Company's that use social media

1. Aztec Brewing Company
www.aztecbrewery.com
Uses: Facebook, Twitter, Google + (Why isn't there a link to our Yelp profile?)

2. Chapman University
www.chapman.edu
Uses: Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, iTunes U, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google +

3. Encinitas Surfboards
www.encinitassurfboards.com
Uses: Facebook, Tumblr, Yelp, Twitter, Google +

4. Yoga Six
www.yogasix.com
Uses: Facebook, Twitter, YouTue, Pinterest, LinkedIn

5. The International Positive Psychology Association
www.ippanetwork.org
Uses: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Communicating with Businesses

So I was struggling all of last week to think about a time when I have used social media to try to communicate with a business. I think that it's safe to say that we have all had a point at which it's been difficult to make contact through traditional methods... the perfect example being the DMV. One experience that I would like to share where I had difficulty was when I was trying to figure out how to keep one of my student loans from defaulting because I had no record of statements telling me that my loan was due. I had taken a semester away from school and was apparently supposed to do something called "loan exit counseling", which had never been done. I had a terrible time trying to figure out how to fix the problem because the finance aide office was telling me one thing and the company with whom the loan was through was telling me another. Not to mention the fact that the loan company was based on the east coast so their hours were different and it was difficult to get through to a live person. It took 3 days of being on the phone, keeping records of exactly what had been done with each new agent that I talked to and cross referencing with my school. I'm not sure how this could have been better handled by social media because it was between the two institutions (Chapman and the loan company), but I know that I found myself frustrated by the long wait times, changing agents I talked to, and inauthentic script that I was lead through.

     Now onto my good experience. Over the weekend I noticed that my internet was not working. I immediately dreaded having to go through the process of finding a contact number for AT&T customer service and expected that it would take me a good half an hour to an hour to just get the problem sorted out. Luckily, there was a troubleshooting page that helped to diagnose the problem and when resetting the proxies and then the router didn't work, it offered to allow me to "Live Chat" with an agent. I should mention that the only reason that this worked is because I was able to use my next door neighbor's working internet to communicate while running back to my own apartment to check on things. I'm not sure that it would have worked over my iphone. The representative was obviously a live person and even though I was definitely being taken through a script, they were able to determine that I would need to be sent a new router and answered all of my questions. Even now as I write this, I wonder if their search engines will see that I used the company name and locate this unofficial review. Powerful stuff. I liked the immediacy of the live chat and I also liked that the troubleshooting data was already in front of the agent when we began talking. I still think AT&T is overpriced and wonder if the "self install" of my router is going to require me to have another chat session, but at least the issue is in the process now of being resolved. I can see how feeling heard and responding to problems quickly is important.

Personal vs Professional

So I realize that this is coming in a little late, but I still wanted to make sure that I made the post regarding which social media platforms seem geared more towards professional and personal use. Well obviously LinkedIn is geared more towards professional use, but I think that it is probably more useful for personal rather than corporate use. That is, companies represent themselves on LinkedIn as well as individuals, but from what I have seen, it seems like LinkedIn is more useful for personal networking than for connecting with businesses. Facebook started for more personal use, but is now used by lots of companies. I think that what Zuckerberg calls "the open web" where just about anything online can be "like" or commented on using ones Facebook account is a super powerful tool for businesses. When it comes to Twitter, I think it is most powerful for professional use. Sure, people use it to power blast their opinions and daily whereabouts, but frankly, I find that to be narcissistic. I mean, who cares? Still, I have used Twitter and Tweetdeck for news and like that it brings stuff that I am interested in and subscribe to to me.

      There are many other social media platforms out there, but instead of laboriously working through every one that I can think of, I will say this: I think that that platforms in general facilitate group conversations and discussions. Those platforms that are more based around individual profiles and people seem to be more geared towards personal use. Those that after more based around products, social issues seem more geared towards professional use.

Choosing a Template

     Greetings fellow bloggers! My name is Sarah Kawai and I am taking a class on using social media for business. This will be my first real experience with keeping a blog and hopefully will outline the things that I learn along the way. Our first assignment was to choose a template and explain our rational for our choice, so here goes....

      For now there isn't too much rhyme or reason for my choice of blog template. Since I'm not sure what purpose my blog will serve yet, I am hesitant to make it too stylized or complicated lest I decide to change it again once my vision becomes more clear. Therefore, I just used the "simple" template and chose the teal blue color spectrum because I personally like the color teal and I felt that it gave the blog a clean and easy to read feel. I feel like colors along the blue scale as well as simple font like "Arial"are reminiscent of Facebook's theme which I have always admired. I am holding off on adding any personal pictures besides the one that I am using for my profile, again, because I am not sure what goal I have for this blog yet.

     I am considering using this blog for a trial run of a blog for the Western United States Academic Community of the International Positive Psychology Association that I am helping to get started right now though. If that is the case, I will likely look into using our logo and a color scheme that is reminiscent of the one used by IPPA's (International Positive Psychology Assoc) main site. In that case, I will want to develop a more professional, academic feel for the blog, but how to do that, I am still not sure.

     From our reading I understand that it is important to let your own personality and authenticity come through. As I continue to post and work on this thing, I expect to find ways to incorporate more of my own flair, but in general I like to err on the conservative side when it comes to online stuff. I worry that you can always put things up, but never take them down. What do you think?