Dr Aleksej Heinze

This year has offered some dramatic lessons in the power of social media. Twice, people have confounded predictions to vote for ideas which have targeted emotional responses.

Now we have President Donald Trump, and the UK Government scrambling to navigate a path out of the European Union.

As 2016 draws to a close, a shooting in Washington at a pizza restaurant – the so-called pizzagate incident – exposed just how dangerous and how effective those emotional appeals on social media can be.

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Dr. Peter Reeves

Salford Business School lecturer Dr Peter Reeves writes on the importance and recent evolution of political marketing, and how the strategies employed by key players could be even more influential in 2017.

I have been busy over the last year or so working on a very special political marketing project.

I have been Guest Editor for a Special Issue of the Journal of Customer Behaviour.

The topic of the special issue has been on political marketing: voters, political parties, candidates and elections.

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Dr Gordon Fletcher asks is the Social Media Bubble about to burst?

Social Media Bubble questions resurface whenever Social Media attracts bad press. For example, claims that paid ads receive low levels of engagement, or that social media is a waste of time for marketers are contributing to this thinking.

These statements appear to have practical support. Twitter recently announced redundancies and as a result its panicked users feared that the service was shutting down. One of Twitter’s headline purchases, the video service Vine, was also recently closed. A decision that, for some, served to reconfirm their fears.

Can this combination of actions be seen as signal that the social media bubble is bursting?

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Richard Dron discusses US Election predictions

Am I the only one that thinks there is chance that Donald Trump actually might win in the US Election prediction? I don’t have a crystal ball, but even with Beyonce and Jay Z’s help I am just not sure Hillary Clinton can win this week’s US presidential elections.

I have to tell you, I was thrown a few months ago with the result of the EU referendum. But, was I in denial? Were the signs not there? I went to give a talk to our MSc Digital Marketering students about analysing social media and I was asked for a prediction. I said:

At the moment it looks like leave is well ahead but there will be a swing … there is always a swing!

I had the data in front of me, visualised. The conclusions were actually obvious, and I still couldn’t see it. My lesson from #brexit is quite simple. Don’t let your mind play tricks on you and believe only what you want to be true.

Do you know why I think that we need to prepare ourselves for another shock voting result from our friends from across the pond – here are my thoughts based on Social Network Analysis (SNA) research…

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Simon Chadwick tells us about why Manchester is a Global Centre for Sport

Many of us here around the centre of Manchester love sport. We are all different whether we are active participants, enthusiastic spectators or avid readers, sport is often an integral part of our lives. When you engage in sport, try and think about what sport really means to you, your family and friends, the place you live, your country and, indeed, the world in general. It means a lot to me, for sure!

I think that sport is one means through which health and well-being of people is improved. It is also a way of building social cohesion by bringing people together. I believe sport can help foster both community and national identities, helping generate a feel good factor among those engaged with it. What do you think?

Have you thought about how sport also creates jobs, generates income, and builds export revenues? There are marketing and commercial benefits too. How do towns and cities position themselves as being homes of sport, while countries utilise sport as a way of influencing other countries?

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Dr Gordon Fletcher

The recent announcement that the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) will work with Amazon to test drone delivery services has been met with a series of largely negative comments. The Sun called the experiment controversial and the Telegraph implied that some testing had already occurred around the Amazon Prime Air service.

The majority of reports did successfully identify the two major limitations to the commercial use of drones. The CAA does not permit the commercial flying of drones in urban areas unless the ‘pilot’ has ‘permission to operate‘. If you want to use a drone for non-commercial work and are unsure whether you need a permission, please see a short guide for non-comercial drone flights.

This permission is by no means trivial and requires expensive training from approved providers as well as the preparation of a flight manual. Even with this permission to operate there is the second limitation that a pilot must keep visual contact with their drone at all times.

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Yousef Essali tells you why lack of experience should not limit your ambition

In the 2nd year of my BSc at Salford I applied for a lot of placements. Not even once did I get to the interview stage! What was I doing wrong? That was during my undergraduate degree where everyone was fairly similar in age and experience. But, when you think about  the postgrad level it gets even tougher. Suddenly you find yourself competing with peers with wider levels of experience and talent.

Why did I return straight away after graduation to start MSc International Business? One reason was the opportunity to do an internship or placement as part of my course. However, after the rejection fiasco in my Undergraduate degree I knew I needed a new approach! How could I change the playing field to my advantage, bypass the traditional recruitment process and get face-to-face with potential employers?

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Dr. Yvonne Moogan, Salford MBA Director

Why study for an MBA at Salford? Being able to assess a number of information sources and make judgement on the most appropriate course of action for your organisation is just one of the key skills that a Salford MBA graduate will develop.

To be relevant to the business world the Salford MBA programme itself is constantly reviewed and aligned to the needs of organisations. The latest Salford MBA course revisions ready for September 2016 intake make our Salford MBA programme up to date by focusing on these factors:

All Salford MBA modules are now specific to MBA students so that these are no longer shared with MSc students on other programmes. This change increases time when MBA students can learn from one another and gives each intake a distinct group identity and forges your contacts beyond the course timelines and helps for you establish long term business networks.

All modules are core except for the pathways in Digital Business, Sports Business and Executive Education Leadership. The assessment process comprises assessment portfolios without any exams. The teaching is made even more industry linked by all modules including company visits, monthly guests talks followed by individual personal development review sessions with MBA director and most interesting is the International trip which shows an insight into an international market.

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Ian McHale, Professor of Sports Analytics

Now that SAM’s predictions for Premier League matches are on the BBC website every week, I am getting asked three questions a lot:

1. What is SAM?
2. How does SAM work?
3. Is SAM any good?

In this blog I hope to give pretty simple answers to these questions, and point the interested reader in the right direction to get more information.

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Alex Fenton, Co-Producer of Creative Entrepreneur explains why you should attend our industry collaboration event

Have you heard of Creative Entrepreneur 2016? It is Salford Business School’s industry collaboration event! Here at Salford Business School, industry collaboration is really important. We really want to make sure our teaching is real-world relevant and that our graduates are as employable as possible.

How do we do this? How do we create a bridge between theory and practice? Creative Entrepreneur is one of the ways! This will be our third year of holding the event at MediaCityUK and we hope, once again, to grow. I am always amazed by the generosity and wealth of talent of the range of industry experts, students, alumni and organisations involved each year. 2016 promises to be bigger and better than ever!

At the event you will meet young entrepreneurial students as well as staff and businesses from nearby and further afield. Join us at MediaCityUK on Wednesday 23 November from 9.00am to 5.00pm. The programme and registration for the 2016 event is now open. But, before you signup here is a taste of some reasons you should come to Creative Entrepreneur 2016.

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