Social Media Marketing Course at Rutgers University is Teaching Local Businesses How to Make Money Online (02/22) | Social Media Advice
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., Feb 16, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) --The Rutgers University Center for Management Development (CMD) announced today that there are still seats available for the Social Media Marketing course in its Mini-MBA program that is teaching local businesses how to make money online. This innovative executive education program is a deep dive into social media marketing strategy and provides practical, hands-on social media training to improve business results.
This certificate program is designed for executives or teams of professionals working in marketing, advertising, branding, communications or sales that want to gain practical skills through the use of the latest social media technology. It is also appropriate for individuals seeking to employ social media to further their individual careers.
"Many businesses are quick to setup Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube accounts, but few understand how to use them strategically to drive ROI," said Eric Greenberg, Director, Marketing Programs, CMD, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. "Executives and small business owners will leave the program with the knowledge and skills to generate profits from their social media programs."
To accommodate a variety of schedules, the Social Media Marketing Mini-MBA will be available either in a one-week accelerated format or a nine-week evening class that will cover the same curriculum but in a format that will fit around regular work hours. The next opportunities to be part of this exceptional program:
The evening Social Media Marketing course will be held at the New Brunswick NJ campus every Wednesday evening from 6-9:30 p.m. from February 22 to April 18.
The accelerated Social Media Marketing course will be held at the New Brunswick campus from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday to Friday, March 19 to 23.
The cost of the Rutgers Mini-MBA: Social Media Marketing course is $4,995, which includes all instructional materials on a pre-loaded Apple iPad 2 and fees. The Rutgers Mini MBA Program may qualify for corporate tuition reimbursement. for those interested in academic graduate credit, a 3-credit course waiver is available for an MBA.
This program has been approved by the New Jersey Department of Labor for workforce training grants. Funding may be available for those receiving unemployment benefits. Rutgers CMD's channel on YouTube features former students discussing the program, including Diana Candela, an Account Manager at CISCO Systems, who discusses how she is translating what she has learned in the Rutgers Mini-MBA Social Media Marketing course into business and professional success.
About Rutgers Center for Management Development
Founded in 1947, Rutgers CMD provides management and leadership training for professionals in business and human resources. Instructors are Rutgers faculty members from the Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick, and the School of Management and Labor Relations, as well as industry experts. Programs bring practitioners from different organizations and industries together in a diverse learning environment designed to develop skills and enhance knowledge through a combination of expert class instruction and peer interaction.
for general information inquiries and registration, please contact Peter Methot, Rutgers CMD Program Manager at 732-640-1853 or email at .edu or go online to the Center for Management Development.
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SOURCE: Rutgers University Center for Management Development
SEO-PR inc. Greg Jarboe, 978-549-9537
Copyright Business Wire 2012
Privacy Tussle Brews Over Social Media Monitoring (02/22) | Social Media Advice
A major tussle is emerging in the debate over how government agencies can gather and use information posted publicly on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and other agencies contend that social media monitoring is a vital part of their efforts to keep abreast of events that that could pose threats to national security and public safety.
Privacy advocates maintain that unfettered social media monitoring by the government will chill free speech and intrude upon privacy and civil rights.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and other groups have noted that that at least some of the information harvested from social media sites by some government agencies has little to do with public safety goals.
Several lawmakers today expressed similar concerns at a U.S. House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence hearing called to examine a social media monitoring initiative launched by the DHS two years ago.
DHS documents released in response to an EPIC inquiry show that the agency hired General Dynamics to monitor numerous blogs, news and social media sites.
Under an $11 million contract, General Dynamics has been tasked to, among other things, collect information that reflects adversely on the government and agencies such as the DHS, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the CIA.
Lawmakers today sharply questioned the rationale behind such information gathering and demanded to know how it served either national security or public safety goals.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), a ranking member of the subcommittee, told DHS chief privacy officer Mary Callahan that the information the agency is gathering to build files on journalists, bloggers and Internet activists is "irrelevant."
Speir contended that the information is not needed for public safety purposes -- and and asked that the DHS to stop collecting it.
For example, she cited a document which appeared to show that the DHS collected and analyzed community responses to a controversial proposal to transfer Guantanamo prison detainees to a local prison in Standish, Mich.
