Editor’s note: WSU M.B.A. student Kanira Jain wrote the following blog post about the importance of managing indvidual and corporate online images.

In the Internet age, companies face various social media challenges. Primary among them: Online reputation management. As a larger portion of our personal lives are shared online, more and more of us are making startling discoveries about the major downside of over-sharing on social media and the inability to completely control how we are presented on the Internet.

In the U.S., 70 percent of human resource recruiters have rejected a candidate based solely upon information found online.   - Source: Handbook of Social Media Interactive Marketing

Primary examples of lost control range from posted Facebook photos that someone else shared and tagged, without the subject’s permission, to negative comments and reviews about anything at all. At the same time, by not engaging in social media is to risk losing out on any kind of online presence. It’s important to remember that the impact of a person’s digital reputation can be immense and not taking advantage it can mean missed opportunities. Societal and ethical issues in the information age are a common topic for conversation in both personal and professional circles.

Editor’s note: Senior undergraduate students, Shylan Ghoujeghi, an ISM major and Natalia Kumar, a dual major in ISM and Marketing, co-wrote the following blog post based upon their participation at the recent HubSpot Inbound 2014 annual conference in Boston.

The Next Generation: Students Natalia Kumar and Shylan Ghoujeghi offer concise user's guide to Search Engine Optimization

Recently, we joined a group of students and faculty from Wayne State University’s School of Business to attend the HubSpot Inbound Marketing Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, where we (students) were introduced to the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What we learned there immediately impacted our student website but, perhaps even more importantly, showed us the impact of SEO in business.

The Power of SEO

At the conference, people around us were throwing out words like “spider” and “Panda,” and if you think they were just talking about animals, so did we. As students, whose knowledge of SEO was the extent of a quick Google search of the definition and tools, it took us a while to truly understand how this three-letter acronym was going to help us attract new members for our ITO organization at Wayne State University, and how we could utilize it for our website.

 After numerous inbound marketing sessions and tutorials, we came back to Detroit with a whole new respect for HubSpot software and a better understanding of how to use it. Throughout the semester, we gained a deeper understanding of SEO and saw significant benefits of using it for our website.

By Andrea Tangari, assistant professor, Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management, Wayne State University School of Business 

Nearly one-third of the calories in the standard American diet come from foods that add calories with little nutritional benefit--soft drinks, sweets and desserts, alcoholic beverages, and salty snacks (Block 2004). Therefore, it is not surprising that the prevalence of childhood and adult obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases has increased dramatically in the last 30 years. The unhealthiness of the American diet is the result of a complex mix of social, marketing, environmental, product, and individual (e.g., affective preferences) factors (Seiders and Petty 2004; Wansink 2010). Consequently, food consumption-related issues have been investigated from the perspective of many different disciplines. Within the field of marketing, much of this research has focused on the highly visible and well-publicized "obesity crisis." Given the strong relationship between the overconsumption of food and obesity, it is not surprising that calories have been the focus of many of these studies. However, America's recent preoccupation with calories has a potential downside—other negative nutrients (e.g., sodium, sugar, cholesterol) that are associated with the development of several serious health conditions which may not always be receiving the level of attention they deserve.

By Jack Malloy, VP of IT Services Integration & Quality, Henry Ford Health System

Editor’s note: Pravin Sapre, director of Henry Ford’s Enterprise Data Warehouse Program will be a featured presenter at Wayne State University’s 2^nd Annual Big Data & Business Symposium, March 10 -11, 2015

Henry Ford Health System’s Baldrige Award

Four years ago, the Henry Ford Health System was acknowledged as a national leader in performance excellence by winning the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, this prestigious award annually recognizes organizations whose core values, leadership, and performance management framework work together to deliver exceptional and continuously-improving results, giving them a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Data driven performance management

A key component of the rigorous Baldrige evaluation focuses on measurement, analysis, and knowledge management. In its application for the award, Henry Ford highlighted its approach to data-driven performance management by describing how it uses analytics to track metrics aligned to its 7 Pillar Strategic Framework of: