of the post including key words easily recognized by Google. For example I used the word digital and the word writing, both of which were not in the original description.

Orcania Burgos

Successful digital writer - The New York Time

With over one hundred years of printing history, keeping up with times, one of New York’s greatest news paper has gone digital. Not only is this website a wonderful source of information, it is also very well structured and concise. The news articles and reports are presented with the highest level of efficiency and sophistication. This website does a great job at catching the reader’s attention because it is neither repetitive nor boring, it is actually entertaining and challenging while easy to explore. In addition, the site provides the readers with a large variety of choices and features that cater to basically the interests of people from all walks of life.

The New York Times website continuously undergoes updates and modifications. A lot of readers have expressed their opinions, criticism, and suggestions through the years allowing the site to grow and improve. I feel it a little out place for someone like me who is not an expert editor or blogger, to attempt to change such a prestigious and successful website. However, there are two thing that if left to my whim I would change in an instant about the site. I want to explain that this is only from a reader’s point of view only. I would first separate the ads from the news, probably by confining all the advertisement to the classified section. Secondly I would eliminate subscription making it completely free for all users alike. Other than these two unrealistic modifications I think the site it is a great site.

Orcania Burgos

The Power of the Average User

Last week I presented the Honda Crosstour Facebook crisis with a few unanswered questions, I do apologize. These two sites regarded my discussion http://www.autoblog.com/2009/09/03/honda-purges-some-comments-from-crosstour-facebook-page/ and http://www.autoblog.com/2009/09/04/honda-updates-crosstour-facebook-page-with-official-response/

However, I took the liberty to see if the Facebook page was still up and if anything was changed. The answer is yes and yes. Here is the link to the up to date Honda Accord Crosstour page http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/hondacrosstour

Following the deletion of several negative and misrepresented comments, the Facebook page still exists and is "liked" by 11,298 Facebook fans to date.

However, there are still those who bash the vehicle and the comments remain on the page. Most are senseless vague remarks, although some users such as Josh Hotles on October 26th, 2010 exhibit true complaints that can be addressed by Honda for future reference.

Honda has added 14 interior photos and 6 more exterior photos. In addition, users can add photos of their car which may include custom paint jobs or other unique work done to their car.

Leaving the Facebook page up allows Honda to receive direct criticism for free. While the Accord Crosstour 2010 may go down as a failure; Honda is most definitely considering and appreciating Facebook user comments. as they help improve the Crosstour or even consider other models.

Hope this has resolved your unanswered questions.

Sean Conklin
http://keansocialmedia.blogspot.com/

"If You Build They Will Come"

During this past week we were to focus on increasing or SEO(search engine optimization) to generate more traffic on our blog. While thinking of different ideas on what I can do to help our blog, for some reason the movie "Field of Dreams" kept popping in my head.

If you ever saw the movie you know it has nothing to do with a blog or even Internet, it tells a story about a man who basically is told to build a baseball field first and wouldn't have to worry about finding people to use it because they would come on their own.

Basically we have to do the same thing. If we build on to our SEO it will create an easier path to our blog which would generate more traffic, hence the tittle.

We can do this by; putting common search words in our tittle, linking websites on our blog post, posting more pictures, and linking this blog to our facebook or any other social media.

Country Music and Blogging to Help Rank on Google!

SEO aka Search Engine Optimization is what our #Kean University marketing for social media class is trying to increase for our blog known as Kean U Talk 2 Me and to help, I have added a link to our blog on my twitter page. If you haven't checked out twitter at all, give it a look.

I also changed my headline from last week's post and included the words social media.

There are a few different ways to increase the SEO for a blog or a web site including:

• using words that are highly searched (such as social media for example)
• including pictures in posts
• keeping blogs updated on a regular basis
• talking about current events.

And for one current event, as I write this post, I am listening to country music and just heard a few commercials for the CMA Awards, which will be held this Wednesday on ABC. I know I'll be watching.

Thomas Cassidy

Facebook Got Me Here!

