I don’t know why this ad ticked me off so much. Maybe it seems to embrace the notion of bad money management practices? Maybe it's the fact that there is no amount of personal responsibility or accountability?

Who does this ad speak to? The consumer who doesn't want to be punished if they spend more than they have, but still manage to scrape together $3 for a cup of coffee?

I have no doubt the message is well-targeted, but is it the right message to send? Does it really hammer home the 'less fees' message it was probably intended for?

It sort of is a "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche” comment and it didn't sit well with me.

I'm one of thousands exposed to this message, but keep this point in mind - while your message may resonate with a lot of people, make sure it's not going to irritate an equal or greater number.

I'd rather see them figure out a way to make my coffee cheaper.

I was at an event a few weeks ago hosted by Blue Hornet and the speaker was talking about growing your e-mail list through multi-channel  techniques.

More specifically, how to use SMS to add to your e-mail list, and how consumers who subscribe via SMS tend to have higher value than consumers who register through other channels.

Some of the folks in the audience were unfamiliar with the concept and none had implemented it for themselves. It's easy to take this stuff for granted when you're managing SMS campaigns for major brands.

When I was out over the weekend, I saw a great example of SMS opt-in and figured I'd share (this isn't one of our campaigns). I think this example does a great job at illustrating how to tie POS materials (offline) with SMS (mobile) to build your e-mail list.

We have found this to be useful for our customers and I find it useful as a consumer.

Now if only my birthday hadn't just passed. I could go for a free scoop.

I took this picture earlier this month in a small cafeteria in an office building. Six months into the year and the sign still has a Happy New Year message on it.

While I too am surprised by how fast the first half of 2010 has gone by, I can't help but think how many times the business owner has passed this sign since January. He's probably walked by it every day and night, yet hasn't thought about updating it.

This isn't the first time I've seen this. You'd be surprised how many times I come across websites with 2009 press releases on their home page or a blog post from April. It's easy to to let time get away from you.

Even if you're updating your news room and blog on a regular basis, when was the last time you updated your product pages with fresh images or refreshed the copy on your "About Us" or "Our People" pages? Chances are, there are updates to be made.

Think about content management as part of your marketing responsibility and part of your customer service responsibilities.  It does matter.

Oh yeah, in case you didn't know it, U LOOK MARVELOUS.

I attended two conferences recently: The Clio Awards Conference and Creativity and Technology (CAT). Intermixed with the mediocre food, self-congratulatory speeches, and months old "trends" were some pearls of, if not wisdom, at least things that make you go hmmm.... (I was wondering when I'd be able to work in an Arsenio Hall/C+C Music Factory reference). I'm going to summarize some of the discussion I found interesting or useful. There was significant cross-over between the two conferences (both in presentations and presenters) so I'm going to mash them together and serve them up with my own blend of seasonings. I will try to give credit to the appropriate presenter, but if I drop the ball, feel free to call me out in the comments. I also believe in brevity in blogs, so I will spread this over a few posts.             

On Leadership:

The first session at the Clio conference was one that seemed perhaps to be the least relevant, but ended up being the most interesting. What is leadership and what makes a good leader, specifically in a creative company? The presenter was Doug Guthrie from the Berlin School of Creative Leadership.

The examples of great leaders we often site are those people who are charismatic, have taken charge of a situation, have orchestrated a "big moment", or have displayed a specific strength as an individual that allowed a situation to be overcome or a goal to reached for the betterment of a group. While these types of people can be successful leaders, those are not necessarily the characteristics that make a good leader within a company. Here are some key points discussed:

• Your position is not important, how you act in your position is.
• Everyday activity is more important than a "big moment". You must lead with every action not just once in a while.
• Managers think about their departments. Leaders think about the broad organization, independent of individual or departmental needs.
• Good leaders lead through empowering others.
• True leaders embrace complexity inherent in the structure of an organization  and human dynamics. They don't try to oversimplify the situation.
• Don't confuse aspiration with vision. Vision shows the path to success and is essential in a leader.
• Create harmony among component parts by thinking about complexity, articulating a strategy, and then doing the actual work of creating the structure to let it happen.
• Inspire and facilitate other employees to succeed.
• Be introspective. Know yourself.
• Embrace failure. Innovation involves risk so evaluate on effort and intent and not always on success.
• Admit to being wrong.

