Facebook as a Business Tool

Thanks to my class, ALES 204, and my lovely professor, Dr. Jessica Laccetti, I have created my first professional Facebook page. I have always thought of Facebook as a means of sharing photos and instant messaging with friends and family. I never thought it could emerge into such a powerful business tool. Through popular emerging social media sites, like Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace, businesses are able to promote their businesses around the globe at the touch of their fingertips. I started a professional Facebook page as a means of getting potential employers to know a little more about me, my skills and interests. With advancing technology, it is definitely a  lot more convenient than carrying around a resume all day!

Figure 1:
Professional Facebook Page

                                Professional Facebook Page, a photo by paulinen416 on Flickr.


Facebook will prove to be beneficial in my pursued dietician career as it will help me in increasing my audience to attract a diverse potential clientele, promote my business, and share my nutritional and active living thoughts with those who like my page or come across it. Facebook and Twitter are great business marketing strategies as they are so widespread universally; millions, if not billions, of us use it on a daily basis Time Magazine's article shows how businesses can use social media sites, namely Facebook, effectively in business strategies.

Figure 2:
The Social Network, 2010

I'm sure that many of you have seen the movie "The Social Network (2010)". The movie reanacts the origins of Facebook and the life of its creator, Mark Zuckerburg. The movie explicates how Facebook was orignally created from its predecessor, Facemash, which was a website that compared the attractiveness of peers. What has started as a online social networking site between the students at Harvard University, has now amounted to a whole new dimension of our technological lives on the world wide web. What Facebook has become has caused a whole new era is doing business and promotions. As Steven Johnson writes in Time's Magazine article "How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live,"  regarding the creation of popular social networking sites, "It's like inventing a toaster oven and then looking around a year later and seeing that your customers have of their own accord figured out a way to turn it into a microwave." Professionals in the business sector have found the potential in the popularity of Facebook and Twitter and have extracted this tool as a means of doing business in a whole new sense of light. It was not why Facebook was created, it is what we have made it become. Facebook is beneficial to businesses as it promotes on a mass market level. As many popular social networking sites are free of charge to the public, businesses can target almost any audience that owns a laptop, or smartphone. Instead of spending millions a year through advertisements and billboards, businesses can create pages on Facebook (similar to the one I created above) or pay for advertising space on the site.This can be less time consuming, more successful at attracting potential customers, as well as more cost effective.

To see a few more reasons on the successes of creating a professional Facebook page, and why you should promote your business, resume, etc. online, check out a fellow blogger, Chris Wohl's post at Chris Wohl's Blog Until next time, check out my Facebook page here to learn a little more about me, and as always, stay active and healthy!


References:


Figure 1: Professional Facebook Page [Personal Photograph], (2012). Retrieved from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/75254019@N02/6767836447/in/photostream

Figure 2: The Social Network (2010). [Photograph], (2012). Retrieved from:  http://www.rocktheworldbook.com/

Welcome to my Blog!

Figure 1:
Apples

 Hey there everyone! My name is Pauline N and I am a second year undergraduate student at the University of Alberta, studying Nutrition and Physical Activity. I am very excited to start my very first blog so I can share all my new nutritional knowledge with everyone! I am passionate about educating others about healthy lifestyles through means of proper diet and exercise.

Many athletes will know that achieving the "perfect body" requires not only strenuous hours at the gym, but also means dedication to eating your fruits and vegetables and the willpower to pass on the last slice of pizza. As many of us stare enviously at the front pages of magazines, I strive to inform you the HEALTHY way of eating and exercising to get you looking like your idolized celebrities.  

As the field of nutrition and sport is constantly changing at a rapid pace, I will like to research popular diets and workouts and communicate, through my blog, the effectiveness of these trends. As social media reveals different diets and popular workouts that are claimed to be used by Britney Spears or Jessica Alba, how do we know what really works and what is just a waste of your hard earned dollars? A popular website revealing celebrity workouts is advertised on the internet as well as celebrity diets . As my studies develop, I will tell you what workouts and diets are hot, and which are NOT!

Figure 2:
Jessica Alba

  

 I think that social media will be a great means for me to communicate to the public about my thoughts on nutrition and exercise regime, as well as get feedback from anyone with a passion towards these areas. I would love to start educating others more about healthy Vietnamese cuisine. There is a popular traditional story in Vietnam that told of a king who offered his daughter's hand for marriage. The chosen suitor would be the man who brought the most delicious meal to the king. After thousands of men lined up for this opportunity, the king was presented with meals of exquisite duck and filet mignon. However, the man the king chose to wed his daughter was a peasant farmer who was very poor. All he had to offer the king were salad rolls, simple food eaten by the lower class (see pic below). The punchline of the story: something so simple and taken fresh from mother nature can be delicious AND nutritious!

With this thought, I invite others to eat foods how they were meant to be eaten! Straight from earth's roots. As trans fat is on an alarming incline, I encourage you all to stick to fresh fruits and vegetables, straight from the garden. Crisp, fresh and delectable! I ran across a fellow student's blog in nutrition and I am very excited to meet someone which such similar interests in healthy living and public education. Check it out at http://pc204.blogspot.com/. An inspirational blog that I came across on the internet as well is that of Alan Aragon's.  If you interested more about nutritional science and sport, he is the man to go to!

Figure 3:
Vietnamese Salad Rolls

That is all for now! Please feel free to leave some feedback. Cheers and happy eating!

References:

Figure 1: Apples [Photograph], (2012). Retrieved from: http://forserious.ca/2009/10/03/world-compares-apples-to-apples-canada-wants-fruit-combo/.

Figure 2: Jessica Alba [Photograph], (2012). Retrieved from: http://iphone.88000.org/33__Jessica_Alba_.htm.

Figure 3: Vietnamese Salad Rolls [Photograph], (2012). Retrieved from: http://www.epicureselections.com/en/recipe/262