my feelings ~

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

The steps and elements of a new media plan



Objectives set out what a task is trying to achieve. It is important for leaders and managements to get the process of setting objectives right, as inadequately formulated objectives could guide an individual, a team or an organization in the wrong direction. SMART is an acronym that has been credited to both Peter Drucker (1955) and G.T.Doran (1991). SMART which is refer to specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. Firstly, Specific means that to make the outline in a clear statement precisely what is required. Second, measurable is to include a measure to enable you to monitor progress and to know when the objective has been achieved. Next, achievable is the objectives can be designed to be challenging, but it is important that failure is not built into objectives. Employees and managers should agree to the objectives to ensure commitment to them. In addition, realistic that focuses on outcomes rather than the means of achieving them. Last but not least, timely or time bound is to agree the date by which the outcome must be achieved.

            Next stage is to identify the target audiences. Target audiences can be categorized into internal and external. An external customer is someone who uses your company's products or services but is not part of your organization. If you own a retail store, for example, an external customer is an individual who enters your store and buys merchandise. An internal customer is any member of your organization who relies on assistance from another to fulfill her job duties, such as a sales representative who needs assistance from a customer service representative to place an order. External customers are essential to the success of any business, as they provide the revenue stream through their purchases that the enterprise needs to survive. Satisfied external customers often make repeat purchases as well as refer your business to other people they know. A customer who suffers through a negative experience with a business, such as being treated rudely by an employee, can also hinder a business by dissuading others from patronizing it. While internal customers may not necessarily purchase the products or services offered by their employer, the internal customer relationship also plays a key role in the business's success. In the sales example, the salesperson who does not work well with customer service may have greater difficulty placing orders or obtaining answers to his external clients' questions, resulting in a poor level of service. Strained internal relationships can also adversely affect company morale.

            To select a correct platform, it is important to understand where your audience is locate, set goals for what you wish to achieve with your social media efforts. There are four different goals that normally people wish to achieve, that is improve SEO, increase traffic to site, increase brand exposure and improve customer engagement. For example, Google+ and YouTube are the best platforms to focus on if your goals lean towards improving SEO, while Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are great at driving traffic to your website. If the main objective for social media is to reach the largest community, it will definitely want to focus on Facebook. But, don’t forget that a large community does not mean an engaged community or a community of potential customers. It is not only to focus only on the size of the community, but also on the potential to convert those community members into customers or brand advocates.

The next stage will be planning and construct gantt chart. The reasons of having a plan is to identify all tasks or project components to make sure the team includes people with firsthand knowledge of the project so that during the brainstorming session all component tasks needed to complete the project are captured. Planning also help to identify the first task that must be completed and identify any other tasks that can be started simultaneously with the first task.
Besides that, planning can identify task durations by using the knowledge of team members, reach a consensus on the most likely amount of time each task will require for completion. It is good to construct the Gantt chart. It helps the planner list tasks in sequence and show clearly the time line that spans the total required time to complete the project. 

            Work sampling is to show that the draft of the plan that the management plan to do. For example, the draft poster, the new layout of new media, information that will publish in new media and etc. It is to let the management roughly know the design and what information that will be publishes for the activities.

            Then, defining an expected outcome is important because we need to objectively state the idealized result that will be obtained once we implement our problem solving strategy. By defining our expected outcome before we implement our problem solving strategy we will have a benchmark that can be used to determine if we are on the right track to solve our problem, and to evaluate the final outcome to our problem.

            Lastly, measure and evaluation is the process by which data are collected and analyzed in order to provide information to policy makers and others for use in program planning and project management. Evaluation is important because it helps program implementers make informed decisions regarding program operations and service delivery based on objective evidence through the measurement on how well the program activities have met expected objectives and/or the extent to which changes in outcomes can be attributed to the program. It also ensures the most effective and efficient use of resources, helps determine the success or failure of a program, and assists in meeting organizational requirements such as reporting.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

viral video - the annoying orange




         The Annoying Orange is an American comedy web series created by former Minnesota film student and MTV production assistant Dane Boedigheimer in 2009. It stars its creator as an anthropomorphic orange who annoys other fruits, vegetables, and various other objects by using insulting, rude, and sometimes crude-humored jokes. The YouTube channel "Annoying Orange" has over 3 million subscribers.

