As I’ve progressed through college I’ve discovered that my passion, and focus, shifted, and specified itself as branding. I’m lucky in the fact that as technology changes and the larger masses adopt new forms of communication and even forms of expression the entire branding business shifts with it. After carrying Zag—by Marty Neumeier—in my backpack for the last 3 weeks I realized that brands are facing a critical tipping point: social media.

Brands are no longer, and really have never been, logos, color schemes, and store fronts. They’re the consumers’ instant perception and reaction to the company or product. And what influences those things the most? Conversations make business. They build relationships, spur decisions, and drive purchases. Social media, is conversations. – @charliechapin

I feel as though I have gained an immense amount of knowledge and understanding through my social media marketing class this past semester, but what I strive to learn more about is the adaptation and adoption of social media by the branding industry. What brands will have major malfunctions or achievements? How will they respond? Will they respond?

I would absolutely love to incorporate social media into the rest of my life, both socially and professionally. My aspirations are to join the ranks of Brand Managers, which some are even now calling Brand Ambassadors, and use my social media skills and knowledge to fully embrace the technological shift. Consumers are talking more prolifically and openly than ever before. And in a world where consumers are bombarded by thousands upon thousands of advertisements every day, establishing a reputable, and transparent brand is becoming more important than ever before.

Below is a sampling of blog entries which highlight insights and observations that I’ve accrued throughout the semester.

“Social media is become the pretty much be-all end-all of, well, everything. Companies want it, Brands needs it, and Individuals are starting to think that it’s the only way that you’re going to get a job.” –  Can a College be a Brand?

Is a whiny, complaint ridden, school boy the impression that I want to give off online whenever there’s a lot of work to do? NO! – Dear College Students: Get a Job!

what about positive reviews or interactions with users and brands? Do they even exist? Is it possible, with all of the new forms of technology (Google’s SideWiki anyone?) and transparency of the Internet for a company to successfully reach out to and positively connect with its consumer audience? – Branding and Social Media… Can’t we all just get along?

I’d love to connect with you! If you don’t agree, have new insights or research, or just want to say “What up?” as a avid social media enthusiast I’m open to any and all form of connections.

My twitter

My LinkedIn

My Facebook

12seconds lets you upload 12 second videos of yourself… or anything doing well, anything. What’s even better about the site is that it’s completely integrated itself into other media forms as well. Because the video files are so condensed, due to the length restrictions, 12seconds has successfully partnered up with Twitter, Facebook, the iPhone, email, and other mobile devices as well!

One of the most innovative, in my opinion, uses of the site has come through its integration with Twitter. The already bit sized micro-blogging site can now also be used as a bit size – micro-vlogging site!

Online Shopping, you are my Achilles heel.

One of the best sites that I heard of, and was told about, was Amazon.com, an online superstore containing any and everything that you could ever want.

Amazon.com is an online superstore that aggregates products across all categories. This holiday season Amazon took on a new social media initiative in order to spread awareness about the sales offered through its site. Amazon.com incorporated YouTube, Twitter, and email campaigns, and created a unique web page within its domain in order to maximize exposure and sales.

Happy Holidays and Happy Shopping!

Companies want it, Brands needs it, and Individuals are starting to think that it’s the only way that you’re going to get a job. This may or may not all be true, but recently I’ve been hearing a lot of conversation about Colleges and social media.

I go to Emerson College in Boston, MA. Emerson’s slogan “Bringing Innovation to Communication and the Arts” is descriptive, appropriate, but is it true?

Emerson’s main website is, well, lacking. No RSS feed, no links to blogs, Twitter profiles, or Facebook fan pages. And the content generally stays static for a least a few weeks.

When you search “Emerson College” on Facebook you get this:

There’s very little participation throughout all of Emerson’s Facebook presences, unless of course it’s the annual group “Emerson Class of ____” filled with new students and transfers asking any and everything that they could possible want to know about Emerson.

Some positives, however, are the recent development and implementation of “Emerson Today Digest”. I was pleasently surprised this morning when I opened my email and found a new format and presentation to the “This Week at Emerson” email. Typically the email has been nothing but text, in bullet format, and leaves much to the imagination.

To the Emerson Community, did you know that the Iwasaki Library has a blog? And a pretty good one at that too. Their posts include interactive tweet contests, suggested reading, “New to the Iwasaki” and artist biographies whenever they change the displays.

WERS, Emerson’s student run radio station, has a pretty great twitter account as well. And finally in its hay day the Emerson Mafia was a premiere source for networking opportunities for the students, both past and current. Check out their Facebook and Twitter as well.

Emerson is a pretty great school. Their Marketing Department gives students some great opportunities, and it’s one of the best theater programs that I’ve heard about in Boston, but is it a brand? Does Emerson really bring “Innovation to Communication and the Arts”?

