March 4, 2008
How to Attach a Print Media Page
March 4, 2008
Top Tens for Second Life
- Join Second Life/Second Life Grid and create your avatar.
- Can make it like you, and dress it how you want.
- Subscribe to, read and contribute to the blog, wiki, and tutorials.
- You can learn a lot about it by just reading what others have done.
- Helps you learn from their mistakes.
- Purchase Linden Dollars
- For $5 (US) you can get $1,254 L (Linden Dollars)
- Buy land or island
- Can choose from 4 different terrains or design one of your own.
- Average Island is $ 1,675 L
- Host an event (parties, workshops, contests)
- ACS Virtual Relay for Life, raised $40,000
- Advertise
- Can buy advertising space on billboards
- Open a store for our company
- Create brand awareness on Second Life, as well as offering our services
- Create buildings for company (barn, silos)
- Can choose the type of building we want to represent us on Second Life
- Design our agriculture products (animals, tractors)
- Depending on what we sell or do, this can all be designed on Second Life and sold for real money.
- Many companies do a lot of business on here (Mazda, Coke, Adidas, Dell
- Hold employee training on Second Life
- Universities and Major Businesses hold training sessions, can be for distance learning or simply computer based communications
Second Life is an online social world, created by its users. Opened to the public on 2003 and is available around the world.
Second Life Grid is a platform designed for organizations to build their company on. Can be used for various things both non-profit and major corporations.
Everything in Second Life has been designed by someone and uses Linden Script Language (LSL) Code to control it. This code is based off of Java Script.
Second Life has many well known companies and businesses in their world, this includes NBC, Coca-Cola, and Dell.
March 4, 2008
Class Web 2.0 Explorations
Per your request… here is a complete list of the technology everyone looked at. The presentations were great today. I hope you enjoyed them!
YouTube- Annie and Danielle
Del.icio.us- Christy and Jen
Flickr- Jackie and Cassaundra
Twitter- Heather
Facebook- Jamie
Myspace- Joni
Wikis- Laura
Mash-ups- Jill
Blogs- Kelsey and Megan
Podcast- Kara
Google Docs- Leigh
Second Life- Morgan and Amy
Digg- Kim
LinkedIn- Allison
Technorati- Angela
March 3, 2008
Wood Frame Photoshop Tutorial-CH
This tutorial teaches you how to place a wood frame around your photo in Adobe Photoshop.
March 3, 2008
Jill’s Ten Tips to Mashup
Their application(s) + your site = a mashup
Basically, there are endless possibilities to what makes a mashup. It just depends on what is right for that specific site. Since there are so many different applications that can be used to create a mashup, I’ve decided to list some ideas that would be beneficial to a business using any relevant application.
In case you want to check out one of the first mashups created, it is chicagocrime.org. It integrates Google maps and crime statistics from the Chicago Police Department.
Get them to you: Make it easy for customers or clients to find your business. Instead of them having to hassle with finding directions, add a map to your site so all they have to do is type in their address and hit print directions. Google Maps, Yahoo, Microsoft and Map Quest also offer similar services.
RSS Feed: Give viewers, the opportunity to subscribe to your website using an RSS feed application or other bookmarks such as del.icio.us, where they can tag your company. On the business side, you can also subscribe to competitor’s sites to keep current on their progress.
YouTube: For this tip, I did get specific with YouTube because it is so popular. For the specific industry your company is involved in, such as beef, ag radio or soybeans, you can use YouTube data API to request videos that have content related to that industry. It is also a great public relations move to post interesting videos about your company to gain exposure. You can also get public information about the YouTube users who produced the video if you want to contact them.
Give visuals: From a company charity event to past breed champions create a photo gallery using Flickr or other photo sites. Allow viewers to see what your company is doing.
Time Management: Want to make sure your employees are always where they’re supposed to be? Join their social account, such as Twitter, with their work calendar to keep them up-to-date and always on time.
Reach millions: Create an application for your company with the ever popular Facebook. Again, I got specific with Facebook but with the amount of users, there is a lot of exposure that can happen for your company, cause, or event.
Sell Your Stuff: With many companies having online stores it is nice to give customers a familiar checkout experience by integrating a “Pay Now” widget from Amazon payments into your site. This would also be good for smaller companies or ones that are just getting started.
Make Money: This would be great for not for profits or government campaigns. Let supporters have fun and give a little to your organization in return. This site, Logobama, is a perfect example of a combination of Flickr, RSS feed and a link to his official site.
Blog: With so many people using blogs these days, add one to your company’s site. Then make sure to tag or post the blogs on sites such as Technorati, and del.icio.us. This will get your companies name out to many different viewers or people interested in your product, cause, event, etc.
Stay connected: Can’t find that perfect candidate for an open position? Want to electronically connect with colleagues? Creating a profile for your company on LinkedIn or a similar application and then linking those to your company’s site will allow more communication in the office and between potential clients, employees or sponsors.
The concept of a mashup is pretty simple but there is so much that can be done with it. It really is what you make of it.