"Capturing public reaction to major government proposals is not something you should be doing, Speier said. "This is not a political operation."
Subcommittee chair Rep. Patrick Meehan, (R-PA), demanded to know who at DHS was responsible for ensuring that the social media monitoring was not intrusive.
"Who is making the protections against circumstances under which government is playing a role in not just analyzing but filtering back, recording and reporting about things that people in the community have said about governmental activity," Meehan asked.
Callahan insisted that the social media monitoring activities of the DHS focus only on breaking news and events, not on specific individuals. The DHS uses specific and generic keywords such as 'disaster', 'flood' and 'tornado' to search for information on social media sites, she said.
She contended that the concerns about monitoring social networks for examples of public dissent and for public attitudes about government agencies and proposals are misplaced and based on outdated documents.
"The standard by which we operate is not the 'who,' but the 'what,'" she said. Callahan said the only instances in which the DHS might collect personally identifiable information via its social media monitoring is when it involves public figures or life or death circumstances.
The FBI, which recently began scouting for a social media monitoring tool, also has said that it doesn't target specific individuals or organizations in its searchers.
The FBI has maintained that it aims to enhance situational awareness by tapping the information on social media networks.
Both the DHS and FBI have said they are only collecting publicly available information, though it's doubtful whether such assurances will assuage privacy and rights groups.
In a statement that was quoted several times by lawmakers at today's hearing, EPIC maintained that there is no legal basis for DHS' monitoring and that it in fact violates the federal Privacy Act.
"Law enforcement agency monitoring of online criticism and dissent chills legitimate criticism of the government, and implicates the first Amendment," the privacy group said.
EPIC also called for the DHS to immediately suspend monitoring for political and journalistic activity that may reflect badly on the government. It called for more controls and oversight and said that the DHS, FBI and other agencies involved should be required to submit annual reports to Congress detailing their social media monitoring activities.
Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at @jaivijayan , or subscribe to Jaikumar's RSS feed . His e-mail address is .
Read more about privacy in Computerworld's Privacy Topic Center.
Ford’s social media strategy entrepreneurial (02/22) | Social Media Advice
In a big coup for Cincinnati Social Media, Ford’s U.S. social media manager Craig Daitch visited the LPK Brand Innovation Center this morning to give a presentation about the ways he’s helped the Michigan auto manufacturer become a leader in online engagement.
Daitch manages a Facebook presence of 5.5 million engaged fans (on multiple pages).
He helps launch new cars and trucks exclusively through social media.
He initiates national cause marketing campaigns that generate tens of millions of online impressions.
He produces original video content featuring Ford as a lifestyle.
He mines the Web to find ways for Ford to help people and generate buzz.
And he responds personally to the company’s fans, especially when they’re angry. (Daitch made a personal call Wednesday to a woman who violated its engagement rules on Facebook).
He’s also a lifelong (and vocal) fan of Ford. Check out the video he created several years before taking the job:
How I Fell in love with Ford Motor Company from Craig Daitch on Vimeo.
Check out tweets from the event here.
Interestingly enough, Daitch also comes from a startup background. after college in the early 2000s, he and some friends created one of the first text-messaging platforms that allowed messaging across wireless carriers. the Detroit company called SimpleWire also built a web developer network of 70,000 people who shared about their projects.
After selling that company, Daitch formed another to offer brands product placement opportunities within video games. the firm made $2 million in one year through a partnership with the gaming company UbiSoft, and then sold in 2006.
Daitch spent several years in New York City as an emerging media consultant and guest lecturer at New York University’s Stern School of Business before taking the job in his hometown at Ford in early 2011.
He spent some time after the morning presentation to answer questions from the audience and I.
You have a robust corporate social media program, but how do you translate that to your dealer network?
Typically negativity on social media involves a certain dealer. To keep favorability of the brand in social media, I have to get dealers totally in line with social.
FDAF (Ford Dealer Advertising Fund), which manages social media for dealerships, and Buddy Media, a content management system, are rolling out 3,000 dealer Facebook pages this year with syndicated and local content the dealers will moderate. Dealers go through the same training as employees. It’s a foreign world for most of them, but no one has said no.
How are you integrating your social media strategy with mobile? what challenges exist?
