Foursqure

Foursquare is an application for smart phones created in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadura, which is used for checking in the places you have been to, like stores, restaurants, and bars. You also can know where your friends are by using this application.
        Foursquare is a useful tool to engage customers of the business, especially it is a good way for the small business to advertise their produces and services. When users check in to a new place, 3 points will be given on Foursquare; when check in to places the users have been before, 1 point will be given. So users can be stimulated to check-in when they go to the places they like. This app allows people comment on the places. For example, when I do not know where I can go for food, I always use the Foursquare to look for a good place, and also I always choose the one who has the most comments. In this way, people know where they should go for shopping and fun.
      However, privacy is a big problem for Foursquare. Foursquare make users expose their location when they are using this app checking in to a place. One of my friends told his boss that he was sick and could not go to work that Day, but he checked in into a bar. His boss found out he lied to him, so he got fired.
     Personal speaking, I like foursquare very much. On by typing in the key word of the place you want to check in, you can know the full name. In this way, you also can know how to get the places you want to o but you do not know where it is.  It is convenient for you to share your life with your friend.

Crisis Communication

Crisis communication, an important concept in PR and itsrole cannot be over emphasized in any company. Encountered with any crisis that greatly negatively influences its reputation, any organization is supposed to have the awareness of crisis communication and then follows strategies of crisis management. A good case is demonstrated in China—Shanghai official metro weibo(ID: shmetro) (twitter in Chinese version) reaction to Shanghai subway accident.

On September 27, 2011，“a subway train slammed into the rear of another train in a sprawling transit line” as is reported in NYtimes.com lately. Shmetro released the first message at 14:10 to warn passengers of longer waiting intervals due to equipment failure. And then (at 14:40) it consecutively posted two messages on the apologies and claims on this initiative . In the next few hours, shmetro constantly released messages on the details of this accident and its treatment of the injuries. This issue ends with the public report on October 6, claiming the punishment of 12 officers .After the accident, shmetro released 27 messages in total covering warning, notification, and apology. This crisis management proved to be successful, which successfully comfort the massive people’s emotion, fulfilling its duty in charge of public transportation.

Even though I have no access to official decision-making process, it is obvious that its strategies just follow the right track of crisis planning, including identification of cause of problem, demonstration of responsible action and consistent messaging. Theories have been successfully translated to practice in such international metropolis. When faced with crisis, which should be avoided in advance, what administrators are supposed to do is not complaint and regret but positive attitude and counter-measurement with the guidance of crisis communication, which can also contribute into individual affairs.

Social Media Metrics

Revisiting influence from social media has played an important role for organizations in this web 2.0 world. It is critical for any organization to collect data including traffic, views, and referring sources so as to conduct quantitative analysis for its strategies in marketing and communication. David Stout (2009) states that it is not always easy to measure the impact and value of social media. Yet powerful tools such as Tweetreach, Klout, and Google Analytics. They are able to produce tangible data such as exposure, engagement, influence, and action.

Exposure reveals how many people have accessed the information posted online; engagement measures how many people interact with the information; Influence indicates how social media has impact on the people—positive, negative or neutral; and Action, the most important indicator, shows the conversion of viewers to real consumers, which are the origin of profit.

However, how to translate cold data to practical decisions and then profits requires specific knowledge in the field or even acute business intuition. Meanwhile, it shall be attractive to measure individuals’ personal social media such as twitter, facebook, and Myspace, and then figure out methods to transplant business information into the top trending accounts in an implicit way so that the advertising effect would be maximized at minimal cost. It also leaves space for the development of consultant companies which specialize in offering customized advice and interpretation service according to the data collected from social media metrics tools.

In conclusion, powerful social media metrics tools are of great use and value in the web 2.0 world, yet its interpretation and strategy-making require professional skills in specific field.

Content Curation

Content Curation is the process of collecting information through the vast amounts of contents and organizes them around a certain theme. It is both beneficial to personal and organizations. It can be divided into four steps:

First and foremost, you should define and explain what you curate about. This is especially important for the organizations because it can contribute to group your audiences who are interested in your themes thus to build a community. The community will help to energize your company through sharing the information you post.   

