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| GOING SOCIAL |
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| Marketsmith's summer intern program offered opportunities to three strong young women from Marylawn High School of the Oranges, a school devoted to preparing its 100% female student body for the challenges of rapid societal and technological change and fostering initiative, creativity, self respect and concern for others. |
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| Because of the values and work ethic instilled in each of them at Marylawn, the Generation Y interns were able to respond to the challenges of a business environment bringing fresh ideas and enthusiasm. As primary drivers of consumer generated media, themselves, Gen Yers will be the dictators of future trends in social media and direct marketing through their buying and socializing behavior. As their primary task, the interns established Marketsmith accounts on MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn in order to form communities and inspire thousands of young people to think about direct marketing, hopefully interesting them in pursuing it as a course of study in college and as a profession. |
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| The following article was written by the interns about their summer experience. |
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| Once graduating from high school, students race to secure their last jobs before heading off to college, usually working at the mall or a run-of-the-mill fast food restaurant. However, this summer, we had the opportunity to work in one of New Jersey's fastest growing, multi-million dollar marketing companies. We were the lucky ones. All of us were nervous during our interviews but once we secured our positions as marketing associates, also known as interns, we began the task of creating a social networking site for Marketsmith, Inc. Marketsmith, Inc. is a company that is "dedicated to making their clients better than they were the day before," so with this motto etched in our minds, we set off to create profiles on three different networking sites that would convey their message: Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. |
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| Facebook launched into the internet world three years ago, has become "the most viewed site among all respondents," according to a survey done by eMarketer.com. Knowing that we had our own Facebook accounts, we decided it would be the perfect place to kick off our summer experiment. One of our main goals was to reach out to as many of our peers as possible. This was done by adding people to our "friends" list who we already knew, then branching out to those people with whom we were not so familiar. Another purpose for this experiment was to interest our peers about the companies Marketsmith, Inc. represents. We accomplished this by asking weekly questions, which prompted the reader to visit the company's website in order to answer each question. In addition to this objective, we were also on a mission to build awareness of the company. By reaching out to our peers and educating them about direct marketing, we hoped that they in turn would refer their parents or other relatives working in a business environment that desired to improve its marketing abilities, to Marketsmith, Inc. Although the Facebook account attracted our peers, we knew that if we were going to make our summer trial a success, we would need to broaden our horizons. |
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| MySpace is one of the biggest social networking teen sites, with over 50 million members. It's also one of the fastest growing websites in the country, so what better way for Marketsmith, Inc. to reach out to teens in high school than to create a MySpace profile? Like the Facebook application, the MySpace profile informs and educates teens about direct marketing and influences them to inform their parents and other relatives who work in a business environment to visit the Marketsmith, Inc. website. The profile was also created to reach out to companies that want to become better at marketing. The profile page features various engaging activities that draw teens, such as special requests to be featured on the page for a week and acknowledging every friends birthday. Any professional means are used to attract our friends to the Marketsmith, Inc. page and website. Although slow with its progress to date, with time, the MySpace profile will build and add more friends. We believe one or more of those friends will need the services of Marketsmith, Inc. |
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| In our search for a third social networking site, we stumbled upon LinkedIn.com, which unlike Facebook and MySpace is focused on professional networking. Little did we know that LinkedIn is one of the most popular business networking sites, with more that 11 million registered users. What makes LinkedIn so popular among users is that they are able to maintain a list of Connections, which incorporates Connections that are two degrees away (friends of friends), to develop a network of business contacts. Our first step in shaping a network of business contacts was to create a profile for Marketsmith, Inc. This profile has a summary of Marketsmith, Inc's core marketing business, a list of specialties and associations, and a link to the Marketsmith, Inc. website. The long-term goals for the LinkedIn profile are: to develop a strong network of business contacts, to increase Marketsmith, Inc's Google page rank, and to connect to potential customers. |
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| Marketsmith was pleased with the work the interns accomplished. And we have learned a great deal about social networking sites and how to evaluate participation in them. Consequently we have decided to reevaluate our participation in Facebook and MySpace. We firmly believe that forays into social networking sites must serve the objectives of the organization. And at this time, we have determined that Facebook and MySpace are better suited to organizations that seek a direct dialog with the primary audiences those sites serve. We will continue to evaluate and monitor the evolution of such sites to decide if we would like to participate in the future. |
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