So, You Want To Work In An Ad Agency?

Reblogged from The Atlanta Egotist


I sometimes get notes and phone calls from random college students and recently graduated job seekers that heard from someone that I work at an agency they admire. I was on a roll and just wrote this latest kid a novella, since I can't sleep tonight anyway. Thought it might make for a blog post if you're having trouble sleeping too.

WARNING: If this doesn't make you go to sleep then you may need to go into advertising.

On 06/01/11 3:31 PM, XXXXX XXXXXX wrote:
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Eric,

Thank you for getting back to me so soon. A lot of my questions revolve around two main points. I am new to the whole idea of working at an agency. Until recently it hadn't even hit me as an option. But now that I have been more involved in my advertising and design classes I realized that is where my strengths lie. So I guess my main questions for you are what are the different opportunities/positions available at an agency, and what can I do to prepare for an internship at an agency?

I would also love to hear your story and experience. Xxxx Xxxxxxx told a bit of your background with working for Volkswagen, but it would be great to know more. I'd also love to hear from you what agency life is like. Pros? Cons? Favorite aspects? I am just an ad agency sponge that wants to soak it all in.

Thanks so much for taking your time to help me out with this. I appreciate it.
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MY REPLY, POOR KID:

Oh dear. So much to learn. It's good you want to learn. But you'll have to become your own student and not rely just on school and formal programs. Be a geek if you enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it, what do you enjoy? Do that. Here's a giant checklist to start so you're never bored.

1. Subscribe to the daily AdAge and AdWeek Emails. Read the articles. Other options are BrandWeek, and a quick updating, kinda gossipy ad trade blog agencyspy.com. Be in the know. Know way more about agencies all over the country (and world) than your young gun peers. If you are the most ad industry savvy of your peers at BYU-I, that doesn't mean much, but it's where you should be anyway. It's a good start.

2. Pick up books by ad veterans, like Paul Arden (i.e. "Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite," and "It's Not how Good you Are, It's How Good You Want To Be." They are super cheap and worth owning and reading about once a year.) Watch movies like "Art & Copy." Read books about culture that interest you. Know what's going on, even if you don't have time to know everything deeply, just know it's there.

3. Get digital. Follow websites like thefwa.com, be a geek on gizmodo.com and understand what flash is, HTML 5 is, different types of web banners, email marketing, CRM schemes, social media trends of the hour, social media marketing campaigns of the hour. How does an agency go about building an entire website to serve a client's goals? Why do the sites do what they do and how do people end up there? Where do they go from there? What's a KPI when it comes to online marketing? This will evolve about as quickly as you learn it, so it's a fun hobby to stay on top of.

4. Become a fan and student of advertising that's not advertising at all. Powerful messaging comes from a powerful product truth. How can the company bring that product truth to life in the consumer's life in a way that changes culture, not just takes advantage of current, already existing trends?

5. Get an internship at a big agency for the exposure. Doesn't have to be giant with offices all over the country/world, but should have national accounts and do really smart, strategic, creative work. If you start there (EVEN FOR FREE), you'll have many more options in your future. You can always settle down for a boring job that isn't as chaotic and demanding later. But you may not always be able to jump into the creative bandwagon. Be willing to move and live in Miami, Minneapolis, LA, NYC, Portland, San Francisco, Austin, Boulder, Richmond and other cities I'm surely leaving out. If you're hesitant to drop your life in one location and go for the gold at a crazy low paying job at a worldly agency in a place you've never been, then you'll be limited to what your options are in the future. If you're flexible and adventurous in college and the first 5-8 years after (and work like a mad man and never stop learning), it'll open up more doors and put you near the top of recruiters lists later. Be willing to work your butt off - nights, weekends, be the guy that will go pick up food at midnight and build binders or proofread copy when what you'd rather be doing is hanging out with your family and friends. It'll get better, promise. Kinda.