Today I was trying to think of ideas to increase SEO for our blog.

The first things that came to mind were:

• change the headlines
• change the name of our blog
• add more images
• use more searchable words

Then, I went to search us on google (just like Kelly did) and also came across Alexander's blog about Facebook.

which made me realize that what we need to do is link to or mentioned websites that are extremely well known in our blog posting .i.g. Facebook, twitter etc.

That way when people are searching those type of websites, our blog would also come up.

We have to keep in mind, that if our SEO increases, our responsibility as bloggers does too.

We need to keep improving our blogging, keep making our blog interesting so that more readers would search us and join us in this blogging journey.

Mariana Alfonzo

#Kean University Marketing Students

Traffic: The Good Kind!

The usage of excellent Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is key to drive users to our blog. In the simplest terms your personal site will not succeed without it.

While searching for my subject through Google, Yahoo or wherever, I seldom scroll past the third or fourth page.

With that in mind I am missing hundreds, thousands, or even millions of potential suitable sites whose data is simply going to waste.

I tried searching for our blog using a few terms the common Kean University student may use and it was rather difficult to find our blog.

In fact, to be quite honest I found several other useful blogs that would be sufficient for a Kean/college bound student, so the search ultimately has ended without our blog receiving any traffic.

So...What can be done to increase traffic?

• Adjust the site URL to the suitable target audience to a more specific yet concise URL
• Create more inbound links to our blog
• Make sure every blog post and comment contains a link back to our blog. The more URL's listed the more the search engine server recognizes our site.
• For each blog entry identify a few key labels to what the general idea of the article is. (Labels are located in the bottom right hand corner of new blog post)

Driving traffic is the most important step to SEO. After reaching users it is vital we maintain the users we have acquired by keeping our blog active through daily posts and comments.

We can start driving traffic today by putting ourselves out there so to speak by attaching our link to social websites such as Facebook and Twitter. In addition following comments we may add to blogs attaching our blog link is essential to increase traffic and recognization.

Sean Conklin

http://keansocialmedia.blogspot.com/

Facebook Brought Me Here...

I was checking out our blog's searchability on Goolge today...

When I typed in "Kean u Talk 2 Me" a posting by Alexander Mathew about Facebook brought our blog up on Goolge!

In the number 7 spot-- First Page!

I know a lot of us are using the key ingredients to good digital writing, and I feel that this post brought up our rankings on Google because Mathew embedded two links and used searchable key words in his posting.

Hopefully a very simple way for us as a class to increase our blog's searchability is to follow Mathew's lead and:

• incorporate urls
• Use key words
• and blogging about current news topics to increase our traffic.

If we all do this, hopefully next week our blog will show up in the number 1 spot -- 1st page!

--Kelly Duncan
#Kean University Marketing For Social Media

"Digital Writing" - You Either Know It Or You Don't

The impact of good digital writing to a consumer will always have them coming back to your website for more information. I am quick to jump to another website if the blog does not keep my attention or if its too boring to read on.

To improve their websites all companies should keep the blogs interesting and current. Also i like to see a picture or some type of information about the author. And of course get straight to the point with.

The check out blog for Walmart is a very effective blog. They have a lot of pictures to relate to their post and they even have a check out the authors section that briefly talks about each author.
http://checkoutblog.com/

Justin McNeil

More Traffic to Our Site!!

SEO means finding ways to increase our site's appearance in web visitors' search results. This generally means more traffic to our blog.

I think that to get started, we as a class and part of our Kean blog, should be conscious about placing appropriate keywords throughout the blog.

Every aspect of our blog should be consider:

• Titles
• Content
• URLs
• Links--I just linked the blog to my facebook page and IT WORKS! It really increased the SEO.
• Images

When i look for information on a specific topic online, i try to narrow my searchings to specific keywords. The more relevant words, the more likely the page is to appear in search results. So, lets start thinking of keywords as search terms.

