4. 2015 - The year of video marketing

Woah, this week has been more hurried than the previous ones! Let's go straight to point, we got a big task this week: plan your own lecture (30 min) about one freely chosen topic. Our group felt it natural to choose video marketing and video in general because of the big interest to videos within the group.

We started on Monday afternoon by planning what to tell. Reading articles about the topic and then listing the most important information. This time we wanted to take the presentation one step further by first of all using Prezi instead of the usual Power Point, but also by doing an animation in addition to a video. Non of us had used this kind of software earlier so we used almost all Tuesday making that one. It's more difficult than you would think. The point with the animation was to show some statistics regarding video marketing. Actually kind of interesting! If someone's interested, we used this program called GoAnimate to do the animation.

Working hard on animation!

Then on Wednesday we started filming our video with the topic "How to make a video". That day started also this eService online course by introduction lecture. At this point we understood we'd never finish the presentation in time, with the deadline on Thursday. Fortunately we got permission to finish it after Thursdays lectures. So this week we didn't be one of the fortunes to present in front of class. ;)

Remember to have fun while working!

Before moving forward to the lectures on Monday and Thursday, here's the link to the presentation. Hope you enjoy!

FTS13: Video marketing presenation

So this week I have to be honest when saying I can't actually remember much of the Mondays lecture with everything else going on. But it was time for the next guest speaker, Tomasz Odrobinski. Like the previous guest lecturer he told us about his own experience and what it's all about. The subject was mainly about sales and international development in the digital era. They have also created this awesome rental website Erento, check it out. What I do remember well, is that he knew his field like I know the back of my hand!

What's left of the week? Thursdays lecture. Actually this wasn't just one lecture, but I think like five. Five groups presented their own topic. First two presentations were great but didn't concern this course at all, but then we heard presentations about blogging, growth hacking and LinkedIn. Which all I think were useful for many of us. Especially this thing called growth hacking was a brand new thing for me. Shortly it's all about market yourself/your company with limited or no money. Looking forward to hear more about this topic.

Even tough this week has been long and I've been exhausted in times, I believe my team has done a great job and we had lots and lots of fun working together (again, as usual)! I suppose next week will be exciting, considering that we will meet the company's we will be doing some sort of projects to the rest of the fall. Looking forward to it! From next week on we get also a new team member! She's Ria, we know from earlier that she has good English skills and has a great motivation and we really do have need for one extra pair of hands. 

This week's Martta-photo: We welcome the upcoming
winter with a new awesome dogjacket! 

Have a great Sunday you all!

3. Culture - Heia Norge!

The third week was what I would call awesome! And why? We got to be creative again and did a video about this weeks main topic. I'm going to tell more about it later in the post, but let's start with the Mondays lecture.

So on Monday we had a lecture held by Anna Ikonen, with the topic CULTURE. I personally think cultures are extremely fascinating. I believe I'm quite "culturish" myself because of my Finnish-Swedish background and one year of exchange in Norway. Even so, my first thoughts about the topic was: "why should we learn about cultures in this course of digital marketing?" During the lecture I understood the importance of cultural differences also in business life. The most important thing that I'm going to remember is to learn about new cultures, with all it's manners and beliefs, before participating in an international meeting. With respecting others, I believe that also I can be respected.

Culture globe. Copyright: Amyglenn.com

Anna told a lot of examples of Poland and their manners and beliefs. It was really interesting and actually fun hearing about. But one thing bothers me when it comes to stereotypes and cultural thoughts about Finns. First of all, apparently, people think Finns doesn't say "please". I always say thank you and please. That's how I've been raised, and that's what all my friends think they do also (at least those who I have talked to about this). Secondly Finland seems to be a closed and unsocial country. Also those claims are wrong if you ask me. Yes, here are persons who like more to be with themselves, doesn't like to be very social or doesn't like other people at all. But what country doesn't have those? The most people I meet daily are friendly and social. But these are after all my own opinions. No people should be generalized based on old stereotypes. 

Anyway we got two tasks this week, one individual regarding the blogs and one group task. The individual task was to create your own cultural baggage. You can see mine below, it was actually fun doing this one. Not all the statements about me is really Finnish culture (or what other may think is Finnish), maybe little Norwegian or Swedish too? I'm independent, I say thank you, family is my everything, I may seem quiet but when you get to know me... ;)

My version of the cultural baggage.

The group task was to choose a culture and make a presentation of it. For our group it felt natural to choose Norway, because of my knowledge of the country. As I mentioned earlier we made a video again, please watch it and let me know what you think?!

We had a lot of fun making the video of this week also. At first we started to make a handbook of all the things we wanted to tell about, and then we just started filming. We made this video in two days, on Tuesday 10 am to 4 pm and on Wednesday from 9 am to 6 pm. Although it took a long time, it didn't feel bad. Hope you like the short "documentary"!

The second lecture, also on Monday, was held by our first guest lecturer Lynn-Marie Sederlöf-Airisto. She told us about international marketing. She told about her own experience but also about:
1. How to target your customer - your target may be nothing like you
2. Social media - many platforms that are changing all the time, you need to be where your customers are, make choices
3. Running a global campaign - define target audience and message, create content
4. Tools - Google Analytics, heatmaps & scrollmaps.

Why did I found this lecture interesting? Because I have absolutely no idea what I wan't to do after I graduate. I know that within this branch there's tons of opportunities, but what to do? This international marketing actually sounded very nice, so maybe I dig more into it. For example Lynn's career sounded exciting.

Short summarize of Thursday: Presentations! We heard many interesting presentations about different countries and their cultures. The funniest thing was that no one chose the same culture! We heard about Latvia, Albania, Spain, Luxembourg... I can't remember all of them but we also showed our video about Norway.