6. Be humble and smart. Although you may be intimidated by all the progressive hipsters that seem to fit in so well in this industry, you can be yourself. Be natural and real. But make sure that "yourself" is super smart and nice to have around. Of course, if you're a creative urban type, that's an advantage and will help you fit in on top of your smart humility. But first and foremost surround yourself with people smarter than you and soak in everything you can.

7. The resume and interviews: What makes you stand out? (Not just 'what makes you qualified,' although that's obviously important.) Find it early and make it something worth having, hiring and paying for. Make sure it's clear on your resume and the cliche' stuff isn't getting in the way of seeing why you would be the kind of person that a CEO would want representing him and his company / agency. If you think that person wears pleats and looks like he just got his hair cut with the #3 clippers on the sides and back, then you may be right. But you're probably not interviewing at my agency.

(Exhale)

Good thing I'm a bit of a loner insomniac this week, working out of town. I'm pretty sure I just wrote the skeleton of a presentation I could give at the next BYU-I Communications Day. Know who puts the guest speakers together? Ha.

As far what job you want in the agency, that's something only you'll know. If you don't know what departments are in a typical larger agency and how they tick and roll along, learn that. Here's a really basic agency structure 1.0 resources i just found with one Google search:
http://drypen.in/advertising/agency-structure-of-advertising-agency.html

Scour agency websites about the jobs they have open to see what on earth they are even called at various agencies. i.e. Some places call Account Management "Content Management." Account Planners (or just "planners") can be "Cognitive Anthropologists." Not kidding. But most agencies share the same or similar names for positions.

AGENCY JOBS:

Planners find the cultural and business insights that shape a creative brief and the strategy we sell to clients and build work from. In a good agency, they are the unsung heroes of the best work.

Creatives take that strategy and come up with how to apply it to the media. They are copywriters and art directors, creative directors. There are also studio workers and designers, creative technologists and other specialties, but mostly writers and artists that are supremely creative and hard working.

Traffic Managers (or Project Managers) help guide creative and account Managers toward a deadline. They keep all projects on track, organized and on schedule internally.

Account Management (or Account Services or Content Management) are the liaison between the clients and the agency. They are the central hub of organized, client friendly ad experts that work with every department inside the agency as well as vendors and partners outside the agency, not to mention clients, of course, to guide a campaign or project from before its inception (when the client comes to the agency with a task, i.e. a new product launch, or rebranding) all the way through the brief and concepting and back and forth with clients, and media planning and into production to create the TV or Radio or print or OOH (out-of-home) or online work or all of the above, to the details of pushing that work out into the world through whatever means or partner companies you work with to get it into the real (or digital) world, to the post-launch analytics and post-mordems and continual beta tweaking and optimizing (for digital work, it's rarely "finished," even after launch)....then it all starts over and projects overlap so you're always juggling and managing something. This is what I do. Account people need to be experts of their clients' industry within weeks, whether that's cars or phones or pizzas or credit cards or online services, and they need to be friends and champions of everyone within the agency as well. A good account person remembers that he works for his agency, not his client. That is sometimes easy to forget.

Production: producers are the cool cats that actually create the TV spot or digital marvel the creatives thought up but have no idea how to actually create. They have the resources and knowledge to guide the approved ideas into actual work that consumers end up seeing and interacting with. There are broadcast producers, interactive producers, print producers, etc. Each is pretty specialized.

There are more, i.e. media planners, media buyers, business affairs, art buyers, analytics, interaction designers, and all the overhead positions that keep the employees paychecks coming and building functioning, of course. At least in a big agency. The smaller the agency, the more that stuff may be done by anyone from the owner to the "new kid."
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That's all I've got in my system tonight. I'd recommend you get out there and get inside some agencies so you can see what they look like on the inside. Talk to more people and see if I'm just full or crap, so you can get a wider perspective.

But above all, do #5 above. The rest will come naturally if you're actually excited and interested in it.

Best,
eric

This piece is cross-posted from Eric Forsyth's blog and The Denver Egotist

Google+ , U Got One Already?

