Blogging, fun or business?

I think blogs are used for many purposes. Generally people just feel to share their thoughts in public so they find blogging being the best option. There are blogs used just for fun, where the authors are posting some interesting thoughts, then are blogs where authors tries to gather audience so that later they can add advertisings and make money. But then there are companies who doing almost the same. And because blogs are easy to manage, they advertises and promote own business. So blogging can be a shorter way of selling products.
The most viewed blog in May 2015 according to eBiz MBA was Huffington Post with over 110 millions views. What makes this blog so popular, why so many views and does the author makes money from this? Huffinton post blog is so popular and has a lot of audience, because of sweetie information which many want to taste. It is a source with a lot of information about many domains and is generating and up to date every day. For this blog are working over 100 people which are gathering all this information and put it in one place. Huffington post blog makes money from advertisements and sells also some stuff.
There are all kind of blogs good and bads, generally bads are those who doesn´t have an experienced manager. To manage a good blog, needs own time and concentration. Some doesn´t have so much time or enough skills, so the blog looks like it looks. One example of bad blog could be Worst SEO blog.
Wikipedia is one of the most popular “what about it” website, from where most of companies are using it for promoting their own business. Many companies or corporation choose voluntarily to write up in Wikipedia so, that they will be more viewed and known by people.
Wikipedia and blogs could be middle ways of promoting others.

Gabriel Marinica

 

AM Blogs and wikis - wow!

 1. First of all, I want to emphasize how interesting it was for me to learn that companies actually use blogging as a tool in a way or another. When thinking about blogging, most of the people start thinking about private persons blogging or celebrities etc. 

My focus was on two blogs: the blogs of Starbucks and IBM. The latter one (IBM) is the one which i consider to be the bad example of company blogging. There are too many people (IBMers = people who use IBM using their own name) posting in their own individual blogs which are all combined in one base. But the idea is still confusing in a way: the company itself remains in a shadow since they highlighted that thoughts presented in blogs are not necessarily representing IBM's views. But in positive the personal thoughts of each blogger becomes clear for readers = the people who are interested in same things (after every blog there is a list about things what the blogger is posting about, so that you can choose if you want to read it or not). However, when checking few blogs, it shows that there are many bloggers who do their posts very occasionally (even every 6 months) and the posts are quite short, so the quality is lacking. 

On the other hand, Starbucks shows us the good kind of company blogging. They (Starbucks) focus on innovations giving a base where average people can share their ideas or view other peoples ideas. It is also possible to see how the ideas presented are actually been used and became reality in the "ideas in action" -section. In this way, Starbucks is using blogging as a tool for new product development and engagement. In the same time, they are receiving feedback and highlighting Starbucks' products. The blog is for especially customers (who can use a username when commenting) and there are two employees (with their first names, introduced) who are answering questions and giving feedback.

2. I chose to get familiar with the blog of Anna Vanhanen - Mungolife. It is a number one blog in the list of top blogs by iltasanomat. The blog is the sixth most read blog and it has over 4 000 subscribers and about 6 400 readers per week. I believe her blog is successful because of the fact that every girl and women can find something interested in it: there sections about fashion, food, travel, beauty.. It is clear that there are product placements and also a lot of ads in the blog. So I would guess that she is making something out of it! She is actually coming with the idea to create a website where se could rent her clothes and expand it so other bloggers could do that there too.. So she has the ambition to doing business in this way at least! I did comment on her latest post but it's "awaiting approval". I'm not sure what that means.. And i actually tried to send her email and ask some further questions about her blogging, but her email mentioned in the blog seems to be the wrong one since the email can't be send.. :( My thought on her blogging though, based on her posts, is that she started blogging because of the fact that she's really ambitious about fashion and is a good writer so maybe she just wanted to share this as a hobby with other same kind of people. 

