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