Keeping updates of your sources frequently and timely. Nowadays is a age of information cluttered times, the only way to make your audience loyal to your curation is to find out what they are looking for, and what is the most latest and useful sources.

Summarizing what you have found and making it organized. Since you have found much information through various means, it is important to classify. A piece of organized and high-value post will defiantly draw the attention from your audiences.

Analyzing the collection is one of a curator's essential tasks. To pick the good and get rid of the useless or wrong sources can add a lot of value to your online "collection".

Pinterest is a perfect tool for content curation.

The word Pinterest is made up of “pin” and “interest”, which means users on Pinterest can upload or sort through the whole internet of images and put them into a context based on their “interests”, known as “pins” on this platforms. Pinterest is a personalized media platform, but everyone in this platform can see each other’s interests through the function of "Pin It" button. And even those who are outside the platform can find the popular pictures belong to the same topic and save it.

   Content curation is both beneficial to personal and organizations. Persisting in doing it will make your organization to be the thought leader of the specific area, in turn; every personal audience also can learn and get the professional knowledge from it.   

Live-tweeting Experience

Hi, every reader, here is my link to Storify

http://storify.com/gui_zhao/reflection-on-my-live-tweeting-experience-1

Personal Branding

Companies use brands to market their products because good brands can make products look visible and memorable and stimulate consumptions. However, have you ever thought to be your own boss by   using brands to market yourself? Personal branding will give you a competitive advantage over the numerous masses that are looking for jobs.

A personal brand, in a nutshell, is the way you present yourself to the world. So the most vital step to successfully branding yourself is to establish a personal identity. Who are you? What do you do? What is your focus on your future career? Once it is defined, you can Control what others feel about you and who are the key audiences interacting with you. Then you should make full use of the media channel, like twitter or blogs to develop you reputation. Writing articles, sharing professional information and knowledge, or submitting comments on others’ social platforms in your field is effective. This lets targeted audiences see your name frequently and become aware of the benefit and knowledge that you offer. It will absolutely enhance your influence and popularity, making you a pro in your industry; an expert in your field. Using professional networks that built around one’s employment capabilities, like creating a LinkedIn profile, will also promote your opportunities to be known to the public.  

 As for me, I only use blogs on Google Plus to position myself as a social media enthusiast. I post new articles related to how social media technology evolves and how it affects our lives each week. Moreover, I never post words about my personal life because I want my personal brand to look more professional. It takes time to build personal branding as a social media practitioner, nonetheless.

The Photo Sharing Age

Flickr is a “free or pay” online platform to store and share digital photos. It has been generally believed to be a great example of the way of Web 2.0 application. Flickr was launched in February 2004 by Ludicorp，and Yahoo purchased Ludicorp and Flickr in March 2005.

The key feature makes Flickr outstanding is the presence of tags, which can be used for marking photos as favorites, group photo pools and interestingness, for which a patent is pending. The function of tagging enables users to find imagines related to the same topic or even the same place names, so that people can find out others sharing on the same subject. It is the first website to implement tag clouds,

Actually, the real value of Flickr should not only in photo sharing, but also to build the social network based on sharing photos. In the age which people do not know what is social network, Flickr already have created one. Groups are used as a way to communicate with fellow members of Flickr around common photography interests. By choosing to follow groups, recent uploads of the group will sometimes appear on a user's homepage when they log on. The relationship between users is not the traditional, for example, one can put the other person into “family” group without adding friends first. Such flexibility largely encourages sharing, giving comments and interaction between users, as well as improving the database.

Grasping better photography will sure to enhance the popularity of your photos shared on Flickr. Here are some tips:

It is hard to make perfect concentration on a photo, to move a little to the left or right, or zoom in or out just a little more. Using the zoom on your photos will not only change how close your subject appears but it will also change the depth of field. You can hold the camera horizontally or vertically to include the whole shot.           