Google+ is a big hit in the world now, with over 20 million users and it's dominated by male! Although it's not that booming in Indonesia, (there are around 5 millions Google+ users in US, and around 3 millions in India), but some Indonesians who are social media geek and those working in creative field, already signed up for this. So, what's so different about Google+? They have Circle (it's about interest centric interaction, you can split into some, e.g : friends, family, colleague, following, etc) which defines how u'd share your relations to anyone connected to you, Sparks (your interest), Hangouts (group video chat), +1 (for how you can share any articles u read to Google+), and more importantly, PRIVACY! The privacy here let you modify how your connections can view your profile, and you can modify who can see anything you post, either it is a person or one of your Circle.

BUT... most of Indonesians currently not really into it (means using it daily as well as Facebook and Twitter), BECAUSE... most of their connections are on Facebook and Twitter. In reality, most Indonesians are only have less than 50 connections / friends on Google+. So, how can u increase the numbers of your connections? Will you just randomly add anyone on Google+ you saw? It's not like that. U can actually transfer thousands of your Facebook friends into Google+ so you can expand large amounts of connections that you already built.

Just watch this video tutorial



You can also gain more contacts on your Yahoo! Messenger directly imported from ur Facebook contacts' automatically. So you can chat with them whenever you see them online in Yahoo! Messenger (rather than using complicated new Facebook chat features). Let's have a try, and see how many connections can you gain! FYI, I found nearly 100 connections from Facebook in Google+.

How much will you value your friends and your data on social network?

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The video illustration case of Friends on Facebook

After you saw the video above, you could be surprised when you thought like : "Does Facebook have such an application like that?" Or maybe some of you may thought that the application on the video was the idea of how the video creator thought about the social network or Facebook should be. The correct answer is the second guess. When you have seen the full video, you absolutely will know the reason for that. In the social networks, especially Facebook, some Facebook users have so many friends, exceed 1000, or even close to 5000 friends. The question is : Do they know all of their friends on Facebook or can they remember all of their Facebook friends' name? The answer will be 'definitely no.' The research from GoodMobilePhones surveyed over 1,522 Facebook users and found out that the average Facebook user doesn't know a fifth of their friends!

So, it seems that lots of Facebook users are friending only to have more friend collections and probably so that they will seem more to be popular when they have more friends than others. The next question, do one and other friends on Facebook you have are equally important? Well, Facebook might think so. Even when you can customize your parents, brother, sister, or cousins and give them the right title of who they are to you as the actual condition, what about the rest of "non family friends" you have? Besides, this title only just appear on your profile, not more. Facebook respectably see that all the friends you have on Facebook are equally important to you, your family, your classmates, boyfriend, girlfriend, colleagues, people you met at conference, neighbors, or even people that you never met, both in case when you actually know who they are or you don't. In fact, whether you have 400 or 4000 friends on Facebook, you only communicate with some of them in the real life, and so does on Facebook. For example, when you post some information on people's wall to ask them for support, most of the time, you may only post information to someone's wall that you really know, for the reason that the probability of them supporting you would be bigger. Then, maybe you'd do this to 50 of 600 friends you have. See? Only some friends on Facebook that really "that important" to us, in a way that we can communicate with them a lot in a wide range of topics.

But would you be willing to sacrifice the rest of your 550 friends on Facebook to be removed? Maybe some of you would be, but only few people that you really really don't know. Why not all? The reason might be, because I still want to see the updates from them, their status, photos, videos, and also their birthday, so that I will be able to post birthday greetings on their wall when they're having birthday. Or I can talk to them when I need them someday through their wall or message. Anyway, you must have been noticed that now Facebook is integrating Facebook message and chat in one stream. So, when you want to send a message to a person, and the person is now online at the time you send the message, then you will chat directly with them through the chat window. Personally, I think that the feel and situation between when you chat and send a message to someone is somewhat different. You would be dare to chat with them when you really know them and you think that they will be available at that moment to talk to you. But with the message, it's more free, means you will still be dare to send a message to your killer professor, for example, when you are scared to chat with them directly. But when your killer professor is online and you want to send a message to them, then you will have to wait to see him offline, so you can send "an offline" message.

