Mendon Ponds, the Best Park in Rochester, New York (Google it; it is awesome!)

Mendon Ponds is a beautiful park with a pond in Mendon, New York. The pond is near to my house so I’ve had many many events there. I’ve gone there with friends and family and gone hiking in the woods and swimming in the pond during the summertime. In the winter my friends, family, and I go there and go sledding. I’ve been there for birthday events too. They have cabins and you can rent one out for the day and you can have a celebration there. Dad works for a college and at the end of the year him and his coworkers have a celebration in the cabins and everyone brings food and it’s just a wonderful time. If you are ever in Rochester, New York, make sure to visit Mendon Ponds.

Check out my video about Mendon Ponds:

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Customers Might Find Your Product or Service on Social Networking Sites

In this blog post I would like to write about social networking because customers are going and buying online or learning about products and services online. A lot of them are more and more each year because every year people become more savvy with computers. What a lot of companies have currently are Facebook and Twitter accounts and people actually go to both Facebook and Twitter—people like me and look at what people have to say about the products and also the comments that are below.

People also definitely look at what people have to say about a company for example people will tweet about Phillip’s European, which is a restaurant in Rochester, New York and Phillip’s European will retweet it. When I go to Phillip’s European’s Twitter account, I’ll be able to search for what people have to say. Same thing with Jet Blue, if somebody tweets about Jet Blue somebody at Jet Blue might retweet it and you can go and take a look at Jet Blue’s Twitter account and you can see all the things that people have to say about Jet Blue’s service and people’s flying experiences.

It’s important to have a website and it’s important for people to be able to buy from your company’s website, but it’s also very important to have the social networking presence and a positive presence at that because a lot of people will go on social media and create accounts and sometimes there will be negative comments and things like that so you have to make sure that your product or service is upstanding. Here are the must haves: you have the company website, you have the social networking presence, and then you have a positive online presence. Those are some key things that you need to have as a business owner and that’s always been the case.

Nowadays social networking is sometimes at the forefront of the whole service or product advertisement campaign because sometimes a person might be swayed into buying a product or service because they found the product or service on a social networking site like Facebook or Twitter. In that case, it’s the social networking sites at the forefront so social networking is the first thing that they see so for example for me there have been products that are shared by people and I’ve bought the product. There has been music shared by people and I’ve gone to iTunes and bought the track. It’s through social networking sometimes that I learn about new things that come along.

The way I see this a lot actually is when somebody shares a Youtube video about a product on Facebook or shares a Youtube video of the music on Facebook. That’s how I’ll actually see many new upcoming music and then it leads me to purchasing via iTunes. Having that social networking presence in that case is very very important.

There’s also hotels that I learn about that are through Facebook because it’s shared by somebody and also because let’s say Conde Nast Traveler or CNN has posted about it. I’ve also learned about great restaurants to go to because Conde Nast Traveler or CNN has created a top ten best restaurants in New York City for example and then their article is posted on Facebook. Then I’ll be scrolling through Facebook and click on the article and read that these are the ten best restaurants in New York City. That’s how I see some of these products and services. Recently I’ve been thinking about how important it is to have a Public Relations professional within a company that takes care of not just making sure that you have the great posts, the great videos on Youtube, but also that magazines and the news are writing about your product or service so it becomes viral on social media and your product or service is the number one thing on people’s minds.

Buyers Are Going Online to Buy

I wanted to do a blog post about customer buyer experience now, which is mostly online. Basically when I want to buy a new computer, I would now usually go ahead and do some research online instead of going to a brick and mortar store. I would Google types of computers there are, compare prices and buy it that way. In the past, I would have gone to a store first. I would gone probably straight to the Apple Store and if I couldn’t afford an Apple I would go to a store that sells PCs like Best Buy or something where they would have computers. Then I would go ahead and ask the sales person to go ahead and show me all the different computers, what I need for it, and ask other questions pertaining to owning a computer.

Now with me being more internet savvy, I definitely would just go to Google first and search for the different computers now available, the different brands, and compare and contrast. Then also, as far as software goes also I would Google Adobe Photoshop, what they have there and not even have to go to the store at all and just buy all of my computer and software needed for the computer online and do the transaction that way.

Same thing with clothes, in the past I would have gone to the store and shopped at the mall, mostly I relied on the saleswoman or man to help me find my perfect outfit. Now I would probably go on the site for brands that I love like Express or Limited and shop that way, order my size, make sure it’s the right size, and have it delivered to my house.

There’s a few changes in my buying processes that I’ve noticed and another one of them is books. I would normally go to Barnes and Noble and buy books that way and you know talk to the saleswoman in helping me find the book, now I might go to Amazon and order it instead because it’s cheaper and then have it delivered to my house. I would learn about the book by just reading about the book online, read comments online, there’s Good Reads and there’s comments also on Amazon pertaining to the book I would like to buy.

Because everyone is going to online stores now instead of going to a brick and mortar store, one can see how important it is to have an online presence. The online presence may come in a form of a site where the customers can learn about the products and also shop there. It is also important to have a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account for the company because that will help attract the customers and they can also read comments about the products and what people have to say about the company in general.