Social Media’s Future Influence on Education

Let’s face the facts, the days of searching for information in an encyclopedia are long gone.  To be completely honest, I firmly believe if you were to give a teenager an assignment to locate information in an encyclopedia they wouldn’t even know how to do it.

Computers and the internet have completely changed the way we look for information and social media is going to play an even larger role when it comes to education shortly.

With the world tweeting, Digging, Tumbling, and writing on walls, it’s only a matter of time before a high school teacher or college professor decides to add his/her Twitter address on their syllabus so the students can get a hold of them (that is if they don’t want emails to flood their inbox), creates a class forum for required discussion sessions (which is already happening with Springboard), or gives live video review sessions via Justin.tv or Ustream.

That’s not all, think about how easily students can obtain information using Digg, Reddit, or StumbleUpon.

I’ll give you a scenario:

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Social Media Strategy Gone Wrong

One of the most important things a business has to remember about utilizing social media is, everyone is watching!

Well, BestBuy CMO, Barry Judge, had to learn the hard way about that.

DougMeacham had an unpleasant turned pleasant experience at BestBuy recently and decided to let the BestBuy CMO about his in store experience.

Judge must have been a little distracted when replying to Meacham, because things went completely left at the end of the conversation.

Social Media ROI and You!

The biggest concern that I read about on LinkedIn, blogs, and tweets is how do you measure a social media marketing plans success.  What it really comes down to is “What ROI will I see?”

Rightfully so, businesses can ask this question, and as a social media marketer I have to answer this question.  The answer is as simple as it sounds, it’s more about qualitative than quantitative results.

Before you form an opinion on what you just read, let me explain.

Starbucks’ Free Pastry Day = Twitter Win!

If you aren’t in the social media loop, something very interesting happened today on Twitter all courtesy of Starbucks.

Starbucks ran a promotion giving away a free pastry with the purchase of any beverage.  The purpose of this promotion was to introduce people to Starbucks new pastries that are without the artificial flavors, dyes, transfats, and high fructose corn syrup.

As for coupon control, Starbucks required that you had to show a coupon in order to receive the pastry. Displaying the fact that they are inline with technology, you could either print out the coupon or show the coupon on your phone.

With the promotion being run from opening until 10:30 am, Starbucks #FreePastryDay is a perfect example of how powerful a medium Twitter is.

Microsoft, Apple and Social Media

Yesterday, Mashable posted an article that made some Apple fanatics cringe.

Microsoft has decided to build retail stores and strategically place them right next to Apple retail locations. In addition to that announcement, Microsoft also claims to have received a phone call from Apple demanding they cease all of their “Laptop Hunters” commercials.

After reading this, I began to think, if Microsoft and Apple took their “battle for the top spot” to the social media world, who would do it best?