I have taken the opportunity to sit down with my aunt, Sharon Webster, age 62, member of the Baby Boomers generation.  She is a pastor’s wife and also substitute teaches in a public school.  She is tech savvy to a point.  She uses the Internet to communicate through email, facebook, and sometimes to look up products or services.  Facebook is the only SM platform that she is familiar with, and she uses it to stay connected with family and friends.  She does use her phone to communicate with facebook, email, and texting.  Sharon does not think that email, facebook, or texting is a better way to communicate than snail mail and face-to-face communication.

I am a supposedly very tech savvy person, yet I do not maintain all of my Social Media sites regularly.  Maybe after I am finished with my master’s degree, I will have plenty of time to keep all of my sites updated on a regular basis.  I am confident that both Sharon and I do not make the best out of our opportunities to be able to build relationships through Social Media.  I think that even my generation, Generation X, could use a little boost into new thinking ever once in awhile.

While interviewing Sharon, I realized our vast differing views on Social Media.  I view it as a tool to get what I want from who I want, for example, I love to use coupons; so I “like” all of the coupon fan pages that I come across.  This enables me to get what I want.  And the coupon page owners get “likes”.  And the companies get me to purchase their products.  Sharon, on the other hand, does not use SM for anything other than communicating with her friends and family to exchange limited comments and look at abundances of pictures.  Social media, to her, is just that … for socializing.  To her it is not a tool that can be used to mass-market products and services to create business and patronage.

While following this path of seeking out other generation’s views on social media, I stumbled across the continuous use of social media by all of the teenagers that I am surrounded by through family, friends, and work.  I am amazed at the way that teens look at social media and how it is just a fiber of life for them.  I hear, “Can I get on facebook?” way more times than I care to admit.  But, each time I see the way it builds relationships for my kids; I could not possibly deny them the pleasures that I, also, so often seek!

When companies are trying to reach all of these generations, it may prove to be difficult due to the different interactions that multiple generations have with social media.  Baby boomers may not have instant tweets that inform them of the sale at the local department store, so they may not show up for the sale.  While Generation Y is there when the door opens and he/she has re-tweeted the sale information to all of their 100s of followers!  This may play a vital role in whether or not the company chooses to use social media to advertise products or services.  Who is buying the product? Where is it being sold?  Can it be bought online?  All of these questions and more need to be asked and answered to have an effective social media campaign.

Three different approaches, three very successful SM campaigns

Charleston Parks Conservancy

This site seemed to be most useful for getting the word out about the garden and its needs.  The site had links to facebook, twitter, youtube, and flickr that gave users multiple different ways to communicate with the park.  The use of the blog was very interesting.  The blog was kept up-to-date, and it was interesting and full of information.  I think that this sight is very successful at bringing the community together for a common goal.  I would suggest that the site might be able to extend to users outside of the Charleston Area.  If they attract other users, they may solicit funds for the ongoing projects.  When I clicked on the SM icons on the website, they brought me to relevant, useful information.

Random Buzzers

This site is very different.  This site is focussed on a very specific, unique user.  The user likes books of a certain genre and comments about the books.  The site creates a way to ensure users are commenting by offering “buzz bucks”.  These “buzz bucks” are accumulated for members through reviewing books on the site.  The “buzz bucks” can then be spent on a book from the selection.  Random Buzzers includes Facebook, twitter, and a running user blog right on the site.  The SM on this site is very effective for the limited amount of users.  I saw only 1600-1700 users on twitter and facebook.  I think that this site could improve by broadening their repetore of books.  The site might grow in a following if they had more books to review and talk about.

Sea World Case Study

The SM campaign that Sea World chose to use seemed to be very effective.  Sea World’s marketing team used a specific site along with Youtube, Flickr, and Veoh.  This campaign was then followed through with surveys and marketing analysis to determine the effectiveness of the campaign.  The online social media campaign proved to be more successful over traditional offline advertisement by a fraction of the cost.  The campaign goals were to bring in customers through a dedicated website and new SM strategy all surrounding a new ride at Sea World.

All three of the campaigns were specifically catered to their type of users.  Interestingly enough, whether they have 1200 followers or many, many more; they managed to meet the needs of their users and glean benefits and mutual relationships from each other.

Is Social Media a Fad or a Revolution?

