Week 9, Part A Blog Post

My business for this class is called Codex Alexandria, and it supposed to be a company that specializes in selling educational software to homeschooled, private school, and private schools students from grades K-12. My Twitter account for Codex Alexandria is located at   https://twitter.com/AlexandriaCodex  . I have found four other businesses that are somewhat similar to Codex Alexandria, and I believe that I can learn something from each one of these companies’ Twitter accounts.

1. Khan Academy- https://twitter.com/khanacademy

Khan Academy is a well-known online educational company that specializes in offering free course material to K-12 students and college students. Khan Academy hosts free courses in subjects as diverse as mathematics, engineering, science, computing, and many more subjects.  Khan Academy’s Twitter cover image contains a cartoon of various animals craving pumpkins for Halloween. This has probably been done to make their profile appeal more to children and teenagers in the K-12 grade range, many of whom enjoy Halloween and trick-or-treating. Even though Khan Academy does forward or copy of its Facebook posts unto its Twitter account (especially ones that are related to marketing Khan Academy products, the company still engages with Twitter users somewhat by retweeting their endorsements of Khan Academy and posting customers’ endorsements on Khan Academy’s Twitter page. One of the key things that Khan Academy does (that I appreciate) is the fact that they frequently use their Twitter account to encourage students with their educational ambitions. I think that Code Alexandria’s Twitter page could generate more interests and followers if I were to write posts like this. However, I think that they could improve their Twitter page by interacting with more of their individual customers by asking them why they like Khan Academy so much.

2.Coursera- https://twitter.com/coursera

Coursera is an online educational company that a variety of enrollable courses for a fee. Coursera claims that they provide their enrolled students with access to the best educational sources in the world. Coursera’s Twitter cover photo features a headshot of a man staring intently at his tablet device and cell phone as he accesses Coursera. This is a good, personalized photo for showing that Coursera can be accessed on all kinds of digital devices. Coursera’s Twitter account is mostly dedicated to retweeting favorable articles about their company and advertising upcoming webinars and courses. In contrast to Twitter, Coursera actually responds to individual users on Facebook to answer their personal questions about the company.  I like the fact that Coursera’s Twitter account often advertises how their products have been endorsed by various companies in the business world, which gives them a greater air of legitimacy. Their Twitter account also features posts about speaking engagements by their current CEO, Jeff Magioncalda. I think that my Twitter account would benefit from featuring a few pieces of me (as the CEO) talking about Codex Alexandria.

3.edX- https://twitter.com/edXOnline

EdX, an online educational company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, offers online college classes from world-class universities such as MIT and Harvard University. EdX’s Twitter cover photo features distant snowy mountains below an infinite, deep blue sky. This cover photo is perhaps symbolic of the infinite amount of new information that users may have access to if they enroll in edX online courses. In comparison to its Facebook account, some of edX’s Twitter posts are the same, but others are uniquely different, even though the different Twitter posts also focus on presenting brief facts and statistics and the proceeding to advertise for edX courses that offer students the opportunity to study such knowledge in greater depth. Although edX does retweet positive comments about their company that individual people on Twitter give, edX does respond or directly interact with people on Twitter. I think this company could ultimately improve its Twitter account by interacting with more individual customers on Twitter and by writing individual responses to them. However, I do admire edX’s frequent use of colorful photos on their Twitter account, which undoubtedly attracts more users’ attention. Codex Alexandria would do well to emulate this aspect of edX’s Twitter account.

4.MIT OpenCourseWare- https://twitter.com/MITOCW

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers free educational videos, exams, and lecture notes to any online users who want to take advantage of these resources. MIT OpenCourseWare’s cover photo features an intricate golden key placed on top of black computer keys, which is perhaps symbolic of the company’s mission to have computer users unlock access to more knowledge that was previously out of their reach. Most of MIT OpenCourseWare’s Twitter posts are mostly different from its Facebook posts, but some of the same posts appear on both the company’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. One of the greatest characteristics of MIT OpenCourseWare’s Twitter page is that the images it features on its page are a mixture of photographs of students and instructors participating in their open courses, interesting graphics, and GIFs. I think that my Codex Alexandria Twitter page would look more dynamic and attract more attention if it featured a more varied mixtures of images on my future posts. Overall, I think that MIT OpenCourseWare has excellent, engaging Twitter page, but the company could perhaps spend more time responding directly back to comments from individual users. This would strengthen the relationship between customers, potential customers, and the company.