This month I had an accident and was operated so all my work was stopped because of health issues. I am trying to apply for an extension for extenuating circumstances but none sent me the form, so I have no idea of how it works.

I had to postpone the second social media apero on 4^th of May and I could not work to gather together more people because of my health issues and because I wasn’t confident about my health situation on that day. I am still wondering if I will be able to go there tomorrow.
I reached 25 guests, 32 maybe attending.
I could not work to find a sponsor and the group did not help, so I informed the group that everyone will pay for its drinks.

However, the work done before the day of the accident and some work done afterward resulted in the expansion of the Social Media Basel group with 61 members and the fan page with 121 fans.
I personally have reached 521 Facebook friends, most people are interested in social media and web.

The expansion of my audience will start again once I will recover.

I only was able to attend a Social Media Seminar where I verified that the language they use is Swiss German, so I was completely cut out.

The only good point was that a person recognized me and contacted me on Facebook afterward.

I was unable to develop further contacts even after this event since my bad health condition.

The business customer I found for Blomap, a real estate in London very keen on Social Media, didn’t push me to further advertise its apartments. In addition to that its assumption that I leave in UK made me feel yet more isolated, since I could not introduce myself to an event of an hotel consultants group where he mentioned Blomap on Linkedin.

The client of my company Swissite International, the bride-shoes online shop which requested a social media campaign on Facebook including group and fan page, delayed on signing the contract and my accident stopped also that.

The Social Media Natives blog will start someday, as soon as I will recover.

I ran some other Facebook and Ad Words campaigns and they brought traffic and some new members to Blomap. I must say more traffic than members. This is due to the double nature of Blomap which is either a community or a blog platform open to everyone. The adwords campaign gave me reason to think that the travel topics are the most relevant for the Blomap business.

The Web-developer delays continuously on its tasks and I am looking for other developers. It is very difficult to find someone honest, professional and competent.

In addition to that I started working with the affiliate marketing publishers and the two Italian publishers revealed a very low commitments to the job.

I applied to UK affiliates on Zanox (affiliate marketing distribution agency) in order to start a business with some international publishers and the next step will be delivering affiliate links to these publishers who will earn 30% percentage of the income gained through the affiliate links.

It is highly likely that I will need to monthly pay a team of publishers/bloggers to work on Blomap, since I see that the current publishers are not so much committed to the project, probably because of the unsecure income.

The necessity of a new developer and of publishers considerably increases the risk management.

Whatever will be the next result I see two possible future ways for Blomap:

- a non commercial way, because of lack of capital to invest on the further development of the community, so Blomap will be a simple community for the time being.

- a commercial way, because of arose opportunities of capital to invest, given that I will find some investors.

Most communities have no business onto the internet, so it would not be crazy to think to a non-commercial way for Blomap.

Blomap could stay for the moment as a creative project of my company, a sort of flagship.

However, the possibility to have capital to invest could quickly change everything:

• I could make those usability improvements which can make blomap much more usable to use;
• I could translate it in several languages;
• I could invest in advertisements and attractive functionality;
• I could pay bloggers/publishers and community coordinators to expand the community and to develop the affiliate marketing business and other possible business opportunities.
• I could have a real office.

In fact, the tourism industry has a very large target group and it is completely converting onto the internet.

So my previous idea of making Blomap an online global journal could not bring me any money at the moment. If this concept will develop it will develop later, once the community will become considerably big.

What I criticise of my work at the moment is a slight lack of project management due to my health condition. Things changed or stopped because of my temporary health condition.

Furthermore I stopped using any project management software and this is a very bad move, I will recover it asap.

Even the place where I live makes me feel demotivated. Switzerland does not excel in media innovation, that’s it.

In addition to that the language Swiss Germans use is an inaccessible dialect. However, I started a German course to refresh it (I had to stop it because of my health conditions) and I am going to attend a three months proficiency English course starting in September in UK. Enhancing my language skills would be greatly beneficial to communication issues which are against any business opportunities even if learning Swiss-German is rather impossible.

In fact, once I will be fine the first move will be gathering information to find and convince investors to invest in my company, very good language skills will be very useful.

 Chiara Bolognini