Posts Tagged ‘facebook’
Social Media Cupcakes
Posted on: August 28, 2009
I have a presentation for my company tomorrow on Social Media. It’s a Lunch and Learn, so I figured I could at least provide dessert. Behold, social media cupcakes!
I came up with this idea initially and wasn’t sure if it would actually come to fruition. Some may call it being bored, but I call it being inspired by awesome social media entrepreneurs like @foiledcupcakes. I decided to spend my Thursday night baking up a storm and creating banana and chocolate fudge cupcakes topped with Twitter, Facebook and Yammer icons made out of Lorna Doone cookies and icing.
I decided to share my masterpiece with you – enjoy!
Ingredients: Cake Mix + ingredients, white icing, Lorna Doone 100 Cal packs, blue cookie icing.
How-to: Bake the cupcakes per the cake mix package directions. Put blue cookie icing on the backside of the mini Lorna Doone Cookies and let set. Put a spoonful of white icing into a ziplock bag and poke a very small hole in one of the corners. I practiced creating the letters for a while before I actually started to pipe them onto the cookies. Lastly, I iced each cupcake with the white icing and put an iced cookie on top. Voila!
The Ingredients
Creating the Icons
Assembling the Cupcakes
Yummy Social Media Cupcakes!
This post appeared on VitaminIMC – Medill IMC’s student-run blog.
While some companies are slowly dipping their toes into the social media waters, Whole Foods Market has dove in! Over the past eight months, Whole Foods’ social media presence has grown from corporate accounts to over 120 Twitter profiles and 97 Facebook pages.
Whole Foods is often cited as a social media success, but the details of its amazing tactics are what make them unique – taking a completely decentralized approach to their social media strategy. They have taken the close interaction between Whole Foods employees and consumers, along with team member empowerment and applied it to their social media strategy to create local relationships. This grassroots approach has fueled the explosion of their social media presence while supporting their corporate values system.
Their social media accounts range from umbrella corporate accounts to individual accounts for store locations. There are accounts that cover the many locations for metro-areas (think @WholeFoodsCHI) and topic-specific accounts discussing such topics as wine or cheese. They even created a social media presence around their participation at Bonnaroo.
Some may criticize such a fragmented approach to their social media, but Whole Foods learned from their experiences with their corporate social media accounts and expanded to fit their customer’s needs. They started to see that customers had very specific questions about local stores and quickly adapted, adding social media into the local marketing mix. Liz Bootz, the marketing team leader for Whole Foods Oakland, provides support to customers on Twitter. “One of the things I like best about being on Twitter is if a customer has a question, I can tweet the answer to them and provide that information to 200 other customers at the same time,” she said.
Other companies should follow their lead and apply unique company culture traits to social media, taking a personal and on-brand approach to their online presence. Their responsive, customer-centric method has seemed to work judging by the numbers. Whole Foods Twitter accounts recently reached one million followers.
Nike+ is on Facebook & Twitter
Posted on: June 25, 2009
- In: Randoms
- 9 Comments
If you’ve read my previous post, I’m a big fan of Nike+ and the way Nike is creating a social community with their website. It gets better: I found Nike+ applications for Twitter and Facebook!
I’ve been using the Twitter application for some time now. It’s really easy to set up. Just visit www.twiike.com and follow the instructions. Every time you sync a run, it will automatically generate a Twitter post for you. It also uses the #nikeplus hashtag, so you can find other people who are syncing runs and connect with them.
Nike+ status update on Twitter
I just set up the Facebook application, so I haven’t had as much experience with it. I turned off my status updates, but it still posts my run to my profile. Search for ‘Nike+ Running Monitor’ within facebook, and follow the instruction on adding the application. This process has a few more steps and is a little more confusing that the Twitter app, but it’s still worth the effort.
Nike+ update on Facebook
Since my Twitter and Facebook profiles have pretty different audiences, I’m excited to see the new feedback I’ll be receiving. This adds to the community of runners nicely. Now, not only can Nike+ users see how my running is going on the Nike website, but I constantly have people offering encouragement and kudos. It really adds to my accountability to run, too.
Think of Nike+ social networks like the angel on your shoulder saying “everyone’s going to know if you stop running, keep it up!”
Stranger Danger
Posted on: April 2, 2009
I decided to check myself out on the Internet. Now that I’m on all these networks, I decided I should see what ‘Strangers’ can see about me. I’ve been pretty careful in the past, and in recent times have done a decent job of monitoring the things I post… but after my Tweet showing up for my director, and getting a notification that my exboyfriend was ‘following’ me on Twitter, I think I better re-examine!
When I Googled my Full Name, the first 3 results that came up were for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
1) Facebook didn’t have my picture, but it did have the groups I’m in and what I’m a fan of, which includes my school and organizations I’m in. I went into my account settings and changed everything so that JUST my friends could see everything, and in ‘Search result content’, unchecked ‘My friends list’ and ‘Pages I am a fan of’. Now you really can’t see anything personal about me at all, just that I’m on Facebook. Switching into ‘Image’ search, there was an image of me attributed to facebook, so hopefully that has been changed now that I fixed my settings.
2) LinkedIn had my current workplace and school, but since it’s for professional networking, I think that’s ok. Just for the heck of it, I decided to check out the account settings and see what my options are. There are a few options to limit what is shown, but off the company you currently work for shown at the top of the screen is not possible. Little Scary…
3) Twitter was the freakiest – it showed a message I sent someone telling them where I work. Creepy. More account settings… ‘Protect My Updates’ needed to be checked.
Other things that showed up were my school records and running times, messages I had posted to my school’s blog using my full name, and a whole bunch of information that wasn’t me (nothing compromising, PHEW)
So the moral of the story is: I thought I was being careful, but it’s still pretty easy to find personal things out about ya, so be cautious!
Update 1: Unprotected my Twitter account updates after a coworker told me he felt creepy having to ask to follow me. Hopefully they will enable more variations to their security in the future.
Update 2: Removed the screen shot images on this post after I was told it was a little hypocritical to post about security then show my information on the shots… point taken!
An Experiment in Social Networking
Posted on: March 20, 2009
Do you Tweet? Yelp? Fbook? Myspace?
Well, my friends, I do. And I’m going to do it in only an hour per night. Sounds crazy, right? Yep, I agree.
After being a member of Facebook and Myspace for about 5 years now, I want to see what all the hype is about these other sites. I joined Twitter last night (brandiheinz, follow me!) and Yelp today (not sure how you can add me yet, I’ll get back to ya on that one). I never saw the point of wasting all my time on these sites; so, my goal is to spend 1 hour total each night making updates in addition to this blog. Seems pretty impossible, but I’m confident. I’ll keep you updated!
Oh yeah, any suggestions for other sites I should be joining?