Also, I agree with the suggestion of changing the title of our blog in class. I think there are too many prepositions that makes the searchings not to appear at first. May be we can try "Kean Media talks" or #Kean University Marketing Students.

As as personal experience i have been making changes on all my blog postings. Not only i tied up the content of my posts to the title but also i have changed some general words to keywords.

Moreover, i have been linking all my posts to my facebook page to increase our SEO. After searching for our class blog in google, i noticed we come up as a third option in the google page!!

It seems that our efforst for increasing our SEO is actually working!!

Jenny A. Contreras

Kean U Blog for Social Media Students

Increasing the SEO of the Kean U blog can be done by mentioning it and linking it to a Facebook page or a Twitter account. By linking my FB page on here and posting the link to my page, I've increase the SEO of this blog.

It may not reach thousands of people but it could very well reach a few hundred.

Also, possibly changing the name of the blog. Using key terms and phrases with in the headline may increase SEO. For instance, changing the name to Kean U Social Media Student Bloggers

I've also tried to design the headline for this post using key terms to maximize SEO.


Cynthia Rodriguez

Exploring and Invitation

To improve our class, Kean University Marketing Course, web page visibility (Search Engine Optimization), or make it higher on the page, I explored with three different names: Exciting Blog, Jungle Blog, Blog with Style.

• With the title “Exciting Blog”, I got no result after searching from page one to ten. I didn’t continue after page ten.

• Same as “Exciting Blog”: I can’t find it after ten pages with the title of “Jungle Blog”.

• I faced the identical problem with “Blog with Style”.

With the original title name, Socialmediaexaminer = Eyecatcher, Google search engines returned the first three blogs as follows:

1) Kean U Talk 2 Me: Big Blue Coming Through!
2) Kean U Talk 2 Me: I want news and I want it FAST!
3) Kean U Talk 2 Me

My Conclusion

Since our web site is not a paid listing site, Kean University Marketing for Social Media, and contains no images and video, we are still among the top three search results because the title “Socialmediaexaminer = Eyecathcer” fantastic SEO results. So I would keep the original title.

Invite Your Friends and Peers

In order to bring more traffic to our class blog, Kean University Marketing for social Media, I first thought it would be good idea to start to get my friends and peers to participate. So I invited my friends to become my Facebook friends.

• I sent everyone on my Yahoo e-mail list an invitation (about 200 people). Next
morning I received more than 20 requested mails saying the contacts would like to be my friends.

• After I clicked on “Confirm Friend” box and went to visit their Facebook pages, I couldn’t believe how many more friends I could add to my invitation just from these friends’ lists.

The best of all, these lists not only incorporated friends from US, China and Taiwan that I know, but also the people from Indonesia, and Africa, and some parts of Middle East that I have absolutely no connection with. Suddenly, I went global!!!

I Think I Will Send Facebook Invitations to These New Lists.

I figure these new lists will definitely increase our SEO. So I sent them invitations. A very funny feeling came to me after couple of people responded. I was afraid to click on “Confirm Friend” box because I really don’t know these people whether they are trustworthy or not.

Actually, I am very anxious to find out what my friends will think of our class blog. I also want those friends to be proud of me because I am now a blogger!!! Showing off!!!

Some of them may be expert bloggers. If this is the case, I’d like to have their feedback so I can learn from their expertise as I am just a beginner.

Not Everyone Will Participate


I realize not everyone I invited responded to my invitation. Inviting my friends to our blog site not only increases traffic, but also helps to get some dialogue going.


This is really a powerful way to increase traffic. If each one of our classmates would do what I did for the last couple of days, we can bring in thousands of traffic by just inviting people from our personal e-mail lists.


We Should Retain Our Visitors Afterward

In order to retain our visitors after they check out our site, our classmates can do following:

• Have our blog build in some style: post some interest pictures, videos, and class activities.

• Have all our classmates follow all the digital writing rules.

• Create pages that always have clear topic headlines (I am learning myself).

• Use simple and straightforward global English language.

• Use clear, precise, grammatical and accurate text written with energy and
active voice.