I think social media is a revolution, but not in its entirety. Social Media is in its infancy, but I do think it will mature in ways that we probably can’t conceive of yet. I believe that social media is here to stay, but will look much different 5 or 10 years out.

Please click the links below to watch videos of answers to the question “Is Social Media a Fad or a Revolution?”

Social Media Today

Is Social Media a Fad?

I think we can expect to see quite a few changes and experience some growing pains as social media matures. One thing is for sure: the way companies interact with customers and market their products and services will never be the same thanks to social media. So from that standpoint, it’s definitely a revolution.

Social media is here to stay and I believe that the only thing that could change this fact is if something MORE revolutionary comes along!

The following blog has some great Information and Statistics: Ginny Toll’s Blog

“Many businesses are still trying to hold out and think that social media is just a passing phase that will burn out in time. Other businesses realize that social media is not a fad but a new way to communicate in the world.”  Ginny Toll’s blog

Here is another link to an interesting blog that stated that Social Media in fact was a fad because it will soon be embedded in our culture and we will not think twice about using SM in everything we do.  Sysomo’s blog

Market Rumba has an interesting video and site about the fact that maybe the term “Social Media” is a fad, but the concept is here to stay!

Market Rumba site Market Rumba Video

Last summer, Disney and Pixar launched a massive social media campaign that included videos, tie-ins, and ads to promote the upcomming movie, Toy Story 3.  Disney produced traditional banner ads and billboards, but they also created viral videos including fake, vintage style ads.  These ads featured the new Toy Story 3 characters.  They also had an iAd on the iPhone 4 and a Facebook page with a built-in ticket buying app.  The social media campaign was a success because it played off of the parents reminiscence of their childhood while engaging the children alike.  Here is a link to a Toy Story 3 video ad that got nearly 4 million views.  Disney and Pixar made many more of these viral videos to promote the blockbuster movie.

What a great experience that I had while in this class.  The out of class, on the road format of the class was very exciting and interesting.  I enjoyed spending time outside of the classroom with fellow cohorts.  We got an opportunity to carpool, go to lunch or dinner together, and learn at the same time.  Brant Mullen was very diligent in finding very relevant and interesting places for us to visit. I appreciate the opportunity to take this class, and I look forward to the next class of this kind that we will be taking in May.  I hope to be able to work with our professor in the future.  It was a pleasure.

On one cold Tuesday evening, we headed out to beat the traffic and meet all our cohorts, again in Dallas county.  We all made it to TI just in time to see a presentation of the “RFAB”.  Which is what they called the one million square foot building that TI built from the ground up in Richardson that is an administrative and fabrication building.  The building was a complete “system” all on its own.  The fabrication part of the building had to have extremely clean air to be able to produce the semiconductor chips.  This room had vented floors and ceilings that circulated air through filters to maintain a very clean environment for their “clean rooms”.  This building was a great example of how to do things energy efficiently installing environmentally friendly design elements and landscape to reduce, reuse and recycle.  They spent less money on the building, and the building is saving them millions of dollars in operational costs over the first couple of years of opening.

Next, we finished up at Frito Lay.  This building was a 25 year old building that Frito Lay redesigned to be Leed certified.  Since the building was redone, the energy efficiency is not the only thing that changed.  The employees have use of a new gym, the Cafe O’Lay, a full cafeteria, and much more.  Frito Lay believes that making a healthy, happy environment for their employees helps to increase the employee retention and productivity and that this is good for the Frito Lay bottom line.  The virtual tour that we saw was a little less than desirable, but I thought that the initiatives set forth by Frito Lay were extremely relevant to our Sustainability Cohort.

We might have had to meet in Downtown Dallas at 8 am, but what a day we had!  Our wonderful professor, Coach Brant, scheduled two of the best trips on that beautiful Saturday.  First, we visited with Jackson Murphy, of Green Bean Analysis and Huitt-Zollars.  Mr. Murphy was very informative and hospitable.  He spent his Saturday morning helping us to understand all of the different stages of green building.  The energy efficient and consolidated urban feel of the building was very interesting.  The dual usage of the residential and commercial building was a grand design for urban development.

