Dear Valued Blog Followers
My blog was an ideal way to share my experiences throughout my placement year. Having completed my placement year and continuing back into a full time programme, I believe it is crucial that my focus is entirely on that.
It isn't to say that I won't blog. I want to keep you interested, updated, ammused on my lifestyle and opinions and thoughts. I have decided to now blog on a monthly basis rather than a weekly basis.
I hope you are not too disheartned, I will be back before you know it I will be back, writing articles and and vouching my opinions once again.
Thanks for following.
Flipper
Saturday 25 September 2010
Friday 24 September 2010
The wide world of Blogging!
The Internet is a wonderful place, full of information and useful advice. Since the evolution of the Internet many years ago we can now browse, read, purchase information in a matter of seconds it's at our finger tips.
Blogs are excellent tools to enable the development of such information and in particular people who write blogs tend too comment not just on the facts but also on their opinions. A blog post can take many different shapes, sizes and content structures. Whether your into Football, Art, or something niche there will always be something out there for everyone.
The area in which blogs live in a social media context is called a blogosphere. The term implies that blogs exist together as an entity or as a social network in which everyday authors can publish their opinions.
I was reading an article from which the picture below was sourced, within it there were some relevant and interesting statistics relating to the blog industry:
Blogging isn't something which you start up once and just forget about. For someone it is often a full time job generating enormous revenues from advertising and other media. If you use it wisely much of the information can be beneficial to others.
Have you got a blog? Interested in starting your own blog but don't have any inspiration or guidance on what to write. Send me a message and hopefully I will be able to help you.
Blogs are excellent tools to enable the development of such information and in particular people who write blogs tend too comment not just on the facts but also on their opinions. A blog post can take many different shapes, sizes and content structures. Whether your into Football, Art, or something niche there will always be something out there for everyone.
The area in which blogs live in a social media context is called a blogosphere. The term implies that blogs exist together as an entity or as a social network in which everyday authors can publish their opinions.
I was reading an article from which the picture below was sourced, within it there were some relevant and interesting statistics relating to the blog industry:
- Blogpulse track more than 150 million blogs currently with the Huffington Post rated as the best blog out there on the market. According to Jeff Bullas he suggests that the sucess of Huffington Post, a blog started by Arianna Huffington, co founder of the Huffington post, is based on a number of factors, mostly to do with their passion, and she suggests that the reason why she started her blog was for the ability for people to make a difference on the Internet by just pure persistance and passion.
- The majority of blogs are focused around an important hobby or interest. Furthermore the average age of bloggers are around 35 - 44, often these people have defined career goals or may be stay at home mums wanting to keep busy.
- Further evidence shows that the blogging culture is most popular among males (67%). Readwriteweb suggest this maybe due to the fact that more men may work in a computer/IT related environment.
- Most blogs are updated on a tri-weekly basis. Keeping people in the know about a particular interest or hobby or updating your experiences is key in keeping your followers interested. According to Howtospotter, 2010 the main reason why blogs fail is because lack of unique, quality information that continues to flow to it.
- Japanese is the most common blog language closely followed by English. Although this is quite surprising, according to Global Voices online "Since the time that Manabe Kaori, who has been called the first Blog Queen, it has because the dominant culture and norm". A more concrete suggestion of the larger percentage in particular, Ichiro explains that Japanese is the country of writing. Japanese have long been writing diaries, journals etc and so this continued trend has followed into their blogging lifestyle.
- With the most number of blogs widely distributed around the east coast of America in particular New York and Boston. This further demonstrates their culture and online lifestyle.
Blogging isn't something which you start up once and just forget about. For someone it is often a full time job generating enormous revenues from advertising and other media. If you use it wisely much of the information can be beneficial to others.
Have you got a blog? Interested in starting your own blog but don't have any inspiration or guidance on what to write. Send me a message and hopefully I will be able to help you.
Monday 20 September 2010
The Tetley Tea Folk are back!
The Gaffer and Sydney are back and have made a revolutionary return to our screens. Not since 2001, have they been seen before and tonight they made a revolutionary come back during the advert break for Coronation street.
Gaffer, Sydney, Archie and Clarence used to be a mainstay of Tetley's advertising in ads such as this from the 1980s:
The campaign is targeted to highlight the health of tea and make aware the value of tea in our daily lives. In recent years Tetley has seemed to lost out to its superior Unilever's PG Tips dominating the sale of tea over the last 9 years.
According to Marketingmagazine, the teaser campaign (shown tonight) is to be followed by a "Nostalgic, emotional, tearjerker of a TV ad"
Here is the advert in full.
The use of nostalgia is something that we yearn for in the past, of course different people have different memories of their past. The use of nostalgia in advertising is nothing new and has been around for ages and often Marketeers bring back characters of our childhood to use in their ad's. These are just a few examples of recent adverts featuring nostalgia.
