Social Networking Week!!!

For the last week or so, I've been doing a lot of writing of blogs for TMI. It's a surprisingly time-intensive project to make something that is interesting to read. I've had to do research on even the simplest of topics to make sure what I'm saying makes sense. Recently, in order to make a blog, I had to spend a few hours dyeing Easter Eggs and putting tattoos on them. It's fun, unsurprisingly, and has made these blogs my favorite part of the internship thus far.

My favorite thing about writing these blogs is not actually the creation of them. That part is actually pretty hard. I enjoy writing things, but when you have to write on one specific topic and make it interesting, that gets hard. what attracts me to the blog writing is the idea that someone will see them I am, essentially, at the front lines with these blogs when it comes to interaction with the Customers. Whether giving them some fun ideas on how to use temporary tattoos for Easter eggs of giving them a brief history of the traditions of Saint Patrick's Day, the people who are reading these are the people who have an interest in the company (or people who I direct to the site, but in the spirit of detailing my project let's forget about that for a second.)

In my mind, the people who read these are getting some kind of pleasure out of them. Maybe they were looking for an easy way to learn about Augmented Reality and they stumbled upon our blog that details how that technology works (TMI is working with CapriSun and putting Tattoos that work with an AR app. This is not a random topic. It's actually pretty cool). The idea that people are taking time out of their day to read what I have written is a great feeling. Not to mention that as a communication device, it's pretty cool as well.

As for what I'm doing this week: More blogs. I have a couple of blogs, written by me, going up on the site this week. I'll link them here (and  probably on Facebook too) when they go up. Please read them and tell me what you think. It's mean the world to me knowing that I did a decent job catching your attention.
(Also, ask questions on here. I'd love to know if people are interested in any aspect of my project)

Oh, and it's Social Media week for me! I'll be tweeting and Pinning and Flickr-ing (?) all throughout this week, so check out those as they come along. There may be a few Facebook posts as well. I'm sure my next blog post will probably be all about each social network and their strengths in the marketing world as I go through them this next week.

As for my project, I finally have an idea in the direction that it's going. More reading has to be done, and more investigation into the world of Social media and business in currently underway. If all goes according to plan, I'm sure I won't be disappointed about the final product.

That's all I really have to say here. I'll probably post next week. See you then!

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

What's been Happening... Part 1

What's been happening? A good amount! During my time at TMI, I've been learning a lot about how the industry of Temporary tattoos works. The actual manufacturing of them is a surprisingly complex process that I'm not even allowed to talk about due to company policies. Which brings me to one of the major things that happened in the last few weeks. As a part of employee training that the marketing department had to go through, we went on a quick tour of the tattoo factory, learning how everything works in pretty good detail. Some of those machines are massive, and slightly terrifying, but the whole process is extremely complicated and interesting. Those small flower or dragon tattoos that you put on as a kid are the result of some pretty complex stuff that unfortunately, I cannot go into detail about. Fortunately, my project isn't about temporary tattoos specifically, so that makes this blogging thing a whole lot easier on me.

In addition to the tour, I finally finished the Blog Footer project. you have no idea how great it was to get that done. while a relatively simple task, it was a pretty big undertaking that took days to complete. It was finally nice to get that done. This gave me time to do some research on the role of social networking and the role it plays for TMI and companies in general. While orders can be made over the phone, a large amount of temporary tattoo orders are made through the website. This is important to note when looking at the role that social networking plays for business. Because it is relatively cheap, or even free, to maintain a blog or page on a social network, it essentially acts as free advertising. To use Facebook as an example, if you were to like a page about Astronomy or some other interest that you hold dear to your heart, the page that you like shows up on your friend's feed as "What's-her/his-name like this." If you have 300 friends, there's a chance a good amount of people will see this and maybe click on it out of curiosity. This effect is even greater if you share something that the page posts such as a funny picture or interesting fact that you had previously not known. These actions don't seem like that much but you might actually be getting that astronomy page, or in our case, TMI's page, a ton of visits just from clicking a small button. However, this alone does not create revenue. This, at it's most basic form, even if your friend's do not even click on the page, creates attention for the company. Even if this is for a split second, the fact the the company has been introduced to someone new is important.

