Week 5: eLearning

I still remember in primary school we used to have learning days whereby we were not required to attend school, but instead stay home to do assignments and submit them through the school portal or physically the next day. I must say it is not exactly as effective or helpful as it is, but it did help me to learn independently.

The future of digital classroom would give students more opportunities to engage using digital devices such as laptops and tablets. My cousin shared an interesting article on Facebook and I thought I would share it with you! It talks about how of school curriculum should be and I think it is something Singaporeans can adopt.

https://brightside.me/article/the-school-of-the-future-has-opened-in-finland-13755/

They mentioned that "Laptop computers, in fact, are this school's version of the school blackboard." For your info, it is a school for younger children. To use laptops for classes may mean to prepare these kids for the future as we continue to live in a digitalised world. Start from young as they say. But I hope they restrict their usage though.

A video about eLearning

Till then.

Week 4: eBusiness

A week ago, my sister shared with me the news about every girl's dream online store, Nastygal. The link to the article can be found here https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/nasty-gal-what-went-wrong. 

With 2.3 million followers on their Instagram page, what exactly went wrong?

Nasty Gal is a Los Angeles-based e-commerce company found in 2006 by #GIRLBOSS Sophia Amoruso. They were forced to shut down all 17 physical stores in May 2016. They were filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on 9 nov to secure financial relief while it restructures. Below are a few reasons why they are failing as quoted from the article. 

- Many of Nasty Gal’s vendors were owed several thousands of dollars in back payments. Some were owed more than $100,000.

- When the company raised its $40 million round in 2012, spurred by a jump in sales from a reported $28 million in 2011 to $128 million in 2012, it invested heavily in fulfilment and logistics.

- “Our decision to initiate a court-supervised restructuring will enable us to address our immediate liquidity issues, restructure our balance sheet and correct structural issues including reducing our high occupancy costs and restoring compliance with our debt covenants,” said Sheree Waterson, Nasty Gal’s chief executive officer.

This showed that Nastygal was quick to expand and did not manage their finances as well as they should have. It is a pity that they would be gone sooner or later, even with a large group of supporters. 

Till then.

Week 3: Social Networking for Business

Seems like I kinda talked about social networking for business in the form of social media marketing in the last blog post. So I'll talk about the benefits of social networking for business! https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-for-business/

1. Gain valuable customer insights. This allows you to be aware of your target audience's needs and wants, habits and interests.

2. Increase brand awareness and loyalty. Social media can help engage your customers, build relationships with them to provide the best customer service, make them have trust in your brand and support your services/produces.

3. Run targeted ads with real time results. Social media is an inexpensive and effective way to market your product. It allows you to target based on location, demographics, behaviours, interests etc and also track and measure the results instantly!

4. Generate higher profits. In the State of Social Selling in 2015, nearly 75 percent of companies that engaged in selling on social media reported an increase in sales in 12 months.

5. Provide rich customers experience. Businesses can reply to customer's feedback almost instantly as customers always look for fast and 24/7 response.

6. Increase website traffic and search ranking. Not only does social media help you direct people to your website, but the more social media shares you receive, the higher your search ranking will be.

7. Find out what your competitors are doing. It is a competitive and cruel world out there hence it is important to be aware and see how to improve your business so that it is on par or better than your competitors.

8. Share content faster and easier. Well, we all like things short and sweet. Hence the social media is a way to provide information in bite size pieces that are easy to digest. 

9. Geotarget content. Geo-targeting is an effective way to send your message out to a specific audience based on their location. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have tools that allow you to communicate the right kind of content to your audience.

10. Build relationships not only with customers but people in other industries to widen your network and social circle.

With so many people using the social media these days, businesses have to keep up with their consumers in order to give them what they want/need.

Till then!

Week 2: Social Media

Social media is dominating our lives. We use it for almost anything and everything.. To check the weather forecast, read the news, be a KPO and see what your friends are up to, watch viral videos, get information about products/services, post #ootd photos on Instagram, get inspiration, marketing products and the list goes on...... Without social media, I think we will feel lost because we rely on it so much. So, is social media good or bad? I personally feel it's for the better. It is a way to connect with people all over the world and be exposed to a wide variety of content that TV/newspaper/books don't present to us. Let's see some of the most influential social media campaigns that went viral!

1. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
The #IceBucketChallenge was a campaign to raise awareness for the illness, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. You simply throw a bucket of ice over your head if you are nominated, post it on social media and nominate someone else. This what made this challenge so successful. Easy, exciting and spreads like wild fire. 

2. Dove Real Beauty Sketches

The Dove campaign was used to improve the mentality of women on how they view themselves. FBI trained forensic artist drew faces of the participants with the help of the participant's, family's and friend's description of themselves. The participants then realised they have overly criticised themselves. You are indeed more beautiful than you think. Within the first 10 days, this video was shared on Facebook 630,000 times! Social media campaign done right, I would say.

3. World Suicide Prevention Week

Something a little local.. The Samaritans of Singapore (SOS) and TBWA\Singapore partnered together to launch a new campaign - Wear a plaster. End the Silence. The campaign encourages wear an SOS plaster on their inner wrists to show their support for the victims. The plaster serves as a conversation starter so people can talk about it and prevent suicide. You can even change your profile picture to the SOS plaster or take a photo with it and post on social media to raise awareness and pass the word around. #howru? I hope you are doing fine. You will be fine :) 

A bonus video that I really love and would like to share it with you. It's just so cute and it shows how girls (and boys and anybody) can imagine the possibilities! 

Oh, I found this which summarises how to get started on social media marketing!

Till then!