Thu
Aug
12
No matter what you say to a client about the value of social media for their brand, the bottom line is that unless there are metrics attached, your supplications might fall on deaf ears.
Enter Looxii. This new service can help you make the case for brand engagement on social media channels. Humongo tested this tool by running a report for…drum roll please…’80s MTV VJ Pauly Shore. If you’re interested in what is being said about Pauly, visit the sample traffic report.
Looxii offers three tiers, which can be accessed on a free trial basis. Best of all, this service won’t cut into your campaign budget, because the fees are capped at $20 per month. Personally, I might have run a search for DJ Pauly D, but hey, I’m all about the Shore!
- Pedro
Tags
- marketing - metrics - pedro - social media - celebrities - measurement
Tue
Aug
3
Firms Strive to Better Social Media Skills of Every Staffer
M Booth’s very own Digisquad and our social media mentoring program were featured in the August issue of PRWeek!
M Booth & Associates created a group called “Digisquad.” It meets weekly about social media and includes at least one employee from every practice area. Account supervisors and SAEs within Digisquad are part of the agency’s social media mentoring program, in which the junior staffers show SVPs how to use social networking for personal use.
“We took a personal approach to social media because SVPs are already very smart strategists,” says Josh Rosenberg, SVP and director of FirstWord Digital at M Booth. “They just need to experience the value of communicating this way.”
Nice job, Josh!
—Alyssa
Tags
- m booth - PR - public relations - social media - education - alyssa - josh
Wed
Jul
21
In his presentation about growing an audience for your business at today’s BDI conference, Matt Gentile, Century 21’s Director of PR and Communications, provided several key takeaways for the audience:
- Define targets
- Establish objectives
- Select appropriate platforms
- Measure for success
- Adjust for optimization
Gentile mentioned this post from Brian Solis on Mashable, and walked the audience through Solis’ 10 Stages of Social Media Integration and what the brand is doing on platforms like Facebook and YouTube.
- Rob
Tags
- Rob - Rob Longert - Social Media - bdi - real estate - facebook - youtube
Mon
Jul
12
Since early June, Casa Velas, a boutique hotel in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, began offering their guests a free social media workshop.
According to a press release on the Casa Velas site, the workshops “help guests create a profile, add friends, upload photos and ‘Like’ pages in Facebook; create a Twitter account and profile, follow and Tweet updates; as well as create and upload videos to YouTube.”
The idea came out of a survey of 300 Velas Resorts guests. According to the resort, “Seventy percent of respondents, ages 18 to 64, expressed a serious interest in social media; the majority desiring to share vacation photos, videos and trip experiences with friends and family on Facebook.”
The workshop seems like a great way to get hotel guests to engage with Casa Velas via social media by teaching them, and the hotel is doing their best to walk the walk with a relatively active Twitter account and Facebook page.
Would you want to take a course on social media on vacation? I might check it out, but based on their Flickr page, I think i would focus on the pool.
- Rob
Tags
- Social media - rob - rob longert - travel
Fri
Jun
18
From time to time, our Better4You team speaks on panels and participates in the discussion of how social media impacts the food, nutrition and consumer health communities.
Check out Frani Lieberman’s post about her experience as a panelist at TechMunch here, and stay tuned for additional updates on FWD Thinking from our Better4You team!
- Rob
Tags
- better4you - food - social media
Wed
Feb
17
I have never experienced a Fashion Week through social media like I have this season. I think it’s a huge sign of the extent to which the fashion industry has increased its embrace, or at least acceptance, of the medium in such a short span of time. My Google Reader is bursting at the seams, my Twitter feed is off the charts and I seem to know everyone’s opinion about each show before I’ve even had the chance to form my own. I can’t figure out whether I love the crossfire of information or if it’s just too overwhelming. Did I love the simple lines and soft beiges of the Marc Jacobs collection, or did I just read that somewhere? How does social media change the way we think for ourselves?
-Kristin
Tags
- Kristin - fashion - social media - twitter
Thu
Jan
14
“ Social media is not ‘Field of Dreams.’ If you build it, they won’t necessarily come.
Adam Brown, Director of Digital Media at Coca-Cola (via @PRWeekUS)
Tags
- Alyssa - social media
Tue
Oct
20
You know how some people you follow on Twitter seem to forget that their posts are public? And sometime it’s just a little TMI? No one really needs to know about the details of your love life, however steamy or dull, so save the drama for yo’ mama… or for Relatious.
This new micro-blogging site is dedicated solely to relationships and love connections. Users have 400 characters to write about their triumphs and mishaps or ask for advice from fellow users. Like Facebook and many other community-based websites, each post can be “liked” and commented on by others.
The concept and application of Relatious is reminiscent of Yahoo! Answers + texts from last night, with a sprinkle of Craigslist’s Missed Connections. It gives readers a voyeuristic look at the scandalous lives of others, providing a fix of relationship gossip for us to live vicariously through (or to make us feel slightly better about our own love lives). However, like TFLN, it reeks a little of facetiousness; some posts are surely made up or highly exaggerated. I do feel bad for those who attempt to use this website for relationship advice, as it doesn’t really seem other users are taking their questions seriously and often give sarcastic, rude responses.
On the other hand, at least these people won’t be clogging up my Twitter stream.