When you take a photo of a friend, a pet, or an animal, do not let the surroundings to distract attention away from the subject. Standing further back and zoom in with your largest lens magnification. This will minimize the depth of field, which means only your subject should be in focus

Using a tripod will keep your camera steady which will make your photos clearer. For example, if you are using a 500 mm lens, the minimum shutter speed you would normally need to use without a tripod would be 1/500 second. When using a shutter speed slower than this simple rule of thumb suggests, a tripod is in order.

Some of people may ignore the function of mode setting, like ‘portrait’, ‘landscape’, ’sports’, and ‘night’ etc. This function can help to change the aperture, shutter speed, ISO, making the shot more life look.

Cosmopolitan Magazine on social platforms

The largest-selling young women's magazine in the world, Cosmopolitan is famous for its upbeat style, focus on the young career woman and candid discussion of contemporary male/female relationships. This magazine is active on the social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google blogger and Cosmo Radio on channel 109 on both Sirius and XM platforms. Cosmopolitan is the best-selling young women's magazine in the U.S, a bible for fun, fearless females that reaches more than 18 million readers a month. The magazine uses the listening strategy through the comments from fans who share what they like or dislike on the platform. Its fan page on Facebook has 1,857,510 likes and 20,912 people talking about this. One of the comments catching my attention is “I'm getting annoyed that a magazine that's suppose to help women become "confident and independent" has become more about pleasing a man than anything else.” But there is no public relation team helping to explain problems for readers on the Facebook.

It posts articles on relationships, sex, health, careers, self-improvement, celebrities, as well as fashion and beauty. Each month when the newly published is released in stores, it will update on Facebook and also offer download links for readers to get monthly issue of Cosmo on e-reader. You’ll be reading your favorite magazine in just minutes.          Cosmopolitan magazine has a subscription website called Cosmopolitan Magazine Customer Service, which can be used to order your magazines online.
      It also 387,142 followers on Twitter, and 12,967 tweets mainly offering tips for fashion and beauty, but few of them have rewets. It does not work as effectively as Facebook does.

Reflection on Social Network

The Internet is considered to the most useful invention, it has changed our way of study, life and even social work. But some may say it is just fictitious world, not the real one. Actually, most of all may feel that social network really is one part of the real world, and that is also the reason why Facebook can be so popular that become the social kingdom in a flash.

In the movie Social Network, like most genius, Zuckeberg is very shy and not good at social. He is really kind of pinchers, he will even change five topics in one minute in conversation, and his girlfriend cannot stand up, and broke up with him. It is the stimulation as well as the inspiration of the Facebook.

He invaded the school network database that night, and collected photos of all the beautiful girls, including his ex-girlfriend, and posted them on his website called Facemash, and students in Harvard even can give marks for the beautiful faces. Large number of clicks caused the collapse of the network, and Zuckeberg was punished by the school board. But he did not care about at all. He accepted the invitation from Winklevoss brothers to found the Harvard Network together, but after the success of Facebook, he was accused of plagiarism.But I think it still very difficult to put the definition of plagiarism, I think Zach really draws on the inspiration of the Harvard network, but he what made ​​the to the Facebook is far beyond the Winklevoss brothers imagination. Let alone Winklevoss brothers did not found any website successfully, even like the Facemash. It is impossible to produce good outcomes, if you do not have great skills, and creativity will remain in its prototype, just like the Winklevoss brothers.

Zuckeberg become the king of the social network, and he also is the youngest billionaire, but he has lost his friends and schoolmates who have helped with the foundation of Facebook. And he is also caught into self-blame for hurting his ex-girlfriend. The success or failure of his life, is really a dilemma.

Energizing your customers to be spokesmen

Are you still nervous about having no idea how to engage the relationships with your customers? Or you do not know how to increase your company’s branding popularity? Besides talking and listening to seek more customer insights in marketing, energizing is also a good approach.