One of the ideas that came across throughout the entire discussion (at least to my ears) is that a good leader pushes his organization ahead rather than pulling them. He is thinks of the organization over the individual, to the point where a good leader will eventually render themselves obsolete (at least in the context of specific goals to be met).

In this sense, Steve Jobs is not a good leader. He is a great innovator, a creative and business genius, and an tremendous influence on the world... but not a great leader. I don't say this to slam Mr. Jobs, but he was brought up in the session as a good example of someone who would normally be pointed to as a great leader, and yet falls short within the tenets listed here. He inarguably has changed the face of consumer technology and his influence in Apple and beyond will be felt long after he retires, but, by all evidence, is a leader in the traditional "pinnacle" paradigm, rather than the idea of  "leader as foundation" ideas discussed here. In truth, many people we would list as strong leaders would have a hard time standing up to this categorization. This is simply because those people that draw our attention are often characterized by actions and personalities that are not specifically important within this framework,  and those that fit this description tend to be less noticeable as an individual even while the success of their efforts are obvious within the industry.  

And with that... let's go to our studio audience.

(Tune in next time for more from CLIO and CAT... and me of course.)

Almost every week I continue to be shocked at some aspect of how Facebook is treating the privacy of their users. While I think Facebook has done some amazing things to redefine the landscape of connection and community in the digital age, the way they auto-opt-in users to new policies and settings that unwittingly further expose them in a manner that is beyond confusing for almost everyone is driving me crazy.

It seems to be a total disregard for privacy that leverages "confuser interface design" tactics and misleading redesign functionality alterations to extend their dominance at the unknowing expense of most of their users. They actively seek to get you to enter as much personally defining data as possible. They make it incredibly complicated to manage your assorted privacy settings, then they go and make significant changes that auto-opt in users to new options like making all of your posts available to search engines or to share your personal data with applications and sites using FaceBook tools. All of this while presenting typical users with a perception of communicating and sharing with their "Friends." Maybe FaceBook is just working towards a Nobel Peace Prize by wanting everybody on the planet and every corporation to be Friends? Ummmm.... no.

 

Conversely, while not exempt from scrutiny, Twitter takes a much different approach. They begin by having an established perception that what you post is public, they have one very clear and simple blanket option to make your posts private, and the information they ask you to enter for registration is extremely limited.

 

I'm also driven crazy by the constant changes to FaceBook API's that make the lives of developers miserable as they struggle to work with this juggernaut of social media and the fact that they employed algorithms that began to selectively decide whose posts among my friends they thought I should see (and even excluded my wife's posts from my stream until I manually added her back in)... but that's a whole other couple of blog posts to write. The following is a short list of things I actually find less annoying than FaceBook's treatment of the concept of privacy:

 

15.       SPAM e-mail

 

14.       People who post their every Foursquare or Gowalla check-in to Twitter

 

13.       The mere existence of Farmville and Mafia Wars

 

12.       The first time I saw Clippy

 
      11.    Developers that hardcode and use auto-code generators out of laziness

 

10.       Requirements documents for a web site or app that say: "should work in every browser"

 

9.       Web sites that dramatically over-use Flash for everything they possibly can

 

8.       People that show up for an interview and haven't read and reviewed your company's web site or have any ability to articulate what your company does

 

7.       People that text or use mobile devices to tweet while driving (or drive while talking on their mobile phone without using a Bluetooth or hands-free device)

 

6.   People that call themselves "Social Media Gurus" in their bios or otherwise

 

5.   People in busy airports that obliviously stop walking out of the blue and then wonder why everyone crashes into them

 

4.   Every scene on the Fox TV series 24 that ever involved Kim Bauer

 

3.   Stupid people (as one of my friends is fond of saying as he quotes his old high school football coach, "Ya can't fix stupid.")

