Archive for the ‘University Of Michigan’ Category

What Do Snakes And A Chicken Have To Do With Viral Marketing?



With mass communication being achievable with just the click of a mouse, the internet has become the worldwide marketplace. That is why most advertisers believe that viral marketing is the most effective way to get customers to buy your product. As Tom Kinnear, executive director of the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan tells Forbes.com, “It [viral marketing] can be referred to as word-of-mouth on steroids.”

The movie Snakes on a Plane is a good example. While the film did not do so hot at the box office it got a huge amount of buzz when people started writing songs and creating videos based on the title. When the media picked up on it, word of mouth for Snakes on a Plane took off like wildfire. This required no effort from the filmmakers after their initial advertising push. That is the essence of good viral marketing.

You may not have a movie studio or Samuel L. Jackson to help you out but there are ways you can adapt viral marketing to your internet business.

The Fun Page

If you are a serious marketer, and you do not have enough funding for a major advertisement, this is one of the best techniques that you can use. Make a page on your site with funny or interesting videos or images, or even create a mini game that is focused on your product. Be sure to include a tell a friend link to ensure that your fun page gets circulated. Creativity is the key. If your fun page is cool enough, you can be sure that you will get more hits for to your website.

Kind of Weird

Remember the Subservient Chicken? Burger King created a webpage that contained a video camera with a command line below it. On the site, you just typed what you wanted the subservient chicken to do, and voila, the chicken did it. People were born curious. If you have some idea in your head, do it. The Subservient Chicken became so popular that people forwarded the links to their friends, and all Burger King had to do was to maintain the website. The downside is this strategy might create bad publicity but as the old saying goes, bad publicity is still publicity.

Email Forward

Create a message with funny pictures or a video, and then send it to your friends or list of subscribers. If it is funny enough, you can be sure that this little message will reach a lot of people. Remember that the images or video should contain at least a brand logo or a website address. The best thing that you can do here is to include your name on the video itself, like for example a guy wearing a t-shirt with your brand name on it, or a bunch of funny pictures dealing with your products. Most forwarded e-mails are viral marketing strategies. In this technique, you can always be sure that your e-mails are going to be opened, because they came from the friends of the e-mail owner.

Free is Good

Most people search the internet with free as one of their keywords. Free stuff can boost the popularity of your website. There are a lot of items out there that you can give out for free. Creating a downloadable Flash game is one of the most used today. But of course, you should make it interesting, and make the people think that without this free stuff on their desktop, they’re missing out a lot.

Viral marketing may not answer all of your promotional needs, but it will surely help you in creating a buzz. It is cheap, easy and very effective. What viral marketing does so brilliantly is fuel our irresistible urge to tell somebody about a good experience. It is hard to find any advertising better than that.

Becoming a Florida Lawyer – not an Easy Process



Becoming a Florida lawyer is very similar to becoming a lawyer in any other state and includes obtaining a four year degree from an accredited college (in the state of Florida these include Florida State University, Florida Technical College, and St. Thomas University to name just a few), gain acceptance into a law school that is recognized and accredited by the American Bar Association, graduate from the law school, and finally to pass the Florida Bar exam. This is not an easy process and only thirty percent of those individuals who begin the process actually complete it and become a practicing lawyer or attorney in the state of Florida.

There are thousands of accredited four year colleges in the state of Florida and they range from the huge Florida State University to the much small and private St Thomas University. However, they all offer four year degrees in any number of fields, sciences, or arts. Determining which college is right for you is a largely unique determination that takes into account the cost of tuition, the location of the university, scholarships offered, and ultimately academic acceptance. However, once a university or college has been decided upon, then the successful completion or the curriculum becomes important.

 At this stage, it is not necessarily important what type of four year undergraduate degree is earned. While it is important to choose a discipline that encourages logical thinking, academic research, writing, public speaking, and interdisciplinary organization, it is not a requirement for ultimate success as a professional Florida lawyer. Programs that many future lawyers have found useful have been majors in humanities, social sciences, history, and political science. Again, at this stage of the process, it is not important what four year undergraduate degree is attained. It only matters that degree is successfully attained.