Specsavers: Most recently Virgil and Postman Pat appear highlighting that you should have gone to specsavers.
Marmite: The use of Paddington Bear to promote the latest squeeze bottle of Marmite caused somewhat confusion, to the bears favourite marmalade.
Quaker Oats: The use of Camberwick Green's Windy Miller for some brings back distant memories of the famous puppet character used in the childhood series from the 1980's.
Can you think of any other advertisements that have brought successful TV Characters back to life?
Gaffer, Sydney, Archie and Clarence used to be a mainstay of Tetley's advertising in ads such as this from the 1980s:
The campaign is targeted to highlight the health of tea and make aware the value of tea in our daily lives. In recent years Tetley has seemed to lost out to its superior Unilever's PG Tips dominating the sale of tea over the last 9 years.
According to Marketingmagazine, the teaser campaign (shown tonight) is to be followed by a "Nostalgic, emotional, tearjerker of a TV ad"
Here is the advert in full.
The use of nostalgia is something that we yearn for in the past, of course different people have different memories of their past. The use of nostalgia in advertising is nothing new and has been around for ages and often Marketeers bring back characters of our childhood to use in their ad's. These are just a few examples of recent adverts featuring nostalgia.
Specsavers: Most recently Virgil and Postman Pat appear highlighting that you should have gone to specsavers.
Marmite: The use of Paddington Bear to promote the latest squeeze bottle of Marmite caused somewhat confusion, to the bears favourite marmalade.
Quaker Oats: The use of Camberwick Green's Windy Miller for some brings back distant memories of the famous puppet character used in the childhood series from the 1980's.
Can you think of any other advertisements that have brought successful TV Characters back to life?
Tuesday 14 September 2010
The not so special delivery!
Last week.... I ordered a printer off Amazon and it was delivered Super Saver Delivery. The shipping company HDNL (Home delivery network limited) was in charge to delivery the parcel. You can eventually know the story by now... you wait in for hours and hours, still no parcel, you wait in another couple of hours still no parcel.
No one to tell you when your parcel will delivered or where your parcel is in transit, it would be nice to know as instead of the "will I or won't I go into town" you stay at home waiting for that lucurative parcel you ordered.
Anyway, so the parcel failed to come in the morning even though on their parcel tracking service it left gatwick depot at 9.12 am. I am not stupid, but I live in guildford and it only takes 50 minutes from here to there, so I sort of expected it to be here in the morning or early afternoon.
Still no parcel.
Ok, I might have been a bit optimistic ok, what about early afternoon 2 - 4. Yet again still no parcel. At this moment in time, you begin to get a bit frustrated, panicking that someone has taken it or they have just forgotton. Luckily for me I wasn't at work but if I had been it would have meant I would have had to take the whole day off work.
Eventually my parcel turned up at 6.30pm, the bloke dumping the parcel and leaving again. Asking if it required a signature or not, he said "no its ok". So even though they took 9 hours after they left gatwick, the parcel didn't even need a signature. What sort of customer service is that?
Browsing the internet I can see that I am not the only HDNL customer and how they are renowned for their poor customer service and delivery times here are just a few examples.
Aberquine - they failed to deliver my john lewis TV. because I lived in a flat, instead left it at the Aberdeen depot.
Review Centre - Appalling service. Failed twice so far to deliver. Cited not possible to again access to property. Yet property is open to the public with a barber's shop on site. Am convinced the driver did not bother to attempt delivery. Customer Service completely unsatisfactory merely using the 'broken record' routine stating they will attempt delivery again. "Please be available 0700 - 1900". The van isn't even loaded until after 1030!!!!
See a common problem here? Yes HDNL poor customer service record. My problem isn't with Amazon who I ordered my product from in the first place, they are only the seller and all they do is pass it on to the carrier, but my problem is with carriers and if not careful if you choose the wrong carrier your business could be at fault.
Selling the product at the right price is one thing. Making sure that the product is delivered to the customer is another as this is the overall experience and could be the downful for a review of the product in the long term.
This quote sums up this blog post, "Absolutely useless, would avoid any seller who uses them for delivery".
Have a similar issue or have had another experience with another carrier offering poor customer. I would like to here from you.
No one to tell you when your parcel will delivered or where your parcel is in transit, it would be nice to know as instead of the "will I or won't I go into town" you stay at home waiting for that lucurative parcel you ordered.
Anyway, so the parcel failed to come in the morning even though on their parcel tracking service it left gatwick depot at 9.12 am. I am not stupid, but I live in guildford and it only takes 50 minutes from here to there, so I sort of expected it to be here in the morning or early afternoon.
Still no parcel.