 

2.   The continued existence of IE6

 

1.   The constant deluge of Top <insert number here> Lists

 

I could probably learn to live with all of the above. But I'm on the verge of simply shutting down my FaceBook account instead of constantly fighting to control my own information and exposure. Of course... I don't think FaceBook makes it terribly easy to truly shut down an account, they'd probably just auto-opt me in to be reactivated in a couple of weeks.

(Image Credit: Privacy by alancleaver_2000)

By now, Twitter should be an integral part of your media relations strategy. Twitter has become one of the most efficient tools PR professionals use to manage relationships with journalists and other influencers. Why is Twitter such a great channel for media relations? Here are a few reasons:

• Fish where the fish are: most mainstream and amateur journalists and bloggers are on Twitter. There are many tools for finding journalists on Twitter, such as MediaOnTwitter, MuckRack or JournalistTweets.

• Mix business with pleasure: Twitter provides the ultimate glimpse into a person’s world. You can learn a lot of about journalists and bloggers by following their tweets and getting involved in conversations. This will help you not only identify ways to approach the journalist better, but also to monitor and respond to journalists’ needs – positioning you as a trusted expert.

• Get to the point: journalists are overwhelmed with pitches. The short message format of Twitter makes it easier for journalists to scan brief messages. The chances of your tweet being read may be better than with email – just make sure the journalist is cool with being pitched via Twitter before you tweet it.

• Pass it on: a tweet (Twitter status update) mention of your company or product by an influential journalist can be just as effective as a mention in a print publication. In many instances, the tweet may drive more traffic to your site in a short period of time. If increasing qualified site visitors is a core objective of your PR plan, you may want to consider Twitter.

• Track results: most of your activity can be tracked through Twitter. Whether you want to track the pace at which you’re gaining new followers, the number of times your tweets are re-tweeted (passed along to others), or how many people click on a link that you share (using trackable URL-shorteners like Bit.ly or Su.pr), it’s easy for you to keep tabs on the effectiveness of your social media impact.

• Build relationships: Twitter is all about relationships. The longer you use Twitter – actively use Twitter – the more relationships you will form. I can honestly say that I’ve built more relationships with media in the past two years on Twitter than I had in the previous five using conventional methods.

So how can you use Twitter for media relations? I suggest you look at Twitter as a channel like you would any other outlet. Treat journalists and bloggers with the respect they deserve – you know, the way you would like to be treated. Listen and observe at least (if not more) as much as you talk or tweet, you’ll be surprised what you can learn from journalists and bloggers. If you follow the media on Twitter long enough, you’ll notice that most tell you exactly what it takes to score publicity opportunities with them step-by-step.

Here are some general tips for using Twitter as a media relations tool:

• Follow journalists and bloggers relevant to your organization and read what they tweet about. If you see a tweet you really like, consider passing the tweet along or sharing your feedback with the person. This is a great way to build relationships, outside of just wanting coverage.

• Use the Twitter Search function to search for keywords related to your business. This will make it easier to see which of the users you’re following are talking about relevant topics. You can also set up saved searches for keywords or hashtags (#journchat for example), so you don’t have to read every tweet that comes along.

• Monitor Twitter users like @prsarahevans, @skydiver and @profnet to keep tabs on publicity opportunities issued through Twitter. You should follow each of these users if you’re not already.

• When it’s time to pitch a story, you should know that the journalist or blogger is open to being pitched through Twitter. If you’ve followed the steps above, you’ll know the answer.

