New Adds Coming to Snapchat

Snapchat has become popular among teens and college students, but now it has become the media's new stomping ground for advertisements. In a recent article I read it goes into what companies have been utilizing Snapchat to market their products. The recent adds that have been appearing on the new social media craze is Taco Bell and Grub Hub. These company's hold contests and giveaways on Snapchat to real in customers to their stores and sites. This app is a new marketing tool for many businesses. If your target market is young individuals then this is the site to use. Snapchat is valued at 10 billion dollars and should be the new marketing tool for businesses. I think Snapchat will grow and expand and businesses will jump on board with it.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/snapchat-discussing-new-content-service-with-advertisers-and-media-firms-1408486739

Ethics in Social Media Marketing

A hot topic issue in today's social media presence is the issue of ethics. Social media nowadays has been deemed unethical when it comes to privacy settings, advertising campaigns, and stalking of unwanted friends. In an article titled "3 Steps to Ethical Social Media Marketing" it goes through the steps a user of these sites can take to defend themselves against unethical social media sites. The first step is to disclose any advertising product samples or incentives, step two is to disclose any relationship marketers and third is to disclose all relationships with people you don't know. I think these three things are important, but there are some other things I think this article is missing. Obviously setting your privacy settings to protect yourself is a no brainer and will help shield you from people you don't know or don't want on your page. Reporting unwanted users is always a good idea when it comes to unwanted stalkers. So there are other ways to fight unethical social media sites and those need to be addressed as well. Ethics is important and if people care about their privacy and ethics in today's internet connections, then some might even leave these sites to be secure and safe.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-steps-to-ethical-social-media-marketing/

Google Plus The Future?

Google Plus has died in many wealthy individuals eyes. They have down played the power Google has to make this social network worth signing up for. In the article "Proof That Google Plus Will Prevail", it brings up a lot of good points about how Google is making everyone believe they don't have something special with Google Plus. It speaks about the fact that no one recognizes the fast paced site and how much it is growing in users. It will secretly make its way to the top of the chain next to Facebook and it will shock everyone. In my opinion, I do not use this site or know the benefits and features of the social network, but I am interested in seeing what it is all about and it could be a good change of pace from Facebook and Twitter. I think it will creep up on everybody in near future and trust that Google know what it is talking about.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3004448/plus-one-proof-google-plus-will-prevail

Quick Tips on LinkedIn

I read an article on Forbes regarding LinkedIn and what not to do for your professional career when optimizing a LinkedIn account. The article is titled "8 Mistakes You Should Never Make On LinkedIn" and it goes into some major mistakes people make on LinkedIn that hinder them getting hired. A couple examples of the 8 mistakes are things like not using a profile picture or using an unprofessional picture of other things but yourself, neglecting privacy settings, not having a summary, and eliminating past jobs or volunteer work. In my opinion all of these are good tips for every student coming out of college to be aware of when creating a profile and showing it off to future employers. I suggest following each one of these as it will help you look professional and ready to get that job you have always wanted.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/learnvest/2013/03/04/8-mistakes-you-should-never-make-on-linkedin/2/

Free Advertisement!

In an article title "5 marketing benefits of using YouTube" It gives us 5 good reasons why companies should be using YouTube to market their products, get customers in the door, and keep them coming back. The article goes on to list the 5 benefits: Ability to reach a global market, informative can be better than humorous, increase your rank in Google's search engine, it's free!, and people can subscribe or follow your channel. I personally think the best benefit is that YouTube is free advertisement! In today's business world you can't get much for free so take the opportunity you have to create a free way to advertise your product or business on YouTube. It doesn't hurt to see what customers you can gain by utilizing the use of this social media site. All of these benefits are important, but nobody can go wrong with free! Here is a Walgreen's commercial that not only grabs viewers attention on TV, but when posted to their YouTube channel, created a buzz in the comments section and even in sales.

http://blog.marginmedia.com.au/Our-Blog/bid/78075/5-Marketing-Benefits-of-Using-YouTube

Why Investors Love Pinterest So Much

This article I read is about investors pouring their money into the new social media site Pinterest. Last year investors gave the site another 250 million dollars for future enhancements of Pinterest which now stand at 3.8 billion dollars. The article is called Why Investors Love Pinterest So Much and it explains how Pinterest hasn't made money yet, but investors believe that it will be something international for the future of social media. Pinterest is currently working on step two to try and bridge the gap between getting users and making profit. In my opinion, Pinterest could become a cash cow with advertisements and selling products on their site. This site is already extremely popular and growing internationally. There is currently 10 countries where Pinterest is currently launched and operating. This will expand in the future and change the way buyers purchase items online.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-24/why-investors-love-pinterest-so-much

Vine: Why 6 seconds?

In an article I recently read about vine it explains why vine allows only six seconds and tells how they came to that conclusion. The article is called "How Vine Settled On 6 Seconds". Co founder of Vine Dom Hofmann explains the reasoning for only having Vine videos run for six seconds. They went through some research and did some testing on some other times, ten, nine, seven, and even five seconds to see what would be the perfect time for a Vine video. Five seconds was too short to get any message across and ten seemed to loose peoples interest. They compared their app to Instagrams new video feature where you can post a fifteen second video... Vine didn't like it, it looses people interest and humans attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. Dom claims it just kind of came to him: six seconds would be the perfect amount of time to capture peoples attention and keep it there for six seconds per video. Dom also noticed that once the clips ended it was too abrupt and didn't feel right, so they made all the video clips loop to pose an anti-climatic ending to the videos. I have a Vine account, but I enjoy watching other users post videos instead of making my own. It is a perfect time for a video to keep my attention. Long videos do not interest me and Vines are just long enough to keep me entertained. I will continue to watch vines on Facebook and Twitter because they keep me interested. Six seconds is perfect for this social media account.

