Charlotte Russe bores me

Last week I wrote a blog about how Charlotte Russe went MIA for over fifty hours. Ironically about five minutes after I posted my entry CR came to life again and starting promoting their "Trivia Tuesday" question. I participated, and unfortunately did not win the cute little necklace that was the prize. I'll admit, I was pretty bummed. As the week went on they seemed to have more problems with staying active with use; there would be days that they were no where to be found, and days where they were blowing up my home page with tweets. I've really lost interest in their Twitter... I looked at it for a while tonight trying to figure out what I would write this weeks blog entry about, and the only thing could come up with was how ugly the jacket was that they gave away for trivia yesterday. So, that being said, I decided to do a different take on this entry...

I have an idea for future SM classes. Since CR has seemed repetitive and I've lost interest in checking their page everyday, I was thinking of different ways in which this semester-long project could work. I know I'm not the only one who became disappointed in their company, since I've ready other students' blog posts about changing who they are following.

Rather than follow the same company for an entire semester, I think it would spice it up if we were to follow a different company every week. It could be narrowed down into categories; One student would look up different food companies every week, one would have fashion magazines, one would have sports teams, etc. I know there would probably be overlap with some students following the same categories, but as long as they were following a different company every week I think it would work out. Everyone would sign up for what there were going to follow week-by-week at the beginning of the semester, to prevent confusion as to who was following what. I mean it could end up being a terrible idea, who knows. I'm just throwing it out there since I couldn't really think of anything to write about this week.

Personally I think I would really enjoy following different companies, since Charlotte Russe's Twitter has seemed to bore me... (At least their clothes are still fab :))

My first YouTube video, Ever

So after watching random funny videos last Thursday on YouTube, I decided to give it a shot and make my own. Over Christmas break I got one of those new little video cameras that takes awesome quality footage. One day my dog was being an absolute princess and decided to take random videos of her just doing her crazy daily things. Eventually I wanted to make a movie out of her clips for something along the lines of "A Day in the Life of Fi-Fi." I never got around to editing the clips together, and then the semester started and that was the end of that idea.

Thursdays class on User Generated Content gave the spark to want to make this video work and get it posted on YouTube. Yesterday I decided to 'have at it' only to find that my new camera isn't compatible with Final Cut Pro. However, the clips would play in iMovie. I have no experience whatsoever with iMovie, but I decided to give it a shot anyway... The quality of the edit wasn't being graded so it didn't really matter. After editing for a two hours, my masterpiece was complete. I logged into my YouTube account to begin my next obstacle; posting it.

I expected it to be this long, ongoing process to get a video up. But seriously, it took less than ten minutes. Just two minutes to read the instructions and agreement, and eight minutes to load my content... then Wa-La, my first YouTube video was born.

I've been posting in on my Facebook and Twitter, and sending the link in e-mails to my family. It'll be awesome to track how many hits Fi-Fi attracts. I'll post about her success next week :)

So check out my video of Fi-Fi by clicking HERE. I promise you won't regret it, it's hilarious.

CR, Keep on Tweeting!

As stated in previous blog entries, the business that I am following for Social Media class is Charlotte Russe. This previous week CR was big on promoting their 7 Days of Sweetheart Deals to go along with the Valentine's holiday. From 2 for $20 T's to 2 for $10 leggings, Charlotte Russe was promoting it on their Twitter.

The last day of the Promo was Sunday, and at 11:24 AM and they tweeted:

"Happy V-Day fashionistas! For our last day of Sweetheart Deals we have Buy 1 Get 1 $10 Footwear until 11:59pm EST!"

And that was the last they've posted. It is now after 1 PM on Tuesday - 50 hours since their last post - and nothing has been said. In order to keep followers engaged in their Twitter, CR needs to be consistent! Even though their latest promo is over, they still could have found something to tweet about the last two days. They were fine the week before, when they didn't have the Sweetheart deals to promote.

Charlotte Russe, where are you?

The Twitter Olympic Era

The 2010 Winter Olympics are the first Olympic games to be held since the start of the "Social Media Revolution." Because of these new forms of media have recently become so popular, athletes can instantaneously upload behind-the-scene photos and information to their friends, families, and fans through their Twitter and Facebook accounts. The International Olympic Committee has set guidelines for what the athletes can and cannot post... Rule 49 of the 4 page Olympic blogging guideline charter states that athletes and coachers are not to act as journalists.

In a technological world of endless possibilities, this proves that at some point there needs to be a line drawn with what can and cannot be instantaneously accessed by the public. Reading this article got my wheels turning, and I really started to think about different scenarios.

If a rule like this appeared as a guideline for an American based competition, would people argue that the rule is against the athletes' and coaches' First Amendment Rights?

My opinion is... yes. If someone were to get in trouble for breaking "Rule 49," they could take it to court arguing that it is abridging their rights to freedom of speech / press, and would most likely win.

Readers, what are your thoughts?

MSNBC's article on Social Media in the Olympics

Charlotte Russe is better to follow

So after the epic struggle for me to find a company to follow on Twitter this semester, I finally made a decision on Charlotte Russe. Reasoning: 90% of my wardrobe is from there. It just seemed logical. Unlike my original idea of following Forever 21, when I started following Charlotte Russe I did not feel like my page was being spammed every 30 seconds by some random tweet by Forever 21. Also, CR had actual giveaways and contest that I had interest in... So CR wins the award of my religious following. It is still a debate as to whether or not I'm going to "unfollow" F21. The 10 tweets in the last 24 hours seemed to be pointless to me.