Finally, don’t make the mistake of thinking Twitter is just another social media fad. As someone with firsthand experience using Twitter for media relations, I can tell you that – for today, at least – it’s the easiest and most effective way to get the attention of today’s busy journalists. It’s also a great way to accelerate your learning around PR, with thousands of helpful PR professionals at your disposal for advice at any hour of the day.


(Image Credit: Twitter Badge by 7son75)

 
A friend recently asked me what all the sensation was around Foursquare and Gowalla. These location based services (LBS) now gaining serious traction in the social media space. This same friend had asked me the same question a little over two years ago when I started actively participating and raving about Twitter and Facebook.

The first time I was asked this question, I initially struggled to answer it in a way that would easily explain the excitement and draw of using an online service to tell other people what I was doing, where I was eating, or why I think that (so and so's latest article) was so interesting. 

However, this time the answer came to me rather quickly. "It's all about our interaction with our communities. Mine and yours and how they overlap!" When I see a friend write that the Thai place down the street has some kickin' sushi, I give that more credence than the billboard I see driving to the office. When I see one of your friends talk passionately about their son's kung fu instructor, I take that as a more qualified reference than a yellow pages ad.


So what are we really seeking when we post our latest thoughts on Facebook and Twitter? Or when we check out where our friends are checking in on Foursquare or Gowalla? Are we just vain and think that what we are doing is SO important? Or are we just seeking a way to connect in an ever busy, ever moving, ever expanding world?

We have friends and family and colleagues and people we just admire with whom we go days, weeks or even years without actually laying eyes on each other. Or even more rare, actually sitting down and catching up on what has been going on in our lives, our careers, our family, friends, churches, baseball leagues … our communities.

Thanks to these online tools, I get to keep up with a larger number of people than ever possible before. And I learn more about their communities and the people and places in them. This in turn, expands my own known universe. It makes me bigger than I could be on my own. My boundaries are constantly expanded, and in a way that is relevant and meaningful to me and my friends (and your friends and their friends). Growth is good, is it not?
 
I live and work in Atlanta. I like to enjoy the occasional tasty local brew, listen to great live music and I also just so happen to really get geeky about the latest and greatest innovations in the .NET developer community. Wonder how many different ways those communities intersect and how they are related? Wouldn't be a cool thing if I could go somewhere and see my friends in these different circles talk about these things that are interesting to me and that we have in common. What if I can be the catalyst to help bring these different communities together in new and interesting ways?



One of the most interesting ways that new media tools have affected me and my community are when my online and offline worlds converge. Last November, I was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to host and moderate a panel for the TAG Consulting Society on "Marketing Your Practice to Build Loyalty and Brand Awareness". I was able to engage 2 panel members through my offline community and reached out to my online community to find the remaining two panel members.

Thanks to my network of friends, I was introduced to two extremely smart and engaging panelists who helped round out a wonderful panel. (Thanks again to @lisa_sherman77  and @johnreed3000). Another example of where my friends reach out to their friends who then become my friends who then can become your friends too.
 
I would like to extend this opportunity for us to become part of each other's community. Follow me on Twitter @andrewmccann or on Facebook or on LinkedIn. From there you can find me on Foursquare and Gowalla and whatever the next big thing is that allows me to connect with my friends and your friends and my friends with your friends.

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
-- Herman Melville

What do you want? Those of you that are CMOs, Brand Managers, VPs of Advertising or Marketing, what do you really want?
 
Whenever and wherever this question is asked, the answer is always the same: Results! You want results and you want them now (it’s the same thing you wanted yesterday, and the same thing you’ll want tomorrow).

If you are in the agency business, you should never lose sight of this basic marketing need. If you are in-house and spend your money on advertising and marketing, I hope this helps you think about how to find people who can improve those results faster.
 
This topic has been on my mind since I got together with a group of marketing professionals earlier this month. We started off talking about how to produce ROI reports for their CFOs and finance counter parts. Ultimately, what everyone really wants to see is results.