Well, the little illustrations above may have already explained that the connections you share on Facebook between one friends and another are different. Just like, for most person, they only often (means almost everyday, or at least they do it once in a week) have wall-to-wall conversation with less than 10 friends they have. The situation will be the same with the activity of commenting or liking photos and status of their friends. Even at one time they see many status from 20 of their friends in the news feed, they may only give comment or "like" to the person that pretty close to them (whether in real or cyber world) compared with the other friends that they don't share a close connection, even when those other friends post very interesting photos and status and you see and read it on your news feed.

Talking about news feed, sometimes you might ever be in a situation when you see in your newsfeed that few of your friends (or not few?) post something (status, pictures, etc) that is really irritating, annoying, or make you angry or jealous, don't you? Or are you a kind of person who will post anything about your life on Facebook and somehow you don't want certain of friends to see it? So, maybe you ever wish that you can hide your status from some friends, and vice versa, you may not wish to see someone's status? Well, the good news is that on Facebook you can control it by modifying your privacy setting (under the Account tab), and then click the "customize settings" (the one written in blue color letters). You can change it by changing on "post by me" between Things I share by clicking the customize option and you can hide it from some friends that you desire (to hide your status, photos, etc that you post in order those person will not able to see it on their news feed). And if you don't want to see any annoying updates from some annoying friends that you have on your newsfeed, you can change on "Can see wall post by friends" between the Things others share, and you can select customize then type the name of your friends in "Hide this from These people...."

Was that easy? No, it wasn't, the bad news is, when you want to select many friends (e.g. around 70 from your 800 friends. Those 70 are all your seniors at college). So here, it is important for Facebook users to customize their connections and interactions, so they can classify between their 1500 friends, which one are their classmates, friends at the same school at the same extra activity with them, people they met at conference, family, boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, neighbors, employers, colleagues, high school friends, people thay they never met but they know, or even people that they don't know at all. Aside from that it can make easier for Facebook users to post information, share story, or hide their updates; it will be easier for them to remember their tons Facebook friends, where they meet, what connection they share, etc. Just like in the illustration video from Youtube above, you can classify your Facebook friends that you ever met under the Facebook "I know your name" application. But it should be highlighted that this mechanism is totally different with Facebook group. You can still see all the updates from all of your friends in your news feed no matter what connection you share if you wish to, or you can give a restriction "only for your colleague friends", for example, that will only be able to see your updates in their news feed. It will be much easier than selecting one by one name of your 1500 Facebook friends to check "who are my employers on my friend lists?"

So, maybe you will start thinking about the "interest-centric-interaction" on social networks. Because nowadays most social networks have the same perception that between one and another friends that the users have, all of them the are the same important, so when one shares something, it will worth the same to all of their friends. Yet, the real condition, is that it will have the same value to all of their friends who have the same interest with them or share the same connection, such as under the same company, or else. Now you can check your Facebook newsfeed, and you can make a selection between the recent updates from all of your friends, "which one is relevant to you?" After that, you can go to your friend lists, can you classify in 3 minutes who are your classmates among your 1000 friends? And when you see someone's (or more) name and photo in your friend lists or in a tab of Friends having birthday, have you ever been in a situation when you start thinking who is he/she, and how did you know he/she? That is similar but different with the story in the video above, when someone forget someone's name but actually they know each other. That is, Facebook fails to address that issue. Friends are important, but do all of them share the same connection, have the same interest with you, and equally important to you?