—kelly
Tags
- kelly - Twitter - social media
Mon
Oct
19
A shift in seasons always seems to mark a new chapter in our lives, promising change in a routine that was perhaps going stale, inspiring hope that new experiences are just around the corner. As the long summer days become shorter and the cool crisp breeze of fall begins to creep in, I tend to find myself romanticizing over thoughts of a warm cozy sweater, chunky knit scarves and of course, the ultimate symbol of fall’s impending reign: boots.
Seasons have always marked a pivotal point in time for the fashion industry. Just as our internal human clock syncs with the schedule of mother nature, ready to turn over a new leaf and embrace the unwritten road ahead, we crave the wardrobe to accompany our hopeful outlook. Fashion is readily poised with the answer, introducing fall’s freshman class of trends to inspire. This season more than ever, I have felt the contagious energy of trending: girls lusting over leather jackets, thigh-high boots and impossibly large pompom hats.
Is it just my imagination, or are trends more potent and pervasive this season than they’ve been in the past? An article on Consuming PR suggests that this could have something to do with the ever-burgeoning influence of social media. Through countless fashion blogs and outlets like Facebook and Twitter, the channels for dialogue are wide open, allowing for a flood of information and exchange among fashionistas, as well as members of the industry who are looking to promote the latest and greatest in trends.
The astoundingly rapid pace at which we share information these days, thanks to the social media explosion, could translate to a shorter lifespan for these tenuous certain fads, whose novelty now runs the risk of fading before they have properly run their course. Could this prove true? Easy come, easy go?
-Kristin
Tags
- trends - fashion - social media - kristin
Tue
Oct
13
Finally - A Sports Organization Embracing Social Media
For a variety of reasons, sporting organizations like the NFL, SEC and others are attempting to take a hard line on social media (specifically, on Twitter). This is happening for a variety of reasons, particularly because of the desire to protect the exclusive relationships with media outlets. While many sporting organizations are trying to curb and regulate social media use, there are a few trying to embrace it.
The New York Mets appear to be hitting the idea of fan-activated, in-stadium social media out of the park (which is good because as you know, this year, that was a bit of a rarity — sorry, Mets fans, had to do it). In all seriousness, next year the Mets will debut several activations through txtstation that will help enhance the fan experience. Fans will be able to submit their pictures taken via camera phone to appear on the big screen. Verizon Wireless Fan Choice Awards will run various text polls to which results will be displayed in the stadium in real-time.
The above examples as well as the various other mobile-based social media initiatives planned for next year will provide a great model for organizations out there looking to capitalize on social media opportunities rather than trying to stifle them. Nicely done, Mets!
-Andrea
Tags
- mobile - social media - sports - andrea betts
Mon
Oct
12
“Social media is about forming relationships and having conversations with customers, not constant promotion.” That’s the motto of Chris Bruzzo, Starbucks’s vice president of brand, content and online, which should hold true in any marketing program these days.
Speaking of Starbucks, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote a fantastic article about how the coffee chain’s social media initiatives have made it the poster child (along with Microsoft) for companies engaging consumers in real relationship-building online. A great read if you have a second.
-Maria
Tags
- maria - social media - brands - corporate
Tue
Sep
8
This cute, tongue-in-cheek infographic shows how our digital interactions rank in importance, from most urgent to least. It’s funny how true it is — and the most distracting of all is your significant other closing your laptop on your fingers.
—Alyssa
Tags
- Alyssa - social media
Fri
Aug
28
More marketers use social networking to reach customers
This USA Today article about brands leveraging social media to reach consumers has a ton of great, useful stats:
- Smartphone shipments are expected to surge to 164 million this year, up 13% from 2008 (Source: Forward Concepts)
- The mobile social-networking industry is expected to become a $3.3 billion market worldwide by 2013 (Source: ABI Research)
- 95% of business decision-makers use social networks to some extent (Source: Forrester Research)
- 53% of marketers planned to increase social-media marketing spending this year (Source: Forrester Research)
- The number of American adults who use a social-networking service more than quadrupled to 35% in 2008 from 8% in 2005 (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project)
- 50 million Facebook users joined the site in the past three months
- More than 300,000 businesses — 1/3 of them small businesses — have a presence on Facebook
- Twitter users spent nearly 300 million minutes on the site in April, 3,712% more than in April 2008 (Source: Nielsen NetView)
- 3/4 of men ages 18 to 34 say they spend most of their time in front of a computer screen vs. 18% in front of a TV screen (Source: AskMen.com)
You can thank me when you’re making your next PowerPoint presentation!
—Alyssa
Tags
- Alyssa - research - statistics - social media
Wed
Aug
26
I really enjoyed reading Catharine P. Taylor’s Social Media Insider post entitled “Ten Things I Dislike About Social Media” today. It just goes to show you how social media as a medium is still flawed in some areas (even though I still think it’s awesome!). Some of the highlights include:
- “That many of us are hopeless slaves to social networking fashion, flitting from one hot service to another, like Carrie Bradshaw always on the hunt for a new pair of Manolos.”
- “That you have to create a new email account every time you want to open a new Twitter account.”
- “That social media is just as good at spreading irresponsible rumors as it is the facts.”
-Maria
Tags
- Maria - Social Media
