Growing Your Social Capital

Brittany Traynor

ENT3003 Growing Your Social Capital

Due: 11/03/17

As a reminder, my product is an application that allows students to have mobile access to their student ID’s on college campuses.

A.

1. Representative from Traveler’s Insurance Company. Her name is Karen, and I met her while I was interning for a small insurance agency over this past summer. Her job was to advertise for and encourage people to use Traveler’s new mobile application. She and I collaborated on a project to create E-cards to send via email to a certain market of Traveler’s clients in order to make them aware about the new mobile application.

2. Domain Expert: I would consider Karen to be a technical expert who knows a lot about the type of product that I would like to produce. She knew a lot about how to advertise for a mobile application because she was spending her time this summer marketing a mobile application that created convenience for her specific company. The purpose of her company’s mobile application was very similar to that of mine as both applications create convenience for users.

3. As I said before, I met Karen over the summer. Through working with her, I still had her contact information (email address) and so I reached out and asked her to arrange a phone call for me to ask her a few questions.

4. She told me a little bit about what she knew about the creation of the app, and then she was able to tell me a lot about the process of marketing the product. This is important because if I were to create my product, I would have to market it to students first, to get information on whether or not this product is something that students would use and therefore make it worth purchasing for the Universities. Then, I would have to market it to the Universities themselves. Karen provided me with some helpful information about how to market this type of product, and she did not really expect anything in return because this summer I helped her advertise her company’s application.

5. Including this person in my network will help me better understand how to market my product. Maybe doing the E-card idea would be a good start for me because I could probably get a list of student’s emails at one University, such as UF, and try to get feedback on their opinion on my potential product via email. Or at least use this idea to make the students aware of my product. For example, if my product were to be created, I could get a list of all of the students who enroll to UF and send them a E-card with information about my product before they even come to Preview. This would spread awareness quickly.

B.

1. Bank of America marketing expert. She has been working for Bank of America for about 11 years and has seen the company market their mobile applications for banking purposes and functions.

2. Market Expert: Although she has a broader market than me, she is marketing a very similar product as I am.

3. My friend’s mom works for a branch of Bank of America in my hometown. I reached out to her and asked her if she could put me into contact with an individual who was involved with marketing the mobile applications.

4. The exchange was a brief phone call where she told me what she knew about marketing the product. She did me the favor of providing me with insight about her position and research, and in return I am a user of Bank of America and use their mobile application for my banking needs. That, combined with the fact that I already knew someone who worked for Bank of America, is why I chose them for my assignment as opposed to a different bank who I do not use for my personal banking needs.

5. Having this person in my network allows me to have another resource to utilize who has used and marketed a similar type of product to what I am trying to create.

C.

1. Graphic designer for apple.

2. Industry Supplier: As a graphic designer for a company that’s products all use mobile applications, this individual would be very knowledgeable about supplying apps that sell to companies that have products that use mobile applications.

3. I have a friend who goes to UF and currently interns for Apple, Inc. I asked him to provide me with contact information to anyone who could put me into contact with a graphic designer within the company. I then emailed the individual recommended.

4. The graphic designer has not responded to my email yet. I hope to ask questions and gain insight about the process of actually designing a mobile app. I use Apple products, such as my IPhone 6 and my MacBook Pro. This provides me the opportunity to do something in return for this individual, such as download a certain application.

5. Including this person in my network will help me to expand my variety of types of people in my network, as I do not personally know anyone who is a graphic designer. It will hopefully provide me with enough information to understand a little bit about the behind-the-scene process of creating a mobile application, which is ultimately my product idea.

This exercise provided me with the opportunity to really think about the people who I want or need in my network, and then actually seek out those people and have some sort of interaction with them. This experience was very different from any other networking experience I have personally had in the past. This is because the experiences I have had in the past have been with people that I have come across by coincidence, rather than people who I have specifically targeted. I guess the most similar experience I can even compare this to would be Career Showcase (here at UF), because I have researched what companies would be present, and then went and found the recruiter or representative for that company and talked to them. However, this experience still did feel very different in nature from that. I think that this experience will change my outlook for future networking events because I might be more motivated or comfortable reaching out to people who I might not necessarily come across coincidently, but rather people who I have to make an effort to interact with.