An example: we’re creating an app that is unique to the features of a device. the Mustang Customizer has over two million customizations of the vehicle, both Ford and other vendors, and allows you to build your own Mustang. It’s a ubiquitous brand experience.
We’re migrating to HTML5 on everything, but there are still challenges if devices lack Flash support or if a content management system we use isn’t necessarily compliant. We’re still driving a ton of traffic to the desktop, laptop, PC experience. However we’re doing a lot in embracing mobile too.
You started your career as a serial entrepreneur, and then joined the corporate world. How do you incorporate the values of an entrepreneur into the job?
The very core of the job is 100 percent reliant on being an entrepreneur. Going to Ford Motor with 160,00 employees, you do have that latitude to be an entrepreneur. Given the fact that the rules of the road have not been written on social, we’re still inventing on a daily basis. that alone has let us really embrace the entrepreneurial spirit.
When you’re an entrepreneur, there are so many factors you face, everything from making critical business decisions that could impact your product or customers to, ‘am I going to make payroll?’ there is a scrapiness that Ford embraces not just in myself but in all our employees. We encourage great ideas to float to the top.
What advice do you have for startups trying to get the attention of a major brand/company?
Be patient. Have a real value proposition. That’s not just for small companies. That’s everything from Empire Avenue to Pinterest to LinkedIn. It’s really easy for us to gravitate to critical mass when Facebook has 845 million members. Our goals are to create reach and relevancy, and I can often do that on one specific social network. sometimes it’s challenging to find value in niche nascient services. with that said, we are constantly looking for new ways to build relationships with our fans and our customers.
What do you think about Pinterest? Is that a platform you’ll experiment with?
Pinterest isn’t working with brands officially, but we have a plan and are going to use it for one of our programs coming soon. what I love about Pinterest — we’re a culture of curators. We don’t like to create content. We love to share it. And Pinterest really hits that core with people. It’s a really neat social network and we’re looking forward to working with them.
What new companies are you most intrigued by?
What Path is doing is interesting. the whole concept of checking in with GetGlue is real unique. Shazam is finally taking off not just for music, but TV. When you see the reach of TV and you couple that with social check-ins, that provides for some real relevant opportunities for Ford based on sponsorship and product integration. Instagram too. even though users are relegated to one device, that device has such high market share. It allows everybody to play award-winning photographer.
Twitter Diplomacy: State Department 2.0 : All Tech Considered : NPR (02/21) | Social Media Advice
The U.S. evacuated the staff of its embassy in Damascus earlier this month owing to security issues. But that hasn't stopped Robert Ford, the U.S. ambassador to Syria, from using social media to keep in touch with events on the ground, and to try to shape them.
On the embassy's Facebook page, for instance, Ford has posted satellite images of tanks moving on cities and a pipeline fire spreading toxic fumes.
Ford is part of a new generation of diplomats using online tools such as Facebook and Twitter to get their message out. in fact, these days, U.S. diplomats take a course in what one State Department official calls "21st century statecraft" before they head out to their assignments.
Today if somebody is lying about you in the media ... we now have the tools to get the real facts out there.
- Alec Ross, State Department social media adviser
"I tell all our ambassadors, remember, you only have one mouth but you have two ears, so use this as a way not just of communicating with the citizens of the country where you are serving, but also understanding the point of view of people who may not be sitting at a mahogany table inside the embassy," says Alec Ross, the State Department's senior adviser on innovation.
Sitting at such a table in the State Department's rare books room recently, Ross says it wasn't an easy start for Ford, the ambassador in Syria. He had early run-ins with pro-government bloggers, known as the Syrian Electronic Army.
But instead of "curling up into the fetal position," says Ross, Ford responded to the Syrian Electronic Army's misinformation. many Syrians also turned against the pro-regime bloggers, who then retreated, Ross says.
Ross points to another ambassador, Michael McFaul in Russia, who is using social media to counter what's being said about him in the Russian press.
"Today if somebody is lying about you in the media — and there have been plenty of things that are factually inaccurate written about Ambassador McFaul — we now have the tools to get the real facts out there," Ross says.