3. I decided to comment on gefilus-article in wikipedia. I think wikipedia is a great in a sense of democracy and freedom of speech but as a base for information it usually lacks, of course depending on the case. When checking the gefilus-article there seems to be quite reliable information due to the source mentioned in the end. Actually by that you can see if you can trust that the article or not. However, it is difficult for me to say how strong the fact is since I'm not a specialist in that field. If you want to be pessimist enough you can also question if Valio is putting some info there for its own benefit because Valio was introduced quite strongly. 

- Azma :) 

Blogs and Wikis

This post is about blogs and wikis. Our task was to analyse one good and one bad blog, introduce a successful blogger and find an article in Wikipedia that is not so neutral.

Company blogs: a good and a bad example

I chose Taloudessa.fi as an example of a good blog. It is a blog of Finnish bank and insurance company OP-Pohjola and it was actually chosen as the winner of “Finland’s best corporate blog 2014”. I haven’t ever read it before even though I’m OP’s customer but when I read quite many posts and browsed it I understood why it has been chosen as the winner. Taloudessa.fi has many bloggers, overall 31, and the bloggers work in digital marketing, sales, management, investment etc. so most of them actually work for OP. There is also a brief presentation of all of them. I think that the blog is for both private and corporate customers. Probably because of so many bloggers the blog updates really often which is good and keeps up the interest. I think one of the best sides of this blog is that it is not all about marketing their company. Of course they do write about their services sometimes but there are for example many posts about leadership and wellbeing in work. Quite many posts have also comments and bloggers have also answered to them which also makes it a good blog.

It was surprisingly hard to find a bad company blog. I chose to analyse the blog of a travel agency called Lomamatkat. I wouldn’t say this is a bad blog but to get better they should do some improvements. Bloggers who write the posts are travel agency’s guides who present and write about their current location. When reading the blog I felt like this blog was all about marketing their holiday destinations and different trips. It would’ve been nice to also read for example about travelling overall, tips how to pack or choose your destination etc. The posts haven’t got many comments either so I think the posts could be more conversational. I have to admit that reading this blog made me feel travel fever so on the other hand I guess their goal is fulfilled but I won’t still end up as their regular follower.  

Successful blogger

I chose this blog called L.A.Madde. This is one of the blogs that I like to read because I like traveling blogs and she lives in Los Angeles and works as a flight attendant and a photographer. She was previously a blogger for Finnish Cosmopolitan and now she is an independent blogger so my assumption is that the makes money with the blog. I think she’s successful because she lives in California so everything she does is different than we have here in Finland and she also takes beautiful photos.

I asked from her in one of her posts why she’s blogging but she hasn’t answered yet. I will be back if she answers it.

Doing business in Wikipedia

I think I found a good example of using Wikipedia in marketing. The article of Finnish company called Myllyn Paras tells a lot of basic company info but when you read especially the products-part the text sounds a bit like an advertisement and not so neutral. The text looks like it is taken straight from the company’s website but I of course don’t really know who has written it.

I use Wikipedia a lot to get basic information about something but I wouldn’t use it as the only source if I needed reliable facts.

- JennaEAD first > http://www.slideshare.net/…/8-steps-to-starting-a-company-b…> http://www.slideshare.net/…/ways-to-keep-your-company-blog-e! What's the purpose of the blog? Is it used for informing or marketing or for something else? For whom? Who in the company is creating the content? Does the person use his / her own name or professional identity?All these facts and many more are usually discussed when the company is making a plan for a blog / wiki.
2. Find a successful blogger who has lots of readers and followers and receives lots of comments. Why it's successful? Does the blogger make serious money with the blog? Comment the bloggers posts and ask why he / she is blogging.Remember to link this blog to your course b3. Doing business in WikipediaMany say that Wikipedia is a great project but not a good source of information becuase it includes so much material which is not neutral or has marketing purpose.You can either comment the example I have chosen http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gefilusind your own example of a text that introduces a company / brand / product. Rem

