Last week in one of my classes, my professor shared this video with us. At first I was some what annoyed we were watching youtube videos in class because I can do that at home, so I logged onto my Pinterest account and began pinning away. But as the video was beginning and the story was unfolding, I found myself not pinning recipes and shoes but completely drawn in by this little boy Caine’s story. I was instantly inspired by this story and the fact that it was all accomplished because of social media. This is easily one of the most inspiring and cutest stories I’ve seen in a long time, and it even brought tears to my friend’s eyes while we were watching it in class. As soon as the video was over, I knew I had to blog about it.
This story is absolutely amazing in that this little boys life was made because of social media. All it took was one person to see what Caine had created to share it with the rest of the world. By creating one event on Facebook, Caine now has a future. His college donation fund has already exceeded its goal and its all because Caine had an idea and someone was kind enough to share it through social media.
Now miracles aren’t happening every day because of a Facebook event, or a tweet. But this goes to show that a simple share, or retweet can actually better someone’s life or help to create change. Without Facebook, Caine would have never his surprise of customers and fans at his arcade and his college fund would have never been set up. Caine now has a good future ahead of him because of these good people who heard about him through social media.
Serves: about 12 muffins, Calories: approximately 128 per muffin
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups bananas 2/3 cup honey 3 tbsp nonfat yoghurt 3 tbsp natural sweetened apple sauce 2 large egg whites 1 tsp vanilla essence 2 tbsp whole wheat flour 3/4 cup oats 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp cinnamon, ground 1/4 cup semi-sweet mini morsels (mini chocolate chips)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 180C (350F). Spray a muffin tray with cooking spray.
Mix the first 6 ingredients in a medium bowl (all the wet ingredients).
In a separate bowl, whisk together the remaining of the dry ingredients (except for the chocolate chips).
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until just blended together.
Pour batter into prepared muffin tins. Sprinkle the top with the mini chocolate chips. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes.
Embracing Social Customers
In this weeks reading for my social business class, from my professor Michael Brito’s book Smart Business Social Business, we learned about embracing the social customer and how to effectively communicate with them. I really enjoyed reading this chapter because Brito clearly states what makes someone elegible for becoming a social media practitioner, which is someone who communicates with a company’s customers via social media channels. I also like how Brito used real life examples of companies using social media to not only communicate with the social customer but to create relationships. I myself have been in situations where I have reached out to a company for support, but have only received generic answers and no sense of care in the help they were offering. By taking Brito’s advice a company could easily turn their customer experience around and create outlets for customer’s to seek support and care on the web.
Thrifty ice cream!! So good @amavila21 (Taken with instagram)
I love my littles!!#deltagamma #deltaupsilon (Taken with instagram)
My main girls❤ minus Kourt of course! (Taken with instagram)
The top 10 reasons people unfollow and unlike brands
By Kristin Piombino | Posted: February 22, 2012
Breaking up isn’t always hard to do.
In fact, when it comes to breaking up with a brand, some people find it quite easy.
An infographic from Get Satisfaction and Column Five illustrates the top reasons why people unsubscribe from brand emails or stop following a brand on social media.
According to the graphic, most customers break up with brands because they post or email too frequently and the content becomes repetitive. Customers may originally follow a company because they want to stay updated, but they don’t want to hear about everything the company is doing.
Consumers are most likely to unsubscribe from brand emails first (91 percent), but they cut ties on Facebook (55 percent) and Twitter (43 percent) fairly easily, too.
If your company wants to avoid being kicked the curb, take a long look at how you can keep your customers’ love alive:
Kristin Piombino is an editorial assistant for Ragan.com.
Another amazing presentation in my social business class, this time from #hootsuite #socialsjsu (Taken with instagram)
Juicy Couture’s lack of communication with consumers
I have been a loyal consumer and advocate for Juicy Couture for about three years now. I love their look, their products and everything about the brand. What I do not like about Juicy is their lack of communication with their consumers. While in my social media class, another student talked about how Brooks Brothers is really great about communicating with their customers and creating a relationship. It is the complete opposite with Juicy. I follow Juicy on twitter, and they rarely tweet anything, and when they do it is not replying to followers or re-tweeting followers, it is to merely promote their brand. While they do have a small share of re-tweets or replies, there is a minimal amount of them.
I would like to see Juicy build better relationships with their consumers, including myself by sharing more and replying and re-tweeting more. I feel they are doing the bare minimum and need to step it up. As a loyal customer, I would not stop buying their products because of this, but because I am so loyal I would expect them to want to create relationships with consumers like myself.
I would like the see the brand create some sort of reward or incentive system. Juicy offers nothing like this, and the only way I am linked to this brand is I follow them on twitter, tumblr, like them on Facebook and am on their e-mailing list. The only information I receive from these social media sites is what their new products are or a sale that is going on. I really believe Juicy should come up with a new system for creating relationships with their customers instead of just informing what is going on with the brand.