Then some thoughts about the blogs in the end:

1. Blogs are personal. In my opinion they can't be compared with one another.
2. Short and rich content are much more interesting to read than loooooong and nonsense.
3. This is new for almost everyone in the course, it takes time to be the best :)

This week was also a doggie week! We got great support from Linda's puppy Ruu and my dog Martta. Love it! Until next week :)

1. Ruu 2. Martta

PS. Check out our group's Twitter account @FTS13laurea! I will found out later how to get the gadget to work...

2. Who am I - Who knows me?

So the second week of the digital course is done. This week we had two topics: self-branding and communication. Everything started on Monday with a lecture about self-branding by Anna Ikonen, one of our mentors. Actually I thought I already knew quite a lot about this topic, due to a course we had last year. But then I realized that I knew what an elevator pitch is, and that’s about it. But during the lecture I got some new perspectives and ideas, which I’m going to work on.

First of all there’s all the tools that can be used in branding yourself. Social media, videos, blogs, articles… There’s probably so much I don’t even know that exist! I only use Facebook and then of course LinkedIn. Now I realize I should be more active with especially updating my LinkedIn profile. But after this course I will be! In fact, I’ve already done some updating.

Then Anna said: "It's not even important to know who you are, it's about WHO knows you". This is one thing that I believe we should keep in mind. In order to get work, we have to network. Connecting with the right people is the key nowadays. But it's also important that the people you're connecting with knows the real you, all your skills, your experience and why YOU are the best human being EVER! Well there's no need to be that excited, but you know... :)

After the lecture our group did this mind map kind of thing that everyone wrote down different skills they thought the others had. Okay, this explanation was really bad, but below you can see the picture of my personal mind map so you get the point. We’ve already worked together earlier, so you’d think it would have been easy, but actually it was a little tricky! But I think everyone had some skills they should be proud of. 

What the girls thinks about me!

After the first lecture we got a task to do our own pitching video. I believe I know what my best skills are, and it's easy to tell about them face to face. But try do it in front a camera, alone (with the dog staring at you), and get it to sound good. Not an easy task at all! 

So I downloaded this movie maker that's free for Windows users, so I could edit my pitching video a little. It was so, so, so bad! The stupidest thing was that I didn't get any music in the video, because the movie maker had no own music to be used. I couldn't download any music to this video because of the copyrights. So below is what I got finished. Not quite happy but "no can do". 

On Thursday we had the second lecture, about communication. Actually I believe we knew quite a lot about this topic too, because of the communications course last year. The biggest advantage of this lecture was learning about it in English. And of course "kertaus on opintojen äiti", so it's good to fresh up the memory a bit.

Anyways communications are a part of our everyday life, both in the personal and the professional life. This slide from Anna's presentation below tells like everything about the communication process. The quality is bad, but shortly: The sender encodes the message that the receiver decodes. And it's very important to get the receiver to really understand the message. 

Ah, very bad quality...

What I think what is the most important things to remember would probably be what will be said, how it will be said, when it will be said, where it will be said and who will say it. Those are the basics in communication. It doesn't matter if the communication is on evenings between you and your family or at work with your coworkers or customers. We have to learn how to encode different kind of messages. 

Here I consider my week done, and this is how I'm going to spend the rest of this Sunday! Have a nice next week!

Lazy Sunday!

1. Here I am - at the digital course

Hello! This is my dog Martta, an about six year old Podenco mix from the Spanish streets. She is one of the greatest dogs I’ve ever met, and she’s getting me through every single day. I’ve had her about half a year of my 22 years of living, and already she’s exactly like her owner: a little lazy, a food lover and over all enjoying life up to maximum. Actually she is right now sitting on my lap trying to help me with my struggle of typing this text. No, just kidding, she’s begging for my attention after not noticing her in what, fifteen minutes?

Now you’re probably thinking “why on earth is she writing about her dog??” Yes, this is after all a learning diary regarding the digital course at school. The truth is, I have no idea how to write a blog post or how to start it. The most natural way for me seems to be writing about something that I like, something small about myself, something small about the person behind this text. But hey, I learn fast!

Walking in to Laurea Otaniemi’s campus after a long summer vacation (well a long summer working), felt a little confusing. Not knowing at all what is heading us this fall 2015. The first lecture with the mentors and the digital couches took place in the small (and warm) auditorium the 31^st of August. It gave us a little idea of what all this excitement of the digital world is. Still I’m not quite sure of all the details, but who cares, learning by doing is anyway the best way of learning!

The biggest eye opener for me was this view. The website that shows us how much the different services of the internet is used every day (yes it shows some other stuff too). Check out this link to "Internet Live Stats" for today's statistics. Crazy, huh? Even this post will be left somewhere in the clouds of the Internet. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the world’s population is estimated to be approximately 7.3 billion. Almost half of the world’s population is using the Internet. This gives a little proportion of how “today” the digital world is. 

Next thing I wan't to tell you about is our girl power group. It contains myself, Nelli, Mira, Linda and Tanja. And of course our digital couch Faysal Hasan (Who is by the way an awesome photographer!) and mentor Ilkka Kurkela. Together I think we make what you could call a dream team! ;)

Mira, Nelli, Me, Linda, Tanja (Photo: Faysal Hasan)

Our first group task was to write down “A Dream for 2020”. Our group FTS13 decided to make a short movie. The filming was a lot of fun, but the editing gave us a few gray hairs… But in the end the final result turned out great and I must say I love it! Watch it below, and please show us some mercy: none of us are movie makers or editors, but again, we’re learning by doing. Looking forward to work with new videos and tasks!

This first week gave me a good impression about this digital business course. I'm sure this course will give me good skills in both digital stuff and in English. Hope you enjoyed reading the first blog post ever made by me! Please feel free to leave a comment, in good or bad. Until next time!