Budweiser king of…Facebook?

About as American as it gets

Budweiser King of Beers has one of the greatest fan pages I have ever seen. They have 15 different tabs on their Facebook page. They range from the ordinary, Wall and Photos tabs to the extraordinary, Birthday Buds which if you sign up for you receive a visa gift card on your 22nd birthday for a free birthday beer, and music downloads app, since Budweiser received a million likes on their Facebook page they are giving at one free song out to all their fans, I choose Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye.

One thing in particular that I enjoyed is that all their pictures are not what they are advertising; they allow pictures of everyday people such as you and me to upload pictures to their fan page.  The videos they have on their page are what someone would expect from a business fan page. It is all the amazing advertising that Budweiser has done in the past few years including my favorite commercial ever the grab some buds campaign.

I honestly don’t think that they could do anything better with their page. Budweiser knows it fans and what they like, and they have done an amazing job of making their page great. I feel that Budweiser does not need to use Facebook ads. They do it with their popularity, and their ability to connect with their consumers.

Budweiser has 1.7 million likes in the United States alone. They have 3.9 million fans worldwide. This company knows what it is doing.

Learning from others.

Today I’m writing on other people’s blogs today. Ads of the World and Chris Brogan’s blog are my main focus today. These are two very successful blogs; I can only hope to aspire to be in consideration with them. I’m pretty new to blogging but I feel that I can learn quite a bit from other blogs like these two.

Setting up a professional blog.

These advertising blogs do some things very well I really like ads of the world blog. They have a picture with every post, making it a much more user friendly blog. Another thing I like about Ads of the Worlds blog is that they don’t feel like they have to realize a blog every day. They post their blogs when they feel like posting them no because they have to, making the content better and not feeling forced.

This brings me to Chris Brogan’s blog; his blog isn’t as much about advertising as it is about making you a better/creative person.  He had a very nice set of posts like his post on his three words for this year, and ideas for building a valuable platform. I suggest everyone takes a look at this post if you want to be successful in social media.

The main thing that I’ve learned from following these other blogs is that I really need to put out more consistently quality work. I also need to work on having better pictures and videos with my posts. I hope that I can learn from this and that all of my followers will benefit from it as well.

Internet Deprivation

I’m spoiled. In a world in which every facet of our lives can be broadcasted to thousands of people at a moment’s notice on twitter or facebook we sometimes just need to take a moment to just step away from the computer. I currently spend anywhere from six to ten hours a day on my computer, whether it is looking at pictures on The Chive or watching latest EpicMealTime video on Youtube. I do have the opportunity to completely disconnect from the rest of the world when I go home, but I can’t do it because I feel that if I’m away from the computer I will get passed up by the rest of the world.

When I go home I have the opportunity to disconnect from the world. We don’t home an internet connection, and our cell reception is spotty at best. Which is why this year for Spring Break I’m going home taking the battery out of my phone, and hiding my computer. My goal is going to be making this a learning experience on how someone can survive without being able to be reached by the outside world.

One of the few places I will be disconnecting from the world.

I look at the thought of going completely wireless as being in a sensory deprivation chamber. I know that there are things out there that can stimulate my senses but I’m choosing not to feel anything. I think that I will learn more about myself here than I could if I were able to sit down in front of a computer.

After writing this I think I might bring my computer out just once a day so I can blog about my experiences of the day.

Google Plus is going to be MySpace soon

When Google Plus was announced many hailed it as a Facebook killer; what it was is more of a MySpace clone. The reason why Facebook works is because of exclusivity. On Facebook only your friends can see your profile and add you as a friend. On Google Plus you can add people on a whim, in my circle I have about 50 friends but I don’t know about 10 of them. I added celebrities which on Facebook you can only Like them but you can’t see their personal profile.

