A Look into Another Medium

When most people think of social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. easily come to mind. It’s not at all difficult to see the “social” activity, communication, and impact throughout these sites. 

However, I find that any medium that engages or interacts with others can be considered “social”. So, what about a website? I definitely think a website, especially for businesses, plays a huge role in the way of social media. Without a professional, polished site, a business won’t be taken as seriously by current customers or potential clients.

We’ve decided that Marvin Medisoft’s website needs to be updated and redesigned—and even modernized—to draw in more people. The overall design needs improvement, and we would also like to include an RSS feed from Facebook, Twitter, and/or LinkedIn, a Testimonials page, and an admin panel to manage and edit the site in the future.

However, we opted to hire a web designer rather than redesign the website ourselves. Now all we have to do is choose someone…

That’s certainly a project for tomorrow. :)

Until then,

Mia Lu

Eating the Elephant One Bite at a Time

Coined by Creighton Abrams, a U.S. Army general in the Vietnam War, “eating the elephant one bite at a time” is an expression for tackling any kind of large, difficult, or overwhelming project. In business, the phrase means breaking up a large task into smaller ones.

I discovered that this expression was very applicable to today’s events, as I found myself looking down at my extensive notes from this morning’s meeting.

Ms. Vaidya, Leah, and I met with Kevin Berk, who was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule. Mr. Berk is currently the manager of AZ on the Rocks, social media manager of Pita Jungle, and founder of Service Guru, a new website which collects customer reviews. We talked for two hours about marketing strategy, social media presence, business models, and customer service.

I have broken down a few ideas we discussed about how Marvin Medisoft can potentially improve its business:

A.   Continue to use content as a prime pitch in social media marketing, as opposed to direct advertising.

B.   Expand the actual TPN 2000 software by developing it into a web-based program.

C.   Find a way to get TPN 2000 hospital-approved, so Marvin Medisoft can then reach out directly to advocates like individual nurse practitioners or physicians (there are definitely regulations here).

D.   Ask customers (directly) for testimonials and/or stories of their experiences with TPN 2000 and have them leave professional rates/reviews.

Apart from giving advice on Marvin Medisoft’s marketing goals, Mr. Berk stressed the importance of customer service in all industries of business (and in life!). Whether in the restaurant business or a medical profession, service is not only a strategy, but also a necessity to live up to.

So, all in all, a business lecture and a life lesson all wrapped up in a very helpful and successful meeting! A huge thank you to Mr. Berk for meeting with us!

Hopefully, I don’t bite off more than I can chew…of the elephant, I mean. :)
Mia Lu

The Return of Madam Secretary

Wow, what a busy day!

Today I listened in on two conference calls: one was a discussion of TPN software issues, and the other was a practitioner tutorial. I was responsible for taking meeting notes, just like an actual company secretary! :)

During the first call, a group of doctors, physician informatics, TPN providers, and IT technicians discussed specific problems with a new version of the TPN 2000 program and its accompanying network. It was a very tech-y experience, and it took some time to sort everything out and get everyone on the same page. But eventually, with everyone’s advice, commentary, and suggestions, the technical difficulties were significantly improved—yay!

Then, after a lunch break, Ms. Vaidya invited me to listen to a tutorial/Q&A-based call with nurse practitioners working with TPN 2000. Unlike the first call, this involved discussion about the biochemistry behind total parenteral nutrition and the write-up/administration process. I was glad that I could understand a bit of the conversation, including calcium-phosphorous and sodium-potassium mole ratios, milliequivalents (mEq) conversions, and positive-to-negative ion matching (throwback to AP Chemistry!). I also got a taste of the TPN 2000 software interface, which is very complex and accounts for many elements and amounts used to produce the TPNs. I’m so grateful that I was introduced to the science behind this research in order to further understand the benefits of TPN and its software.

After all that, I can definitely appreciate the multiple layered factors that go into running and maintaining this software business.

I had a great second week of interning and can’t wait for next week!

Until next time,

Mia Lu

Tweet, Retweet, Repeat

Have you ever played the card game Spoons? The zealous nature of the game calls for a whirlwind of card passing—or really just slapping them down in front of your neighbor. It takes a trained eye to glimpse the cards in your growing pile and continue to pass the correct ones, while simultaneously watching the spoons in the center. You pass as swiftly as possible but still end up with too many cards to handle.

I found Twitter to be quite similar to Spoons. 

Today I combed through live feeds and directed my hashtag search to health, pediatrics, nutrition, neonatal health, and so on. With every live feed (this morning I did some research on #ZikaVirus), there seems to be an infinite number of posts per hashtag. Tweet, tweet, tweet. I did not think it would be difficult to read them: most are very short and concise—plus, I can just ignore the ones in German and Spanish. However, no matter how fast I read through tweets, there are always new results…2, 8, 17, 24… Even when I just glimpse at the posts, more and more appear at the top. 

So, tweeting from Marvin Medisoft’s page was interesting because my tweets were constantly buried under newer results. Newsworthy topics like raising awareness about zika encouraged many to join the live feed, and I learned that more active users tweeted incredibly often.

Additionally, I never really understood the power of Retweets. I can enhance information sharing without having to come up with an engaging title/tweet since someone else’s was already included. This makes it much easier to enhance awareness of a certain topic I want to share. 

This all seems pretty arbitrary and obvious for you current Twitter users (any “Duh” moments, anyone?), but as a newbie, I found it to be quite cool. 

More to come this week. 

Keep tweeting, and play some spoons while you’re at it.
Mia Lu

Navigating the Social Scene

I’ll admit it, I’m not familiar with the world of social media in the slightest. My friends and classmates, who try to convince me to join the scene, have not yet succeeded. I even disabled my Google Plus account because I rarely used it (maybe once a year, at the most).

However, for this project, I have been given access to Marvin Medisoft’s Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts to perform research and analysis. The first thing I noticed was that social media are extremely busy, in layout and in content. This did not surprise me, but I was still a bit overwhelmed by the material. I also realized how dedicated users are in terms of consistency and content. It must take great effort (especially for small businesses) to remain noticed by others in a scene where so much is going on. Kudos to everyone who keeps up with it!

Becoming familiar with this social media scene definitely pertains to my upcoming tasks as an intern. I plan to outline strategies for three of Marvin Medisoft’s existing media (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter) with a goal to inform and educate, as opposed to direct advertising. By isolating them and determining which content to post on each, I will be able to categorize the information and aim this towards target audiences.

With that in mind, I myself am interested to continue research on social media and the power they can have for small businesses.

Stay social!

Mia Lu

An Intern's First Impressions

First day of interning with Marvin Medisoft!

It felt strange to pass BASIS Scottsdale and not walk through its doors, but I soon found myself at my first internship and the beginning of the last stretch.

Today, I met with Ms. Vaidya and we discussed research goals and plans for the duration of the project. 

We agreed that the first objective is to determine which social media would be best to use to market TPN 2000 and draw more viewers to Marvin Medisoft. We took a look at the business’s LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter pages to note current activity and followers. For the purposes of this research project, I will be observing and monitoring these specific social media and will try to avoid much additional media, which may make everything more complicated.

Another aspect of this project is the actual content on the social media pages, which will most likely incorporate product information as well as general details about neonatal nutrition. Hopefully, this awareness will increase traffic to Marvin Medisoft’s social media as well as its website, which may even be updated.

As of now, it seems like an overwhelming task for a ten-week period, but I’m hoping my organizational skills will come in handy for this project.

More to come soon,

Mia Lu