The series was rated as the most viewed web series of February and March 2010 by Mashable, with over 52 million views. On April 26, 2010, the series had over 108 million views on YouTube. In June 2010, the channel had received 137 million views. By August 13, 2010, it had received 1 million subscribers. On June 2011, the channel was ranked as the eighth most subscribed and 30th most viewed, with more than 2,000,000 subscribers. On January 13, 2012, the series hit 1 billion channel views and 2.3 million subscribers. The Annoying Orange YouTube channel currently has over 3.5 million subscribers.

Despite the show's popularity, it was universally panned by critics. Liz Shannon Miller considered the show to be "annoying for many reasons." In the web series column Pass the Mustard, Ned Hepburn called the show "pure, pure unfunny, highly concentrated, in droplet form, just purely nonsensical riffing from an Annoying Orange." Hepburn concluded, "The Annoying Orange series is one of the few that I had a physically bad reaction to. It was horrible." 411mania.com called the show "idiotic" and "creepy as hell", while other publications have referred to it as "third grade humor." However, among internet audiences, the show has garnered generally positive reviews, as opposed to the unanimously negative ones.

Despite the show's negative critical reception, the show's popularity after its first episode led it to become the subject of a TV series, a video game, a range of toys, and a t-shirt line. Other accessories, such as costumes of the series characters, have also appeared on the market for the company. Why do millions of people watch the Annoying Orange Videos? The series began in October 2009 and it is still alive and kicking with nearly 40 million viewers to date on the first video. There are several reasons why so many people have taken the time to view, laugh at, and get annoyed by, this special orange. 

First of all, the orange is really annoying. The orange on the counter with the eyes and mouth has a high-pitched voice that is unpleasant to the ears. To make matters worse it has an irritating laugh and it simply wont shut up, right to the last second of the video. It might annoy the audience, but this is the unique point of this video that people might use the same way to annoy their friends as fun. Unlike Family Guy or the Simpsons, these videos are not satirical and don’t have any heavy or insulting jokes that people can seriously take offense to. If audiences really want to read more into what the creators intended, then perhaps audiences need to lighten up. Overall, the idea is to simply make people laugh without making political statements or making people think too much to get the jokes. It is all lighthearted and simple enough for kids to enjoy along with audiences.

Besides that, the element of danger is also one of the points that make this video viral. The setting is in a kitchen where all kind of foods get sliced, diced and cooked. The other foods arrive only to be tortured by a small, annoying, citrus fruit on the opposite counter before their sudden demise. Of course the orange offers a two second warning before the screaming starts, as the already victimized foods become meals. It makes such an ordinary thing like slicing an apple seems like a horrific act, and it makes us laugh because it’s a ridiculous idea.

Next, it’s viral due to the familiarity. Audiences all know the characters, so it is easy to dive right into the story. Orange, apple, pumpkin, cheese, grapefruit, bananas, and other foods have made appearances and it is interesting to see how they are given personalities. Audiences all have a mental reference to these things, and the twist is refreshing. Not to mention the Mario and Pac-Man episodes, which bring in classic video game characters that audiences all know and love.

It’s also providing an escape from reality. Many people use funny YouTube videos to unwind. Stress at school or work is more than enough reason for some to tune into that annoying orange. Life can also get mundane, depressing, and overly busy. These videos can help audiences forget about reality for a few minutes and laugh a little. 

In most cases, people watch things because they heard about it from a friend or family member. There are so many easy ways to share things online these days, so it is easy for a series of funny videos like this to go viral. Audiences can email, blog, post on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and other social networks about what audiences see, and before audiences know it friends tell their friends and soon it seems like everyone audiences know has seen it. A lot of people have read tweets about the videos, scrolled through YouTube and saw the title, or heard someone talking about the “Annoying Orange”. The simple title simply spurs curiosity and some people just have to find out what everyone is talking about. After they watch the first one, they become even more curious about whom the orange will annoy next, and therefore watch the other videos.

That is why so many people tune in to watch the many Annoying Orange videos. It’s good clean fun for the whole family.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Connecting to Audiences via Mobile Apps

Malaysia Airlines System (MAS) is the national airline of Malaysia. MAS began in 1947 as Malayan Airways and then being renamed as Malaysian Airways after Malaysia achieved independence. After that, it changed the name again to Malaysia-Singapore Airlines. It was then divided into Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines. Then, Malaysia Airlines (MAS) operates flights from Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) and later with a secondary hub at Kota Kinabalu and Kuching. Malaysia Airlines operates flights in Southeast Asia, East Asia, South Asia, Middle East and on the Kangaroo Route between Europe and Australasia. Malaysia Airlines achieved a significant milestone in 2012 when it received its first Airbus A380-800 followed by a historic Malaysian record on 1 July 2012 with the launch of its A380 scheduled service between KL International Airport and London Heathrow. On 1 February 2013, Malaysia Airlines became a full-fledged member of Oneworld alliance and is now connected to some 850 destinations in 150 countries across the Oneworld alliance network. MAS hold a lengthy record of service and best practices excellence, having received more than 100 awards in the last 10 years.

