Second Life, Chapter 4

I FINALLY got around to getting a hold of my book.

So I have been assigned to chapter 4 for our second life project.  I’m debating on what I can summarize for my project. Here is what I have so far:

Chapter 4: Strategies for Tapping the Groundswell

If you are interested in tapping into the Groundswell, the first place to start is with the four step planning process: POST.  This stands for People, Objective, Strategy, and Technology. This is the systematic frame work for assembling your plan. More in detail,

People: You need to understand who your customers are what they are ready for.  Figure out whether your customer base is the type that would prefer to read blogs, or join a social network.

Objective: What are your goals? Are you interested in talking in the Groundswell to let your customer base know about your product, or listen to the Groundswell to figure out what your customer base thinks about you?? This is where you figure out what it is you want to what to use the Groundswell for.

Strategy: How do you want your relationship with your customer to change? Do you want them to know your product better? Do you want them to help share information about your product to other people?

Technology: What technology are you going to use to help your business? There are multiple technologies such as blogs, wikis, social networks, etc.

Also through the second step, there are five different objectives companies can peruse in the Groundswell. There are hundreds of ways companies are approaching the Groundswell, there are five primary objectives that companies successfully pursue. They are:

Listening: This objective is used to help understand your customer base. You would search your products and find out what customers have to say about your product.

Talking: This is where you use the Groundswell to spread messages about your company. If you want to be heard, this would be the objective to use.

Energizing: After figuring out your objective, you need to find your most enthusiastic customers, and use them to supercharge the power of your word through the help of Groundswell. This is where you allow your customer base to help advertise your product.

Supporting: Set up groundswell tools to help your customers support each other.

Embracing: This is a way to integrate your customers into the way your business works. This is by far the most complicated of the five.

There are many suggestions that come up in regards to the objective you are perusing. The first thing you have to do is to create a plan that starts small but has room to grow. You should first create a rough plan: what you will do first, how you will measure success, if you do succeed, how will you build on that success? You should also think through your consequences. Think about the possible downfalls the groundswell can bring you in. Find out whether it can affect your business, and if it does what you can do to turn the situation around /learn from it. You also need to put someone in charge of your tools. You are going to transform your relationship with your customers. You do not want a mid level IT person in charge of talking to your customers. You want someone as high as possible on your ladder to reach out to your customer base. Make sure the person in charge is someone important.

Keep in mind, there are multiple things that can go wrong. One being, you can use the wrong technology to get to your customers. If you find yourself using the wrong technology, you should quickly go back and reevaluate your objective.

Finally, keep in mind, there is no going back in the Groundswell. You are going to fundamentally change how your company relates itself to its customers. This is a trend that can not be ignored. The Groundswell trend is unstoppable and that is where your customer base is settled. You might have to go a little slower then some, or maybe a little faster, but you can only move forward; there is no going back!

There are many wrong ways to join the Groundswell. For example, not listening when you should, and not talking when you have to. There are many ways (as listed above) to effectively join the Groundswell and help prosper your business.

Second Life, Building Stuff!

This Second Life stuff is a tad confusing, but I’m addicted to it now! For our assignment, were supposed to go to the Ivory Tower Library of Primitives and learn how to build something.

I’m still trying to figure out how thing work in this world, or even, why im even learning how to build something. Back to Second life, Im going to figure out how this world works!

Getting started with Second Life!

So I’m finally getting the hang of this Second Life Stuff. I bought myself an outfit that cost $350. I bought it from a store called Styles of edo. Look at me, I look so fly.

Ahhh Ives just walked into the Lab and kicked all of us out!!!!….. kind of.

Google, What do I know about you?

The most knowledge I have about Google is that it’s an amazing search engine! There are many applications that have been released by Google that allow people to make more efficient decisions about their lives.

Heres a Wiki about Google apps (my presentation): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Apps

There are applications that allow users to freely Email, Chat, Share documents, and much more. As of now, all these services are free for the user. They get as much space as any gmail user (about 7 gigs). If this wasnt sufficent enough, they provide a $25.00 one time charge that gives you 25 gigs to use.

Customer Set for Slideshare

I love making lists:

1) Students (High School, College, Graduate School): I will get more information about this soon.

2) Teachers/Professors: Teachers and Professors can now upload their lectures online to students who have missed the class. There are many times where an emergency can come up allowing the student to miss the lecture. This software can assure students, that regardless of any emergency, there isn’t a reason to get lower than an A in any class!

3) Business Sector: Present and previous presentations can now be posted on slide share to allow more efficent business meetings (in regards to distance). No longer will employees have to fly out from city to city, all presentations can be just a click away.

Slideshare Candidates to Interview

Rashmi Sinha, CEO – If  I am able to, she would be the first person I’d want to interview. Who else, other than the CEO of the company? From personal experience, it seems that the CEO is the best person to talk when pertaining to any topic of a company. They are the most aware about the entire company as a whole.

Jonathan Boutelle, Head Geek – This guy just seems very interesting to me. He is known as the guy who came up with the initial idea for Slideshare and wrote the first version of the site. If a person is creative enough to come up with such an innovative idea, I’m curious to know what else is running through his mind.

Buying Movie Tickets from Cell Phones

MovieTickets.com had announced in 2007 that it will extend its services to mobile cell phones to allow customers to purchase tickets from their mobile phones. Seems like the ticket lines should get shorter very soon! The online service is a safe and secure way to purchase tickets fast and quickly so customers so not have to worry about waiting in long lines.
http://www.movietickets.com/wap.asp

ebags, It’s the first thing that caught my eye!