Ok, now let's talk about the data or content you have on Facebook and other social networking sites. Do you think that when you post something and add information on your Facebook wall or profile, those contents will only be yours and only visible to your friends? Ok, maybe my friends will see my cute photos and save it in their laptop memory. No, it's way more dangerous, complicated, and worse than that. It's not only me who have that kind of perception. In 2010, Sophos's "Security Threat Report 2010" polled over 500 firms, 60% of which responded that they believed that Facebook was the social network that posed the biggest threat to security, well ahead of MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  

Writers for The Wall Street Journal found in 2010 that Facebook apps were transmitting identifying information to "dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies". The apps used an HTTP referrer which exposed the user's identity and sometimes their friends'. Facebook said, "We have taken immediate action to disable all applications that violate our terms." As Tom Eston, creator of the web site socialmediasecurity.com points out, the very business model Facebook, and other social networking sites like Twitter, stands on is making user information as public as possible in order to generate new ways to make money. What kind of business is it? We reveal it later. Facebook said in one of its privacy setting, "The more info you share, the more social the experience". Ok, so, how social it would be? It would be too surprisingly social, as Facebook also change its settings to Facebook users info.

The changes were introduced on April 18, 2010. Before, the users can hide some information, such as friends list, hometown, and likes and interest. But after those changes, it became publicly available and couldn't be hidden. Even more,"As a result of these material changes, Facebook requires users to designate personal information as publically linkable 'Links,' ‘Pages,' or ‘Connections' or to no longer make such information available,"the complaint states. Many Facebook users previously restricted access to this profile data, which includes users' friends list, music preferences, affiliated organizations, employment information, educational institutions, film preferences, reading preferences, and other information." When the changes went live, Facebook presented users with a pop-up screen compelling them to link their profiles to various pages selected by Facebook based upon content entered manually into the user's profile. The user could either link their profiles to all selected pages, choose pages individually, or click the "ask me later" button.Well, those are the complaints given from Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and Federal Trade Commissions (FTC) demanding that Facebook cancel new features introduced in mid-April that compel users to share more information than before.

EPIC writes in the complaint, "Even if users designate content as private, Facebook will hide the information on the user's profile but disclose it elsewhere, such as on friends' pages, community pages and third-party websites. For example, even if users disable Facebook's new "instant personalization" feature, their information may be disclosed to third party websites if any of their friends have not disabled the service." Talking about third-party, it must be about business and the money always comes from advertising and other business involved in it, such as applications you sometimes use on Facebook. In the latest episode of the gang that couldn't get privacy straight, it was revealed by the Wall Street Journal that many of Facebook's popular applications were unintentionally transmitting the names of the social network's members and, in some cases, their friends' names to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies.

According to Symantec, certain Facebook applications have been inadvertently leaking "access tokens" to third parties such as advertisers and analytic platforms. Symantec estimates that close to 100,000 Facebook apps were enabling this leakage in February 2011.When you install an application on your Facebook account, a little window pops up. This window usually asks you to give the application certain permissions, such as the ability to see your info and publish posts to your wall. When you click "Allow," the application is granted these permissions--which are also known as "access tokens." Most of these access tokens expire after a short period of time, but Facebook also allows applications to request "offline access tokens." Offline access tokens allow the application to access your Facebook account even if you're logged off, and do not expire until you change your Facebook password.  


Facebook has been alerted to the situation and has fixed the problem, Symantec is happy to report. However, third parties may still be able to access your information if they were given offline tokens that don't expire until you change your password. So this means you should change your password. So, what kind of our information can they access? Facebook merely said that it will only be the basic information that we set to "everyone". Case in point: A quiz designed by the ACLU that shows Facebook users just how much information they hand over to application developers every time they agree to install a new app. Want to take that quiz to find out who you were in a past life? Each time you do, almost everything on your profile, even if you use privacy settings to limit access, is made available to the creators of that application.Yes, almost everything on your profile. You may check at 'Privacy Settings' under the 'Account Tab' and click on 'Edit your settings' under the 'Apps and Websites' at the bottom of the page. On the 'Apps you use', you may see what applications you currently ever and still use. And when you click on Edit Settings, you will be directed to a page where you will find "You have authorized these apps to interact with your Facebook account" and the names of the apps. Click 'Edit Settings' on the app you desired.