How you define results and what value they deliver for your business may vary, but here are some sample measurements based on our discussion:

•    Brand health metrics
•    Units Sold
•    Leads Generated
•    Awareness and Recall levels
•    ROAS
•    E-mail marketing conversion
•    Increased Foot Traffic
 
How can agencies produce results more consistently when results are so varied by each client? Here are six suggestions for ways I think agencies can be prepared to provide a variety of results for a variety of clients and also for the same customer who has evolving needs over a long period of time.

1.    Understand your client's business. If you are not as much a management consultant as an ad person, then I think you will fail in the future. Today's marketing and advertising challenges, impact customer service, public relations, product develop & procurement as well as IT, finance and channel relations. Now, they always have, but now that the world is digitized and visibility is possible; the demand to work on more than just demand is higher.

2.    Understand customer behavior. One of the things I think Agency can do better than most client-side marketers is getting to know the end customer and the customers along the way.  We can and should provide outsider insight into the purchase drivers that lead consumers or businesses to buy from clients. By being involved in the insight business, we can help our customers produce the results they need.

3.    Be more social. So much has been said about this over the last 18 months, so I'll share why I think agencies need to become more social. We are in the business of communications and in connecting companies and customers. The landscape has evolved where the cost of distributing messages is virtually zero and the demand for connection is 100%.  When demand is this high and the cost is so low, there is an unlimited amount of success you can have for you and your customers if you tap into this skill set.

4.    Learn math and how to analyze data. I became a Speech Communications major because it had no math requirement. I bet a lot of people who are in our field did the same thing, I know it.  Math has never been a problem for me, I just didn't care to do any more formulas or equations. Then I got into advertising, and as I did Nielsen store data, GRPs, category management, research, coupon redemption and media plans, it became clear that math was going to be a big part of my life. When I started our Integrated Interactive Agency in the 90s it become clear that math, engineering and analysis would be at the center of much of what we would do to help clients. A strong analytics capability and good math people, programmers, engineers and analysts are essential if you are serious about producing results and proving those results.

5.    Learn how to produce.  Content, code, sounds, event. From branding to social, to broadcast to micro-cast. From visual to technical, and in-home to the 6th screen. A good partner doesn't outsource the doing to sub-contractors, it is no longer acceptable to do the boards, the concept, the design, the plan and then hand it off. In these days and times, buyers expect ongoing interactions and learned messaging overtime. The mediums must be an integrated seamless experience or you will lose sales and revenue for your clients. That is not the result they want.

6.    Ask your clients what they need to thrive. So I end with this, what do you need to thrive in your current marketing and advertising role? We are listening……….
 

Facebook’s Hottest TV babes, Celebrity babes on Twitter, Hot babes on LinkedIn, babes, babes, babes...

Did this get your attention?  OK, so let’s progress.

I recently attended a few industry conferences on leveraging “Public Relations in the Social Media Era.”  The sessions were eye-opening.  With a show of hands, it seems most of the 500 attendees, who were charged with managing their brands’ PR function, didn’t understand much about how to harness the power of Social Media or how to convince their executive management to engage in it. 

A prevailing theory shared with me follows: Social Media has enabled a two-way dialogue between brands and consumers.  However, many brands over the last 50 years grew accustomed to telling customers via one-way conversations (advertising, promotion, news releases) that their product or service was essential to the customers’ aspirations or success.  So, now there’s a disconnect.

Well, I’d like to share some of the new “truths” about re-connecting that I have heard from my recent travels.  And I hope they will be of some constructive use.

Truth #1: Social Media has put the “PUBLIC” back into Public Relations.

Years ago, PR consisted of community town hall meetings, public comment forums, press conferences, and other means that enabled public feedback, deeper questioning and public input. Back then, the public had some say and means of expressing their opinions and their voice could be heard.  But public dialogue was hard because you couldn’t easily reach the masses in a personalized way.  So, the press release took over and gave birth to one-way dialogue and allowed brands to merely issue holding statements on issues instead of getting in front of customers and listening to what they had to say. 

