On Monday we had a lecture by Ilpo Kärkkäinen. He is DJ, Music producer, entrepreneur and blogger. Go check his website resoundsound.com. For me he seemed pretty inspirational guy when he spoke his blogging and entrepreneurship. He had four main points that he wanted to share about blogging:
Firstblogging is a learning tool. For him this one was the most important part in blogging. Blogging teaches how to focus and it evokes creativity. It also helps one to discover ideas and gives direction and momentum.
Second blogging can become a solid business. I learned that there are many ways to make money in blogging, like advertising, selling products and affiliate marketing.
Third blogging connects you to people and opportunities. For this one if you show people your vulnerability they more likely can relate to you.
Fourth blogging helps in creating clarity and achieving goals in life. Blogging is flexible and in life it transform with you when you transform.
From Monday's lecture Ilpo Kärkkäinen
Ilpo also told us about google trends which relate to our week task. We got a task to use google trends -tool and think three concrete themes for our partner company's blog. So we really had to dig deep and search common trends in the industry. Also we got a chance to give feedback to Ilpo Kärkkäinen of his blog and I hope our points of view can help him.
By the way, I founded some interesting google analytics YouTube -tutorialvideos and I am definitely going to watch them when I have some more time. Videos are very helpful if you want to learn more about google analytics. Go check out via this link.
And on Thursday we are going to have an exam but I can't make it because of I am going to London for a six day trip. I wish all good luck for the exam and I'll be back in business in the end of the next week!
Last week was "a holiday week" (although I spend it doing school assignments) but this week FTS13 is back in business and we created a nice video for this week's task. The team task was to use a tool website.grader.com to give a grade to our partner company's website and it's competitors. I think it was very useful to use this tool and I really learned to that there are many tools that you can use to grade your website and that way develop it. First we thought that we are going to do a video, like a basic video. But why that because the task was easier to explain with an animation. Making those animation takes a lot of time but and it took. We had a little problem with it that we had to create new user to use free trial to goanime and then we had record the anime video with computer screen. Luckily Tanja was the one to get that done and I think that the video is so good and it explains well the given task.
Our video webpage grader.
We also had many lectures this week. First one was on Monday, actually first two. Terhi Aho from Tulos lectured us about SEO, search engine optimizing. I learned that there are many search engines besides Google and Bing. Search engines are also yahoo, Ask, Yandex, Youtube and Pinterest and also Baidu (used in China). She also told us about Google updates which are split in three different categories: Panda-content, Penguin-links and Hummingbird-Semantics. Google wants to be your personal assistant. I learned that the main things in search engine optimization are content, technics and links. If you want your website to pop up in search engine you can link your website to other websites, like that they are link to each others like networking. She also told about customer journey and content strategy.
FTS13 in action
After Terhi, we had a second lecturer Joanna Purosto from MMAliitto. She had three important things to say: Network yourself, digitalize and that all of this (studying) is just beginning. It was more like an inspirational lecture. But she also gave us a tip to use codecademy.com if we want to learn something about coding. I'm definitely going to check that out when I have time.
On Thursday Ilkka (our teacher) gave a lecture. It was also an inspirational lecture. He also gave that lecture as a stream what was totally new for all of us. He had 3 main point, actually 4. First was that people who inspire you. We had to write three people of our life that inspire ourself. Mine was my mom and dad and also my boyfriend. These people inspire me the most and they are super important to me. The point was that to succeed, with these people surrounded I can because they give me strength to work hard for my dreams and goals. Second main point was strategy. in marketing and in digital marketing strategy is important and what I wrote down from the lecture that "Always put your website in the center of your digital strategy". Third was that digital presence creates trust and that's true. If some company doesn't have anything in the Internet, the first thing that I think is that it's a scam. And also the material in the Internet should be for my opinion good quality to create more trust. For last was that customer is the king. Always should appreciate the customer.
After Ilkka's lecture we had lecture by one of the digital coaches Bishnu about lead nurturing. The subject was totally strange to me and still is a little bit but at least now I know what it means. It's a process of building effective relationship with potential customers throughout the buying journey. So pretty intensive week with lectures.