Once you have finished an undergraduate program, then you must get accepted into law school. Law school is usually an additional two year program. Acceptance into one of the two hundred or so law schools across the nation is based on the LSAT (Law Schools Admissions Test). This test is designed to test the attributes that a lawyer should have. It examines basic knowledge, logical thinking, and problem solving. It is largely considered to be one of the hardest admission tests that a lawyer will have to take. The higher the school then the better the chances of being accepted into a law school are. All law schools are not created equal. While they all offer the same basic program, some are much more famous and expensive than others. In Florida, law schools include St Thomas School of Law, Stetson University College of Law, and University of Miami School of Law.

Obviously after the successful entrance into a recognized law school, the next step to becoming a Florida lawyer is the completion of that program and earning a law degree. Earning a law degree is not easy and requires a broad knowledge of all legal standards and situations regardless of the intended field of the law student. It is therefore very challenging.

Even after graduating from law school, an individual is not fully recognized as a lawyer until he or she has passed the Florida Bar exam. This is an exam intended to test the basic knowledge and skills of a lawyer. A person can take this test as many times as necessary to receive a passing grade. Once a person has successfully completed this exam, he or she is a lawyer and can then practice law in Florida.

The Atkins Diet



The Atkins diet hit the diet scene in 1972 when Dr. Atkins published his book, “Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution”. And the Atkins diet was really revolutionary. Most diets of the day focused on counting calories and maintaining a low fat diet. Calories were felt to be the enemy and the fewer you ate, the better off you were. Dr. Atkins paid less attention to calories in his diet and more to reducing the number of carbohydrates in the diet. To followers of his diet, the carbohydrates were the problem. The diet promoted the use of lots of protein and a moderate amount of fat with the idea that your metabolism will cause you to lose weight on this diet.

The Atkins diet was not taken very well by many nutritionists who were promoting diets low in fat and protein. This was about the time that the four food groups turned into the food pyramid. Fruits, vegetables and grains were near the bottom and should be consumed the most. Unfortunately for the Atkins diet, these were things that were to be avoided on the diet. Near the top of the food pyramid are fats and meat proteins. We weren’t supposed to eat many of these types of foods on a healthy diet and yet they were prominent in the Atkins diet.

The Atkins diet included menu plans high in bacon, fried meat and even fried pork rinds. While there were some salad greens on the diet plan, you were allowed to add fatty dressing to the diet plan. The Atkins diet plan really promoted eggs, cheese, meats at every meal and, in some cases, protein bars or protein drinks. This was a time when cholesterol and triglycerides were being better understood and their role in heart disease was made more clear. Experts felt that the Atkins diet plan was too high in cholesterol and other fats, making one’s risk for heart disease greater. Dr. Atkins continued to promote his diet plan, amid a great deal of controversy.

The Atkins diet also included some Atkins products, like Atkins hot cereal, Atkins protein shakes and Atkins protein bars. Instead of having regular hot cereal, you would choose the Atkins variety of hot cereal. The company made money off of these specialized products and still does, but to a lesser degree. As long as carbohydrates were counted and Atkins products used, the diet was expected to help you lose weight.

It’s unclear how successful people were in losing weight on the Atkins diet. If dieting is truly based on calories, the Atkins diet certainly weren’t lacking in them. Since the origin of the Atkins diet, more is known about the effects of cholesterol (from meat protein) and triglycerides (from other fats) on things like stroke, peripheral artery disease and heart disease (coronary artery disease). Doctors are more likely to check cholesterol and triglycerides in patients and doctors are active in putting people on medications to lower these fats in the blood. Few doctors would recommend such a high content of cholesterol and fat for patients at risk for heart disease. Few would recommend this kind of diet for even normal people. Still, there are those who still go on the Atkins diet in the hopes of losing weight.