What happened to Jeff Goetz, that optimistic honors student, that young man with the keen desire to learn from others,  who enjoyed extending the learning environment beyond the classroom?

Well, my readers, I am right here.

I stopped posting  because I learned, through this course, that it is not worth my efforts.  James,  from Campus Talk, taught us that if we have no passion to write a blog post, then don’t write it. I listened.

To the course instructors, I lost my enthusiasm when I saw our contrasting motives for the use of social media.  Our view points differ not in the power of marketing with social media, but in how we ought to use that power . We learned how a business can use viral marketing, user generated content, or web analytics to increase their profits. In my opinion, this is  malarkey. I believe it is unscrupulous to use social media as a means of gaining more customers, and if this your goal, then it will fail in the long run. Just look at the marketing results of the Gainesvillains, whose only successful marketing approach was the one that provided value to already existing fans. These students learned that an increase in Facebook fans or Twitter followers is not mutually exclusive with the result of  increased business. I hope this is something we’ve all learned as a result of this course.

To my fellow bloggers and classmates.  It was a pleasure working with the you to make this course a unique learning experience for each of us. I encourage you all to take the time to reread our user generated content. Our footprint goes much deeper than you may realize.

And finally, to my readers, thank you for taking the time to read my blogs and share you feedback on my content. Some of you my still not know how to pronounce my last name; but one day, you’ll meet me in the real world, and it’ll all make sense. My next endeavor is to blog my experiences as a first year dental student at the NYU College of Dentistry, and to hopefully, contribute valuable content to both my fellow students and to my instructors (sound familiar?)

But until then, I’ll leave you with one final question:

did you solve my puzzle?

Jeff Goetz here. I’m going to have to keep it short to today as I am overloaded with coursework.

Below you will see the instructions for this week’s blog post:

instructions.png

I have included this image of the instructions because I wanted to display user generated content (UGC) to the students of this course.  I hope that this content is useful to you by giving you a quicker route to the directions, thus saving you,more or less, 15 seconds. Posting this picture is also beneficial to me, as the “picture and creativity” is a requirement for this post. I would also benefit if you consistently return to this page to view the instructions, thus increasing my popularity count.

To summarize what I wrote above, the major con of UGC is that it most always creates a win-win situation for the users involved. So there’s a pro, but what  about a con?

One con I’ve found is that in some situations of UGC, the users who contributes the content aren’t actually any better off. Some users may feel like they truly made a difference or that they gained something from their efforts; but I believe this is just cognitive dissonance. For example, am I really learning something from writing this post? does my popularity percentage actually increase my happiness in real life? These are good questions.

Now, for my discussion on the use of Facebook and Twitter to drive business, I will link to the case studies I wrote about two weeks ago.  In my analysis, I wrote about what I thought was a successful discussion board on the Burrito Brothers Facebook fan page. According to the suggestions by the F&B Consulting fan page, the Burrito Brothers fan page still needs a lot of work. It’s got great discussion, but without some user generated images, it is behind the competition.

…and now, back to my all-nighter.

…and what did I think of conversion marketing? It is a tool for tools.

I made this connection after reading the following quotes:

1. “Conversion marketing is when the consumer takes the marketer’s desired action.” from How to quantify and evaluate your online presence by Daniel Byon
2. “Consumer marketing involves the customer performing a certain action directly resulting from marketing schemes….You may wonder; how exactly will the blog lure them in? The Gainesvillains will soon offer an irresistible downloadable mix tape.” from What Do You Want Me To Do? by Jackie Arellano.

It makes me sick to read what these students wrote. This causes me to see conversion marketing as manipulative and unethical.

Fortunately, a handful of students did provide value in their analysis of conversion marketing.

1. “In order to see his unique visitors tally climb ever upwards, the smart blogger must add content that is interesting, relevant, and regular.” from  What Are Your Book Marks by Allan Long
2. “I don’t care about conversion optimization or any other strategy that derives its basis from convincing people to give you their time or money. Learning about these terms and ideas makes me feel greedy; the words seem soaked in do-anything-to-make-money avarice.” from Baptizing the Heathens With Commercial Marketing by Nate Stein

Now let’s make sense of these opposing views…

My take is that there is a conflict of interest in applying the funnel towards gaining sales. This is because, in many situations, application of analytics increases company sales at the expense of wasting the non-purchasing visitor’s energy. It is unethical to apply the internet in this way because it is a win-lose situation. It is only ethical if these new visitors, on average, actually find new value by stumbling across your website. A great example of this would be applying analytics for Citizen Co-op, so that organic growers can find a community business that care for their success (not for their money).

Success on the internet will only come to those whose goal is to create value for their customers.