My vote: Not really, no. It’s making a small attempt, but not being very successful at it. What’s your vote?

Crowdsourcing was coined by Jeff Howe from Wired in 2006. It can be defined with different terminology, but essentially Crowdsourcing is when a company releases a problem to the public, asks for help or feedback, gets the public opinion, and then uses one of the submitted answers to solve their problem.

Crowdsourcing is also an amazing way to increase community involvement with your company/brand.

Crowdsourcing has been used for all kinds of company issues from renaming a company, creating new products, and new product or company innovations. Take YouTubes Symphony Orchestra.

YouTube put out a call for musicians all over the world to video themselves playing a classical piece composed by Chinese composer, Tan Dun. Video’s were uploaded and then YouTube created a panel of judges to screen the videos, while users were allowed to pick favorites.

YouTube took social media and Crowdsourcing to a new level in order to create and introduce this global orchestra. Videos from all of the contestants were put together in a mash up shown below:

Users that uploaded videos for consideration then further spread the event by inviting friends on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and more, to go to YouTube and vote for them as their favorite. This engaged multiple communities and thousands of participants.

The winners were then chosen, flown to New York, and preformed a series of concerts. This, had never been done before and is a prime example of a company/brand using the masses to create something.

But after studying and miderms and far too much coffee, I realized. My bosses’, past and current, all follow me on twitter, and are friends on Facebook… Is a whiny, complaint ridden, school boy the impression that I want to give off online whenever there’s a lot of work to do? NO!

So I read Danah Boyd’s Some thoughts on Twitter vs. Facebook Status Updates article from her blog Zephoria. She points out some key difference between Twitter and Facebook updates and general friend Q&A. But one point that I thought was particularly interesting was her analogy using Twitter and Celebrities:

“I can follow the details of a Celebrity’s life without them ever knowing I exist. At the same time, there’s the remote possibility of them responding which is what complicates traditional parasocial constructs. Angelina Jolie could never see me reading about her in the gossip mags and commenting on her latest escapades, but, if she were on Twitter, she could sense my watching her and see my discussion of her.” – Danah Boyd

Except for the few employers that I’ve friended on Facebook it’s largely JUST a social network for my friends and I, whereas I have 572 followers on Twitter, a large amount I’ve never met in person, and to be frank, probably never will. But this also leads into the question, what can you and can’t you say online anymore? Which then leads into the 1st amendment. Which then leads into a far more lengthy debate that a blog post allows for. So I’ll wrap it up with 6 examples:

If You’re Graduating and Want a Job DO:

• Remain Professional
• Be Nice
• Be Constructive
• Be Smart

Facebook: just finished my last midterm!! I’m excited to take a breather, relax over the weekend, and then start up that new project on Monday!

Twitter: Survived midterm week! For all of you that have more to go try this out: http://tr.im/DD0j ! Good Luck!

Twitter: @yourfriendwithaquestion I had trouble on that too! Try looking in chapter 6. DM me if you need a study buddy!

If You’re Graduating and Want a Job DON’t:

• Freak Out
• Complain about Everything
• Ask for Answers or Shortcuts

Facebook: OMG THIS CLASS IS SO STUPID AND RIDICULOUS!!!!!!!!!

Facebook: Anyone take the ____ test yet? How was it? Do we need to know specific theory examples?!?!

Twitter: I’m going to give up! There’s just too much going on and I can’t do it all. PEACE.

That’s right. laser pointers. BUT! Not just any type of pointer. It’s Star Wars people – Respect.

These pointers just launched and can be found at ThinkGeek.com here for a very nominal fee of $14.99. As I started to forward the link to all of my geeky friends… well everyone I could think of actually, I started to think, how could these best be promoted? I enjoy branding: Watching brands develop, thinking of ways to make them bigger(bolder?) and better. So why not start with these?

Star Wars does in fact have a twitter account. But, unfortunately it seems to have not caught on, or the Star Wars nerds haven’t realized that the Empire has expanded to the realm of 140 characters. Currently the Star Wars twitter has 17,188 followers, 1,575 tweets… and follows a whopping 30 users?! Their Fan Page on Facebook unfortunately is just as impressive: over 960,000 fans, and no original content!?!? Why George Lucas? Why!?

But I digress and go back to the matter at hand: Laser Pointers.

I believe that these tiny novelties could be blown out if properly mentioned in a few key channels. Twitter, Facebook, and Blogs. Let’s face it, the general stereotypes of Star Wars fanatics aren’t that far off the mark. Generally speaking they’re technologically inclined, love little gizmos and gadgets, brand loyal, and hype up new products through word of mouth advertising faster than a Queen Amidala costume change – and that’s pretty fast.