I have to be quiet honest, I can’t decide which case to write the review about so I decided to do the first case that seemed some what interesting to me. As I go on the ebags website at www.ebags.com, I notice there is bags over bags on this website. I wasn’t aware such a website could exist contributing to only bags. So my business side started kicking in wondering, “How could someone take out so much time in figuring out what bags to keep in stock and what bags to throw out?” But we’ll leave that for a different topic. A few things Id like to point out for the website:

1) Organization is great! You can find what you want in just a few clicks.

2) The main page has a Sale Section! Great for college students like I.

3) Also there is a Brand Section. If there is a specific brand I am looking for, I can find it with the ease of a few clicks.

ebags seems to be still around and very strong. The website seems to be doing really well just with the visuals It seems very up to date and very catchy. A quick Google search has shown me that it is being extended out to many other sites such as:

Amazon

DealCatcher

LiveClicker which provides Multimedia content towards any product

(Click the following links in order to get directed to the desired page!)

There seem to be quite a few articles related to ebags; I’m going to see what the articles are about more in detail after I get some more of this assignment finished

Yelp! My First Contribution

As I sign on to Yelp, I’m baffled to figure out what I should contribute towards. I couldn’t think of anything in specific, so the first word I see is “restaurants”. Immediately I think of Red Lobster! If I could, I would go here everyday just for their Shrimp Pasta Alfredo! I usually enjoyed the service there, so I thought I’d write a review over my favorite restaurant.

Link To My Review!

In case you bloggers are lazy, here is a copy/paste of my review:

2323 Highway 6
Sugar Land, TX 77478
(281) 313-2525

“As usual, the food at the restaurant at the location is amazing. I can’t seem to get enough of the Shrimp Pasta Alfredo. I would highly recommend this dish to anyone who is craving any sort of pasta.

There have been times where it takes days for the food to get served, but i feel all due to the server you get. Most of the time, I have my coke refilled before I can even notice I am at my last sip.

The service at this location over all is pretty good. My younger brother gets a kick out of the lobster tank every time I take him here. If you have young kids who would find these things amusing, be sure to bring them here. A server actually took a lobster out the tank and let the little kids pet it; I thought it was kind of cute.”

On the side note, this class makes me feel like I am actually contributing to the Web 2.0 world. It makes me feel good inside.

Groundswell Chapters 4, 5, and 6

After reading a few of the chapters from the book, it seems to be that the things I find most important are listed in a numerical fashion in one way or another. Thus, each of the things I found either interesting or something I could take away from this book, it was numbered in a numerical fashion.

Chapter 4

Technology seems to be moving so quickly, that some people are having a tough time keeping up with the newest things to Web 2.0. Many people get overwhelmed with things they want to do in order to keep up with the pace of technology. There is an acronym for a four step planning process called POST. It includes the following:

1) People: This step in the planning process is used to figure out what your customers are ready for (pg. 67). Figuring out whether your customers would be interested in blogs, social networks, interactive review site, etc. Finding the best match will give the best results in a business

2) Objectives: “What are your goals?” (pg. 67). This step is used to help you figure out what you wish to accomplish. Would you like to use groundswell to listen (seeing what people are writing about your assets) or to speak (creating blogs and twitters to keep people informed about your product).

3) Strategy: This is where a person decides what they would like the customer to do for you. Is your final goal to allow customers to “help carry messages to others to change” (pg. 68)? Or would you like for them to be a lot more involved in your market?

4) Technology: Finally after figuring out numbers 1-3, what sort of technology will you use with your customers? Examples of such can be “blogs, wikis, scial networks, and so fourth” (pg. 68).

Chapter 5

Yet another list of numbers I found to be quite interesting. There are two different ways to listen to the groundswell.

1) “Setting up your own private community.” (pg. 82) This way, you can hear insight from many groups of people. You can find out what people think about a particular business, ways to improve, things that need to change, etc.

2) “Begin brand monitering.” (pg.82) I like to call this the eaves dropping method. With this method, you would listen to the internet (such as forums, blogs, or any place on the web that allows users to provide input) and figure out what the people around the web are saying about your company or product.

Chapter 6

Last but not least (I’ve always enjoyed saying that), I found a list of techniques for talking with the groundswell very interesting. There are many different ways to speak to groundswell, but the following are the four most common:

1) “Post a viral video” (pg. 103). Put videos online and it will soon spread all over the internet. Blendtec did something similar by posting its videos on Youtube. I personally find those videos very enjoyable to watch.

2) “Engage in social networks and user-generated content sites” (pg. 103). One way one can do this is by creating a profile on Facebook. This gives a unique identity  and helps extend your brand reach.

3) “Join the blogosphere” (pg. 103). Use Blogs! Take advantage of them while you can! this is a great way to help release bits of information out to the public to get consumers excited future products.

4) “Create a community” (pg. 103). This is a great tool to help not only speak to your customers, but you can also listen to them. This would be very beneficial to the marketing department. It can help them figure out who their client base is comprised of and what group a product should be marketed to. It can also help if companies are willing to take constructive criticism.

List and list of things, I find them very interesting. All the following seems like it can personally help me if I was to make decisions about anything web 2.0 related. I found all these points interesting not only because it caught my eye, but because I can actually apply it to myself in a real life situation.