Its European inventors wanted a simple messaging system tha

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I-Style Recruiting Texting and Blogging
Shankar Goudar Chief Information Officer Carter
BloodCare
Tuesday, May5, 2009
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Texting The Technology Evolution
What is Texting? Technical term for Texting is
SMS Short Message Service
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Texting The Technology Evolution

• SMS History
• SMS was created in the late 1980s to work with a
  digital GSM (global system for mobile
  communications).

• Its European inventors wanted a simple messaging
  system that worked when users' mobile phones were
  turned off or out of range.

• The first SMS message in the UK was sent in 1992.
  It took a little longer for SMS to make its way
  to the United States.

• Texting is still more popular in Europe, but
  stateside use is on the rise.

• A July 2005 study found that 37 of U.S. mobile
  phone owners had sent or received at least one
  text message in one month.

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How Does SMS Work?
Cell phones send and receive information
constantly. They talk to a cell phone tower over
a pathway called a control channel.
The control channel provides the pathway for SMS
messages. A message flows through the SMSC, then
to the tower, and the tower sends the message to
the recipients phone as a packet of data.
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Message Limitations

• Why 160 Characters?
• SMS was designed to deliver short bursts of data.
  To avoid overloading the system, the inventors
  set a 160-character maximum message size.

• The 160-character limit is not absolute. Length
  limitations may vary depending on your network,
  phone model and wireless carrier.

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SMS Abuses

• SMS Attacks
• A large number of SMS messages sent to phones in
  a small area could overwhelm the control channels
  making it impossible for the cell phone system to
  set up calls.
• Cell phone providers know about the possibility
  of such threats and can design systems to detect
  and limit abnormal traffic.

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Advantages of SMS

• Privacy SMS is more discreet than a phone
  conversation, great when you don't want to be
  overheard.
• Texting can take less time than phone call or
  e-mail.
• SMS is convenient for deaf and hearing-impaired
  people.
• SMS can broadcast a message to a large number of
  people and can be used to contact groups of
  employees or customers. Online services
  distribute news information.
• People who use texting seem to prefer it. People
  who regularly use text messaging send almost
  twice as many SMS messages and make less than
  half as many voice calls as people who only use
  the phone for voice phone calls.
• Texting allows review of a message before it is
  sent.
• SMS doesn't overload the network as much as phone
  calls.

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SMS Lifestyles

• Text messaging subscription services are used for
  medication reminders, weather alerts, news
  headlines, or even novels in a series of
  160-character messages.
• Internet search engines such as Yahoo! and Google
  have short messaging services users get driving
  directions, movie showtimes or local business
  listings by texting a query to the search
  engine's phone number.
• Social networking services use SMS to alert
  people who live in big cities when their BFFs are
  nearby.
• The possibilities for integrating SMS into our
  business model seem endless. Blood centers can
  use text messaging to remind donors of a donation
  appointment, to thank donors, send birthday
  greetings, or alert them of an emergency need.

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Disadvantages of SMS

• Pricing Most wireless plans charge for a
  certain number of text messages a month. If you
  exceed your message allowance, you could be
  charged for additional messages.

• Immediacy Speedy message delivery is not
  guaranteed. During periods of high traffic it may
  take several minutes for a message to be
  delivered.

• Text Only It's strictly for sending text
  messages. SMS does not support sending pictures,
  video or music files.

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SMS in the News

• SMS is Impersonal
• Questions of etiquette/propriety/legality/ethics
  
• What kind of information is OK to send in a text
  instead of delivering in person?

• Legal actions have been filed by people who were
  fired or notified of divorce proceedings via SMS.

• Broadcast text messages have been used to rally
  political activists in Beijing and to mobilize
  young people for riots in Belfast.

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Collateral Benefits

• Some teachers believe that texting impacts
  students' grammar and attention to detail.
  Students have to take the time to proofread their
  work

Ah kin spel gud
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SMS Providers

• Clubtexting.com
• infoUSA.com
• redoxygen.com
• redrabbitsms.com
• sendgroupsms.com
• EzTexting.com
• AlarmPoint.compremiereglobal.com
• Messagebuzz.com . . .

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SMS Options and Cost

• Cost of service is an important factor to
  consider when choosing an SMS gateway provider.
  
• Credit-basedYou purchase a number of credits
  from the SMS gateway provider. Sending one SMS
  message costs one or more credits. The country
  of destination can affect the cost.

• SMS-basedYou purchase a number of SMS messages.
  The cost for sending one SMS message is the same
  for all destinations. If you purchase ten SMS
  messages, you can send at most ten messages.

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Comparing Selecting Providers

• For most gateway providers, the cost for sending
  one SMS message decreases with your purchasing
  amount. Example of a pricing structure comparison
  

• If you plan to purchase 1 to 10,000 SMS messages
  at a time, SMS gateway provider C has lower cost
  per SMS message
• If you plan to purchase more than or equal to
  20,001 SMS messages at a time, provider B
  provides the best cost option.

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SMS Cost Comparison

• Cost to transfer 2560 songs
• From my ISP 1
• Via SMS messaging 15,339,212.80

It's no wonder that SMS texting alone is a 100
Billion dollar a year industry!
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Texting Lingo

• With more than 82 million people texting
  regularly, it's no wonder you've seen this
  cryptic looking code!
• Commonly used wherever people get online --
  including IMing, SMSing, cell phones,
  Blackberries, PDAs, Web sites, games, newsgroup
  postings, in chat rooms, on blogs

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Measure of Texting Success _at_CBC
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Remarkable Popularity Among Young People
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Donors Signed for Text Reminder
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Average Show Rate Donors Who Prefer Texting
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Increased Text Reminders

• Text reminders increased dramatically immediately
  after the option was introduced to high school
  students.

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Texting by Age Group
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Pilot the system with employees. Dont forget
theres a limit to the amount of text you can put
in a message. A 160 character limit means that
you might get cut o
KISS Keep it simple short. Dont let your
message get truncated before youve made your
point.
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Blogging for Donors
Blog is short for weblog. A blog site is a
special website where internet users enter
comments. It is a chronological listing (log) of
posts from all users who enter comments on the
site. It is the unedited voice of each person who
enters comments. It is a web journal with entries
from multiple sources. Blogs (usually) focus on
an particular area of interest.
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Blog Pages

• Most weblog posts are short, a paragraph or two.
  Some weblog tools provide for longer articles or
  stories, often by including a place for a summary
  in the form for a weblog post.
• The home page of the weblog displays the current
  items (configured by an editor/administrator).
• Some weblogs show the last 15 posts or the last 7
  days.
• Eventually each blog post will scroll off the
  home page, but it is permanently stored on an
  archive page.
• When people point to a specific post, they link
  to the archived version, the permanent one, using
  a permalink.

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Blogging is Interactive

• Blogging requires a commitment of time and
  resources. With text or e-mail, you can send a
  message and be done with it.
• Blogging is interactive and requires monitoring.
  While blogs are good at building community - they
  generally feature one person (or a small group of
  people) as the central voices in a conversation.
• Some bloggers keep readers at arms length (they
  might switch off comments and rarely respond to
  emails) but for a blog to work in recruiting,
  its probably an advantage to actually engage the
  reader(s) .

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Selecting a Blog Platform

• Several platforms are available. Make sure you
  know what you want to include in the blog before
  committing to a particular platform.
• Advertisements?
• Calendars and schedules?
• Links?
• Goals
• Recruiting donors?
• Keeping donors informed about the organization?
• Costs
• Site maintenance