• Keep all paragraphs short, so it can be easy on readers’ eyes.

Above are all the points Perri has emphasized every week. Although I try to keep it up, I know I haven’t always been able to do it all. Well, older people just don’t learn new tricks as easily!!!


Li Ching Jung

Kean’s Blog needs More Traffic

How do I as a # Kean University Marketing Student drive traffic to our class blog?

One Key Element of SEO

I hope by implementing one key element in search engine optimization (SEO) that this would increase traffic to our class blog. In doing this it will boost the ratings in the SEO results.

The first thing I thought about searching on search engines is how I go about searching for information and that is using keywords or phrases depending on what I’m looking for.

I feel that developing keyword and phrases is the most important step in developing a successful SEO. I feel keywords should be relevant to what you are writing and the place where you are linking.

To help increase the SEO on our class blog, I decided to redo and old blog post I had done in the beginning of the class, “Blogging in the Classroom?"

I change the headline on November 3rd to read “Marketing Students Use Blogging at Kean.” I feat if a user was searching for information on marketing or Kean University, the blog should come up in the search engine.

I also changed some of the wording to have more keywords that I thought maybe a user would search for.

How did the changes affect the blogs searching results?

I did many searches after updating the older blog I created back in September and changed on November 3rd and did not find a difference.

When searching I tried different word combinations and actually used the whole title as my search and this did not bring up the blog. I even search for my name and this also did not bring up any searches.

In the end my thoughts are that the search engines are not indexing the site once they send out their spiders or the settings for the blog does allow for searching this blog.

Because searching any of the other articles also did not bring them up in searches.

Donna Foerst
11/7/10

Homework due Monday, 11/8

Here's the homework due on Monday:

Change the headline from your last blog posting to increase SEO
Implement 1 idea for increasing the SEO of our class blog
Write about what you did to increase our SEO and the impact in our class blog
Questions and objectives for the class campaign

Reading
Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: Chapter 4,5,7,10

Follow the Stars

There is one particular website that I check first thing in the morning before starting my daily duties, which is Mediatakeout.com.

Mediatakeout.com is a site that updates readers on the lives of celebrities. I do not believe it is the best reliable source on the insight of a celebrity’s life but it has tons of followers and it definitely keeps my attention.

The website consists of good digital writing skills because it keeps the attention of readers, their pictures and videos are eye catching and the articles are shocking.

After hearing about this site from a friend, I have become addicted. Once addicted, the site gains more readers daily such as people like I. What I truly love is the follow up of articles posted and the comments from other readers.

This social media keeps celebrities and fans connected. This site has blossomed. I have heard celebrity publicists mention this site as a main go to site to see if any bad articles or reviews were mentioned about their artist.

From what I hear this site has been around for many years and I have to honestly say that I have been following them for the past four years and to this day I continue to read their articles first thing in the morning.

Kashanna Johnson

Big Blue Coming Through!

Anyone that knows football knows that the New York Giants has had some challenges over the last few years. Even though this team has not been the greatest, their website is definitely an eye catcher.

http://www.giants.com/index.html, contains great digital writing techniques to gain the attention of readers. This site can allow you to order tickets for games by just clicking a button, list stats, and blog with other Giants fans.

This site consists of short ads which will keep the reader’s attention. I am a diehard Giants fan, so it does not take much to keep my attention on this site.

Even those who are not interested in football can easily be drawn to this site because of its great writing tactics. When I first took a look at this site, I was amazed by their writing technique.
There are many advertisements and pop ups which can lead to other articles not only pertaining to the New York Giants but also other teams in the NFL.

This sites seems to follow most of the digital writing points, such as eye catching headlines, ability to connect with other Giants fans, updated schedules and scores and also interesting but short articles to keep the attention of the reader.

Big Blue is definitely coming through 2010 – 2011. We will see you at the Super Bowl!!!!

Kashanna Johnson

Good Writing Speaks For Itself

As a consumer, Good Digital Writing has an impact on me. It enables me to understand and make distinction between well written media and the ones that are not.