Think about it…

I have an answer, but I want to see if you can figure it out on your own. To help you do this,  I’m going to present a quick case study which will allow us to see why certain forms of advertising work better than others. My goal is for you to read this post and to come out with knowledge applicable towards improving the marketing plan of your local business.

I formed this idea after reading the post by Matt Garrett about Leonardo’s Pizza’s presence in Gainesville.

This picture is a link to Matt’s post (you can click it) and within the second paragraph, Matt presents some digital marketing strategies of Upper Crust, Burrito Brothers, and Leonardo’s Pizza. To begin this exercise, I want you to look over the following three web pages, spending as much time as you need to form an opinion about them. (please take this seriously!)

1. Facebook page of Upper Crust
2. Twitter page of Burrito Brothers.
3. Facebook page of Leonardo’s 706.

Now that you have your opinion, see how your experience compares to mine:

When I glanced over these pages, I first noticed they were covered with blurbs that looked like they came straight off the “specials of the day” chalkboards. I then clicked on the miscellaneous Facebook tabs to make sure their wasn’t anything important there and then hit the back key to continue reading this post. In other words, they were extremely boring, and I just wanted to get back to my own business.

This leaves us with the question: Why were these pages so boring?

To get the answer, lets compare these websites from above to a website I find to be much more interesting. This website is the facebook page of Burrito Brothers. (FYI, I had no intention of selling the success of my local business’s web page. Remember, this is merely a case study which I want us all to learn from).

Now, I’m guessing most of you looked at this Facebook page and didn’t find anything different about it. It has the same pictures and the same info about the soup and guacamole. Why did I find this  Facebook page more interesting than the others?

You will find the answer by asking yourself, What Would Google Do?

If you read the book, the answer should come instantly. This Facebook page was successful in catching  my interest because it allowed me to see the word-of-mouth of Burrito Brother’s customers and it invited me to participate in the discussion. If you can’t see what about this web page I’m talking about, click on the “discussion” tab or click here.  This discussion section serves as a platform that enables its fans to create their own conversation and to, unknowingly, create positive word-of-mouth.

Isn’t it interesting to see how we can apply the perpetual words of Jeff Jarvis?

Now that you’ve made it through my case study, I hope you take the time to come up with your own idea for optimizing the word-of-mouth about your local business. Please feel free to create your own discussion below.

…you see, I think I’m being followed by a dentist named Jeff Goetz, and on top of that, I’ve had this terrible headache!

OOHHHH NO!! it’s JEFF GOETZ!!!! AAHHHH somebody help me!!!!!!

HA! HA! Haa! Agghhhh…

You really think you’ll be able to save your little calcified friend?!  Do even have any IDEA of what I can do?!!

Just look at what I’ve done to his friends!!

That’s right! You better be taking me seriously now. If you ever want Cuspy back–so he can dole out his sweet, sweet, candy–then you must respect my evil demands.

You see, I treat dentistry as a business, one where my customers are as comfortable and as pain-free as possible. For some reason though, they always find something to complain about during the procedure. Even when I give them local anesthesia to numb their mouth, they still complain. Just look at this research report on the effect of vibration on pain during local anaesthesia injections !!!!! I mean, COME ON people!!!!

So, hehe,  if you want your friend to come out alive and pain-free, then I need you to find for me the BEST new dental technology on the market today, an innovation that will allow me to fill Cuspy’s cavity and give your dear friend Adam Daugelli the following added benefits:

1. I won’t have to use anesthesia.
2. There will be little pain.
3. I won’t have to use stitches.
4. There will be minimal blood loss.
5. The damage to surrounding tissue is minimized.

You’d be wise to treat this subject seriously as I am always looking to add new friends to my new patient recruitment list. We wouldn’t want anymore losses, now, would we… good luck my friends.

Right as we were told to  “create value with nothing but post-it notes”, my idea came instantly.  My thought was to streak naked through Turlington Plaza wearing nothing but post it notes.  I thought to myself, can I really pull this off? Do I really have the Goetz to put this idea into reality?

So I looked over at my long time friend Nate Stein, I saw the grin on his face, and quickly got the confidence to pull off what I will describe as a chaotic adventure of spontaneity. Our plan was to cover our underwear in sticky notes, enter Turlington Plaza right as classes were getting out, and then somehow, get people to donate money for Haiti by posting notes on our body.

On the surface, our project created value by raising money for Haiti, by creating entertainment, and by promoting this course. However, after reading the majority of your posts, I have decided that our true value lies elsewhere. It lies within our process of forming positive relationships with the people around us to achieve a common goal. I’m not just talking about my friendship with Nate stein, I’m speaking of the strangers who made it all happen: the passing students who stopped to post a note, the Haitians who somberly gave their thanks, and most importantly, the fellow students of this class, who stopped by to laugh and give their support.