Reviews:
we also got a task for this weeks blog posts. So i have to read 5 blog of my classmates and write some idea or learning that they have wrote and also give feedback of the blogs to my blog post. So here comes the review:
I like how he has written his own opinions and his own thoughts. I especially like how he writes in a fun way. It is really nice to read his blog. The cultural baggage was also fun and in created in his own way. respect to that. Very thought provoking sentence in Teemu's blog that I like to share was "is this all we are, just some products on the job market". That evoked my thoughts. For some criticism I could say that more pictures and videos would make the blog more interesting and more captivating.
Her blog is nice and clear. In positive way she has pictures and videos. Only one negative things is that I personally don't like when I had to open blog post separately. I haven't heard anyone else say that but it is just my personal opinion. The one post where she said that "Someone said that people are more creative when they don't have much money to spend. Lack of money should not be never the reason that you can't do anything". That was really wise idea. I haven't thought that way before. And I agree with Niina on that. There is one picture also on the same post that I like to share because it was really thought provoking for me:
For the first thing I noticed she has a lot of pictures and I like that for blog. It is much more interesting to read when there are also pictures. I would hope she would write more her thoughts than rather explains the week. It was nice to read in one blog post where her team were doing a video presentation of blogging and they have put a lot of effort to it and how nice it was for her to get positive feedback. For me it is also so nice to get positive feedback after putting a lot of effort to something.
I like the project in Johanna's team. It is nice that she has shared some picture from their meeting in Aavi technologies that there are something individual. It was nice to read that one lecture was get her to think about life and what she wants for it. Some improvement could that she could share more about the project and what they do or make the blog's appearance more captivating.
He has really good blog for mobile version. I haven't even noticed my mobile appearance. He had really good notes on his blog. It would be nice to read also in his words and more of what they have done in their team. And also picture would make the blog more interesting. But in the plus side the blog is organized well at so nice to read.
This week has been really hard for me. Our team has been working long hours and I almost have any free time after school work. Luckily next week is holiday week, although I have many other school tasks that I need to do. But it has still been interesting week.
On Monday we had a lecture by Faysal Hasan (He is our digital coach also in this course). He does lots of photography, so he told us about photography as a business and what should be take account when building a photography business. You can go check his website from here!
We had also a second lecture by Pekka Tuominen from Digipeople Studio. The company is also our partner company in this project and Pekka the CEO, is our contact person. I was so excited to hear since I'm so interested in videos. He told us about video strategy and he had a lot to say. He told that companies should act like news office that they should inform and be transparent, because people respect that. Nowadays people want to see watch really happening and want to see real and true stuff not just the soft touch. The content in videos should be interesting what catch the eye and that way it might spread everywhere. And the content should also really help people/ customers.
Why video? From Pekka's lecture
Pekka also told how videos should be like or what they think in Digipeople studio. Videos should be consistent when there is many part of the commercial. And Videos must be in YouTube (so they optimized in google) and you should name the videos right. Also the videos style should be equal and most likely in high-quality. What I think was important is that he said that videos shouldn't be too long that people watch them till the end. And dare to throw yourself!! Main points from Pekka's lecture were quality, innovation, release, indexing and tracking. (check out Digipeople studio!)
Material for the video
Action
On Monday and Tuesday our team were making the video for the week's task and doing synopsis for Digipeople. Our synopsis took a lot of time because we wanted them to be good. And of course we did a video also, what else we would do..? Making videos is fun but takes a lot of time, so we have been done three days a row 11am till 5-6pm days. And also other school stuff on top of that. But making videos are with it and those are much more fun to present and people actually have energy to watch them.
I was at Tikkurila on Thursday watching live stream from Nordic Business Forum. This year the forum took place at Helsinki, Messukeskus. There were many speakers from top of the business world. I really was excited to hear their words of wisdom.
I only watched the part where Arianna Huffington spoke and her Q&A part. Arianna is an author and co-founder of Huffington Post (<-- click).