Next, we drove to south Dallas to the Audubon Center in Pleasant Grove.  This facility was built on a brownfield.  The renovation of this land was created carefully to consider the natural habitat of the animals in the area.  The east fork of the Trinity river runs through parts of the land of the center.  The river made for a serene natural habitat for birds, fish, and even turtles.  But as we walked through the trails and saw the trash that is shoved over to the side on the banks of the river, it made me think of all of the trash that is thrown out on the highways.  The trash thrown out of your car ALWAYS ends up in a river!  So…Don’t Mess with Texas!

On our wonderful THURSDAY night class, we took a tour of a new construction Ryan Place house at 2321 Ryan Avenue built by Don Ferrier and designed by architect and owner Philip Newburn; and we listened to a presentation about landscape water conservation by Steve Chaney from Tarrant County Texas AgriLife Extension office.

Mr. Newburn was very welcoming to our class as we toured his home.  He talked about the design elements and energy rated appliances.  I addition he told us about the ups and downs of the permitting process for the construction of the house and specifically the recycled, crushed granite driveway.  We witnessed the use of low water use plants and grasses along with the permeable granite walkway in the front landscape.  Mr. Ferrior also came for the open house and gave us information on the actual construction of the home.  One of the most interesting things that he talked about was the prefab walls and roof that are made to spec and brought in and assembled on-site.  These walls are made up of a styrofoam like material compressed between two pieces of compressed wood.  This product insulates the house and provides structural support, all in one.  The floor was a designed concrete floor that is very easy to keep clean and doesn’t have any VOCs lingering around after being sealed.  Overall, I would not live in this house; but I loved being able to see what “green” things are available for this style of home.

When we got back to the classroom, we were met with a speaker, ready to speak.  Mr. Steve Chaney of Tarrant County Texas Agrilife Extension office.  I believe that the most profound thing that Mr. Chaney presented was the lack of water resources in the future.  He said that as the population of Texas increases, the water supply decreases.  The future of North Central Texas:  Currently: 1.7 million acre-feet of water  … Future 2060: Needed:  3.3 million acre-feet of water.  We can not make more water.  Whatever is on this planet is what we have available, so we must learn to conserve and reuse the water that we currently have.

On Tuesday, January 4th, our Sustainability Cohort visited TCC Trinity River Campus and Heather Ferrier’s personal home.  The TCC campus is located in Downtown Fort Worth and was previously owned by Radio Shack.  This building currently houses Radio Shack’s corporate offices and classrooms, etc. for over 5000 students.  We got a back stage tour of the behind the scenes workings of the building.  One of the most interesting things that Greg told us was that the building produces so much heat all on its own, that they have to run the chillers pretty much all year round.  So, they save alot of electricity by using chillers over traditional HVAC units.  The building seemed to be very energy efficient, but the filters that were not recycled were a concern.  The filters or the boxes should have had some kind of recycling plan. The large amount of filters in this one building were all going into the landfill.

Seeing this large building and the tremendous amount of waste that was produced just from the chillers of one building had a profound effect on my understanding of the overly full landfills.  People need to be educated about the effects of waste on the environment.  The waste keeps piling up and we keep making more… Waste… the truly renewING resource!!

The next tour was at the private home of Heather Ferrier, of Ferrier Custom Homes.  This home was a complete restoration of an existing home on Lovell Avenue.  The home was a dilapidated home that Heather decided to take on as her own project.  The Ferrier group did an outstanding job of redesigning and implementing many energy efficient features in the home.  She hopes to get a large return on investment, and she already has a buyer!

Downtown Fort Worth, Inc., Director of Development, Trinity River Vision

Jim Johnson came to speak to us about policies related to transportation and sustainability.  I thought that the presentation was well organized and informative.

Mr. Johnson presented information related to population density as a tax generator.  Land-locked communities know that public transportation is a great opportunity to boost tax revenue in their thriving communities.  We researched this in Dr. Peterson’s class on our Cotton Belt project.  Amanda and myself made a case for Addison, TX; and we showed that the sustainability efforts that the community of Adddison has made can be enhanced with a new route and stop on the old Cotton Belt.  People can commute into Addison from surrounding areas and spend money in the city.  This brings more businesses in and supports the businesses already there encouraging more tax revenues.

Mr. Johnson demonstrates to us that these transportation plans are going on in Fort Worth already.  He talked about master thoroughfares, minimum and maximum width of streets, parking, traffic regulations, transportation impact fees, and solutions.  The overall consideration for a solution seemed to be to increase in population density through compact urban development.

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