For example, when you use friend.ly, and you click on 'Edit Settings', you will see something like this :

It said that "This app can : access my basic information, access my profile information, access my contact information, access my family & relationship, access my photos and videos, access my friends' information, post to my wall, and access my data any time. At 'post to my wall' and 'access my data any time' on the right side you can find 'remove' tab, means you can remove that function from the app, so that the app friend.ly won't be able to post to your wall and access your data anytime again. But, what about other functions? It said 'required', means you can't change them and the app will still be able to access those information from your profile. It seems that EPIC complaint was right, Facebook still disclose the information to the third party, which in this case the app developers, even when we set it to private. If we don't like it, we can remove the app, but just bear in mind that the app still has our data and information before we remove it. Just like what it stated on Facebook FAQ about the applications on Facebook, "Does deleting an application from my profile mean that the developers no longer have access to my information?"

No. Deleting an application from your profile simply means that an application will no longer have access to any new information that you share. If you would like a developer to permanently delete all of your information, you will need to contact the developer directly by following the directions outlined here.

and another point that Facebook mentions, "Keep in mind that if you'd like the information that you've shared with the application to be permanently deleted from their records, you will need to contact the developer directly."

Just like what EPIC complained to Facebook "... their information may be disclosed to third party websites if any of their friends have not disabled the service." The service means applications on Facebook. So, even we are not using or has removed the application, but our friends are still using it, so the application can still access our information, and vice versa, when we're using the application, but our friends aren't, the app may be able to access the information from our friends. But we can control it just like what it stated under "General Application Support : Application Safety and Security" on Facebook, "You can control which of your information is available to applications and websites when your friends use them by going to the "Info accessible through your friends" section on the Applications, Games, and Websites page. To get to that page, go to the Privacy Settings page from the "Account" drop-down menu located at the top of any page on Facebook and click on the "Edit your settings" link under the Applications and Websites section towards the bottom of the page".

You can unchecked the boxes, if you don't want that information to be accessible by the apps through your friends when they use it.

Has it done already? No. There is another shocking thing. On May 2010, Network World discovered that Facebook apps are added to our profile without our knowledge. "If you visit certain sites while logged in to Facebook, an app for those sites will be quietly added to your Facebook profile. You don't have to have a Facebook window open, you don't need to be signed in to these sites for the apps to appear, there's no notification, and there doesn't appear to be an option to opt-out anywhere in Facebook's byzantine privacy settings. The apps appear to be related to Facebook's latest sharing features and tools. The sites currently leaving this trail all have Facebook integration, and the list includes heavyweights such as the Gawker network of blogs, the Washington Post, TechCrunch, CNET, New York Magazine, and formspring.me.

It isn't entirely clear what information these apps are pulling from user profiles or feeding back to Facebook. They aren't automatically visible to friends viewing your profile page, but if you go to an application's profile page, you can see a list of your friends who also have that app installed, essentially getting a unintentional peek at their browsing habits. On the other side there are sites like the Washington Post's, which has a Facebook Network News box showing a list of your friends who have recently shared a Washington Post article on Facebook".

Too sophiscticated, but too far to cross the users privacy. There are another complained by EPIC to Facebook on April 2010, "Moreover, the act of "liking" pages may reveal personal data "without clearly indicating to users when their personal information is being given to third party websites."

Facebook's privacy settings limit users' ability to browse the Web anonymously because of integration with third party site." "Facebook uses cookies to track its users," the complaint states. "Thus, whenever a user is logged-in to Facebook and surfing the Internet, he is also transmitting information about which websites he's visited to Facebook. A user does not have to click on or interact with a social plugin for his information trail to be transmitted to Facebook." EPIC and the other privacy groups that filed the complaint said Facebook's privacy practices are prohibited by the FTC, and asked the FTC to force Facebook to restore its previous privacy settings, restore a previous requirement that developers retain user data for no more than 24 hours, and make data collection practices easier to understand and give "Facebook users meaningful control over personal information provided by Facebook to advertisers and developers."

Oh my, so Facebook track too much from the information that we give, even when we set it to private. We never know when, how much, to whom, and under what terms would our data will be given. And what about the intellectual property of our data? You must read the "Statement of Rights and Responsibilities" of Faebook point 1) and 2) below. 