I am humbled by the amount of value that our class as a whole created merely by getting to know each other and by having a blast with the process. Thanks guys.

After the surprising success of their day project for class, Jeff and Nate set off again on Thursday to collect more money for the Bush-Clinton Haiti fund.  A passerby took the video above of the team working to raise awareness.  To learn more:  about the project here or the source of the video.

For background on how Jeff and Nate developed this idea, check out yesterday’s class assignment.  The quick synopsis: we gave the class an hour to create as much value only using post-it notes.  Nate and Jeff really took the “only use post-it notes” part to the fullest.

From the Alligator: “Seniors Nate Stein, right, and Jeff Goetz, left, stand on Turlington Plaza Wednesday wearing underwear and Post-its for their Digital Frontiers class. Students donated $1 to victims of the earthquake in Haiti by sticking a Post-it note somewhere on Stein’s and Goetz’s bodies.”

Thanks to Juliana Jimenez who took this wonderful photo!

Source: http://alligator.org/news/campus/article_d7fea97c-064e-11df-ba33-001cc4c03286.html

“people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” –Maya Angelou

In my first blog post, I introduced myself by asking Who is Jeff Goetz? (click to read more)I posed this question for you because I enjoy figuring out and wanted to see if you could figure me out.  My goal is to entertain you as I complete the course requirements. If there’s a point when I am not entertaining you, plain out boring, or have written something to offend you, please let me know privately through email (jwgoetz@ufl.edu)

Now that I’m done with the serious section, let’s Goetz back to my same old giddy and mysterious self.

Since I was not in class for the lecture on Steve Jobs, my discussion will be brief. Before reading the lecture slides, I only thought of Steve Jobs has a creative entrepreneur. I had no idea his success came from his focus on perfecting his public speaking.

I love the beauty of his quote, that  “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”. Can you figure out what Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Nate Stein have in Common? Can you think of any other  names that would fit in this group?

From Adam’s lecture, we learned why we should “enable [our] followers to generate and share content”. I just learned that one way businesses have been doing this is by crowd sourcing, and,  if you just clicked the previous link, you might have read that the creator of Wikipedia is against this practice. I, however, have no problem with it. My favorite example of crowd sourcing is fold it. Can you figure out why its my favorite? [hint: think about my favorite company]

Now, a quick update on my course project. Since the instructors inadvertently excluded me from a group, I am a free agent, and am currently deciding on the feasibility of doing a project on my own. If I did, I would choose to market for a local pediatric dentist’s practice (remember, I am going to be a dentist).

Finally, the first person who leaves a comment on this page and answers my questions Goetz a new Facebook friend and an instant follower on Twitter. Good Luck!

Dear fellow student,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I will begin by presenting a puzzle which you must figure out over the course of the semester.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Who is Jeff Goetz?

It’s a complicated question, especially because your answer will be unique from the answers of all the other students and instructors in this course. I am presenting this question because I want you and I to get to know each other. We have a lot in common and have much to learn and gain from the other. I’ll start  this interaction by answering some basic questions that the instructors have introduced as an icebreaker.

My name, which 90% of you will pronounce incorrectly, is Jeff Goetz. I am a 4th year student with a major in microbiology and cell science. I have minors in chemistry and business administration and I have been admitted into a dental school which I will begin at next fall. I decided to take this course because I wanted to end my undergrad experience with an informative and stress free course about something I want to learn more about. I also decided to take this course because I wanted to form relationships with a group of outgoing honors students who I could see myself working with; that is, once you and I are in the real world. I’m looking forward to developing the nuances of social networking and learning new technology along the way.

I have a descent background in technology. Like you, I’m quite familiar with Facebook. I also have done some tinkering with twitter, and am amused that almost all of my followers are girls whose pages link up to the second most visited genre on the internet. I’m good with Photoshop, I know the basics of PageMaker, and I scored a 4 on an AP computer science exam for a course that taught me programming in java. I enjoy reading the technology section of a national newspaper and I have stayed informed on Health information technology, specifically the transition towards paperless records. I wrote a research paper on how to specialize electronic health records for patients with autism. And finally, I know how to use a mobile device.

I will remind you that I chose to take this course to get to know you and to learn from you; and if you enjoy reading my posts, then please leave a comment. Some students in this course may think they know me better than you do. Well, they don’t. Get to know me from your own perspective because if you get trapped in their dogma, you’ll never solve my puzzle. Speaking of puzzles, my favorite company is Mefferts.com
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The more you explore web, the more complicated it Goetz.