Good Digital Writing engages readers, and it has been an opened-eye for me to understand why I always never like reading long and boring ads and posts.

Long paragraphs, inconsistency, and poor grammar can be a turnoff for potential readers. It takes effort to write well on screen.

This article, “Facebook offers partner deals on clothes, food, movies,” follows the rules of Good Digital Writing as I would like to think.

Besides the writing, the contend of the article is impressing, and I think its a marketing strategy to get more people to want to use Facebook.

According to the article, Facebook on Wednesday began offering coupons from various retailers, including a promotion from Gap which will give away 10,000 pairs of jeans.

An article or any piece of writing speaks for itself.

Abaya Sannor

My Core Website to Visit!

My favorite website to visit is Core77.

This site encompasses all there is to know about Industrial Design. Core77 is more then just an information hub, it also doubles as a great resource for all industrial designers--practicing and those just beginning.

What makes this site so fantastic, other then being easy to navigate, is that it offers so much information on design all in one easy to find spot.

Core77 gives you the most current information like:

• Articles related to design news, current design trends, and the like.
• Insight on design events from all over the globe- like the London Design Festival of 2010.
• Current design competitions that you can participate in.
• Book Reviews on design
• New Materials or technology
  
• Interactive discussion feeds
• Information on design firms from around the world
  
• The best is Coroflot! This is an actual “social site” so to say, where students and designers can post their online portfolios, interact with one another and view job/internship postings.

Great Headlines!
With Core77 being geared towards creative designers, the site is complete with nice graphics, cool pictures and fun headlines- like the one below for a poster design competition.



Great News!
Each article is short and to the point. All you really need to know about the topic is well written and explained with the most common design language.

Learn Design Jargon!
This also doubles as a great learning tool for student designers to become familiar with studio jargon.

Serious About Design!
Anyone who is serious about design is mostly likely very familiar with this site.

To say the least Core77 is a more then just a great place to gain the most current knowledge of what is happening in the design world. It is also a place for designers to get recognized, socialize and find employment opportunities.

Check it out here and tell me what you think! http://www.core77.com/

-Kelly Duncan
#Kean University Marketing Course

My Starbucks Idea!

Social media isn’t only about using existing websites, but sometimes creating your own. In order for Starbucks to get a better handle on consumer's opinions, they created a site which is called “My Starbucks Idea.”

The site allows users to submit suggestions to be voted on by Starbucks consumers, and the most popular suggestions are highlighted and reviewed.

MyStarbucksIdea has four components:

• Vote: The site let's you easily see what other people have suggested and vote on the ideas you agree with. The community decides what's important and what is not.
• Share: Where community members post their Starbucks Idea. Anyone can post an idea.
• Discuss: Community members discusses ideas with other customers and about 40 Starbucks Idea Partners from various departments answer questions and provide feedback to the discussions.
• See: In addition, Starbucks took a step further and added an "Ideas in Action" blog/tab is the proof.

Here is where Starbucks announce what actions have been taken and have further discussion about top ideas.

As a #Kean University Marketing for Social Media student; I know that the purpose of a business using social media is to increase their revenue through communicating better with their own customers, and employees who at the same time can be also consumers.

I think that by empowering this exceptionally site, Starbucks strengthens their campaign to add a personal touch to coffee.

http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/

Jenny A. Contreras

This Just In: Social Media!

Being someone who works in the horse racing industry, it’s not hard for a site that covers the game to be appealing to me, but there is one site that I always look to first and that is www.drf.com.

Since taking a #Kean University marketing course that focuses on social media, I have learned a new appreciation for the way www.drf.com is run.

You may be asking, what is www.drf.com? It is the web site for the Daily Racing Form, a daily publication that covers horse racing around the clock.

The Daily Racing Form’s web site is the place to go to find out all of the latest updates and breaking news stories about the racing industry. It holds especially true for this week with the Breeders’ Cup World Championships less than four days away.