Ok, I might have been a bit optimistic ok, what about early afternoon 2 - 4. Yet again still no parcel. At this moment in time, you begin to get a bit frustrated, panicking that someone has taken it or they have just forgotton. Luckily for me I wasn't at work but if I had been it would have meant I would have had to take the whole day off work.
Eventually my parcel turned up at 6.30pm, the bloke dumping the parcel and leaving again. Asking if it required a signature or not, he said "no its ok". So even though they took 9 hours after they left gatwick, the parcel didn't even need a signature. What sort of customer service is that?
Browsing the internet I can see that I am not the only HDNL customer and how they are renowned for their poor customer service and delivery times here are just a few examples.
Aberquine - they failed to deliver my john lewis TV. because I lived in a flat, instead left it at the Aberdeen depot.
Review Centre - Appalling service. Failed twice so far to deliver. Cited not possible to again access to property. Yet property is open to the public with a barber's shop on site. Am convinced the driver did not bother to attempt delivery. Customer Service completely unsatisfactory merely using the 'broken record' routine stating they will attempt delivery again. "Please be available 0700 - 1900". The van isn't even loaded until after 1030!!!!
See a common problem here? Yes HDNL poor customer service record. My problem isn't with Amazon who I ordered my product from in the first place, they are only the seller and all they do is pass it on to the carrier, but my problem is with carriers and if not careful if you choose the wrong carrier your business could be at fault.
Selling the product at the right price is one thing. Making sure that the product is delivered to the customer is another as this is the overall experience and could be the downful for a review of the product in the long term.
This quote sums up this blog post, "Absolutely useless, would avoid any seller who uses them for delivery".
Have a similar issue or have had another experience with another carrier offering poor customer. I would like to here from you.
Monday 6 September 2010
The safe and not so safe side to Ebay.
As many of you may or may not know I have become slightly addicted to eBay over the last year, what ever I can find in the house, if I can't make a use for it, I will stick on eBay; jeans, televisions and printers.
But it makes you wonder how would you ever trust me if you have never bought anything from me before. Recently I had one customer who recently purchased a product from me. Having tested it before I sent it (as that is the usual norm) she received it and said it wasn't working. Having gone through testing the item and even when the product was sent back it was still working. In the end I gave the customer a refund as she was saying one thing and I was saying something completely different.
Can eBay be questioned as safe then?
EBay has over 68 million shoppers is an attraction to all offering bargains and huge outlet discounts. When you purchase something through eBay you are only shown the item description and small thumbnail of the product. Is this enough to go on, to convince you that the product is working? Not for items like MP3's then and television receivers too. Maybe they need to launch a video method to prove it is actually working?
This customer probably won't buy anything from me again and maybe not even from eBay in the future.
Apart from that then why would someone buy something from eBay? After all you aren't covered by other consumer laws that protect you when shopping on the high street. Neither are you protected by the sales of good act, which says everything you buy should be fit for the purpose. Its a question of trusting the seller.
So how can a customer trust you? After all he has never met you and you have never met him…..
· Well according to Thisismoney, you should always research the customer or company. This can be done easily by reading there sellers ratings and feedback scores.
· Never give out your credit card details to anyone. Use eBay’s preferred payment method PayPal to prevent fraudulent behaviour.
· Finally to make sure you know exactly what you are looking for ask the seller questions directly about the product.
Would you buy something from eBay? Tell me your views and opinions or experiences you have had with the online phenomenon.
But it makes you wonder how would you ever trust me if you have never bought anything from me before. Recently I had one customer who recently purchased a product from me. Having tested it before I sent it (as that is the usual norm) she received it and said it wasn't working. Having gone through testing the item and even when the product was sent back it was still working. In the end I gave the customer a refund as she was saying one thing and I was saying something completely different.
Can eBay be questioned as safe then?
EBay has over 68 million shoppers is an attraction to all offering bargains and huge outlet discounts. When you purchase something through eBay you are only shown the item description and small thumbnail of the product. Is this enough to go on, to convince you that the product is working? Not for items like MP3's then and television receivers too. Maybe they need to launch a video method to prove it is actually working?
This customer probably won't buy anything from me again and maybe not even from eBay in the future.
Apart from that then why would someone buy something from eBay? After all you aren't covered by other consumer laws that protect you when shopping on the high street. Neither are you protected by the sales of good act, which says everything you buy should be fit for the purpose. Its a question of trusting the seller.
So how can a customer trust you? After all he has never met you and you have never met him…..
· Well according to Thisismoney, you should always research the customer or company. This can be done easily by reading there sellers ratings and feedback scores.
· Never give out your credit card details to anyone. Use eBay’s preferred payment method PayPal to prevent fraudulent behaviour.