My Use Of Social Media

I will tell a bit about my social media history first.
I´ve started using social media through mIRC program when I was about 12-13 years old. mIRC was an amazing innovation that came on the public PC´s desktops near some old games, My Computer and Recycle Bin. I learned how to use it so I begin to chat with people. I was so amazed what an easy way to get to know new people. So little by little the technology has advanced and appeared more social web programs like Yahoo Messenger, hi5…, but my roots in social media are starting from mIRC.
Nowadays I´m using social web pages like Facebook and LinkedIn, and applications like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. I will try to talk about Facebook and to share some reasons why I do what I do.
Facebook I use since 2007 and in that time I was quite active till 2011. I´ve uploaded many pictures and videos and I´ve posted and comment a lot. I´ve started to be more and more interested in what people uploads and shares. There has started a “competition” who gets more Likes to own pictures and I had amazing fillings when I got over 100 Likes. I´ve started to upload more pictures and share thoughts that I had or I liked to share. But all of this until an certain point when I realized that some people doesn´t get so many Likes, other are commenting negatively to their pictures and posts, ore someone is publishing some embarrassing picture about some friend. People started to get funny and well known by pushing other people down and tried to get better picture about themselves through laughing about others and making fun. Another problem what I realized was when I saw people publishing pictures from where they travelled, about what they bought or inherited, pictures through which they started to get more proud of themselves. Others seeing this, started to be jealous, to hate and to try to protect their Ego. So because of these problems, I realized that Facebook can be a very good communication and business tool, but also bad on the other way. So I try to have a decent profile which will inspire seriosity and I will try to be careful what I´m posting and uploading, remembering that what I do is almost public. So my use of it is to communicate, to see information about others and keep contact with friends and family.
In my private I use social media to communicate with friends and to see pictures and information about them. In studying life, I use it in almost the same way: to communicate and do school stuff faster.
Usually my social media use takes about two hours a day. During this time I check my profile, I update it if needs, I just look what other posted or I communicate with friends. When I feel that I use too much time (over 30 min) just on looking other posts, I feel so bad because that time is lost (excepting when I learn something). But anyway I try to use my time as productive as possible and to loose less. Social media can easily still time! Try to gain just what you need.

Thanks,
Gabriel

 

Me & Social media

My first touch to social media was also irc-galleria. It was cool before Facebook came and everybody joined there. It was long time before i joined to Facebook because I wasn't active computer user. Then I got own laptop and things changed, I made profile to Facebook. 

I usually read newsfeed more than once a day but I dont't often make own updates or tell about my life. Sometimes I add some photos with my friends or on vacation :) 

I also have Instagram but I don't add  photos there, just look other people photos :D Maybe someday I will be more active also in that social channel.

At the school we also use social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Linked in, blog and littlebit Twitter. In personal life I don't read or upload any blogs. Maybe this course and blog is kickoff to huge blogworld ;) 

- Marika

My first thoughts about using social media

Quite many has started their social media involvement by using Irc-gallery but I never used it when I was a teenager and I felt like I was the only one back then. I didn’t like the idea of putting photos of myself to the internet and that everybody had nicknames. But when Facebook came I was really excited about that and I was actually the first of my closest friends who started using it. Facebook wasn’t first about posting photos and everybody used their own names so I liked it a lot comparing to Irc-gallery. At first I posted quite a lot of messages on my Facebook-page but probably a couple years ago I deleted all my old writings from my teenage times because I didn’t like the idea that for example my co-workers could browse my page years back and see what I’ve written or done years ago.

Nowadays I use social media quite often but only a few different channels. I check my Facebook regularly to keep in touch with my friends in groups and private messages but I don’t post anything on my wall often. Other social media channels that I use are Pinterest, which is really addictive, and YouTube. I also like to read blogs couple times a week. SlideShare is a site that I use sometimes for school projects. There are many slideshows about different subjects especially in English but also in Finnish. I haven’t used social media at my previous work so it’s a bit hard to analyse that.

Using social media consumes a lot of time but it’s hard to estimate how much it actually takes. Sometimes I use Facebook for school projects to help keeping contact with other group members. It’s useful because so many use it many times a day but at the same time it’s a disadvantage because then it is harder to separate private life and school projects or even work things for some people. I sometimes get this feeling that I should answer immediately to messages or people expect me to do that because for example in Facebook you can see if a person has seen your message/post in a group or in an inbox message. I think social media has some disadvantages but on the other hand it enables so much that a lot of things would be more difficult or even impossible without it.