To find out what the Breeders’ Cup is, see www.breederscup.com.

This Daily Racing Form web site does a terrific job of following the rules for digital writing, as it keeps a consistent image and puts the most important topics above the scroll. This is very important to me because I can find out the latest news as soon as the page loads without having to scroll down.

It also keeps a format that can be recognized by frequent visitors because it follows the similar pattern.

The web site also provides a search engine in case you would like to search a certain subject that has happened.

The headlines that are provided for each of the topics covered may not be the most creative, but they do their job and that job is to get the attention of the reader. Here is an example of a headline found from their web site: Temple City will skip Breeders’ Cup Marathon.

The headline may not be considered to be very creative, but what it does is grab the attention of the reader. I clicked on the headline as soon as I saw it to find out why this horse will not be racing this weekend.

That leads me to another thing this web site does well and that is enable their headlines to link to the story.It is quite convenient to be able to click on the headline and get entire story.

The Daily Racing Form also has their own bloggers and those blogs can be found on this web site. Their blogs usually offer great insight, but do not often follow the same format as our class does.

To see what I’m talking about, here’s a link to a recent blog posted on the Daily Racing Form web site, http://drf.com/news/zenyatta-must-earn-title-track.

I do not have any issues with the way this web site is run, but I do have a big issue with the way another site is set up. That web site is www.paulickreport.com. It’s another web site that covers the latest news in horse racing, but all of their links and headlines are scattered all over the place.

It is difficult to find the latest news on that site because the links are not in a particular order.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

Thomas Cassidy

"Digital Writing" Impactful even in the NFL?

One of my favorite websites to visit is http://www.nfl.com/, especially Sunday mornings before gameday and Monday afternoons such as today. Here you will find all the up to date information about your favorite teams, players, etc. and is a must view for any football fan.

My favorite aspect of this site are their blogs; which is http://www.blogs.nfl.com/. This blog offers different perspectives from the hottest topics and is extremely user friendly so feel free to check this out.

Following the Jacksonville Jaguars an out of town team in the tri-state area can be tough because of the lack of media exposure they get here. However, by visiting the blogs and keeping in touch with my fellow fans and helps make being a fan here feel like actually being a fan of a local team.

If you are like myself or the other 27 million NFL fantasy owners in America (according to Colin Cowherd of ESPN 2009) you understand how vital it is to have up to date news and opinions about your players.

This blog follows the rules for "Writing for Digital Media" extremely well as it offers the following

• Catchy headlines which attract the reader and get directly to the point by explaining their most important points in the first few sentences.
• Hyperlinks and videos related to the topic such as press conferences or highlights to refresh the readers mind or help support the blog.
• Very few noticeable grammatical errors with the exception of some comments from readers.
• Extremely organized and user friendly

So what are you waiting for? Check out this blog and enjoy blogging as I have been!

Sean Conklin

SEVEN DEADLY SINS!

We as bloggers need to improve our writing and our way to communicate with our readers.

I found and excellent blog that does not only follows all the digital writing rules, but also teaches readers how to improve on their writing.

Copyblogger is a blog that relates different articles from different authors and it basically explains to the readers the things that should and should not be done when digital writing.

Personally the one that i liked the most was "The 7 Deadly Sins of Blogging" by Sonia Simone.

The article is very simple and straight to the point. It explains the mistakes that most people commit when writing and the author calls them "sins".

The 7 sins she talks about are:

1. Selfishness
2. Sloth
3. Impatience
4. Lameness
5. Identicality
6. Irrelevance
7. Boorishness

I even found myself a "sinner" after reading the blog, which makes me analyze a little bit more on my writing stlye and my purpose of writing.

I think the blog is very interesting and perfect for our class. Since some of us need a little bit of guidance thorugh this blogging process.

If you want to read more about the deadly sins and so many more articles related to blogging, go to: http://www.copyblogger.com/blogging-sins/

YOU WON'T REGRET IT!

Mariana Alfonzo

#Kean University Marketing Students