March 3, 2008
Jamie’s Facebook Top 10
Top Tips to Capitalize on Facebook’s Clientele:
1. Create an Event: Typically used for birthday’s, game-day parties, etc., there is a growing trend for agriculture-affiliated invites. A company could gain attention at promotional activities (i.e. Ohio Farm Bureau community Farmer’s Share Breakfast) by inviting fellow agriculturalists on facebook to attend.
2. Find Some Friends: Facebook allows you to search through the entire membership base, or via a certain network, using keywords listed in profiles. A great PR person could compile these friends as company friends.
3. Create a Company Page: You cannot add friends without having a page for them to link to. Add some friends and every time your company updates your Facebook profile page you will move to the top of their friend list. Any good PR person knows that repetitive advertising sells a brand!
4. Form a Cause: Whether it be agriculture education, animal rights fact sheets, supporting agriculturalists or another issue, start a cause. Friends can then be invited to support that same cause. A valuable part of this industry’s success is sticking together. Facebook even offers an agriculture link within the cause category to list under.
5. Build a Contact List: Most friend profiles have at least their e-mail listed, so after finding fellow agriculturalists, develop a contact list of their e-mails and use this in a company e-newsletter with the latest on-goings within the organization and the industry alike.
6. Reach a Certain Network: Link into networks that are in your business area. No one online guide gives you such a guarantee on potential audience! You know the area you are reaching based on your given network log-in, use it. This is a great way to reach your companies clientele area and let them know the current issues.
7. Sell in the Marketplace: Put your products out there. Sure, not every college student is looking to buy a tractor or a goat, but as broad as the user base is, they just might be. What’s the worst that can happen? You actually sell something?
8. Start an Application: Whatever field you are in within the agriculture industry, create an application icon that gains and develops interest in it. For each person that downloads your application, they invite twenty others to try it.
9. Start a Group: The best way to gain people with similar interests is to start a group and let them join. Some agriculture groups are already taking advantage of this and why not?
10. Start a Poll: What better way do you find out about your audience’s likes, interests, questions within the industry than ask? Put a poll on a group or activity page. It is an easy way to judge your audience and formulate your campaigns!
March 3, 2008
10 blogging tips by mguccion
BLOGGING
By Megan Guccion
Blog
· An online Journal.
· Short for “Web log,” a specialized site that allows an individual or group of individuals to share a running log of events and personal insights with online audiences.
“The Web currently has 15 million active blogs read by 57 million people,” says Rhoda Weiss, chair and CEO of the Public Relations Society of America.
“You have to engage your audience through whatever means necessary. More of our audience is using blogs and spending time online,” says Petro Kacur, senior manager of Coca-Cola’s marketing and communications group in Atlanta.
A Plan for incorporating blogging into a PR marketing plan.
1. Learn from the best.
a. It is important to look at other companies who too use blogs in their PR marketing strategies.
b. Examine a similar company; what have they done correctly? What have they done that is not effective? Contact someone and ask for tips.I.E. Kodak and General Motors
2. Plan well.
a. Choose a good domain name- simple to spell and easy to remember.
b. Choose a manager- who will write and monitor the blog?
3. When?
a. Choose a regular day and time for posting new entries- can be followed easily.
4. No ‘I’ in team. a. If you have a large blog, create a team to rotate the responsibility.
5. Voluntary.
a. Never force anyone to keep a blog.
6. Get REAL.
a. Never have PR staff write the blog, readers will see right through you and could ruin credibility.
7. Budget.
a. Remember, even though they are a cheaper way to market, they are not free
b. Price of software and employee compensation.
8. Content.
a. Authenticity and transparency are the keys to the success.
b. Real people with real opinions.
9. FACE the facts.
a. Putting a human face on the corporation through blogs helps companies drive:
~ media coverage
~ generate content
~improve search engine optimization
10. Mirror Image.
a. A company’s blog should reflect their mission and beliefs.
b. Allow reader response and ALLOW criticism, however, monitor responses.
~Come up with a consistent policy.
Just some Benefits of Blogging
1. quick and easy
2. inexpensive set-up
3. provides easy access to company news
4. search engine friendly
5. brand awareness
6. relationship building
7. learn about your customers
8. reduce calls and emails
9. competitive differentiation
10. reputation management
March 3, 2008
http://www.oqha.com/congress/congresshome.htm
I go to Quarter Horse Congerss almost every year. It’s a lot of fun and I’ve had friends show there. It’s a great event to go to if you love horses, especially Quarter horses. So I decided to check out their web site.
The color scheme is great. Blue and red to incorporate the logo for Congress. Their navigation is somewhat clear. The index page has it’s own separate navigation that does not carry on through the other actual pages, which have their own navigation, so it can get kind of confusing. I do not like their navigation whatsoever. I really expected more from them.
The site is not very creative. It’s a very simple and clear cut page, well besides their navigation. There aren’t many pictures which I thought was odd. Congress is a flashy event and lots of picture are taken so I would have thought the web site would have had a lot of pictures to showcase the event. I think having more pictures would greatly help out the site.
As far as content, there is useful information on there that many people can utilize.
Overall the site lacks a lot of creativity, but it still looks professional…it’s just simple and kind of plain.
-Angela G.