I have a feeling that in the next five years there will be a new social network that will take over as the number three social media site, behind Facebook and Twitter, and it won’t be Google Plus. The only real aspect that I liked about Google Plus is their use of the Hangout feature. I enjoyed this because you can talk up to nine different people at a time, and if you have a webcam like me you can speak as any number of avatars. My favorite was a little white kitten.

This is me on Google+

All in all though my experience was not a good one with Google Plus, I just feel that I’m spoiled by Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg love him or hate him the man is a genius and he knows how to make a website that people can’t live without. Facebook is the most visited website for a reason and no Facebook killer will exist for quite a while. 845 million people can’t be wrong. Google Plus has nearly 30 million. That may be a lot but that’s nothing compared to the other social media websites out there. I have a feeling that Pintrest will bigger than Google Plus by the end of the year.

My life so far in seven words.

I was born into a changing world.

When talking about a single sentence that describes me it’s really hard to narrow it down to just a singular sentence and not a paragraph. My sentence not only describes me but my whole generation. We have been around for the dawn of the internet, and cell-phones. Those two creations have changed everything that we now know. True both these things have been around since the 80’s but the only got popular in the 90’s when we were getting our footing on what the world was becoming.

I can remember the first cell-phone that my family had; it was a three part brick phone. It was so big that the only time my dad brought it around with him was when he had a briefcase with him, and to think that we now have phones that are almost a quarter of an inch thick, and it still has the capability to go on the internet.

How do you describe what the internet has done for the world? The fact that I’m listening to music and talking to my friends all while I’m blogging astounds me. At the time of this writing I have fourteen tabs open, and on average I spend four to five hours a day on the internet. That is what I do with my day.

I have to ask myself then was today better than yesterday. Yes, yes it was. Because I live by the mantra my grandfather taught me at a young age, “Make yesterday the first day of the rest of your life, and always strive for something better.” Every day that you see me is the best day of my life.

Is Facebook… Big Brother?

In today’s day and age we are welcoming a new movement that everyone will have to adjust too. It is the Social Media Movement. We can no longer now ignore it, but we have to embrace it otherwise we will be lepers in our modern-day society. Social media is effecting industry as well. Go on Facebook and type in any national corporation, I can almost guarantee that every single one has a Facebook fan page.

Welcome to the Digital Age.

Today many of the best advertising campaigns are viral, or solely web-based. It is much easier to target your market when you know exactly what websites they are visiting, and what type of videos they are watching. It is possible for a company to target certain profiles on Facebook. In the future when I’m working on an account that I need to be seen by Males 18-23 in the Midwest who play video-games and listen to Radiohead. I can pinpoint the exact market for my product.

Believe it or not you have already been targeted. Going off my profile alone, I have ads along the side for Burger King, Groupon, Mafia Wars, and Amazon. It is very tailored towards me. I use Amazon every day, I check Groupon daily, and Burger King is the fast food I get most often, and I’m above the age of 14 nor am I one of your friends mom’s so I don’t play any Facebook games. The thing here though is that I don’t actually “Like” any of the things that I mentioned above, yet Facebook has pin-pointed many of the things I look at on a daily basis. How is this possible?

Direct Marketing.

Final Blog….For Now

Now the Feature writing is coming to an end I start to look back at my time here in class. I laughed, I cried, and I learned, well maybe not cry but you get the point. This class taught me to think about what I want to write about not what others want me to write about. I learned about a man that I see everyday on my way to class. I learned about a student who knows how to balance his time and still has the ability to pull off an outstanding GPA.

I learned that Billy blues is not a very good restaurant. But the thing I will take away the most from this class is how to give a good interview. I learned how to find every aspect of a persons character, then to develop a story based off what I learned.

Feature writing was one of my favorite classes this semester. And now that it is coming to a close I start to appreciate the crazy amounts of fun I had in class. I just hope that all my classes next semester can compare to this one. I mean what class has a potluck at the end of the semester. Well this is the only one that I’ve taken that has done that.

Thank you Carol for teaching such a fun class.