Click Here for Video: <iframe class="vine-embed" src="https://vine.co/v/hB2FwpJYtMa/embed/simple" width="600" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe><script async src="//platform.vine.co/static/scripts/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/08/20/213846816/how-vine-settled-on-6-seconds

How Does Instagram Make Us Feel?

I hate taking pictures. I am not a photogenic person and Instagram has not been my go to social media site and there's good reason for that. Instagram feeds off of people who take pictures of themselves and how good they look that day, but how is it really making users feel about their appearance? In an article I read titled "Selfie Loathing: Here's Why Instagram is Even More Depressing Than Facebook" It talks about users self esteem and how Instagram is about making their pictures a contest. This can result in users feeling depressed or lonely about themselves. If no one likes it or views it, we might feel ugly or not worth our friends time. It shows the self esteem issue of Instagram and how it can send users into depression and even touches on stalkerish tendencies.

I asked myself how this can relate to business and I found an interesting view. If a company sells beauty products then having an Instagram account could be a money making machine! Feeding on low self esteem individuals can be a source of a great marketing opportunity. For instance, you have teenage girls who seem to have a really big issue with how they look each morning and when posting a picture to Instagram they want to feel attractive for all to see. Companies can really profit if they hon in on these Instagram accounts.

As for me and my lack of interest in Instagram, my opinion won't change. I do not like pictures and I won't post very many to the internet for all to see, but if I am a company I am going to use this social media tool to my advantage and try and appeal to those for feel unappealing.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/07/instagram_and_self_esteem_why_the_photo_sharing_network_is_even_more_depressing.html

Discovering a Deeper Side to Twitter

Twitter has become an extremely popular way to communicate via social media, but there is a stronger connection for each tweet that has ever been sent. In an article published by Paul Ford on the Bloomberg Businessweek website shows a deeper connection most users don't realize. The article is titled "The Hidden Technology That Makes Twitter Huge" and it goes on to talk about how each tweet has the power and capability to be seen everywhere on the internet around the world. The article talks about how each tweet will always be attached with a creator, a date and time and the contents and other things attached to it in 140 characters.. thats powerful. They never go away even if the self life of a tweet is an hour, they can always be dug up and will always be somewhere for access. In my opinion whether or not we want our tweets out to everyone in the world.. they will be. Businesses have power to help and to save their business by using social media and twitter is on the rise. For businesses this power that each tweet has is a great thing because to serves as a powerful tool for customers to use and in return businesses will profit. For personal users, watch out! if every tweet you send is accessible to absolutely everyone, business owners can surely get ahold of it. Getting a job will be tough if you don't have clean tweets even if you posted it years ago. Businesses will continue to profit from Twitter, so if your business doesn't have an account, you better get one quick or crumble and go out of business. This new social media craze is not a fad, it is here to stay forever.




http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-07/the-hidden-technology-that-makes-twitter-huge

Facebook and the Daunting Like Button

I read an interesting article about Facebook and the use of the like button. This article is titled "I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days. Here's What It Did to Me." This article was about the writer deciding to do an experiment in which he liked everything that showed up on his news feed for 48 hours, whether he actually liked the post or not he liked everything on his news feed. The article goes on to say that Facebook uses an algorithm in what you will see next on your news feed. It takes the likes and the page views of others to calculate which statuses you will see most of. It touches on business trying to advertise their products with filling your feed if you like their company. It mentions the ability to manipulate how the person posting the status reacts to how many likes he/she gets from their post. Most of us feel a sense of power and popularity the more likes we get on a status. It can boost anyones self esteem and motivates us to post more and more to get more likes on our page. An even more interesting side of social media is the ads and relateds pages (If you like Farmville, you will get ads and more posts about Farmville). Soon enough your page gets filled with ads, political garbage and the celebrity life. Articles will fill your feed instead of your friends posts. I found this to be a relating topic to all Facebook users in today's society. Why do we press the Like Button and what does it do for the person posting the status? I think every user has posts they want everyone to like and when the majority of people like it.. We get a sense of pride and a boost of confidence, but what is it about social media that pumps everybody up? When did our society start caring more about likes on Facebook than actually having good debates and conversations with friends in person? Ads will forever be apart of our lives and all over social media, but I encourage you Facebook addicts to stop liking things for the sake of pressing a button, but rather show your interest towards others with a more deeper personal connection.



http://www.wired.com/2014/08/i-liked-everything-i-saw-on-facebook-for-two-days-heres-what-it-did-to-me/

About Me

Hi my name is Aaron Soltow and this is my blog. I currently attend Southwest Baptist University and will be graduating in December, 2014 with a degree in Business Management. I am currently engaged  and will be getting married in July, 2015. A few things to know about me is that I love baseball and I watch the St. Louis Cardinals every game when I am able to. I like all kinds of sports, but baseball is my favorite one. I like to watch shows and movies when I have the time but I refuse to buy a Netflix account because I am cheap and hate spending money!