TAKA DESIGNS

If you do a quick search on Google for “common social media mistakes” you’ll pretty much find the same points being covered again and again.  Everything from not posting enough, failing to stay engaged, not having a plan, etc. I think by now a lot of these are pretty much ingrained into our heads. So instead, I wanted to point out a few mistakes that may not be so obvious:

1. Placing social media icons without links to profile pages
2. Using hashtags on Twitter for #everything
3. Automatically linking your Facebook updates to Twitter or vice versa.

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I’ve been a big fan of popchips and the other day I stumbled upon Trader Joe’s version called Popped Potato Chips that looked remarkably similar. If you’re a fan of Trader’s Joe’s it may come as a surprise, but many products that they sell under the Trader Joe’s label, are actually made by some well known companies. As an article by Fortune titled Inside the Secret World of Trader Joe’s goes on to say, “…big, well-known companies also make many of Trader Joe’s products. Those Trader Joe’s pita chips? Made by Stacy’s, a division of PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay. On the East Coast much of its yogurt is supplied by Danone’s Stonyfield Farm.”

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I recently had the opportunity to moderate a panel discussion for the UCLA Social Media Group, which I manage and run. We had a diverse mix of undergraduate and graduate students from UCLA and discussed how they used social media in their personal and academic lives. Our topics ranged from usage and behavior, privacy, advertising and the value of interaction with brands, companies, campus departments and student services.

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In May of 2011, UCLA Marketing & Special Events was approached to help create a more engaging and dynamic Commencement experience online through the use of social media.

With only a few short weeks to make this happen, we began to think strategically about what opportunities and tools existed given our limited time and resources.

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Strike three for Samsung. Did they just copy Apple again? This time it’s not a phone or a tablet, but a commercial called “The Way We’re Wired” for its new Galaxy S II phone. They must have run out of devices to copy. The video looks frightening similar to Apple’s famous “Think Different” commercial, right down to the narrator’s voice (Apple used Richard Dreyfuss). You be the judge and compare.

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