Energizing customers means using the persuasive power of your enthusiastic customers for spreading brand benefits to other customers, whether potential or permanent ones. Energized customers are far more credible than any other media resources, like commercial broadcastings. Because most the commercial broadcastings use the exaggerate style to attract views’ attention, we will find the product are not as good as we expected, it is faked, so we do not want to believe in them. Conversely, if you hear the product from those who have used, it will be intriguing and more persuasive. And a research about “How much online North American consumers trust sources of information about products or services” show that 73% of the respondents get the recommendations from friends and family, 62% of them believe in consumer products and reviews.

One of the basic techniques given is energizing with ratings and reviews. The story how eBags turned Jim from a guy annoyed with his broken luggage into an eBag fan is just a good example Under most circumstances, if the product is broken, the companies will only replace a new one, but in this case, eBags even contact him and consult better suggestion for improving the design and quality. It will leave a professional brand image on customers. And the deeper the impression you leaves, the greater possibility your customers will write down their ratings and reviews, which in turn will be a great promoter for your products’ development.

Most of us may have the experience of shopping online. Numerous choices are there for you to choose from, and the price may vary greatly, but most of us will not choose the cheapest one or the most expensive one. We prefer to refer to their ratings and reviews, whether positive and negative, and choose the one with the best appraisal. Also, some shopping websites even have the function of array from the suppliers according to their satisfactory index. In such way, your customers have been energizied to be spokesmen.

Obama PK Romney on Twitter

United States Presidential election of 2012 is viewed as the first time in the history of the country's “social campaign”, and twitter has become the first choice of platforms for candidates to interact with the fans, which is potential to change public opinion towards. Obviously, those who get the best use of this trend during the campaign is sure to occupy a certain advantage.

In the Twitter platform wars between U.S President Barack Obama and a Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former has about more twenty million followers, and the latter is less than two hundred million. According to a research conducted by the authoritative media agency, it shows that the number of tweets released by Obama is 10 times more than Romney’s, gaining more support from people at this platform. However, Romney’s Twits has been shared and retweeted much more frequently, indicating that his fans are more active.

Team Obama use the platform in much more professional way. They know how to tweets in a way like a real person so as to be better understood. But Romney’s  tweets is lacking in the “behind in the scenes” quality, which makes public have great interests to follow.

Obama get a positive sentiment infusion from his tweets like support for gay marriage and “no tougher job than being a mom” to praise all moms. Besides, he also use twitter as a means to build good image. Twitter users who concerned about the political news in Iowa once saw the advertisements paid by the 2012 U.S. presidential election candidates in January, one of which is from Obama for American. The Prompted Tweet goes like “Four years ago, Obama won the elections in Iowa, since then he has made ​​a commitment to this country and fulfilled his promise as a president."And there is a link to the BarackObama.com, showing the video of the elections Obama won in Iowa.

Studies have shown that every three in Americans who are interested in politics have participated in social networking sites, and more than 70% of them will go to the polls. So, do you think who will be the winner, Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?

Factors affect the audiences

Audiences will be easily affected by their emotions when judging a the media, and here are two factors that may inflence their choices.

I am deeply fond of the Priming Theory, which refers to the effect of some preceding stimulus on subsequent events. Because though media priming seems to have limited effects, it actually can have largely potential large effects. Take the 1992 Presidential Election for example. Nobody can imagine such an overwhelming famous president can be uncultivated because of the shifting media coverage fro international to domestic issues, which reflects political media does not influence what you think, but what information you use to make judgments. Another two models of priming, aggression priming and stereotyping priming are also introduced, and limitations are compared. But all these priming models have a problem in increasing accessibility, which can be a good direction for future research.

