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Businesses keep social networking tools at arm’s length

TEMPE — Even though she’s a young marketing rep for one of the nation’s largest and most cutting-edge universities, Alice Ho says she is still afraid to use social networking tools to spread her company’s message.

What is a “widget”? Are “applications” still something you fill out? And why would anyone want to “poke” or “karate chop” a friend through online networks such as Facebook?

“I’m 27, and sometimes I feel too old for that stuff myself,” Ho admits.

Websites that allow users to interact with each other are called social networking sites. Some business owners still feel these websites are out of their comfort zone, but others say they are the wave of the future for selling products or building an audience around them.

Amanda Vega, founder of Amanda Vega Consulting in Scottsdale, said that social media has been around for more than 10 years now, and includes a variety of different forms including blogs and social networks such as Facebook.

“There are over 250 different tools and technologies and behaviors that comprise social media as a practice,” Vega says. Business should use them as an additional marketing tool, not as the primary one. These sites should allow users to give honest feedback to products, among other things.

But many of Vega’s clients are also concerned about opening themselves up to negative feedback, and they think these comments will be placed on social networks and spread around the Internet, Vega said.

But, Vega states that marketing agencies are able to set up a type of social media that makes sense for the company they are working with. In fact, some tools have popped up recently that allow companies to manipulate search engine results so that the negative comments get driven further down into the queue, and thus, into obscurity.

The problem, Vega says, is that overly positive feedback can ruin a social networking site’s value. Indeed, ASU tends to shy away from using this tool because it can’t control the message.

“When we put a message out there [using social media], it can be interpreted differently,” Ho says.

She also fears social media is only targeting a younger demographic for businesses, and another marketing expert agrees. Jason Ferrara, CEO of Elixir Interactive in Scottsdale, says that some of his clients voice this same concern.

However, businesses need to look towards the future, and that marketing reality includes social networking.

“It’s not a fad. People are using it whether they like it or not,” Ferrara says.

Today’s children are growing up using social networks, and businesses need to react to this by focusing on their clients of tomorrow, Ferrara said.

Yet another challenge that social media faces today is corruption. In 2006, Coca-Cola created a blog for Coke Zero that was suppose to allow consumers to comment about the product. It was soon discovered that Coca-Cola employees were actually maintaining the blog.

In response to this, Ferrara said that this is not a phenomenon of social media, but rather something that we see every day in society.

The key to combating this problem is to be honest and transparent, Ferrara said.

“If you are not strongly represented, people are less likely to place business with you,” Ferrara said.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

Local gumshoes pen tell-all book about finding lost loved ones

TEMPE — Most people never experience what it is like not knowing who their real birth parents are.

The book, Back to the Beginning ($18.95, Perfect Paperback), gives readers an opportunity to do just that.  Co-written by Ava Friddle, Judy Andrews and Kristen Hamilton and Joe Bardin, the book is a snapshot of stories about adoption searches and reunions that the authors have experienced throughout their careers as private investigators.

Hamilton, along with her mother, Friddle, and sister, Andrews, formed a family-owned business called Research, Etc., Inc., in 1995 in Scottsdale. While the business specializes in adoption searches, they also conduct investigations involving all aspects of information research.

Hamilton states that it was after their first experiences in the business that the family realized that this was “something we really loved.”

Shortly after opening their agency, Hamilton and Andrews became certified as Confidential Intermediaries and were trained how to handle reunions between adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents.

Hamilton’s goal in writing this book was to show people the ins and outs of adoption searches and reunions.

But “every case is different, and no two people are the same,” Hamilton says.

The first chapter discusses their background as well as a brief introduction on how they typically handle adoption searches.  The authors write:

“It is our opinion, an opinion that we’ve formed through the years of experience acting as intermediaries, that contact, regardless of who makes it, should be approached discreetly, respectfully and considerately.”

Hamilton explains how emotional these situations can be for people, and the need for it to be handled slowly and carefully so that both parties have plenty of time to feel safe.

The following chapters in the book are separated by the different stories about individual searches.

Hamilton and her co-authors will be showcasing their book this Friday at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe.  The event will begin at 7 p.m. for a book signing and excerpt reading.

Todd Denen, a past client of Research, Etc., Inc., will also be attending the event with his birth mother.  He and his mother are one of the stories that are written in the book.  Hamilton wanted Denen to attend the event so that readers would be able to attach a real face to the stories.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

For students, ASU dorm is caviar in an instant-noodle world

TEMPE — Some lucky Arizona State University students living in Tempe will get an experience unlike anyone before them.

Vista Del Sol, a new student housing development for freshmen, sophomores, and upperclassmen alike is set to open its doors for the fall semester of 2008. The new development, which is located at South Campus on Apache Boulevard, has been in construction for just over a year, and is set just across the street from campus in between Ocotillo Hall and Adelphi Commons.

It will set the new standard in student living with its own theater, tanning salon, and game rooms featuring flat-screen TVs, billiards, foosball and other amenities.

For students who plan on living on or near campus, the new student housing offer top-tier living arrangements just a few minutes walk from campus.

“I waited in line for over an hour just to get an application,” says Anthony Robinette, an ASU marketing major entering his fourth year. “It would be perfect for me because it’s so close to campus, and I don’t have a car.”

Robinette and his roommate hope to move into a two-bedroom apartment at Vista Del Sol this fall. The complex offers apartments ranging in size from one bedroom and one bath up to four-bedroom, four-bathroom units. The prices are roughly $50 more per room than those at the Gateway at Tempe, the current student housing in place on University Drive.

This makes Vista Del Sol pretty competitive. And many of the students like Robinette who applied for housing in the spring have been wait-listed while the complex checks the availability of apartments.

“I was going to try to move into the complex as an R.A., but they don’t have them”, says Dominique Gandy, an ASU senior who has worked in Residential Life since 2006.

While the new apartments are made specifically for students and they referred to as “student housing” on the website, it is not a dormitory in the typical sense. Many of the dorms on campus, such as Manzanita, Sonora, and Palo Verde residence halls, require that residents be first-time freshman and subject to live-in Residential Assistants.

Vista Del Sol, however, offers housing for students of all ages and grade levels, and does not have any live-in RAs.

“We will have Community Assistants living with the students,” says Nick Hulsey, a leasing assistant who works at Vista Del Sol. “They will be there to help the residents, rather than patrol and punish them.”

The complex will also have its own basketball court, volleyball court and outdoor amphitheater. Each unit will come complete with a full kitchen, a washer and dryer, and its own furnishings. Cable television, Internet access and full-size beds will be included.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.