What’s the flipside?

After sitting in all the CA1 presentations, I realised a trend- social media is a big deal in nearly all industries, be it publishing, advertising, books, learning, etc.

I think that this trend just goes to show that people now want to be connected. I think social media is the in thing as it has transformed everything into social media dialogues. Rather than the industry communicating merely and directly to the audience, the communication has become one-to-many.

But like Ms Kwa asked- what is the flip side if everything were to become social and online? Would traditional methods become obsolete? Will people become so accustomed to the interaction that it becomes ‘boring’ and ‘old’ after a period of time?

Personally, I think that the key is in knowing the right balance. There should be a line drawn between everything being online and everything being offline.

However, as Ms Kwa mentioned in today’s lecture, sometimes you just have to take the risk. Who knows when and how it would pay off.

Take for example NTUC Fairprice. They were the first of their kind to jump on the social media band wagon with the setting up of its Facebook page and it has paid off for them. Just within a period of 3 months, they have been able to get almost 10,000 fans. They also know how they are able to utilise Facebook yet maintaning their identity.

All in all, I think that the use of social media is here to stay for a long time and key player should be able to use social media to their advantage.

-one love-

where is learning headed?

We all go through the process of learning; be it our parents, grandparents, so on and so forth. But I never realised how learning has changed from my parent’s time to mine and how it is still changing for the generation to come. Ask any teacher and you will get the same reply – Learning is making the move online (I actually posed this question to my parents, both of whom are teachers and have been teachers since the 80’s).

	PAST	PRESENT	FUTURE
Source	–       Books-       Teachers	–      Books-      Teachers –      Online	–          Same as future but with more concentration on online resources
Information Flow	– one-to-many	–  one-to-many-  many-to-many	–  mostly many-to- many
Environment	–       Physical classroom	–      Classroom-      Virtual realm	–          Both in classroom as well as online realm

 

Besides the above, there is also the trend of the integration of social media into learning. Take for example our very own NCT module. We are encourage to tweet and what I like about this is that fellow course mates can share what they have found online and usually the links are quite interesting.

However, I realize that even if the future of learning is online, we should not disregard the traditional methods as well. As was once Twitted, ‘it’s traditional because it works’. Also, students would need to be taught the discipline needed to make online learning a success.

-One Love-

bridging the gap.

so a group of us went over to priya’s house for deepavalli some time back and we were introduced to one of her friend’s who was deaf. Honestly, we wouldnt have realised she was not like us had priya not told us. Then we all started wondering- how did priya communicate with her friend? we later found out that her friend could read lips.

but this got me thinking-was there any other way to communicate with such people? then i found this article (http://www.forbes.com/2005/10/20/future-communications-gadgets-cx_gd_1024feat_comm05_ls.html) about a company in US which has developed a device to enable easier communication between the hearing and the deaf. The device is able to convert speech into sigh language. Personally, i applaud this company for coming up with such a device that can help such people bridge the existing communication divide between us and them.

pat law guest lecture for nct 041109=)

so today we had a guest speaker,pat law from ogilvy 360 deg, during nct lecture. 1st impression when she entered the lt – she’s so cool! so anyways she was here to talk about social media(sm). We also learnt the framework behind Ogilvy 360deg which is “listen plan engage amp optimize.”

the first thing i learnt was that understandin concept of sm is better than knowing the theory behind the concept. This makes sense to me as I believe that even if you know the theory, you don’t necessarily know how to use it. Interesting fact: 3 out of 5 people in Singapore consume social media and Singapore is ahead of other asian countries in terms of how much we use sm.

Secondly, sm is a tool not a solution-a misperception by some. Rather, the use of sm may lead to the solution such as when it is used as a channel.

What I liked about the lecture today was that we learnt how to use online tools that we may have heard of but never used. Such tools inc google alerts and keywords we should exclude when it comes to communicating online like free and exclusive, Honestly, i never realised that we should not use terms like free and exclusive unless you really wanted your things to end up in ppl’s spam box.

We also learnt the importance of listening- the 1st stage in the Ogilvy framework. We should listen so that we dont assume we know everything being said about your brand, for eg., online. A good time frame to listen would be 2-3 weeks.

So where do you go to listen? Well, pat law shared with us useful links that we could consider such as technorati.com,ping.sg,blogarama.com,google blogsearch ,which you countersearch with icerocket so as to make sure of accuracy.

One stop shops would include-daymix, which provides an overview of online content searched for, whostalkin, which allows penetration of plurk..frenster,social mention We can also track forums witboard tracker..Why should we track forums? Well this is because reviews tend to be done on forums so dont disregard forums!

So how can we listen on twitter? Well we can make use of wefollow,mrtweet,twellow, which is like the yellow pages),twitterfall,hashtag,monitter, which allows to compare with other ppl…

To sum it all up, todays lecture was really enlightening and fun..

p.S thanks ping for all the snacks=)

Facebook 101

I’m sure that many, if not everyone, would have set up a Facebook account. Even if you haven’t, I’m sure that you may be on other networking sites such as Friendster, Twitter… But do you really know how to utilize Facebook to its: 1.maximum and 2.wisely?

Like Ms Kwa has mentioned, potential employers do want to know more about the person they are considering hiring. What better way to find out than to do a search on Google to see if your name pops out. NOTE: even if your profile is privatized, they can still see your profile picture. First impressions can be formed merely from your picture even before you are hired on so here’s the FIRST TIP: Do ensure that your profile picture is decent.

Also, I read online that you should spice up your interests as Facebook can be a way to brand yourself. .To quote Ris Low-“It’s all about me”. So SECOND TIP:  Get more descriptive about your interest rather than being like everyone else.

As for using Facebook for business, certain elements such as a Facebook page or group can be used. For making a Facebook page, MAKE SURE YOU ARE THE OFFICIAL REPRESENTATIVE. What is cool about having a Facebook page is that one can monitor the page using ‘Insights’. As for a group, the good thing about it is that you can restrict people who wish to join.

-One Love-

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