Please, start lovin my blog!

You might have noticed all the UvT students who started a blog at the beginning of February. As you could read in my first blog post, starting a blog is a compulsory assignment of the course Business Information Technology. Since I really like this assignment and I like to read all these blogs I would like to ask all the BIT bloggers to install the Bloglovin widget! Bloglovin is a tool which places the updates of your favorite blogs all in one overview. This can save you lots of time!

Bloglovin is founded by five Swedish guys who are in their twenties. Before they started Bloglovin, they already built websites. Even a fashion (!) community! Unfortunately, this wasn’t so easy as they thought so they asked the help of Carolina Engman from Fashion Squad. During on of their meetings, they saw Carolina checking all the blogs she liked for new updates. A few days later, Bloglovin was born!

Do you vist your favorite BIT blogs on an daily basis? Then I have found the perfect tool for you! Bloglovin!

In the video below, you can check for yourself how easy it is to start using Bloglovin.

Are you addicted?

“People who don’t have an e-mail account, don’t need to check their e-mail account”. A couple of years ago, this was a wise saying but recently, there are numerous social media networks who ask our attention 24/7.

“My name is Juliette and I am addicted to social media. Hi Juliette”. Can you imagine? Some kind of anonymous social media addicts, just like regular AA meetings.

It might sound silly but recent studies show us that there are people who are really addicted to social media! A study among 1000 Internet users shows us that almost 50% of the people check their Twitter and Facebook before they go to bed. Moreover, 42% of the people check their social networks immediately after they woke up and half of them is still in their bed when they do that! It is also striking that 40 per cent don’t mind to be disturbed by social media during other businesses, like during meal or, even more shocking, during lovemaking! That is the end of romance!

Are you addicted too? Please check the symptoms and the video below:

·         You answer your phone with your Twitter nickname

·         Your family and friends had to read on twitter that you are pregnant/ homeless/engaged/divorced

·         Instead of saying “goodbye” you say “send me a DM”

·         You don’t know your neighbours , but you know everything about your good “friends” in Canada, South Africa and India

Employees don’t want their boss on Facebook

“ Employees don’t want their boss on Facebook”. This was the head of an article on the website www.nu.nl from a while ago.  Although everyone likes to stay in good contact with their boss, almost nobody likes a connection on Facebook with him or her. Research showed us that people are still conservative in using social network sites with colleagues. 

Connections with colleagues on social network websites can cause complications. What should you do when the roles change? For example, what to do when your colleague becomes your bose? Should you “de-friend” him or her? Most people find it hard to decide what is wise.

Luckily for them, a few very clever Dutch entrepreneurs came up with a solution, called Whoopaa. With Whoopaa ,a worldwide online social platform, you can manage all your online social activities. With Whoopaa you can divide your personal and business communication. Besides the separation between personal and business communication, Whoopaa also provides one timeline, in which you can manage and receive all the updates form the networks you are involved in.

As a user on Whoopaa, you have the opportunity to create both a personal and a business profile with help of an install wizard. Then, it is possible to divide personal and business communication at only one platform. As a user, you have a dashboard with which you can control the linked social networks and you can switch between your profiles with just one click.

Does the above information trigger you, then you would like the video below about all the mentioned and other features of Whoopaa!

Pay with a tweet, a social payment system!

Lately, you see it more and more often: companies offering their services in exchange for a tweet. ‘Pay with a Tweet’ is the first social payment system, where people pay with the value of their social network. 'Pay with a Tweet' is hot and it works! People don’t mind to tweet about a service when they can use it for free.

This new business model is launched by an American company named “Innovative Thunder”. In my opinion, this new born business model is simple and brilliant at the same time! By using this new model, a company keeps the “benefits” of a free service and generates free publicity at once. Usually, a company tries to rely on word of mouth publicity but by using “pay with a tweet”  they can enforce it! In today's world the value of people talking about your product is sometimes higher than the money you would get for it.

In the below video, you can see for yourself how easy it is to pay with a tweet!

Dutch example
A Dutch academic publisher named "Eburon" already uses the service from “Innovative Thunder”.  In their webshop, a book called “De betere byte in de strijd om het gelijk” is sold for 35 euro’s. Instead of buying the printed book immediately people also can “buy” the e-book in exchange for a tweet.  According to Wiebe de Jager, director of Eburon, they uses this new business model to generate attention for this book, which has a small and specific target group. "When people have seen the free digital version, they might purchase the printed book more quickly!"

Source: Pay with a tweet

How to avoid expensive advertisement costs?

Television is a very powerfull medium to communicate your message to your target group. Unfortunately, it is also very pricey to advertise on television. Creating and broadcasting a commercial can cost you a lot. On top of that, every marketeer knows that repetition is essential when you advertise so all in all, it is an expensive business!

To avoid all these costs, you can use viral marketing. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message via social media. It is like word of mouth advertising strengthened by the Internet. By using viral marketing, a large group can be reached cheaply!

In the past couple of years, numerous companies have been using viral marketing succesfully to communicate with their target group. Below, some of my favorite virals: 

One of the most frequently watched Dutch virals ever (X-Travel "Boeing 737 lands on mediterranean sea", 2008).

This viral caused outrage, which led to the fact that  Ford claimed that they had never approved the virals’ release (Ford Ka "The Cat", 2006).

Almost everything seems to be resistant to the power of "the Force", however the new Passat clearly is not (Volkswagen "The Force", 2011).

Every advertiser should dream about the fact that his or her commercial goes abroad via the Internet, right?