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:

1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
2. When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others). 

For those of you who concern about your contect and its IP, such as the good quality photos and videos that you created and posted on Facebook, don't be too stubborn in the future to claim that those beautiful stuffs are yours and nobody can never use them. Ok, so now and forever, Facebook will have all our stuffs and use them in any purpose that they wish.

 

 

Character (based on the actual person)

Dewi Kusumastuti

 oleh : Ethenia Novianty W, 0806346035

Gadis ini berusia 22 tahun, menjelang 23. Karena postur tubuhnya yang mungil dan paras mukanya yang juga awet muda, hampir semua teman-teman kuliahnya tidak menyadari fakta ini. Di tahun ketiga menjelang keempat kuliahnya, ia masih terlihat fokus dengan bidangnya, yaitu Public Relations. Meskipun ia tidak nampak seperti anak-anak PR lainnya yang doyan berdandan dan banyak bicara, ia tetap menyenangi bidang yang ia tekuni saat ini. Tidak peduli apakah ketika tahun pertama ia kuliah ada seorang senior sok tahu yang memberikan kritik bahwa “Masih bisa kok, masih bisa pindah” dari peminatan PR yang hendak ia ambil (waktu itu belum penjurusan). Isu menarik lainnya selain kefokusan dan ketekunan, ia masih saja sama dengan awal mula ia menginjakkan kaki di universitas negeri yang katanya terbaik dan semakin lama semakin terlihat sebagai universitas mewah yang jauh dari kesan kampus rakyat ini. Penampilannya masih terlihat sederhana, meskipun setelah memasuki peminatan PR ia terkadang mengenakan rok ke kampus. Make up dan barang-barang branded tetap bukan menjadi ciri khas nya.

Satu hal yang mengagumkan dari Dewi ialah ia tetap menjadi dirinya sendiri., di tengah pergaulan ibu kota yang modern, dan di antara teman-teman kaya raya yang sering kali memamerkan gadget canggih yang seolah menjadi tolak ukur status sosial utama. Logat bicaranya pun masih belum berubah. Dewi yang datang dari salah satu daerah di Jawa Tengah ini masih terlihat sebagai puteri daerah yang menjunjung tata krama dan sopan santun. Tutur katanya masih lembut, dan sampai sekarang ia masih lebih sering menggunakan kata “aku”, bukan “gue”. Selain itu, Dewi masih menjadi gadis yang tidak banyak omong, apalagi banyak bacot. Orang tua nya pasti bangga memiliki anak seperti dia. Meskipun disekolahkan ke luar kampung dan merantau, gadis ini masih memegang prinsipnya dan tidak terbawa arus ibu kota. Tapi mungkin ada satu hal yang sedikit berubah darinya. Atlet marathon ini mengaku, bahwa larinya sudah tidak secepat dulu lagi ketika ia sering berlatih. Sekarang ia lebih cepat terengah-engah. Tapi apapun itu, hidup ini memang dipenuhi dengan tarikan napas. Tarikan untuk beristirahat, atau tarikan akibat kerasnya hidup yang memaksa untuk “berhenti” sebentar saja. Coba kita bertaruh, apa ketika ia sudah bekerja nanti penampilan dan ciri khas nya masih seperti saat ini? Wahai gadis tangguh yang tidak pernah berhenti tersenyum dan bermimpi, kota ini lebih keras dari arena marathon di mana kau biasa berlari.

Seribu Rupiah Udah Bisa Hosting Domain

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Aku ingat banget kalo pertengahan tahun lalu aku dapet tugas dari dosen Pemasaran Interaktif untuk bikin website pemasaran sendiri. Astaga. Tugas bikin website ini tugas akhir alias untuk UAS dan udah mulai dinilai dari UTS. Emang sih tugasnya berkelompok, tapi kami yang bukan mahasiswa IT atau Ilmu Komputer ini meskipun canggih di social media tapi kurang canggih untuk masalah beginian. Waktu itu di antara kami yang semua punya blog ini semuanya nggak ada yang pernah punya website dengan akhiran .com, .net, .co.id dan semacamnya.


