What's Been Happening... Part 2

As of March 13th, 2014, I am officially a published Blog author on a blog that isn't my own! Hooray! As a part of my internship at TMI, I took on the task of writing a couple of blogs for them. My first post talks about the traditions of St. Patrick's Day and their origins. It was an educational experience to write, and I'm sure it'll be the same when you read it. Please check it out and tell me what you think of it. You can find the post here.

With my Blog post being posted and all, it creates a good transition into the second half of what I wanted to talk about with what's happened these last few weeks. One thing that I see a lot of while working with the Blog and social networking sites of TMI is some pretty good interaction between Customers and  the business. Between sharing photos that the customers send to us and little giveaways of tattoos that we have every so often on the Facebook, interaction with customers is pretty great here. Interaction with the customers is something that interests me immensely in this project because it's something that has been made much easier with the arrival of Social networking. This is not to say that companies talking and getting along with their customers was non-existent. It's just that it is made easier with social networking.

This is just an observation of mine, and I'll have to do more research on exactly what changes between companies and their customers arose as a result of the internet.

In other news, I got the books I am using as supplementary research for this project:

The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society
By: Manuel Castells

This book is one I am absolutely excited to read. It is an older book, having been published in 2001. It should hopefully provide me an idea of what influences the internet would have on businesses and society as a whole. In addition to that, it provides a point of view from a time before Social networking was the massive thing that it is now. It should be interesting to read 1. because I honestly can't remember a time when Social networking wasn't a popular thing and 2. I'm hoping that I can tie it back into my idea of an Internet Society.

Social Business By Design: Transformative Social Media Strategies for the Connected Company
By: Dion Hinchcliffe and Peter Kim

This book is a bit strange to be using in a project. It's a guide on social media strategies for businesses. Now, this book may have a lot of jargon in it that I'll have to look up, so I'm not as excited to read this as The Internet Galaxy, but It should still be interesting to learn about the certain marketing strategies that Businesses are implementing with the presence of social media.

I've started to read Internet Galaxy and it's very interesting so far. I'll discuss what I learned when I've finished the book. I also have a few articles that I am going to read on the side, but those are coming in later weeks.

Thanks for taking the time to read! Next post will probably be about what I've been reading and whatever has happened with my internship.

See you next Blog post!

Christian Wise