Emotion and Media Effects focuses on the emotion effect as the impetus for Media Selection, the outcome of Media Exposure and the Mechanism of Effect by using the methods of self-report and neurophysiological assessments. Emotion here classified into dimensional model and discrete model. They are different in whether emotion states are influenced individually or not. Zillmann’s MMT indicates that people may be aware of their reasons for media selection driven by hedonistic desires. What we see in media is similar to what happed in real life distinctly, so we will respond to media content as if it were true. Also both excitation transfer and desensitization will lead to the intensity of emotional response. Emotions can give rise to other three effects on message processing based on LC4MP, persuasion and aggressive behavior. As advanced development of technology, viewers can get better access to information online, and they also get more involved in social network, it will be meaningful to find out how media impact emotional lives.

The POST method for tapping the groundswell

As the rapid development of social media, there is a common problem to those people who do not know how to get involved in social networking space, which called groundswell approach-avoidance syndrome. The POST method is a perfect strategy that can solve such problem.

This problem has several symptoms, for example, patients are addicted to running after the articles talk about their fellow sufferers at sites like Facebook; they are also very nervous about answering superiors’ and subordinates’ questions about strategy in the Web2.0, because of the pressure of chasing technology.

The POST strategy has been one of the most popular ideas we’ve ever created, even though it’s so simple. P stands for people. We should generate our own customer profiles about what they are ready for, considering their Social Techno graphics Profile, in case of profile mismatch. O stands for objectives. You should have a clear objective, what you want to accomplish. Do you want to persuade your current customers to evangelize others, or to share information and collaborate with your colleges? Are you aimed at some kind of best customers or the whole groups’ marketing? Set your goals first, and you can find which technology is suit for you most. S stands for strategy. Here Strategies means what will be different after your plan is finished. Have you ever imagined having a two-way relationship with your best customers? Do you want to get more people involved in enhancing the products? Last but not least, T is technology. The means or platforms, like bloggers and wikis, those you can use to gather your customers. It will be obvious which technologies to choose if you figure out who are the people you want to talk to, what is your target and strategy.

There is no denying that many other problems may still arise when conducting this POST strategy, but as long as you use such approach flexibly, the groundswell approach-avoidance syndrome will be healed soon.

Web 2.0’ Effects on Public Relations in China

Web2.0 is a period of time in which people can share any information they want on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue of a virtual community, In contrast to web1.0, where users are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Representative sites of Web 2.0 include Flickr、Craigslist、Linkedin、Tribes、Ryze、 Friendster、Delicious、43Things.com and so on. And the primary applications of Web2.0 are Blog、TAG、SNS、RSS、wikis.

Social Media in China has been in a very special environment all the time because a lack of Press Laws. Thus people do not usually have the right to express their internal thought. Due to the rapid development during recent years, it seems that Chinese Media has overnight full liberalization, and Web2.0 works as a platform for it.

In traditional communication era, there was a theory called “Six Degrees of Separation”, which means that any two people can know each other all over the world only by six people. However, for example, the widely use of Weibo in China can subvert the old ways of exchanging information, only if people add each other as friends on the platform.

Now, ordinary people have the right to speak, adding the bottom-up feedback in public relations. Industry experts can publish professional judgment through the Weibo form and ordinary people also can express true feelings through forums, making industry events into a public event.

Previously, PR firms only need to communicate with the upstream, and now they have to pay attention both to businesses, government, industry, products, channels, and also concern that consumers care about, the socializing of media----emergence of Web2.0 makes the public more complicated.

My social network

           
             The social network I use most often is Q-Zone, which is a multimedia blog developed by Tecent Company in 2005. In China, the most widely used tool for chatting is OICQ, and Q-Zone is a subsidiary function of OICQ, so it is very popular among teenagers, adults or even old people.
              
            

             The social network I use most often is Q-Zone, which is a multimedia blog developed by Tecent Company in 2005. In China, the most widely used tool for chatting is OICQ, and Q-Zone is a subsidiary function of OICQ, so it is very popular among teenagers, adults or even old people.

             The importance of social media is beyond my imagination, I can take one for example, that is, it allows me to send out mass messages to the people in few seconds, both the known and unknown , breaking  the rule called “Six Degrees of Separation” in traditional communication. With its magic power, people even I can know how are the lives of your favorite superstars, making them as your close friends.