Arianna Huffington
Huffington was speaking about the impact of social media and optimism. I agree what she said that more and more people discover things through social media. And I was really interested when she said that in the future 50% of websites is going to be video. I was clad to hear that when I love videos so much.
She also told how all this constant presence in your mobile device or other device effects your well-being. And in some cases more often leads to burn outs. Especially all the negative news has that effect so people should post more positive things in social media not the negative stuff. And also companies should do the same, more positive so it would make more positive and cheery people. So what Arianna said she does, is she turns off her devices in the evening and don't let them be side by her bed all night like almost all people in the world. This also effects the sleep. But about the positive news people should do that more. And that people like to share inspiring things as well entertaining things are important too for the positive image.
Arianna Huffington and John Maxwell Q&A
I also saw the Q&A part of Arianna Huffington and John Maxwell. I have to say that John Maxwell is a really smart man and amazing. They spoke of leadership and how should leaders be like. They said that some leaders can be brilliant but at the same time they could be toxic. Not all brilliant people are good leaders. Leader have to be able to be direct and have positive way of ambition. And also take notice that people consume news differently. And when the leader has to tell those bad news, they should also include good news. So every leader should be fearless and empathetic. What is also important for leaders they should take care of them selves too so that they can take care of others and lead others. And what helps that is people are something also outside of their job, and that is what they should hold by. Clear boundaries and device free bedroom also helps as they said that. Also when nowadays we need to work in teams the leader should know how to lead a team while people in the team should know how to be in the team. And for the last - Failure is a stepping stone to success.
I have really exciting news from this week. We met the partner company that we are going to work with in this project. The company is Digi People Sudio (here is link to their web page). They make videos for other companies and what I have seen, the videos have been really great. Their goal is to do videos which have a story and that video some how touches viewers' emotions. They also does other marketing stuff like 3D-animations, infographics, showreel and commercials. They also have so called "iskuryhmä" for situations which need fast production like launch parties. I am so clad that our group got an opportunity to work with this company. The feeling is just amazing.
We made a video about what is our task to do for the company:
On Monday all of the companies had a little presentation and it was really exciting to here about other teams' companies also. The most I was waiting to here about Digi People Studio of course and we had Pekka Tuominen, the CEO, telling us about the company. But I was also really fascinated about other presentation too like Taigas+Helvetti. I really thought that it was only the books behind that name but in reality there is a whole community behind it. You can find information about it from their website, just click here!
On Tuesday we were at school until 6 pm making the video and thinking about companies that would be great customers for Digi People Studio. We send a list to Pekka, the CEO, what were our idea about companies that would be ideal customers that we could plan an advertising video. We had few really good ideas but lets see what is going to happen.
I have to also tell that on Wednesday we did a little road trip to Porvoo with Team FTS13 and it was so much fun. The point was to get some inspiration and visit Brunberg factory's store and some petstore called "Peten koiratarvike". We got some fun video and picture material from the trip and we bought a lot of candy also what is enough for the rest of the year.
Porvoo's beautiful views. It didn't rain even if the picture looks like it did.
I'm hardly ever in pictures. I'm behind the camera most of the time.
There is also me.
At school we had a quest lecturer on Thursday, Jyri Rasinmäki. He works at Vapamedia (has worked for 5 years) and he was lecturing us problem solving and thinking. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram. The main things in he said was about problem solving, importance of thinking and asking the (right) questions. It was really psychological lecture. He kept telling that everyone should find their own way to think and keep thinking. Relevant to that he also said that you have to be curious and understand people and I agree that. That was wise thing to say because who ever you work with or work for, you have understand them and that is done by being curious about them. And for being curious you have to ask right questions. Three main things that I'm going to do when thinking - I'm going to think freely but logical, I should think more and I should share my thoughts more.
I'm excited for the next week and what we are going to create. Anyway our team continues to have fun while working and that is how we are going to be creative.
And by the way we have new group member Ria Ratia. Sadly she is not in the pictures but hopefully in next week's pictures.