Kalo kata dosenku, buat bikin website kita harus beli jasa hosting domain dan harganya kami pikir pasti mahal. Dosenku juga bilang kalo untuk memilih jasa penyedia web hosting harus yang availability nya jelas. Maksudnya bukan cuma penyedianya bonafide, tapi di website penyedia domain hosting ini harus ada alamat kantornya jelas, dan nomor telepon yang bisa dihubungi. Karena kita kan belinya lewat online, jadi nggak tau kan, kalo udah bayar tapi hosting nggak jalan alias ketipu gimana?

Untuk masalah hosting dan beli domain, pasti kita pernah denger yang namanya godaddy.com. Itu emang terkenal banget dan kayaknya mungkin aja reliable. Tapi mereka kan pusatnya di US, jadi untuk komplain bisanya cuma via email aja. Intinya susah deh, bayarnya harus pake credit card pula.

Nah, jadi kita harus cari hosting domain yang kantornya di Indonesia. Cari webhosting Indonesia lah intinya. Habis browsing di Google, ketemulah idwebhost.com. Pertama, cek availability, dan alamat dan no telp kantornya JELAS. Bahkan dia udah ada selama 7 tahun lamanya. Aku cek deh harga untuk paketnya. Dan ternyata murah. Waktu itu kebetulan lagi ada promo di idwebhost, jadi untuk beli domain .com cuma Rp 65.000 aja per tahun. Dan untuk hostingnya, murah banget juga. Bahkan dengan cuma bayar 1.000 per bulan aja, udah bisa hosting. Wow! Ini benar-benar kemudahan buat kami yang mahasiswa. Bisa bayar lewat transfer bank lagi (karena kami yang mahasiswa ini nggak punya credit card) Hehe. Pilihan paket hosting Idwebhost bervariasi dan disesuaikan dengan fiturnya.

Idwebhost.com emang hosting terbaik. Jadi waktu itu kami pilih paket yang Rp 50.000,- per bulan dengan space 50MB dan udah ada web email. POP3 email, dan mail forwarding masing-masing 10. Berikut pilihan paket hosting domainnya http://idwebhost.com/Hosting_Web_Hosting. Murah-murah banget kan?

Selain itu, Idwebhost juga bisa blog hosting lho ternyata. Apaan tuh? Jadi bloghosting itu semisal kita punya blog di blogspot.com, wordpress.com, tumblr.com, typepad.com, bahkan page facebook kita sekalipun bisa diubah ke www.namakita.com. Keren kan? Keliatan profesional ntar punya website sendiri. Haha. Harganya murah lagi. Mulai dari Rp 95.000,-/tahun aja. Udah gitu, dari blog hosting ini bisa dimikin email turunannya. Misalnya info@namakita.com. Bisa ada fitur Cpanel nya lagi. Kayak bikin website beneran kan? Tapi ini caranya gampang, nggak usah pake HTML ato macem CSS yang ribet banget itu. Dan ini buat domain nya udah gratis ya, nggak perlu beli lagi, pokoknya udah sepaket sama blog hosting ini. Emang, Idwebhost bener-bener webhosting murah yang top abis.


Kalo gini, semua orang bisa bikin website gampang deh, dengan bantuan Idwebhost. Murah lagi. O ya, dan customer support Idwebhost yang kantornya di Jogja dan Jakarta ini emang siap siaga banget. Mau lewat email, telpon, pokoknya responnya cepet banget deh. Maklum, waktu itu suka banyak tanya-tanya karena pertama kali bikin website.

Nah, ini tampilan website yang kita bikin buat. www.cimilikity.com. Online shop buat fashion cewek gitu deh. Hehe.

Mau web hosting, beli domain, atau bloghosting? Pake Idwebhost.com. Pokoknya Idwebhost.com itu trend hosting Indonesia deh. Udah banyak lho yang membuktikan dan puas akan hasilnya. Termasuk aku. Liat aja testimonialnya.