People often think that the internet has provided lots of advantages for their daily purposes. However, in my opinion, the issues of cyberbullying occur more and more often within the current society. This week, we are assigned to watch a TED Talk, “When online shaming goes too far,” by Jon Ronson. Throughout the presentation, Ronson uses a real story on Twitter to represent how cyberbullying can actually affect one’s life. To illustrate, Justine Sacco who unintentionally posts the funny little acerbic joke- “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” on Twitter. Sacco was just a PR woman from New York with 170 Twitter followers before making this post; however, all the sudden she was targeted on the cyberspace. Afterwards, people who saw and share Sacco’s post tend to start making jokes-very despicable ones at her. In this case, even her job and her employers were as well affected by this cyberbullying. In addition, according to Jon, [Justine Sacco] was Googled 1,220,000 times. Also, Google made somewhere between 120,000 dollars and 468,000 dollars from Justine’s annihilation (Ronson, 2015.) In other words, Sacco’s life was changed in a really bad way just because of this unintentional joke. Nonetheless, people who shame Sacco behind their electronic devices got nothing. At this point, even though Sacco should look before she leap the acerbic joke online, people should also think from different point view before they make the comments. As we know, there are more and more people take others’ comments very serious on the internet. In this circumstance, these sharp comments sometimes will cause the tragedy that cannot be undone. To indicate, there are many celebrities tend to be mental illness after reading the comments on social media. For example, Cindy Yang, one of the social influencer in Taiwan who suicided in 2015 because of cyberbullying. After understanding of these two cases- Sacco and Yang, I personally believe that cyberbullying does significantly affect human’s life. Therefore, people should really think deeply before taking these “shaming actions” towards each other via the internet since they do not know when these actions will lead to the unrecoverable tragedies. In short, cyberbullying no doubt is one of the serious problem that needs to be solved in this generation.

Choosing and applying the best marketing strategy is the most important concept to introduce a product into the market. However, living in this “improved technology” generation, single channel marketing is no longer the best and only marketing strategy anymore. This week in class, we have Darren and Sarah from Capulet Communication to discuss about the importance of multi-channel marketing with us. Personally, I believe that the multi-channel marketing strategy does successfully help a company to bring its brand and product to its customers.

Myself as an example, I voluntarily work in my brother’s company to help them to hold the concerts- mainly singers from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in Vancouver. Yet, although there are many Asians in Vancouver, actually the tickets are really hard to sell if we do not apply the multi-channel strategy. To indicate, we have to apply different marketing strategy towards different targeting customers. For instance, we have to place many posters in different areas to inform about our shows; such as Asian markets and restaurants for people who do not usually use the internet and schools that have more younger Asians who might be interested in the concerts. Also, social media significantly are the main channels for us to promote the shows. For example, Instagram and Facebook help us to spread out the propagandas via the internet. To illustrate, whoever see our posts on the social media will share the information to their family and friends and so on. As the result, there will be more and more people know about our shows. Moreover, the one-by-one conversation is the most required service that we have provided to our customers. In this case, it is not only easier for our customers but also for ourselves to answer the questions regard to the concerts. Therefore, throughout these multiple channels to promote the concerts, we have successfully nailed the SOLD OUT show.

Ultimately, I have more understood the importance of the multi-channel marketing strategy after rethinking the process of holding the concerts. According to Darren and Sarah, if we want to favourably reach different audiences, achieve different marketing goals, we have to tell [our] story in different ways. In short, these multi-channels really help many companies to promote their businesses in this new improved technology generation.

It is the 9th week since I have developed my personal blog, “Maggie Loves to Share.”  However, I notice that being a blogger is not that simple as I thought. Indeed, as a blogger, I understand that there are many things that I still need to learn in order to improve my blog. From the last nine weeks, I have gradually understood some important sources that I need to take care of as a “startup blogger.” To illustrate, from the previous process posts, “know your audiences” and “connection,” I understand that it is important to know my readers more if I want to attract more readers. At this point, I have to observe what kind of topics my readers would like to see more through my blog. Also, maintaining the connections between my audiences and myself is another important process needed to focus on. In other words, I have to link with my audiences through building up different connections. However, despite of knowing my audiences more and building more connections, setting up the SMART goals is also another important concept that I need to do for my blog.

This week in class, we have the guest speaker, Monique Sherrett to discuss the importance of setting up the SMART Goals for our personal blogs. The SMART Goals are described as follow:

S– Specific – setting up the specific target to hit; Benchmark or starting point is clear.

M– Measurable – a metric (target) that can be tracked.

A– Actionable and Achievable – it is possible to improve based on this action.

R– Relevant and Realistic – based on the history of performance, this is a reasonable goal.

T– Time-based – timeframe; how much time is required to reach the target.

Although I have learned the concept of SMART Goals from other classes, actually I have never thought about setting up a smart goal from the blogger’s point of view. In this circumstance, I decided to set up a smart goal that I can achieve in the short-term period for my personal blog. My smart goal will be described as follow:

S– create more criterias to attract different audiences.

M– looking for different interesting topics that my readers would like to read.

A– asking for different suggestions from my current audiences (eg,. My family and friends)

R– it is possible have the weekly or monthly meeting with my recent audiences to discuss about how my blog can be improved.

T– this smart goal plan can be runned for the short-term period (eg,. 2, 3 or 6 months goal)

Throughout this smart goal plan, I believe that I can attract more audiences from different perspectives. Ultimately, I would like to thank Monique to bring up the idea of smart goals in class. In my opinion, I think setting up the smart goals is no doubt a really important process to improve my blog.