Yi-Feng+Yeh+JRN492+Week8

[Week 7] Ruby Language Academy []

I chose this English Institute because I had been part-timing here when I was in high school. This is an English learning institute different from general English learning institute. I myself had been to several language learning institute before and know the clas pattern, basically "cramming" everything to students, caring none about the effectiveness and are usually lack of real interaction with students. Another point is that usually students who need to go to language learning center have no confidence in learning the language, and sometimes are "afraid" of English. However, Ruby Language Academy is very different. The institute has one kind of atmosphere that will gradually change the students mind in English. They are happy to be in Ruby Language Academy and have good relationship with their teachers. I was quite surprised. Until now, I have been good friends with the president of this language institute. When I see this project, I instantly thought of Ruby Language Academy, because they are just too busy with students and have no time doing social media which I think they should. After talking with Sonia, the president, I have their permission on doing this project, and then I found that their need of help in social media is more than I thought. They had a website which has not been updating since three years ago, and a Facebook page that has nothing (but they have a Facebook "Ruby" account as a "People")

I plan to ask Sonia to put more information on their official Website before I do any social media, or to be able to manage her Facebook account, and try to make the Ruby Language Academy Facebook Fanpage better with more flow. Finally, I would use "Plurk" a social media generally used in Taiwan, similar to Twitter in the States.

Yi-Feng Yeh

[Week 8] According to last week's analysis, I talked again to Sonia two days ago, who is responsible to RUBY LANGUAGE ACADEMY, the main goal will be gain internet attention.

1.Due to their students are mostly middle school and college students who are very active on internet, especially social networking, we would like to create structural platforms that enable students to discuss. 2. Because RUBY LANGUAGE ACADEMY's reputation is their friendly atmosphere, encouraging Taiwanese students to "like" English, we would like to let others know that via social media discussions. 3. They would want the efforts devoted mainly on social media.

Following is my plan: 1. I will wait for Sonia's reply whether they are willing to update their official website, because the information is too old and cannot really explain or attract visitors. 2. Restructuring their Facebook Fan Page, currently they are using "people" as their Facebook page. 3. Ask if there is someone who can help with updating news daily. 4. Create tools on the side of Facebook Fan page, analyze their needs (on categories) 5. Open a PLURK account. 6. WRETCH.CC a blog site famous in Taiwan. I would like to discuss what kind of contents they would like to share on their blog. Kind of distinguish blog from Facebook and PLURK.

Yi-Feng Yeh 0309


 * Hi Yi-Feng. This is a good project. I never heard of Plurk and Wretch, so I learned something! You need to make a mind map that outlines your plan for this academy. Perhaps you should ask them to have someone with a design background look at their website. It's pretty ugly! And I agree, someone needs to be adding content to the website, or perhaps blogging about recent achievements, upcoming events and the like. Also, please put all of your posts on one page. Onward! -Karl**


 * [Week 11]**

This week I would like to update the plan discussed with Sonia, the owner of Ruby Language Academy. On Wednesday, we had a meeting via Skype for two hours, although not all of two hours that we were talking about the plan, that we had talked about our lives and works. Ruby English Academy, mostly known for Ruby English, is still an institute that primarily aims to help students who have no confidence in English. After talked, I realize that there are only three administration employees in Ruby English: Sonia, Steven and an assistant who may switch yearly. Thus, with this plan, Sonia would like to keep it simple, not too many platforms that they need to maintain after I leave them to people from the institute. They had a small survey in Ruby English and found that students in Ruby English don’t really use PLURK now, instead, Facebook is a social medium that almost everybody owns. However, they would like to keep WRETCH blog site. After last time discussion (approximately three weeks before), Ruby English acquired that they need to have more contents in their Facebook and blog before they can attract more traffic. At the beginning, they have five posts a day. Then I talked to them, telling them that social media will be most attractive with two to three posts a day. Thus, in these three weeks, I have seen them posting at least twice a day on their Facebook. For both Facebook and Blog, they post things related to English learning, which I advice and I think it’s good. Facebook posts are shorter to attract immediate attention; blog posts are more likely to be a full article. Since there customers are mostly high school and college students, we have discussed that they should post articles related to entertainment industry.

This is a post they recently posted, about the movie “The Lady” and below it is a post related to a Taiwanese TV show.

There are still no obvious growth in new comers but we both think we need more time with our contents, and around June, the month they begin to have the most business, they will be able to gain more “friends.” We hope that we can have approximately 50% increase. Finally, I agree that the project will to continue till the end of summer vacation even I will be graduating in May.


 * Yi-Feng Yeh 0414**

=Big Project – Ruby Language Academy Week13_FINAL= April 26, 2012 To conclude the whole project with Ruby Language Academy, I would say there are some achievements, frustrations and many things that can be improved, still. First, I would like to talk about the frustrations. Frustrations always exist while facing clients for many reasons; either they are not willing to spend too much money (or not willing to spend any) or they think making changes can be dangerous or they are not use to new things. Most people are afraid of changes. I list few frustrations I encountered during this project: Ruby English has not yet completely changed their Facebook account into fan page. This point has be discussed for a while, and they hesitated. Since it’s always not easy for an institute to have students “like” their page (so that those students’ friends would know they went to English lectures) so Ruby English was afraid that they couldn’t totally switch these people to fan page. Though say so, they have opened a fan page, and are currently increasing contents, awaited to transferring “friends” to “fans.” They will announce the transfer in a week. Generally speaking, number of friends is hard to increase for Ruby English, since not that many students enroll every year. Since Ruby English is a long-term language learning institute, students pay for at least 1 year. Thus, unless both students’ will and their parents’ can afford, most students aren’t able to afford. This is the first reason Ruby English may be difficult to gain population. Second, not all students are comfortable to let his/her friends know that they are taking classes after school or after work. Since we cannot change the company situation, I suggest them to promote their Facebook fan page in their institute, make sure everybody knows they have a Facebook fan page and may have some interesting stuff on it. Actually, they had growth in friend number in this three months, from 120 to 167, growing by approximately 40%.
 * Fan Page
 * Friends

From March, Ruby English has begun to have regular posts everyday. At the beginning they had different kinds of posts, without any certain topic or style, just have everything posted in English. However, I found that no one is replying since their students may not pay any attention to any “English-written” post. Then we changed our approach to post that would give them keywords students may use in their daily life, or some interesting words. I share some articles to them and they kind of follow the “rules” having regular posts, not over-posting and so on. Now, though still not many people, but every post will have average 3 to 5 responses. Ruby English has a website that they have not update for 4 years, but unable to renew because they have no budget and time doing it. Though I told them they need a main landing page for their search, they think if their Facebook is strong enough, people will eventually go there. To this I couldn’t say that I disagree, but I told them they need more content on both Facebook and WRETCH Blog. Above are things that we (Ruby English and I) accomplished during the big project time. For future plan, we target to gain Facebook Fans during summer vacation this year, from June to August. Summer vacation is the peak of Ruby English because people want to learn more things during their vacation. Hopefully we will grow 50 more people, which is possible. In addition, we plan to have a English writing competition about “Ruby English, a place to learn English.” This is still under discussion, but we plan to combine blog and fan page on this event. Finally, as promised, I will follow up with their progress even after I graduated, and hopefully they will gain students during summer!
 * Posts
 * Website

Yoko 0426