Grand Opening of 2011Miami Book Fair International Spotlighted China

MIAMI- A Peking Opera dancer opened the 28^th Miami Book Fair International with an enchanting performance, echoing the concept of 2011 MBFI (Miami Book Fair International) poster design. The president of Miami Book Fair International addressed the official start of this year’s book parties and festivals.

The grand opening consisted of two parts: the kick-off of the eight-day book festival and the ribbon-cutting ceremony of China Pavilion.

The first part started with an eye-grabbing peacock dance, “Peacock Returns”, leading to a sensational Chinese landscape video about China’s world famous historic miracles and sceneries. Preceded was a remark from the general consul of Consulate-general of The People’s Republic of China in Houston rendering gratitude and honor to have China as the featured country and the positive aspects this event would bring to Sino-Us relations. The following art performances brought a grace and peace note to the kick-off party. Yangge dance, with the dancer’s heavy lifts, light steps and willowy waist, depicted a petite cute Chinese girl in jubilant scenes.

Wang Jie, and Zhou Shiqi, dancers of “The Sisters, Snake Green and Snake White”, an excerpt of “The Legend of the Snake White”, revealed the deep sisterhood they harbor by showing their life details. As a solid proof of music is the universal language, Pipa solo, “A Red Rose for You”, won the most resounding applause among the audience. The kick-off party drew its closure with a performance of “Face Off”.

In the blare of Chinese trumpets and the beats of drums, a Chinese dragon team led the crowd to China Pavilion. After a brief speech from the Vice president of Xuzhou Normal University, the organizer and arts counsel of China Pavilion, candidates from Consulate-general, Miami Dade College and Xuzhou Normal University sectioned off the ribbon into three swoops and cut them in applause and flashes. China Pavilion welcomed the flooding audience with folk group dance and music, acrobatics, and martial arts presented by Xu Zhou Normal University.

HuaXia Traditional School showcased authentic Chinese traditional culture and arts by demonstrating tea ceremony, calligraphy, Taiji, Guqin (seven-stringed plucked instrument in some ways similar to the Zither) and silk embroidery. 

Second life is social media

For the social media event, I registered a second life account. Then I realize second life is essentially social media. Let’s take a look at the common features among the two.

1.     Conversation

Social media boasts for two-way communication. Second life includes an IM feature, but it also has voice chat, rendering it far more of a conversation enabler than Facebook or MySpace.

2.     Community

We regard every social media platform a community for example a Facebook fan base, or a Twitter group. Second life contains a deeply connected and immersive community. What’s more, your Second Life community exists within 3-D spaces where your avatar can move about, greet with other avatars, even party with them.

3.     Groups

Almost every social media platform has group feature, say, we can set up a private study group for our CPR590-T. Second life also has groups where you can broadcast notices; send IMs to group members who are online at the same time.

4.     Events

Facebook Events render us an easy way to initiate and get feedbacks about a gathering as well as serves as a reminder to those who are always bad at schedules. But a Second Life event is way different from what we have in the real world. An event in Second Life is the epitome of interactivity with images, sound, voice, movement, actions and reactions.

5.     Advertising

Since more and more businesses are heading into social media to generate profits, advertising on social media platforms is already a must-have trend for every company. There are many advertising methods available in Second life as well as the ability to give away or sell goods and services. Second life allows you to sponsor, purchase and display in a virtual world

Facebook Privacy: 10 settings every users needs to know

When you fill in your interest box on Facebook, the ads concerning the relevant products and services automatically pop out. Isn’t that creepy, yes, Fackbook is watching us. Therefore, it’s far more important to know the privacy settings that people normally ignore.

1.     Sharing on Facebook

Controlling how you share content is quite complex and will probably make your head hurt, but it’s essential that you take a good look at the settings and decide for yourself what you want to share and with whom

2.     Existing photos

Account>Privacy Setting> Sharing on Facebook> Customize Settings> Edit album privacy for existing photos

With this setting, you can go through your old albums and change the privacy setting for each one, including your wall photos

3.     Checking in to places

Account>Privacy Setting>Sharing on Facebook>Customize Settings>Friends can check me in to places

Having someone else telling the world where you are can be unpleasant and even dangerous in some cases.

4.     Connecting on Facebook

Account>Privacy Setting>Connecting on Facebook

Privacy settings for sharing content on Facebook are separated from the settings for connecting, which basically mean sharing information about you.

5.     Apps you use

Account> Privacy Settings>Apps and Websites>Apps you Use

Remove all of the apps you’re not using and carefully review the permissions you’ve given each individual app.

6.     Instant Personalization

Account> Privacy Settings> Apps and Websites> Instant Personalization

Opt-out of instant personalization on individual third-party websites, simply by clicking on “No Thanks” when asked about it.

7.     Info accessible to your friends

Account>Privacy Settings> Apps and Websites> Info accessible through your friends

No matter how tight your privacy settings are, you’re still sharing some of your content and info with a group of people, even if it’s only your best friends. With this setting, you can set exactly what information is available to apps and websites if your friends use them.