Social Media & Me: A trip down the memory lane and a peek to the future

I’ve been using social media way before I even heard the term for the first time. My first actions that I can find records from are from 2005 when I joined Irc-Gallery (The mixture of horror/nostalgia when visiting that page is truly something else!) but I think the first touch for me might have been through the roleplay community/all the different online kennels where you had an animal to “care”. The roleplay sites were usually built wholly on forums and kennels were websites with guestbooks. The main idea was still same in both types. You wrote to the forum/guestbook and created a story, either alone or with other people. They both were a big thing when I was younger (around 2005) and were a prime example of a site where the users created the content.

My usage was pretty low until 2009 when I was in ninth grade. I joined both Facebook and Youtube and truly found my love of the internet. After that I have found several other sites (Twitter 2009, Blogger 2010, Pinterest 2012, Goodreads 2013, We Heart It 2013, Imgur 2014, Twitch 2015, Tumblr 2015, Instagram 2015…..) but those two still shine the brightest.

Facebook, Instagram and WordPress are so far the only one sites that I use for other things outside my private life. I use Facebook to manage different kinds of school projects and all three in my choir's marketing. I am in the marketing committee and also the main updater of our choir's website. Time wise I spend usually several hours a day on different kinds of social media. The bulk of it comes from Youtube but checking Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all take their fair share as well.

I have always been what the internet calls a “lurker” in social media. I mostly watch and curate (collect and manage) content but don’t really create it. I have never truly felt that I could offer people something that they would find interesting. Only recently have I tried to break that way of thinking and for example joined Instagram anyway.

In the future I would like to break that mindset even further. I want to become more confident in myself and become more active in social media. Part of it is due to the fact that social media is also starting to be an essential element in today’s business world. Social media is nowadays one of the most efficient tools in marketing. It is extremely important to use different social media outlets to communicate with the customers. And if I know how to use social media in my private life it’ll be that much easier to use that knowledge and adapt it when the day comes that I need it in my job. Because I would like it to be a part of my job one day. Social media has found its way to my heart and is only tightening its lovely grip with each post!

-Viivi

Cheers for social media!

Social media... A word we all have a love-hate-realtionship with... It makes us unsocial and glued to our phones and laptops, but it also helps us find old contacts and make us more socialin that way. A tricky little word...

Social media in my personal life is mostly about Facebook and Instagram. These I use everyday and several times per day. I also like to try many new things, but get easily get bored. This means I do have accounts also on Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube etc... But do I use them? No, I don't. I might go in on Twitter now and then to check if it still is as weird as I remembered, (and yes it always is..). Pinterest I go in and check whenever I am bored and looking for new inspiration or dreaming away in beautiful travel photos. I have never added a video on my Youtube account and think I only took the account so I could follow ONE person. But back to the channels I do use. So Facebook, you could almost ask, who does not have Facebook, since everybody do! I usually do not post that much, but as the others have already said, I use it mostly to follow others. And of course to have something to talk about in school with friends ;) Haha! Instagram I post more on than Facebook, but also mostly use it to follow friends, celebrities and for inspiration. And so that I could confuse this social media soup of mine a little bit more, a also have a personal blog which I write in Swedish whenever I have the energy. So in other words, my blog sometimes have few months breaks and then a writing period again! :-D

In work and school life my use of social media is smaller. We do use Facebook for group meetings in our projects and we discuss the tasks there, but that's about it. This would be the first course for me where we actually are assigned to use social media. Also Facebook is an excellent channel to use to reach for example students to answer our surveys for assignment.
In work life I have used social media for posting pictures for marketing and awareness. But as said social media is a great place to reach people, so hopefully in the future we could use it more for work and school related stuff.