I like that CR is not just promoting their own merchandise all over their Twitter, non stop. They are using it for interaction purposes, rather than just throwing their own clothing out there with link after link after link. Personally, if I wanted to see what clothing they had on the racks these days, I'd just visit their website, not their Twitter.

Finally getting the hang of Twitter

So I've had a personal Twitter account for almost a year now, but I never took the time to try and figure it out. Really, the only thing I knew how to do was an @Reply other than just typing in my tweet. I didn't understand what trending topics were all about, or what it meant to ReTweet. I had no idea how to post a shortened link, nor did i know why a lot of the links on Twitter were hyper-linked at bit.ly. I would go months without even logging in, and when I did log in I didn't tweet about anything with significance. From my previous experiences on Twitter - before the days of SM class - it seems like I am not alone. Most of my friends used Twitter in the exact same way as i did... to just update a status just like on Facebook, without any significant purpose.

After last Thursday's lecture on how to do all the different actions on Twitter I decided to make an effort this week to apply all of those actions. This week I mastered @reply, #hashtags, and bit.ly. I even got ReTweeted for my snow fall link for #berks county! I still have yet to find something that I wanted to ReTweet myself, though. I guess I can make that my goal for next week. Hopefully my Twitter account will eventually pose to have some significance to people other than my friends and classmates.

Is Social Media a Spoiler?

Super Bowl XLIV's ratings were through the roof this year, surpassing the all time highest rated show of M*A*S*H. Ad revenue was down by 1/2 a million, yet there were still very many memorable commercials aired during the breaks. Many people tune into the Super Bowl solely to watch the ads. Since companies are spending 2.5 million on a 30 second spot, they put a lot of time and talent into making their spot memorable to the audience.

My question is, is social media taking the authenticity out of Super Bowl ads? In order to get a good laugh of the crazy commercials aired during the game, you do not even have to sit down and watch a single minute of the Super Bowl. Within seconds of the game being over, YouTube videos and other forms of internet media had the ads immediately uploaded for everyone to see. In some cases the ads were on the internet before they were ever aired, spoiling the fun it getting your good laugh in during the game.

However, YouTube is not the only spoiler to media. Just by logging into Twitter or Facebook someone could easily learn what was going on in the game without even watching it, from viewers tweeting scores, plays, ad details, etc. I happened to log into Facebook during the game to find out that Denny's was once again doing their Grand Slam giveaway on February 9th, before their commercials even aired advertising the promo. Although finding out something like this via Facebook may be convenient for some, I personally see it as a spoiler, taking the element of surprise out of traditional media.

Twitter

Initially for my semester long project I chose to follow Forever 21. After paying some attention to their posts all week, I became somewhat annoyed with how frequently they were updating their Twitter, and with irrelevant fashion things. So, I changed my mind and decided to do Coach.

Coach's Twitter seemed much more appealing to me. It didn't seem like "update mania," and everything they posted was relevant to Coach. I thought it was awesome how they posted celeb pics using their bags as they were spotted. Also, they answer customers questions by connecting them to links about their return policies, etc. When customers posted about how much they liked their new bags, they took the time to respond to them personally.

I'm glad I decided to change my company, because I am much more interested in the activity that Coach has on their Twitters rather than Forever 21's site.

Linkedin ?

Tonight I attended the Workshop on the Professional Uses of Social Media in the ballroom of the SUB. I assumed the workshop would just be a crash course on Facebook and Twitter for older people, especially since it was open to the public.

Donna and Steve gave their demonstrations on FB and Twitter, and then came to Linkedin, which I had never heard of. After listening to Steve explain what Linkedin is, I am still really unclear as to what exactly it is used for. Is it used for communicating among your peers in a casual way, or is it strictly professional and more geared towards networking with other professionals?

I am leaning towards the latter, after remembering the different types of topics that members of Linkedin could comment on. It seemed like it's a way to sort of put your resume and expertise out there for anyone to find. Am I correct?

How can a college student benefit from having a Linkedin account?

Why take a class on Social Media?

When I first heard that Wilkes was offering a class on Social Media, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what all constitutes "social media." There are so many different ways to interact with other individuals on the internet, yet most of us college students tend to just stick with what we are comfortable with - Facebook. By taking this class, I hope to become more open minded to other forms of social media.

I think taking a course on social media will end up being very beneficial in the real world. I'm hoping to learn a lot about the different uses of how to use things such as Twitter and Facebook to promote businesses.

Within the last two classes I developed a better understanding of the business aspect of using Twitter. I was always under the impression that a business would use their Twitter to just get the "word" out about different types of promotions they had going on, or upcoming events. However, after last week's class I learned that there are businesses out there that make make their pages fun and very interactive. For example, I found what Sharpie Susan does as a promotion tactic for Sharpie to be very interesting. Knowing that businesses actually post unrelated fun information to draw people to their pages makes me more compelled to look up other business, and see what tactics they are using to get followers.