Adapting to Social Media Tools
McFaul seems to be online 24 hours a day, batting back rumors, writing about his reset of relations with Russia or talking about date nights with his wife. John Brown, who teaches public diplomacy at Georgetown University, wonders if the ambassador can keep up that pace.
"I'm concerned about this, as someone who was involved in public diplomacy for over 20 years on behalf of our government, mostly in Eastern Europe, and ultimately, what's most important about public diplomacy in my view is not Facebook to Facebook, but face to face," he says.
Brown also says that the State Department still seems to be of two minds, promoting social media while also trying to control the message and keep tabs on personal blogs of foreign service officers.
As well, he says that given the 140-character Twitter limit, the State Department should hire a modern Emily Dickinson: "We could have these wonderfully short messages, but at the same time poetic and full of meaning," he says.
Former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley was known for his pithy tweets — and for the heartburn they occasionally caused. For example, here's one of his tweets last year, after a government shake-up by Egypt's then-President Hosni Mubarak: "Egypt can't just reshuffle the deck and stand pat."
Crowley says the bureaucracy needs time to get used to these tools.
"Twitter is the ultimate tool for one-liners. I once had a tweet on some subject and someone was concerned about it and said, 'You lost the nuance,' " Crowley recalls. "And I said, at 140 characters, there is no nuance to Twitter."
Taking Risks, But not Too Many
Crowley, who now teaches at Penn State's Dickinson School of Law and School of International Affairs, says ambassadors will undoubtedly get into trouble every now and then. But to be effective, they have to put themselves out there.
"The conduct of diplomacy is going to have to be much more decentralized than it has in the past, and that involves educated risk-taking," Crowley says. "That's the kind of thing you see a Mike McFaul and Robert Ford doing. they got to their posts and rather than sitting on the sidelines, they jumped into the pool."
Ultimately, what's most important about public diplomacy ... is not Facebook to Facebook, but face to face.
- John Brown, former diplomat
The ambassadors to Thailand, Zimbabwe and Japan are winning high praise from Ross, the State Department's social media guru. He doesn't sound too worried about missteps.
"Social media is a lot less risky medium than live television — you can edit yourself, you can think ahead of time before you hit send," Ross says. "I actually think that if you look at the vast amount of communication that this administration has done over social media over the last few years, it's actually shocking that there have been as few mistakes as there have been."
We’re guilty of not eating right
Updated 8 hr(s) 57 min(s) ago
Early Tuesday, I attended a meeting of children-sensitive stakeholders who have, and have every right to, panicked over the increasing statistics of children eating badly. In Kenya today, children are either being overfed or underfed.
It is easy to identify children who are supposedly underfed, as their images, especially those from poor families, always haunt the media. We have seen pictures of children crying, looking gaunt and with big empty stomachs. they inspire sympathy and get people dipping into their pockets to contribute to kitties that promise to provide them with the necessary sustenance.
But how often do we think of our children, the ones we believe are well fed, even pampered, because they are spoilt for choice? for many parents, as long as a child has eaten whatever, then they are well fed. Rarely do we as parents — and I put myself in that category — consider whether our ‘well fed’ children are actually eating well. are they receiving the necessary nutrients for proper body development (vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, proteins) or are they being fed to obesity — and its resultant consequences?
It is easy to brush aside accusations of malnutrition because this is considered a plight for the poor, but guess what, your child too (yes, you, who has a good job that keeps that fridge well stocked and pays for family fun days at restaurants over the weekent to indulge in deep fried foods — and I’m in that category, too) could be malnourished.
The ultimate end for obese and underfed children is the same — death, unless we urgently revamp our diets. An unhealthy parent is most likely going to promote an unhealthy diet in his/her household and his/her children are, consequently, going to end up eating badly. To reverse this trend, a lot of education needs to be done, beginning with well-off parents on how to feed their children properly.
This was the aim of the breakfast meeting yesterday morning when the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, in partnership with Save the Children, Unicef and the Ministry of Gender, Children Affairs and Social Development, among others, launched a new public awareness and advocacy campaign to address the rising prevalence of infant and child malnutrition.
My hope is that the 18-month campaign will motivate more Kenyans to embrace healthy living and, more so, to direct the savings they will make from cutting back on unhealthy foods to organisations that are working tirelessly, every day, to feed the children of the poor who do not have access to proper foods.
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