Chapter 1

CH. 1 Blog

I consider myself a digital native for sure.  I can only remember a short time when technology wasn’t a part of my life and that was only because it wasn't’ a big part in anyones life at the time.  Even growing up, I remember my parents have some type of phone.  I also remember vividly playing games on the computer, although they were all educational unlike more today.  I feel like I have easily adapted to technology.  I think out generation has it the best though.  We grew up learning how to deal with technology.  I can remember a time when technology wasn’t around, but I learned how to use along the way.  The generation before mine has a more difficult time adjusting to technology and the younger generation doesn’t know how to live without. 

To become active in the social media world, you have to know how social media works and use it for its good.  Through my place of employment, we use many social media tools.  For example, we post outfits and jewelry to the stores Facebook and Instagram accounts.  We get hundreds of likes and numerous comments and phone calls each day from people who want to pay and have us ship them certain items.  This has taught me just how powerful social media is how much people actually do pay attention to it.  

Being a co-creator turns users into producers and consumers.  This gives them an opportunity to make something their own and add a personal touch in order to increase it’s effectiveness.  

Some of the downfalls that I have seen through social media when it comes to marketing and merchandising is follow ups.  Some places are so overloaded with requests that online orders via social media often get lost, misplaced, sent to the wrong address or wrong payment information.  Some places may even be so over whelmed  that they won’t respond back to the customer and this creates a bad name for the company and their product.  

In order for FMO to grow more, I think that they could do some things differently.  They could increase awareness through going to some of the Merchandising classes and talk to the students about what FMO does and the benefits of being apart of the organization.  FMO could influence people to join through talking about what they do or trips they have previously taken or even through handing out cookies while talking to classes about their organization.  Also, FMO could gain more commitment through a points system amount its members.  Whoever has the most attendance points from meetings at the end of the semester could get a prize, for example.