It is finished…

Today – Dec 1st – I have uploaded my last assignment to complete my Applied Social Media in Business course.

This was the last one to complete the Social Media certificate I was working on since the beginning of the year.

Now I have more time to teach the kids as my afternoons were spent mostly to work on assignments.

Having two courses on top of homeschool is quite challenging.

But I persevered and finished it today.

I’m a bit tired though and might take a couple of days of much deserved rest.

Now I wait for the grades and my certificate.

I learned quite a bit during these five courses.   I hope to apply my knowledge to something productive in the months/years to come!

An Out of the Box Offer from Kraft Canada

Recently while being on Facebook, I discovered a new marketing online offer from Kraft Canada. The from Kraft Food offered a samplicious package which contains full size samples of their new products on the market. More the 15,000 sample boxes were available.

Anyone could sign up but you had to pay 9.95$ of shipping charges to get the box. At first I was wondering if this was a scam but someone took the initiative to call Kraft Canada to ask them if this was true. It sounded too good to be a real deal. But it was!

I jumped on the offer, shared it on facebook and twitter. Then I waited for my package to arrive.

Within a week and half, my doorbell rang. Outside the door my postman was holding my Samplicious package. The first question he asked me was: “Can you tell me what’s in there because I have four of those in my van?” I laughed and told him that it probably won’t be the last ones either… I told him what it was and immediately he said “Where can I get one of these?”. I had to inform him that it was sold out at this point in time. I suspect that
these packages were gone like hotcakes.

I opened the box in front of him and we were both impressed with the full size products.

My postman went on his way to deliver the other samplicious packages and the rest of the mail and I brought the box for the kids to see. They couldn’t believe their eyes. Usually when we get a sample of a product, we receive a sample which is a few to taste it. But this time it was full size boxes in the box. Also included in the box were three coupons for full size products at the grocery store for the cheese products. The only items that didn't stay in our house were the gums as we are not chewers of gum. I kept one of the new Trident flavors but I gave the rest to my mother-in-law when she was visiting. The other product that might not find supporters in this house is the Kraft Whipped Cheese Dill flavor. I figure the kids can eat it... *grin*

The fact that many Canadian sites are promoting the daily deals found everywhere on facebook and twitter, helped Kraft Canada to spread the word on this out-of-the-box offer.

Though we loved our package and I think it was an original way to promote new products, I think Kraft Canada would have been wiser to use only coupons to exchange at the grocery store for full size items. It would have cost less money for everyone I think. Though as a stay-at-home mom who also homeschool my four kids, I appreciate the fact that I didn’t have to run around for each of these products. But I think it would have been fun to go with the kids to get the products at the grocery store.

Now I suspect that this strategy is to stir the consumers to purchase the products they have loved from this package. Though we loved them some of these products are so expensive that I will never consider purchasing them on a regular basis.

Take the amOOza twists cheese snacks for example. This is one of the products I had to go to the store to get. The snacks are fun to look at and delicious while we eat it but the price tag attached to them is over 6$ believe it or not. When I was at my local Loblaws, I had found two of the three products that I had received a coupon from. Well with the amOOza! alone I had reached the maximum of allowed coupons from the register. My cashier had to call a supervisor to allow my next coupon to be keyed in. I thought it was hilarious!

I would be curious to see if the strategy of creating the Samplicious packages will created a love affair between the customers and the products offered.

What do you think of this out of the box offer from Kraft Canada? Do you think it will encourage customers to purchase their new products? Would you have paid for the shipping charges or would you prefer to only receive coupons to exchange at the grocery store?

Note to me readers:  This was a post done for the course Applied Social Media in Business that I am currently completing to get my Social Media Certificate. 

My Favourite Tools and Sources for Social Media

Over the past three years, I have learned to start a blog, to review books and products, to start following my results and to keep myself of to date with the trends. I’m still learning. Constantly. I feel as though I have entered a world that keeps changing every day… So today I will highlight my two favourite listening//monitoring tools as well as the two best sources of news and updates for me.

One of the first monitoring tools I was introduced was definitively Google Analytics. It is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. I am still using this monitoring product quite a bit since it is often necessary for me to determine my page views and other stats when I sign up for new opportunities. My only issue is that I need to remember to plug in the code every time I make a change in my blog design. It happened to me again this year. I changed a few things in my design and forgot to put the code for Google Analytics back in once it was uploaded. You see I am using a product called Artisteer to change the design of my blog. Though it is a great product, it lacks on flexibility I find. Anyhow, about a month later I realized my error and lost about a month of tracking on Google Analytics. I was not impressed with myself as I should have thought about it. Still Google Analytics is very useful on a weekly/monthly basis when I want to observe the trends on my blog. I can easily see where my readers come from and what posts are attracting more hits than others.

I have other monitoring tools with facebook and twitter but this year I was introduced to Klout and I am slowly getting hooked to it. Klout is a social media analytics that measures a user’s influence across their social network. The analysis is done on date taken from sites like twitter and facebook and measures the size of a person’s network, the content created, and how other people interact with that content. Recently, I realized that Klout has added LinkedIn, Foursquare and YouTube date in its algorithm. I love the way it presents the stats for my account. I learned that I am effectively using social media to influence my network across a variety of topics, that I am engaged by influencers, that I am more likely to have my message amplified that the average person and that I have built a good size network that is highly engaged. Like I said my introduction to Klout was recent and I still have to discover its potential in the weeks/months/years to come. I am hoping to be able to discover new ways to expand my network with it.

Concerning how I keep up to date with what is going on in the social media world I follow different sites. As a homeschooler, I rely a lot on facebook. Why? You might wonder… well many homeschool companies post specials
and free offers on facebook and it is always nice to be able to save some precious money on products that would be nice to have. For example, this week I discovered that the Scholastic Teacher Express site had a Dollar Deals on ebooks. A facebook page titled Freely Educate also announce that if you use a special code while checking out your order, you could save 10$ on your purchase. While looking in their dollar deals, I have found ten products that would be great for our homeschool and purchased them. Having the special rebate code, I ended up receiving these ebooks for free! So thanks to the tip I got from Freely Educate on facebook I was able to get the following titles for free: Country Report Projects, Ocean Life, Comic Strip MapSkills, Exploring Plants, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Instant Habitat Dioramas, Hands-On History Explorers, Literature Guide: Mr. Popper's Penguins and Literature Guide: Lord of the Rings! As I am writing this, I was wondering how much I had saved on this purchased alone. At regular price, these titles would have cost me 99.54$ - I am speechless. This announcement on facebook was a blessing for our homeschool

The second site that I visit from time to time (homeschooling my kids takes a big part of my daily schedule) would be Mashable which is totally dedicated for the social media news. Part of me wish that I would have more time to dig into Mashable but I don’t. I have decided to include Mashable into my Flipbook app on the iPad and every now and then I update myself using this app. I find the site easy to use and to search. On a matter of seconds I could get all the news about facebook, twitter, the new gadgets out there and much more.

There are many other tools and sources available out there. The important thing is to find the ones that are useful for you and to keep up to date with what is going on out there. So to help me discover new sites, tools or sources of information I am asking you "What are your favourite tools and sources of information in the social media world? ".