Social Media Helping Small Businesses

Social Media is now part of every Marketing strategy and it has become a major part of it because of its cost-effective use. To actually take benefits out of the use of Social Media, small businesses have to know how to do it right. It’s not only having a fan page with a certain number of fans. It takes time to manage a Social Media Web Page. For example, a restaurant can send messages to its Facebook’s page fans around 11 a.m. describing the lunch specials. It would be a good way to connect with customers and promote the business at the same time. There is also one very important thing about using Social Media for business promotion: Know when it’s too much. Some businesses send too many messages or too many event invitations through Facebook or Twitter. These ones are crossing the line from being pleasant to being annoying.

John Jantsch, sponsored by Microsoft Office Live Small Business, created a guide to be used by small business on how to use social media.  When explaining what is social media in the context of the marketing strategy, the guide’s author compared the 4 Ps of Marketing where “you simply created a product, figured out how to price it, got it placed in the market, and promoted the heck out it” to the new approach to marketing, done by social media, which are the 4 Cs of Marketing : “Tons of relevant, education-based, and perhaps user generated content that is filtered, aggregated, and delivered in a context that makes it useful for people who are starving to make connections with people, products, and brands they can build a community around. Content + Context + Connection + Community = Social Media Marketing. “

Knowing how to use it well, Social Media can and already is helping small businesses with little or no budget for Marketing to promote its services and/or products. 

Measuring the effectiveness of Ads with the help of Neuromarketing

After reading professor’s Miyazaki’s blog post of the week I realized how many studies are out there about Neuromarketing.

The best thing about Neuromarketing is the possibility to measure the effectiveness of the advertisement proposed by a company. Marketers have been dreaming about the day when they would be able to measure  the ROI (Return on Investment) accurately when it comes to money spent on advertising. This day might have come or might be not too far from coming at this point. Before Neuromarketing, marketers had to rely on reports wrote by consumers about how they felt in relation to advertisements and what was their actions after observing the ads as well. When there is too much money involved, marketers cannot rely on these reports anymore. Now, there is a way to measure those actions in a much more accurate way: Studying and analyzing what happens inside of the consumers’ brains when they are being exposed to the ads. 

Is Social Media keeping teenagers from buying cars? I don't think so...

I have to disagree with Prof. Miyazaki’s blog post this week. I do not believe that the reason for the decrease of teenagers buying cars is Internet and social media use. Even thought teenagers spend a lot of time in front of the computer meeting new people and chatting with their friends, they still drive a car to go to school and go shopping for example. They might meet a lot of people online but they still meet with them in person to hang out. Just pay attention to the number of teenagers groups at the shopping malls, fast food restaurants and public parks during the weekends.

I did some research on car ownership by teenagers and I found out that some of the reasons for the decrease in the number of teenagers buying cars are lack of money for gas and insurance and the tougher restrictions on teen drivers. Due to the high unemployment rate, some teenagers who used to work before cannot find a job, and that is the reason why they don’t have access to the money to buy a car. 

Teenagers can spend a lot of time in front of their computers but they still need a car to get to the places they want and need to go such as work, school, shopping mall and friend's house.

Online governing is already changing the world

In response to Prof. Miyazaki's blog entry for this week, I would say that online governing is already changing the world. Many years ago, it would've been impossible to even consider the possibility of filling taxes online, for example. Something that most people look for professional help in order to do, can be done online, without an expert's help, simply by clicking on the right bottoms once at a time. 
In regards to the privacy of the constituent information, I did some research and also, from all I've read about the subject, I can say that up to this point, the government hasn't done much because laws concerning online privacy are still being developed. When providing personal information on the Internet, one has to be careful on how to disclose that information and also on where to provide that information to. Be aware that if a U.S. law is broken in another country, there is not much to be done since there is no international regulations for online users.
In regards to the efficient processing of the vast amount of information collected, stored, and disseminated online, I should say that I believe the government has absolute total control over all the information around its activities. There are many softwares being developed to help the government control and store information.
I don't think that the lack of face-to-face interaction between government agencies and the people they serve will affect the results of government actions because not everything can be done online. The most important and delicate situations will still be taken care of through on-site locations. 
Even with all the development of online government services, the main characteristic that government agencies share with its tax-payers will still be respect, and that was not built through online services.