So to close my first text of social media I can admit that a part of me is addicted to social media, but I can also put it away where it does not belong (for example, when actually meeting your friends face to face). Also I can control the quality and amount of my posts. ;) But anyhow, hurray for social media! :-D

/Nelli

Social media is my junk food

I started my social media experience when I was nine and my sister made a profile for me in Irc-Galleria. This was the dark ages of the internet. I was first to have facebook account in my whole class, maybe even at my school. Facebook was something new and no one thought much about it then. Wich is funny now when all we can sometimes talk about is facebook.

After facebook came blogs, twitter, instagram, tumblr, pintrest, stumblr, linkedin, youtube… I am a social media junkie. I will try almost anything if it peaces my interest. Most of the time I loose my interest after few times. I have been using Facebook and Instagram daily now. Mostly to watch what others have publisted. I rarely do post anything and it's mostly about my dog. Yeah I am THAT person in your feed. In more serious parts of the social media I take Linkedin very seriously and I want to learn about it more. At this moment I am the guru in my class.

More for learning I use pintrest and youtube. I think that if no one has done how to… video in Youtube the skill is not worth it… Well not really but the tutorials have saved me many times. Pintrest is more for… ideas and to find more interesting things from internet. One social media that I am obsessed although is goodreads. It's a site where you can list what books you have read and it will find you something new to read. Other medias that I have listed I use rarely or not at all. I

At salo Bisnes Akatemia we study and learn in our co-operatives. Mine is co-operative visioona.  We are in linkedin, facebook and instagram. We have our rules that we live by and we use others as a sensor so that there is always two saying: yeah this could work. We use our medias regularly and two of our members in Monday meetings asks if we have any post ideas or they tell us who will make what post and when. We also use facebook for different kinds of events like Eerikinkadun Approt were huge on facebook.

I spend around hour per day in social media. Sometimes more sometimes less. I have a rule that I won't post anything I couldn't show to my mom - she is on instagram so I'm good girl there! I also think that while social media is awesome it's not social to be there while being with your friends. At bar nights or when I am hanging our it's ok to take pictures but I really want to talk to other people while I am with people. I do stalking later…

Sini O

AM How do I use social media?

I haven't actually used social media in my studies. Well yeah - we did this one Finnish course in high school using for instance FB and other web tools. It functioned without any problems so the experience was positive!

Right now I haven't used social media as a tool for studying. So I haven't spent any time with social media for that reason. I would imagine that this kind of working would function especially with long distance courses and it would be very useful way to express thoughts in-between group members.

What comes to my personal life, I use social media especially FB and IG to so to say stalk other people: I find it interesting how people who I used to be close with live right now, what kind of pictures, posts and thoughts they spread through social media. I'm also crazy about  memes (is this a right term in English?) which roll all around the social media: I love to laugh! :D I do add some pictures, posts and thoughts of my own to show other people. But this happens very carefully and in a shy way. Somehow I would feel exposed if my whole life, or daily life, would be right there in front of everybody. That's not the life I'm ready to live!

I would say that the time I use with social media in private is in control. I try to get interested with it only when I'm alone because somehow I would like to appreciate my friends and people who are close to me with my attention. However, when in class, this is forgotten very often! Did you know that you can avoid falling asleep easily by focusing on scrolling down your FB for instance?

When comparing the use of social media in private with the one in working life, the difference is quite obvious. In private you're representing only yourself and it's your own choice how you like to depict and express yourself in social media. In opposite, as a employee you represent yourself but also your employer and for instance the company that you're working for. In this case the words, pictures etc. posts you put on social media could have other more meaningful consequences as well. 

There are many companies who actually have an additional part which concerns the use of social media in their contracts with employees. I myself have been in jobs where they have encouraged to use social media as a private person to bring the company out, as marketing purpose. And on the other hand, the negative feedback posted on social media has been a turn off. 

In a way, this doesn't cause any problems or special thinking for me because I like to keep the most important things, thoughts and pictures in my own mind and share it only with certain, chosen people. So the social media is only a tool and an entertainment channel for me; it's not a channel for sharing my personal information!

- Azma