This is an exaggeration but you get the point.  Then the Internet arrived and Social Media soon exploded.  Now everyone has a say in your business affairs and consumers are in charge of your brands’ reputation and companies are in a responsive mode -- catering to the interests of their customers once again.  Not a bad thing….

Truth #2: “Every day is ELECTION DAY.” 

I heard this statement and it resonated with me since I once worked in politics.  If brands want to effectively communicate and engage with their customers, they need to get into a campaign mindset and determine how to get “elected” every day by consumers, shareholders, employees, etc.  This mindset requires the willingness to conduct a dialogue with your stakeholders. 

Find that common interest or common ground you have with your customers – determine what’s the breadth of your relationships with your customers?—what emotional connection do they have with your brand or CEO?  -- and then leverage it.  Listen, chat about it and let the conversation grow.  If you want to win (the election), you have to play.  (Okay, yes, that’s a tagline from the NY State Lottery but it obviously was effective and memorable, and it underscores the point.)

Truth #3: LISTENING is more important than talking. 

Who da thunk?  This seems to be a revelation to us communicators who are expected to jump-start discussions and then deliver the pitch.  But, lest we  remember, we’re in a new era where customers have a large share of voice and they are talking back.  So, it’s probably better that we listen to what they are saying first and then jump in. 

Let’s test this theory (some sarcasm intended here; my dad was British so sometimes I let loose….) Testing the theory here:  Imagine going to a party, walking into a roomful of strangers and telling your date:  “Get out there and say something?”  Not very effective -- unless you’re Jim Carrey.  Rather, we’d ease up alongside a group, listen to what they are discussing and choose a tactful means of joining the conversation.  PR in the Social Media era is no different.  Use the “listening posts” that your Social Media experts (or ours) know all about.  Use them to better understand what conversations you should be monitoring and participating in.

Truth #4:  In times of CRISIS, your stakeholders consume, process and use information differently – they are more emotionally engaged. 

As a result, using IMAGES in times of crisis are more effective than words (that dreaded news release again).  So, getting your CEO on video to explain what’s happening, how your addressing the crisis and what to expect is key – post it to YouTube, your website, link it in email blasts, used paid search to drive traffic to your video, and, yes, add hyperlinks to your video in your news releases.  Video is visual and allows you to convey trust, express empathy, to show respect for your stakeholders needs and demonstrate that you’re taking action.


So these are some of the basic truths that I have heard about from experts in Social Media, Public Relations and Stakeholder Communications.  I think they make sense and seem reasonable.  Nothing appears too hard to grasp here in my view.  I asked some of the conference presenters why so many peers face challenges in embracing Social Media.  To these questions, I was presented another truth.  You cannot learn or recommend anything unless you personally first make an effort to try it yourself first and understand it. Seems reasonable. 

So, about those hot TV babes on Facebook….

 

 

As the U.S. recession winds down, and the recovery begins to pick up steam, talent acquisition, development and cultivation will again become important to companies that want to get ahead.

“The War for Talent” is now global and very, very digital. Finding talent might be easier than you think. I’d like to offer a high value, low cost way to find talent in the marketplace and within your organization.

In the information age and knowledge economy we’re operating in, the power of the mind is key component of success – at least for organizations able to tap into that power.

From a management perspective, managers need insight into the minds of their employees like never before. It’s not easy to figure out who is willing to go the extra mile to get the job done.

I believe the answer to the challenges can be found in the blogosphere.

Finding Talent in the Blogosphere

If you establish a companywide blogging program that is open to all employees, at all levels and job functions, it can be an excellent device for gauging the intellectual abilities of your team.