The objective of creating this mobile apps is to provide the most convenient way for customer, MAS come out MHmobile that allow people to book, check-in, share passenger travel plans and fly on the go when you want it, where you want it. It is currently available in English and Bahasa Malaysia and can be downloading by iPhone and iPod Touch, iPad, Andoid, Nokia Symbian Phone and also Windows Phone 8. With this mobile application, public can conveniently pay for flights booked through their mobile phone by using Visa, MasterCard and American Express credit cards, or PayPal account. Besides that, customer can share their itinerary on Facebook and Tripit. MHmobile also able passenger check-in and choose their preferred seat 48 hours before flight. With MHmobile, passenger can check the latest flight arrival and departure times and choose a flight straight away with the booking details pre-filled, check the status of the lost baggage. People can get in touch with MAS offices worldwide and find their way with Google Maps. Malaysia Airlines does not charge a fee to customers accessing MHmobile.
However, MHmobile check-in is currently only available for all Malaysian domestic flights, fights from Singapore to Langkawi, Penang, Kuala Lumpur, Kuching and Kota Kinabalu (vice-versa, flights from Kuala Lumpur to Bandar Seri Begawan, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Yangon, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Bangkok, Phuket, Manila, Jakarta, Medan, Denpasar-Bali, flights from Kuala Lumpur to Paris (vice versa) and flights from Kuala Lumpur to Frankfurt (vice versa).
The target audience of MAS to create this mobile application is those who like to travel around the country or the world. MAS were awarded as the World’s Best Cabin Crew for 7 years (2001-2004, 2004, 2007, and 2009) by Skytrax UK. With this application, people can plan their holiday anytime and anywhere.
            The linkage of this mobile application is to increase the business of MAS. MHmobile able to download immediately, fast loading and easy, it help public save a lot of time by just clicking in to the application.
            Last but not least, the measuring result of this mobile application can be done by calculate the number of people download the apps. MAS can also record the number of passengers who use MHmobile to book their flight so that they can get the exact measurement result. Besides that, focus group can be conducted to know the different of the users before and after use the mobile apps.



Tuesday, January 14, 2014

New Media PR vs Marketing & Advertising



Public relations:
The function of PR is to disseminate the information and persuading internal and external audiences to form a mutual understanding instead of earning profits. PR focuses in creating positive publicity and good reputation about particular company, organization or individual through usage of new media in a long term orientation. PR is responsible in building and maintaining a good relationship between organization and its stakeholders.

Marketing and advertising:
Marketing and advertising were more concerned with the outcome of a plan such as the profit earn through the strategies and tactics used. It is a short term orientation and required immediate gratification.


Differences in using new media:
Public Relations:
PR uses new media to create awareness among publics for its client. The information about an organization was published in the form of text, audio and video news releases about an individual or organization distributed through internet. PR also uses new media to update the information about the organization to their target audience. PR can be a persuasive interpersonal communication by using new media. New media also helps PR to build and maintain the relationship between the organization and their publics. New media has the ability to skip through the stage of gatekeeper and directly communicate with their public, where they could not in traditional media. PR practitioner could easily create a forum to allow stakeholders, shareholder or even person in charge of branches to have a discussion space through the usage of new media. PR practitioner could easily create a forum to allow stakeholders, shareholder or even person in charge of branches to have a discussion space through usage of new media. With the help of new media also, information about the organization would be directed to them and shared at the same time by using e-mail and forum. The organization also be able to get immediate feedback easily through comments by the public.


Advertising:
Advertising is the use of persuasive way to promote the products, services or ideas. It is a short term process as its function is to penetrate into audiences’ mind to create awareness to the target audience as many as possible. Products are always changing; therefore new media helps advertisement to change the information and also the ideas at any time. As new media can save the cost of the advertisement placement, thus advertising can reach global audience through new media in no time.


Marketing:
Marketing uses new media to help the company to increase their profit. New media offers creative way to promote the products and sell the products. The emergence of creative online shopping occurs has changes purchasing style too. With new media, marketers could directly get to consumer without needing their physical attendance.


Similarities in Using New Media

PR, marketing and advertising shared similarities when they use new media. New media can cover large audience in a shorter time and the coverage also can be expanding.