· Finally to make sure you know exactly what you are looking for ask the seller questions directly about the product.
Would you buy something from eBay? Tell me your views and opinions or experiences you have had with the online phenomenon.
Thursday 2 September 2010
Our toys and us!
We all have them when we were younger and they have grown up with us from a very young age. What am I talking about? Toys. Toys come in all shapes and sizes, some large, some small. They appear in our hands, in our beds, and eventually end up in the loft, but they are never forgotten and we all have memories of our favourites.
I grew up in the 80's & 90's, I began my childhood playing with Playmobil, Duplo and Lego. I was so impressed with what I could build and thought maybe one day if only an architect had seen my designs. Other children of my generation had been brought up with Mechano. I never had a real interest in it, with its fiddly instructions and small screws my parents obviously thought it was too complex for young boy like me.
As we grow older we become more distant from our favourites. Toys change and become more relevant to today's culture and traditions. I know when I was younger there wasn't much variety in the types of Lego models you could buy. Come the turn of the century, with improvements in computer aided design and technology, they are becoming more complex including harry potter theme.
Its the same with cartoons and computers games. I remember the days of FIFA 96 and when games had to be installed off floppy disks. Today floppy disks are very much unusable and have been replaced by tiny gigabytes of memory sticks where we store our entire music collections on. Its the same with VHS which has been replaced by DVD and eventually, with a bit of luck in years to come, to replaced by Blu Ray.
Anyone remember Sooty and Sweep or Camberwick Green? All have been long forgotten, someone probably has the VHS tape somewhere and the only digital copies can be found on the ever present You Tube.
Its the same with Cartoons, the days of puppet strings & hand puppets have gone. The likes of Sooty and Sweep and Thunderbirds have been replaced by high resolution cartoons such as Pepper The Pig. However the well known Cartoon 'Brum' is still shown on CBeebies to this day.
They have all evolved greatly since 1989 and are now more exciting, but at the time we are all very impressed and excited about our new toys.
When you grow up to begin with you don't mind toys being given away but in the years to come you might go looking for them and realise that you threw them away.
So where did you give them away too? Car boot sales or younger family members who much appreciate "pass me downs" . You may have even stored them in the loft for a rainy day or to be played with by other generations of the family in the future.
James May recently took a look back at toys of yester year in James May's Toy Stories he built an entire working house out of Lego and full length Model Railway.
It just shows you that we have distant memories of our favourites when we were younger. Yours might be the same, or completely different. As we grow older, our younger generations will have completely different memories of their childhoods.
Have a favourite cartoon, toy of your childhood memories. Why not reply to this blog and tell me what your's is.
I grew up in the 80's & 90's, I began my childhood playing with Playmobil, Duplo and Lego. I was so impressed with what I could build and thought maybe one day if only an architect had seen my designs. Other children of my generation had been brought up with Mechano. I never had a real interest in it, with its fiddly instructions and small screws my parents obviously thought it was too complex for young boy like me.
As we grow older we become more distant from our favourites. Toys change and become more relevant to today's culture and traditions. I know when I was younger there wasn't much variety in the types of Lego models you could buy. Come the turn of the century, with improvements in computer aided design and technology, they are becoming more complex including harry potter theme.
Its the same with cartoons and computers games. I remember the days of FIFA 96 and when games had to be installed off floppy disks. Today floppy disks are very much unusable and have been replaced by tiny gigabytes of memory sticks where we store our entire music collections on. Its the same with VHS which has been replaced by DVD and eventually, with a bit of luck in years to come, to replaced by Blu Ray.
Anyone remember Sooty and Sweep or Camberwick Green? All have been long forgotten, someone probably has the VHS tape somewhere and the only digital copies can be found on the ever present You Tube.
Its the same with Cartoons, the days of puppet strings & hand puppets have gone. The likes of Sooty and Sweep and Thunderbirds have been replaced by high resolution cartoons such as Pepper The Pig. However the well known Cartoon 'Brum' is still shown on CBeebies to this day.
They have all evolved greatly since 1989 and are now more exciting, but at the time we are all very impressed and excited about our new toys.
When you grow up to begin with you don't mind toys being given away but in the years to come you might go looking for them and realise that you threw them away.
So where did you give them away too? Car boot sales or younger family members who much appreciate "pass me downs" . You may have even stored them in the loft for a rainy day or to be played with by other generations of the family in the future.
James May recently took a look back at toys of yester year in James May's Toy Stories he built an entire working house out of Lego and full length Model Railway.
It just shows you that we have distant memories of our favourites when we were younger. Yours might be the same, or completely different. As we grow older, our younger generations will have completely different memories of their childhoods.
Have a favourite cartoon, toy of your childhood memories. Why not reply to this blog and tell me what your's is.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)