That's the first bit of what I learned. I'll summarize the second bit in the next blog post coming in the next day or so. Thanks for reading!

First Week of Interning

So it's been about a week since I first started my internship with Tattoo Manufacturing International, and I have to say, from the get-go, everything has been pretty great. The first day consisted of witty banter between my supervisor, Hannah and the IT department as we attempted to set up my work computer. That's right, I get my own computer to work on along with a decent sized desk. I hope you are very jealous. The rest of that day I spent writing my first blog post for the Tattoo Sales blog. I now know all there is to know about St. Patrick's day. Be on the look out for that post in mid-March if you want to read it. Though you all should. Who wouldn't want to read a blog expertly crafted by my hands?

The second, third and Fourth days of my internship consisted of me going back and editing the footer on every single blog that's been published. Seeing as there are over 400 published blogs, this is a bit of a task to handle. However, I am apparently the only person on the planet who thinks that copying and pasting things over and over gain is relaxing, so that's a plus. The best part of this task is that I get to go through every blog ever posted. I often find myself reading the blogs themselves, something that has made doing this take far longer than it really should. The blogs themselves are extremely interesting due to the fact that they cover such a wide range of topics. There are some that give useful tips on how to do certain thing while others talk about the history and safety of temporary tattoos. My personal favorites are the ones that give ideas on the uses of Temporary tattoos that I had never actually thought of myself. Of course, while it's embarrassing to say, I've never actually successfully applied a temporary tattoo on myself, so that may be why I never thought of them. Despite this though, people who have achieved something as simple as applying a temporary tattoo would still find some of these new uses interesting.

Anyway, what doing this work has taught me so far is that the blog, especially, is a fantastic way to interact with costumers, something that wasn't as easily available to companies before the internet. I personally enjoy reading and writing the blogs, and I'm sure you will too. If you want to check some of these out, the head over to blog.tattoosales.com. I'm sure you'll find something interesting over there. Also, this will be where the blogs that I write are posted when the right times comes. Be on the lookout for that.

In short, I've really enjoyed my first week here. I'm looking forward to what the following weeks will bring and what I'm going o learn from working here.

See you next week for another update!
Christian Wise

Before We Get Started...

Unfortunately, my internship with Tattoo Manufacturing Int. does not start up for another week. So, in addition to me sitting at home doing some research on the topic, I thought maybe it would be a good idea to give some background on how I came up with my project and what I am actually looking at.

The entire idea for this project came as a result of me spending massive amounts of time on my computer. In my time on the internet, I've come to notice that people tend to treat it like it's the real world. I have actually made some really good friends over the internet, so the idea of the internet being similar to the real world is something that I have experienced personally. This is where I got the idea of an Internet Society. An Internet Society, as I describe it, is a mirror image of the real-world society, but on the internet. it's made up of all the interactions between people on the internet whether they are social or concerned with business. Like the real world, these can be positive or negative. The total of these interactions and the actions of the people who make them forms what I called the Internet society. The original idea of my project was to look at this society as a whole and see what was different in the internet society from the real world. Did people act differently? Was there more opportunity for negative interaction due to internet users being behind a screen? Things like that were what I wanted to examine, and it was an exciting prospect, until I realized just how large a task that would be.

In order to rectify that problem, I decided to focus on one type of internet interaction. I switched my focus from the internet as a whole to a Business-Social Media project. My project, as it is now, focuses on how social networking and the internet in general has changed how businesses conduct their business. I will be working on different types of social media for Tattoo Manufacturing Int. and learning how social networking has become both a positive and negative thing for businesses. In addition to this, through doing research of my own, I am going to examine how business has changed from the introduction of social media.

So that's my project in a nutshell. I am starting my internship on the 17th and I'm really excited to start. I'm looking forward to the project as a whole, and I hope that anyone who sees this will keep coming back to read about my project as it progresses.

Of course, if you have and Questions or Comments, feel free to post them.

My next post will probably be next Friday, after I finish my first week of my internship.
See you then!