Let’s look at Etsy as an example. Not really along the same product lines.. but Etsy is an online based community store with a twitter and Facebook presence that can probably teach Star Wars a thing or two. Etsy and Star Wars both share fundamental attributes – They’re community based.

Etsy, and ThinkGeek for that matter, both link all of their new product updates through their main landing page www.etsy.com and www.thinkgeek.com and then simultaneously contribute relative posts and discussion content to their other online outlets as well. If these little laser beauties were talked about half as much as ThinkGeek’s monkey mascot Timmy, sales could be through the roof!

I’ve been reading blogs for quite some time, but few I’ve continued to read for a long time. I’m proud to say that I’ve stuck with Adverblog for at least a year now (I’ve lost track of the actual timeline). I believe that one of the main reasons for that if because of its international scope.

I often go to Adfreak, Ads Of The World, and Best Ads on TV to get more content than I sometimes know what to do with, but often feel a lack of international diversity. I live in the America. I read and watch American News, travel through American cities, and although I know this is an unjustified and pompous statement, I pretty much know what’s going on in America. But in the scope of things the world, is not called “America”.

Adverblog was started in 2003 by Martina Zavagno, an interactive marketer from Italy. For a while it was a one blogger show, but as time commitments became tight contributers got added to the roll.

Some of the reasons why I love Adverblog so much are,

A: Because it’s European.

B: Because the writers are on some “influencer lists” somewhere and receive these incredible promotion pieces for campaigns such as the recent, Birds vs Humans campaign from 5 Seeds,

C: Because there are multiple contributers, from multiple countries! Giving the site an even more diverse look on interactive and general advertising from Europe and beyond.

And finally D: Because they introduce humble college students like me to huge international campaigns like Evian’s bottle design from Paul Smith to innovative and change driven campaigns in foreign counties that I would probably never have had the opportunity to see otherwise such as Volkswagen’s Rolighetsteorin (“Happy People” in english?) campaign.

Ever since he received his own show and started to gain notoriety I’ve been inthralled. It takes a pretty brave and confident man to wear Prada through the Katrina torn streets of New Orleans. And I also have to admit that I’ve always had a bias towards CNN as well. So when the two were matched together? I was in heaven.

CNN as a company, is a major multinational conglomerate that provides, in my opinion, some of the better news coverage in America. They’ve even taken to incorporating user generated content into their site such as iReport, and have a host of shows and affiliated content. AC360° is one of them.

AC360° is contributed to by a host of writers, producers, and affiliates for AC360°. It provides user updates such as, we’ve moved channels, and because it’s contributed to by such a wide breadth of writers, 4 more posts have already been uploaded since I started writing this… I find that rather impressive. Blogs that are constantly added too, especially when they’re tied into, or feed into a larger umbrella company, such as CNN, are incredibly important. They show that representatives of the company are continuously working to provide users with the newest and more relevant content, and that there’s always someone to be reached through the company, and AC360° is a prime example.

A lot of companies have started to fear user responses and feedback to their products and services online because of negativity, take the Boston MBTA for example:

There are pros and cons to this example.

Pro: other users of the MBTA can get notified with real time updates of train delays, or bus problems.

Con: About 95% of the tweets involving #MBTA are negative and therefore give off a bad impression to tourists and potential users.

But what about positive reviews or interactions with users and brands? Do they even exist? Is it possible, with all of the new forms of technology (Google’s SideWiki anyone?) and transparency of the Internet for a company to successfully reach out to and positively connect with its consumer audience?

Dear audience, I give you @Boloco.

I’m going to admit this from the beginning; I have a bias towards Boloco. I’m a student at Emerson College and ever since they’ve opened up their Boylston St. location I just can’t get enough of their “free small coffees with Emerson and Suffolk ID’s” or other sweet little promotions that they run.

With that said, however, I think that Boloco is one of the few companies to successfully integrate a social media presence into their online footprint. They have a Facebook fan page with a list of on going events, a Twitter, and utilize both on their main website as well. They’ve even accommodated online ordering for the busy student and professional, which, having personally just used during a 6-hour meeting comes in quite handy.

Boloco also hypes, and sponsors, social events such as their “Boloco airstream” that made a cross-country trip as a giant wrapped burrito. (I’m actually sad that I missed it. Something about a giant foiled ad rolling across the country just hits me in the right spot).

The biggest selling point of the Boloco customer experience to me, however, is the personalized aspect to it. They keep up on twitter and if someone has a negative experience they react, find out the problem, apologize, and in the case of my friend get their Boloco Card number through DM and add on a free burrito or two.

So in conclusion, I have this to say: