Author Archive for Heather Horsey

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06
Oct
11

The Passing of Steve Jobs and The next generation iPhone and iOS

By Heather Horsey 2 Comments
Categories: Apple, iPhone, Steve Jobs and Technology
Tags: , , ,

With visionary Steve Jobs passing Wednesday, millions of people around the world mourn. From CEOs to celebrities to everyday people. Jobs, chairman and former CEO of Apple, changed the way we use technology. From designing the first commercially successful personal computers, to the creation of Macintosh, to iPods and iPhones – Jobs’ profound impact has forever changed the way we interact with technology and the way we live our lives. He will be missed.

Before Jobs passing, the company he co-founded made a big announcement that may have caught some off guard.

Apple’s first big announcement with Tim Cook as CEO may not have been what people were expecting. Rather than releasing the rumored iPhone 5, Apple announced the iPhone 4S that focuses on internal changes.  It is set to release October 14 with preorders starting October 7.  It will retail for $199 for the 16 GB model and $299 for the 32 GB model.  The iPhone 4S has a similar look to the iPhone 4, but is faster, has a better camera and some more changes to the internal software.  It was also announced that Sprint will be the third U.S. carrier to carry to iPhone, joining AT&T and Verizon.

Here are a few features of the iPhone 4S:

1.)   Camera: The iPhone 4S will have a camera that has 60 percent more pixels and can shoot 1080p high-definition video. According to Phil Schiller, a senior vice president in charge of product marketing, the iPhone 4S will be the best camera some customers have ever owned.

2.)   Faster: The iPhone 4S features Apple’s custom A5 chip, the same dual-core chip in the iPad 2. Everything will be noticeably faster: Web pages will load twice as fast, applications will launch and run faster, data will download twice as fast.

3.)   Your virtual personal assistance: 

It is called Siri and it lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, look

up information and more. Ask Siri to do things just by talking. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back. Siri is so easy to use and does so much and you’ll keep finding more and more ways to use it.

Apple’s iOS 5, which was announced in June, will be released October 12. This includes a lot of new features including the iCloud that can store all your information on all your devices without syncing them. It is your hard drive in the sky. iOS 5 will be free unlike before when it would cost customers $10 to upgrade their operating systems.

Apple showed it may be on the inside that counts. Are you convinced or are you going to continue to wait for the new style iPhone 5? Let us know what you think, post a comment, reply to us on Twitter @Weise_Ideas or find us on Facebook. We’d also love to hear from you about Steve Jobs impact and what the technologies he spearheaded creating have done to impact your life.

26
Sep
11

Let’s get organized in the digital world!

By Heather Horsey Leave a Comment
Categories: Apps and Diigo
Tags: , ,

Are you getting lost doing research on too many websites or having a hard time finding your extremely important notes? Are you frustrated when working late at night and you cannot seem to find that website your were reading on your work computer earlier in the day? Sometimes it is hard to keep your notes organized while you work on other projects, but no fear Diigo is here.

Diigo is an app that has some unique options to keep online reading and researching easy. Diigo allows you to take personal sticky notes and highlight text information with multiple colors on web pages just as you would on a piece of paper. It automatically saves, so anytime you come back to that webpage the information will be highlighted.

You can also choose to share with colleagues and friends to allow them to access the webpage, view your notes and highlights and add their own notations – even if they do not use Diigo.

Here is the best part for me, you can access your notes on any computer or browser, including cell phones with browsing capabilities. Therefore, you do not have to worry about taking notes at work and then trying to find again on your home computer or iPad.

The other useful part is for Diigo you can choose to upload the page, even if it is dynamic or password protected (if you have accessed it before), search your collections full-text, including highlights, sticky notes, titles, etc of the web pages, keep things private or public. There are a lot of great uses and options for anyone researching online.

These kinds of tools really help keep everything easy and organized, in a digital world. Today, we read online, work online, search online, be social online; we do almost everything online. Diigo is especially applicable for teachers, students, writers, business, researchers and people who read a lot.

What do you think about that kind of tool? Is it useful for you?

Let us know by commenting, following us on Twitter @Weise_Ideas or finding us on Facebook at Facebook.com/WeiseCommunications.

23
Sep
11

7-Eleven to Celebrate CofFREE Day

By Heather Horsey Leave a Comment
Categories: Facebook, Franchise, Franchising, Marketing and Social Media
Tags: , , , ,

On September 29, 7-Eleven will celebrate their caffeinated version of National Coffee Day, CofFREE Day, by offering all Americans a FREE medium-size cup of hot coffee (or cappuccino…or latte) from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m.

With more than 65% of Americans drinking coffee during the week (at nearly two cups per day), 7-Eleven found it only fitting to celebrate the beloved caffeinated beverage on its special day.

The celebration kicks off on September 28, with an interactive Facebook game called Dip-A-Drip. Drips are total pains; they are those obnoxious, over-the-top people who get on your last nerve. Dip-A-Drip (get it now?) is your chance to launch a ball that dips a Drip into a giant 7-Eleven coffee cup. Here’s the twist: that giant coffee cup will be setup live at Union Station in Washington D.C., so while you control the movement online, your Drip is being dipped in real-time.

We here at Weise Communications love our coffee, so we will be excited to see how this interactive promotion pays off for the franchise system. What do you think about the 7-Eleven campaign? Will you get your free coffee on CofFREE day? Share with us here on The Side Note Blog.

02
Sep
11

Are we ready for flu season?

By Heather Horsey Leave a Comment
Categories: Communications, Facebook, Skittles, Social Bookmarking, Social Media and YouTube
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Are we ever going to have a worry-free season? In summer, we liberally apply sunblock to prevent skin cancer. In winter, we wash our hands often to fight against viruses. The spring brings pollen and allergies to battle and of course fall is the best time to get vaccinated against common flu. With flu season right around the corner we wanted to bring attention to public health communication in social media by taking a look at a successful campaign.

Social media has become an integral part of immunization communication for many public health organizations, nonprofits and health care providers. The Colorado Children’s Immunization Coalition (CCIC) has created an award-winning campaign, Immunize for Good, designed to answer parents’ toughest questions about childhood vaccines and reinforce a parent’s choice to vaccinate.

As a statewide nonprofit, CCIC works with community organizations, health care providers, public health departments, businesses and policy makers to ensure children get the vaccines they need to keep Colorado healthy. A 2010 national survey shows that while 88 percent of parents follow the CDC-recommended vaccine schedule, more than half, 54 percent, have concerns about vaccines. In response to these concerns, CCIC, in partnership with the Colorado Immunization Program and the Vaccine Advisory Committee of Colorado, launched this exciting and content-rich social media campaign in order to encourage parents to vaccinate and reassure them that they are making the best decision for their child’s health. Parents were informed about the benefits and potential side effects of the vaccinations thru Facebook and Twitter. The campaign was very successful, helping increase awareness of new studies proving the safety of immunization and helping answer questions for concerned audiences. This campaign showcases that social media can be a powerful tool to raise awareness for public health organizations and health care providers.

To learn more about what CCIC did to make a successful communications campaign, visit them on Twitter or follow them on Facebook. If you are looking for a way to learn more about social media and health communications, join me for a Coffee Talk session with the Colorado Healthcare Communicators on Wednesday, September 28. I’d be happy to discuss your organization and how social media might help reach your target audiences.

17
Aug
11

Can Mobile Technology Help Create a Better Health Care System?

By Heather Horsey 2 Comments
Categories: Health and Wellness, Health care marketing, healthcare, healthcare marketing, Mobile advertising and mobile marketing
Tags: , , , ,

Mobile technology could help reform health care and change the way illness is treated all over the world.

One of the most important things is how mobile applications could change the health care systems focus on reactive care and treatment to preventative strategies. If health care could focus on prevention, then less time would be spent on immediate treatment in hospitals and doctors’ offices, cutting costs of health care significantly. This is especially important for developing nations, given the ratio of doctors to patients is significantly lower than that of developed nations.

Along with a more preventative approach, mobile technology could help distribute the responsibilities. Allowing people to have help at there figure tips and not have to run the nearest hospital.

Four tips to begin mobile technology focused health care are:

  1. Getting Comfortable with Non-Clinical Sources
    Patients sharing with patients could be a huge untapped community. While doctors and nurses may not feel it is appropriate to share due to potential privacy violations, patients could share with each other.
  2. Build Tools to Support
    Create tools to remind patients of vaccinations dates, appointments, or preventative visits. Build this into your practice now
  3. Find Systems that are Working to Support People, then Build on Them
  4. Start Small and Learn Your Way to the Right Solutions Through a Deep Understanding of Patient and User Context

The biggest hurtle for mobile health care technology is existing regulatory and reimbursement structures in place, especially in the U.S. It may take a while for mobile health care to take off, but being ready for adopting is key since it may be one of the greatest outlets for improving patient care and costs.

How do you think mobile technology will impact health care? We’d love to hear from you.

12
Aug
11

Three ways to drive traffic to your publication, using Facebook

By Heather Horsey Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

Please welcome back guest blogger, healthcare communications professional Rachel Brand in her second of three guest blog posts on health care public relations.

Facebook wall, meet traditional media. Print and electronic publications, meet Facebook. How can you two create something wonderful?  Read on…

1) Tease a question on Facebook, reveal the answer in editorial.

Credit this tip is to the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN). One day before publishing its e-news, AORNs quizzes fans, revealing answers in the e-newsletter.

This AORN post generated 20 responses:

“Question of the Week: ‘Why do we remove cosmetics before the preoperative skin prep?’ Be sure to comment with your answer below, even if someone else posted what you were going to say. Check out the answer in tomorrow’s Periop Insider e-mail :) ”

2) Continue the story.

New York Times reporters often provide Facebook epilogues to their print stories, especially those that generated a big response. When you do, you’ll want to link to the previous story. See Nicholas Kristof’s page:

“Six weeks ago I wrote about a 10-year-old Indian girl, M., who was in great danger of being sold to a brothel: http://nyti.ms/qg5nyk. Today I just got great news: the family has returned M. to the New Light Shelter in Kolkata and she’ll be returning to school! Thanks to readers for all your concern about M.”

3) Let readers shape the story. 

Interviewing an expert? Attending a conference and planning to cover it? Before, ask readers on Facebook what questions they would like answered. Their questions may surprise you. You’ll publish the answers on Facebook too.

What do you think about these three techniques to increase traffic using Facebook? Do you have other tactics that have increased traffic to your site? Share with us here on TheSideNoteBlog.com or @ message Weise Communications on Twitter @Weise_Ideas.

Rachel Brand is a healthcare communications professional who can teach writing over brown bag lunches at your company. Contact her at rachel (at) brandcommunicationsllc.com.

10
Aug
11

Seven Tips for Health Care Companies on Facebook

By Heather Horsey Leave a Comment
Categories: Business Strategies, Facebook, Health and Wellness, Health care marketing, healthcare, healthcare marketing and Social Media
Tags: , , ,

Social media is one of the biggest marketing tools for companies all over the world. While many companies have found success in this tool, the health care industry has taken a slower and more cautious approach to using social media. Facebook, the biggest social media platform out there, is a great place to start and a great learning tool if you are new to the social media experience. Mashable created a Facebook Marketing Series that includes lots of great tips and advice to get started. We have taken the 8 Tips for Health Care and Pharmaceutical Companies’ on Facebook and reworked them to reflect our experiences. Below are seven Tips for Health Care Companies on Facebook.

 

Tip 1: Is Your Product Consumer-Facing
Are consumers your target? If so, consumers love to research products online, so having a great Facebook page would be appropriate. On the other hand, if you are marketing to physicians, they do not discuss work on Facebook so it may not be the appropriate.

Tip 2: Provide Useful Information
The whole purpose of Facebook is the socialize, so don’t try to bombard consumers with things they are not going to do, such as asking them to follow several steps or share private information. On Facebook, just be helpful, provide your patients with the information they want to obtain and do not ask much more.

Tip 3: Ask Intelligent and Related Questions
Ask and listen to your consumers, if they are giving your site a chance, then they may be willing to participate.

Tip 4: Have Real Experts Lead Discussions
This is a no brainer; consumers want to speak with people who know the facts. So, if you are using PR or marketing to lead your social media content, make sure they know the facts as well as your experts, and have the experts readily accessible to help answer any questions that PR and marketing cannot.

Tip 5: Create a Publishing Schedule
Create a content schedule of relevant information and questions that can be delivered through your Facebook page. You need to stay relevant with Facebook users and the only way to do this is to continuously put up new content and questions to keep users engaged.

Tip 6: Establish the Right Success Metrics
Make sure you are not just using the “like” button or your number of fans to rate the success of your Facebook page. You also need to be looking at the number of conversations, the number of repeat visits, and pages viewed per visit.

Tip 7:  Make a Social Media Commitment
You need to create a community for your consumers to participate. Continue to grow and feed your community.

With these tips and helpful hints, Facebook should be an easy way to start using social media. It is time for the health care industry to get more involved in this marketing tool and to start using it to benefit consumers and companies alike.

25
Jul
11

What Can Google+ Do For Health Care Marketing?

By Heather Horsey Leave a Comment
Categories: Business Strategies, Communications, Marketing, PR, Social Media and Twitter
Tags: , , , ,

Google+ is brings yet another social media site that companies need to join. However, don’t be sour about it just yet, Google+ might actually bring something different to the health care industry in regards to online marketing.

CMI Media just completed a research study, discussed in the article What Will Google Plus Mean for HealthCare. They found surprisingly promising results that will only further help health care reach individuals online.

The biggest benefit is that Google+ can help health organizations and companies “affect unbranded searches, such as for a disease state rather than for a medication.” This could be a new brand new development for online marketing because branded searches are what its all about. In order to use Google+ to the fullest, marketers need to focus on targeted search marketing and encourage companies to add the +1 button to all of their important pages on their websites.

The +1 button attached to Google+ is also something new to the social media world.  With Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, you have a link somewhere on the website of a company where you can “Like” a page or post a page to your account.  With Google+, users can add all the stuff they “Like” immediately at the search page and not have to search for a like button somewhere in the websites domain.  However, just to be on the safe side, Google has allowed the +1 button to be placed next to any Facebook/Twiiter Like buttons on company websites.  By having the +1 button readily available on the search engine this increases the “ease of use” of the new social media and in the online world, “ease of use” is one of the most important factors of a website or platform.

So as with any new big social media platform, new analytics must be looked and researched when looking at online campaigns.  Make sure you add Google+ to your analytics data especially by logging your volume of +1’s.

What do you think about Google+ and how will you change your marketing efforts? Let us know by commenting, following us on Twitter @Weise_Ideas or finding us on Facebook at Facebook.com/WeiseCommunications.

23
Jun
11

Creating Relationships with Consumers

By Heather Horsey 2 Comments
Categories: Ads, Advertising, Brand Loyalty, Branding, Business Strategies, Coca-Cola, Creative, Gorilla Marketing, Guerilla Marketing, Guerrilla Marketing, Marketing, Stunts, Video Ads, Viral and YouTube
Tags: , , , ,

What does Coca-Cola mean to you? It is not just a big brand, Coca-Cola understands  how to connect with the heart of buyers. Their marketing campaigns WOW. They spend marketing dollars by giving back to customers and create a strong relationship with their audience with various unconventional marketing efforts.

Imagine a college student wants to get a coke from the vending machine but ending up getting more than she bargained for. In Coke’s most recent campaign, students get flowers, pizza, and even a huge sandwich from the vending machine. The Coke machine dispenses more than Coke product, it dispenses good will and happiness.

The viral nature of the happiness machine encourages consumers to create a true relationship with Coke. By establishing good will with consumers, especially in emerging markets, consumers will choose Coke because they like the brand – not to mention the taste.

Check out the rest of of the campaign’s viral videos here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqT_dPApj9U

What do you think about Guerilla marketing? How would it help your business get more attention? Tell us what was your favorite unconventional guerilla or viral marketing campaign was and share with us on Facebook at Weise Communications, follow us on Twitter @Weise_Ideas.

Thanks to Duysal Ekinci for her help with this blog entry.

22
Jun
11

Brand Advocates make the Best Endorsers

By Heather Horsey 1 Comment
Categories: Ads, Advertising, commercials, Digital Media, Endorsements, Guerilla Marketing, Guerrilla Marketing and Stunts
Tags: , , , , ,

Are you in love with your car? How about customizing it? Considered color-matched exterior mirrors with your headphones? You are not the only one who loves their car with passion. One of my favorite brands, MINI, ran an outdoor campaign last month in Berlin that brought to life an unconventional marketing idea. MINI is a unique brand which truly allows buyer to express their unique personality.

KLLD global lead agency for BMW group has developed a new campaign for MINI, inviting millions of fans of the car from around the world to become part of the MINI family. This is a brilliant campaign because ir creates a personal experience for buyers, like the tagline says, “It’s Personal. Be MINI.”

In this campaign, brand users got the chance to be in a MINI ad campaigns. Participants were invited to enter MINI Photo Box, clamp on a pair of vibrantly colored headphones and select their favorite model from the MINI family with color-matched exterior mirrors. There were four colors and four models to choose from: the MINI Hatch, MINI Convertible, MINI Clubman and MINI Countryman.

Next, participants appeared in real-time on a video screen together with their photo and personalized MINI model. The MINI campaign was set up overnight on May 16 and continued until May 29 at the intersection of Kurfürstendamm and Joachimstaler Straße in Berlin. The campaign also ran simultaneously with a Facebook launch. (LINK TO:)

“With our ‘It’s personal’ campaign, MINI fans interact individually and authentically in an urban environment,” says Julia Hartmann, MINI Brand Management. “Through the personal configuration of the model, along with their choice of colors, we encourage them to express their personality – in front of friends and a global audience.” This unconventional guerilla marketing campaign was set to reach more than two million people on location and over 1.8 million MINI Facebook fans.

What do you think about making brand users into stars of an advertising campaign? How would it help your business get more attention? Share with us on Facebook at Weise Communications, follow us on Twitter @Weise_Ideas.

Thanks to Duysal Ekinci for her help in this blog post.

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