8.     Public search

Account>Privacy Settings>Apps and Websites>Public search

When someone searches for you on a search engine, they might get a preview of your public profile, which, in some cases, can be very revealing. So watch your digital footprints.

9.     Friend lists

Friends>Edit Friends>Create a List

Create lists of your family members, close friends and business acquaintances; you can finely tune the details you want to share with each list.

10.  Enabling HTTPS

Account>Account Settings>Account Security>Secure Browsing (HTTPS)

Facebook started introducing HTTPS support, which makes it a lot harder for someone connected to the same network to steal your password and other data. 

7 Steps to measuring your brand’s social media health

Social media is very easily measured with various indicators like share of voice, reach, retweets, and comments. However, to measure your brand’s overall social media health, here are seven takeaways from Maria Ogneva, the Director of Social Media at Attensity.

Takeaway 1: Set a clear goal

In order to properly measure your social media efforts, you need to know why you are engaging in social media in the first place. Then you measure you social media health with corresponding merits.

For example, if your goal is driving awareness, you will be looking at metrics like share of voice, reach, readership and engagement with content (measured in action v.s. views).

Takeaway 2: Get your departments on the same page

Social media handling is always teamwork. So you’d better set up your organization for success by better aligning necessary departments to work as units towards a common goal. 

Takeaway 3: Always consider context

Metrics without context are meaningless. Always look at metrics over time and inside of a competitive landscape.

Takeaway 4: Select your platform wisely

Here are some aspects you should consider when selecting a platform:

·      Data—Which data do you need?

·      Reports—Identify how you want to share and present information

·      Actionable insights—There’s a big difference between data and insights

·      Budget—Keep in mind that cheaper tools can sometimes be harder to use or come with less features.

·      Ease of use—If you have limited resources, your platform must be easy to use and allow you to get your job done quickly.

Takeaway 5: Conduct a full social media audit

Conducting a social media audit can also help you monitor the current share of conversation of various players and channels.

Takeaway 6: Dig deeper in your channels

You should also evaluate performance by channel, for yourself and for your competitors, to find which sections are performing well and to help give your numbers specific context.

Takeaway 7: Do A/B testing

Remember to measure your general social media health comprehensively at least once a month and track responses to particular programs more frequently.

10 NBA Twitter accounts to watch as Lockout ends

More and more people are inclined to get news via social media for its speed and interesting conversation it could lead to. With a shortened season likely to begin Christmas Day, here are 10 must-follow Twitter accounts to keep basketball-starved NBA fans entertained through the final labor negotiations and into the new season.

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How social media helped Kate Spade become a global brand

Kate Spade New York ranks among the strongest brands in the online marketing space. Luxury research and advisory firm L2 ranked Kate Spade second in its third annual Digital IQ Index in the fashion category, just behind Burberry. How the label has expanded aggressively into new product categories and markets in such a lightening speed? The answer is benefiting from social media.

Kate Spade released a redesign of katespde.com in March this year to engage more with customers. Commerce is important, but it’s not only about commerce. Engagement drives commerce. The company also applied multichannel approach to drive more customers by flash sales through sites like Gilt.com and Sneakpeeq.

In an interview with CEO of Kate Spade, Craig Leavitt, he disclosed that investments in social media are totally worth it.  “We have young people who live and breathe social media and are immersed in it every minute of every day. We allow them to lead and trust them in this space.” He also talks about how do they choose from so many social networks and decide where to invest time and money. The main standard regarding picking up social media platforms to work on is how many people it can drive in. Kate Spade is closing in on 400.000 Facebook fans and 150,000 Twitter followers, which are meaningful numbers for a brand. Besides, social media enables a real-time conversation, talking about where the brand is now and where it goes next.

Since the great performance on Facebook, the company thinks that the Facebook platform is going to be important from a revenue perspective. Kate Spade gave a strong and very engaged fan base, and the company expects “sales through Facebook” will be the fastest growing part of their business.

Nowadays, brands that are not being leaders in social media are being left behind very quickly.  Social media is a unique space, allowing people connected and empowered.

Social Media Tool—RSS

RSS is a syndication format that allows websites and blogs to distribute their updated, dynamic content as feeds to users. Instead of having to visit the website, users can sign up for the feed provided by the website or blog and using an RSS reader or aggregator (like Google Reader explained below), access the feed. Users can sign up for as many feeds from different websites as desired and then access and manage those feeds all at once using their RSS reader.

More and more companies are offering RSS feeds on their websites (we’ll look at advice for doing this in later posts).  But for now, to get a basic understanding of RSS, here are some resources:

·      Read these articles:

o   Wikipedia entry on RSS

o   About.com’s article on RSS Feeds

o   Read this RSS Tutorial for Content Publishers and Webmasters

o   Read Pressfeed’s Tutorial on RSS

·      Visit and take a look at these RSS renders:

o   Bloglines (web-based)

o   Google Reader (web-based)

o   Newsgator (Outlook-based)

o   Live Bookmarks (For Firefox Browser users)