Blogging
I am an analytic person and I am not affraid to share my opinion. I was able to write posts that sound like I was speaking. I wanted my blog to look like me. This has pros and cons. If I get excited, I might get carried away easily. I have had trouble to summarize my thoughts and that might make my posts difficult to read. It is a skill to tell only the relevant stuff to the listener and that is something that I really need to work on. That is being customer friendly. Not too much bolded text, fuzzy pictures or too much unrelevant nonsense. However I am a quick learner and I learnt a lot during the course. I was able to enlight my text using metaphors and pictures without drifting too far away.
Appearance of the blog is important. A dull looking blog looks unprofessional and not so attractive. Same goes with any website. You wouldn't want to wear a tracksuit when going to job interview. So why let your website look booring if your content is brilliant? I made some effort to improve the looks of this site and I immediately got more compliments. Luckily I have a girlfriend who wanted to help me (a lot) to make this site look like this.
My english has always been pretty decent but after wiriting posts it has improved a lot. A big thanks to my spell checkers mom and girlfriend who helped me to see my flaws. Same goes with the content. I got a lot better when I asked for reviews by digicoaches and I listened to them. I hope I will be as useful to other students as my digicoaches were to me. If you want to improve, ask for feedback and listen to it.
Marketing
The course gave me a better understanding of how to attract customers. Succesfull companies try to create useful products that are needed and they tell their customers why they need/want it. Unlike I wrote in my firsts posts that "branding is just polishing the turd" that is not the truth. Not always. Selling great products that are useful to customers is important. Nobody wants to buy ugly shoes no matter how many times the company advertises them on tv. When you have a great product, people will buy it if they know about it. The main reason why you should invest in marketing is that it is usually the only way to let people know about your products.
What makes a product a best seller? It has to be at least decent in quality. The customer should become happy when buying and using your product. It should be something that the customer needs. It doesn't have to be the best product in market, but it needs to be remarkable. Being remarkable means being different than others and something that everybody remembers. The differnce between Frank Gehry and the average architect is that mr Gehry's work stands out and it leaves a mark. Not everybody likes his works, but people remember it. That is being remarkable. Courage to act differently.
How to tell your target group about your product? First you need to focus on speficific groups and market the information to them. Let's say that I have a company that sells footballs. I wouldn't want to pay for marketing that wouldn't bring me more sells. I should market my products to people who are most likely going to by footballs. I should figure out where they usually are. Usually in football fields. Marketing my products in places where my target audience spends time is a good idea. If my customers google footballs, I should try to get my website to be visible in Google's search engine. Search engine optimization would be a great thing to do. Marketing to kids that play football should be different from marketing to guitarists that want to learn new songs. But in both cases, you need to solve their problem with your product.
Being brave
During the course I improved my skills by repeating tasks. My english got better by writing and by presenting. I got a lot more confidence when I did more things that I was affraid of. If you have nothing to lose why not give it a try? I edited the first video ever and it wasn't that bad. I learn't a lot and I could do it again. I even took an extra project because I wanted to be part of group that I have never been with. That project was for SAE Institute and I learnt a lot by working with people who helped me to learn new skills. I learnt more about Google adwords and SEO from a member who knew a lot about it. I also learnt more about working with different kinds of people. Listening is a useful skill and it is unfortunately not as valued as it should be. It is the key for communicating.
I wrote before that I want to be the person who goes to contact the speaker after his/her presentation. Just like Ilkka and Viveka do. I did it finally after the Nobot company's presentation. I talked to the company's presenter and asked if they had need for workers. They needed somebody who could do things that I cannot do. I talked with the representive for a while and said that I will send email to him. I am happy that I sent the job application even thought I didn't get the job. He was happy that I showed interest and said that they will contact me if they needed somebody for the position that I could fill. After that I wrote another job application and now I am currently waiting for the answer to that. Getting rejected doesn't feel good, but without courage you will never succeed in anything.
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