If I knew all the words

After spending three weeks on the topic of social media, I’m sure you could ask any student in the public relations track at the University of Oregon “what’s a great way to get your small business brand out there and spread the word?” Their reply, “Start blogging.” Now this could be good or this could be bad. Bad? really how could this be bad?!?!

Todd Defren PR Squared blogger talks about how the plight of minor bad buzz for small business bloggers can throw them off the charts, out on the streets, and their product in the trash. The big news online the past week has been Targets response to a bloggers concern regarding an inappropriate advertisement. Targets response was that they simply didn’t interact with non-traditional media such as blogging and did not answer this blogger and faithful consumer’s question.

I don’t know where those PR people went to school, but it sure wasn’t Oregon. Obviously this was not the way to handle the situation and the blogger wrote about it, which is great if the blogger has a large readership.

Now imagine you’re a new business. You barley have a Web site up, and you begin joining the conversation and blogging. Now lets say the product you sell has a flaw. One of your consumers blogs about the flaw. With not much media surrounding your product when someone goes to google to search for your product, within the first few posts there is this negative blog. Though, this isn’t the case for Target. When you go to google the store, the negative blog will be hiding deep within the pages of google because there are more relative site than you tiny little blog complaining about the way you were treated by the PR people.

So can blogs hurt or help small businesses? It’s a ‘double edge sword’ as Defren says. It is definently something you want to bring up to your small business clients and write down the pros (benefits) and the cons of having a blog for your small business. It may just be that risk you have to take to get into the world of social media.

 photo: netream

I was recently reading a blog about how youtube.com is going to take over the world, but in actuality, I believe Google is going to take over the world.

Google has many different widgets to put on your Igoogle site. It’s the number one search engine, and it has created Picasa to edit and store your photos online, so there is no need to take up space on your computer when you can save your photos online. Google has also created gmail, where you never have to delete another email again in your life because it also stores all emails online with unlimited space. Google is soon to come out with the G phone, which will revolutionize the cellular telephone market.
The G-phone is said to look similar-ish to the iPhone, with a big wide screen and few buttons, Google wants to bring their software, search, advertising, IM, VoIP and Web 2.0-style apps to a stylish hand held device that plugs you right into everything Google, bringing Google to those even without a computer.

The only downside some may see is instead of listening to a ring, the person calling you will hear advertisements, making the phone cost $0. Pretty amazing if you ask me. It seems as though Google’s mission statement is to accomplish the impossible. Google’s vision is to bring the Google brand to those who don’t own a computer.
I used to believe that apple was revolutionizing the market when it came to cell phones, I mean instead of carrying around your phone, i pod and camera now its all in one. I think apple still has the upper hand on the ability to have i-tunes on its phones. Google may have free service and most of the same technology but the ability to have you music on your phone…. might whisk college students off their feet.
but when it comes down to the fight over music or free service…. Google will win the ultimate fight.
And that is why I believe google is out to take over the world.