You can do it as internal blogs, public blogs, and topic specific, pre-screened or free for all. Whatever you do you will gain insight into your employees. You will find out which ones are slow to adopt new technologies, which ones have good thoughts, but poor communications skills, great writers with hollow thinking or innovators trapped in task jobs.

You’ll get far more valuable information than you can from performance reviews, meeting attendance or coaching sessions. Simply because it is self selected participation, self-expression and the opportunity to rise to the top or to fade into obscurity.

Just track who is a continuous contributor, who is a commenter and who is absent. Then read those that are intriguing, comment back and see how they conduct a digital conversation. And before you say your business is about relationships and face-to-face today, the future of face to face is digital to digital.

The ability to conduct civil discourse that is a matter of digital record is a daily requirement in business and in life today. The understanding of when to add imagery, video, graphs, links to others and medium appropriate content, is critical and the best new weapons in your arsenal.

I guarantee you that as the talent wars heat up, that your competitors will look for talent in your organization and your employee’s Facebook profiles, blogs, tweets and comments on the digital radar will be part of how they determine who to target for recruitment. You should do the same thing, start with your employees and then move to theirs. The future of your business is dependent upon the next generation of thinkers, doers and digital actors.

 

I just returned from SXSW Interactive (SXSWi) and was blown away by the scale of the festival. There were more than 15,000 people in attendance, looking to expand their knowledge around the Web, social and mobile (for the most part).

It would be impossible for me to summarize the entire festival for you, so here's the "what was trending" version with what you might have missed in the stream:

#1 Location-Based Services Stole the Show

For the first time in many months, something made more noise than Twitter among the Web crowd, namely Foursquare and Gowalla. While there are a bunch of location-based services (LBS) out there, SXSW Interactive was a showdown between Foursquare and Gowalla.

SXSWi was the perfect venue for LBS to take off, due to its geographic focus, large number of events and high concentration of early-adopters. I saw more people checking in on Foursquare than tweeting. Foursquare hit a new usage record at the show, with more than 347,000 check-ins in a day.

Every inch of Austin was checked-in to on one or both of these services during SXSWi, with attendees trying to take over mayorships on any piece of fictional real estate they could find. There's still some question over business models and monetization, but with usage levels like this, there remains a lot of potential.

Gowalla (a similar service) made a fair impact at the festival, but was overshadowed a bit by Foursquare's daily four square games, custom SXSWi badges, heaps of swag, and its star-studded party with the likes of Ashton Kutcher.

While there was a lot of buzz for Foursquare, you really need massive user adoption to make this stuff work. At a show with 15,000+ people, you're bound to have a friend nearby. To really make LBS stick, locations will have to start offering up incentives to people who check in (the most logical extension to all this stuff).

To quote Gary Vaynerchuk's keynote (see #3): "Why the heck would I check in somewhere? If someone gives you a f**king beer for checking in, you're going to check in."

It's true, once businesses start rewarding customers for their check-ins, services like Foursquare are going to explode in popularity (which is what happended when Twitter followers started to get hookups). I wouldn't be surprised to see Foursquare owned by somebody else by the time SXSW rolls around next year.

#2 Private Parts

The more people share online - such as where they're having lunch or who they're hanging out with at SXSWi - the more privacy becomes an issue.

Danah Boyd, Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England, delivered the opening remarks at SXSWi, quickly launching into a mild attack on Google Buzz and Facebook for their recent, well-reported missteps regarding privacy. "Just because something is publicly accessible, it doesn't mean people want it publicized," said Boyd.

As more and more people take to lifestreaming, there's mounting concerns over the sharing of sensitive information. Boyd says she's never met anyone that really knew what their privacy settings were on any social site they use.

While on one hand brands want to open up the lines of communication with customers, they also need to consider any potential privacy implications.

There's a great write-up on Danah's keynote on Techcrunch here.

#3 Gary Vaynerchuk's Keynote

There had to be more than 1,000 people there to hear Gary Vaynerchuk have a conversation with the crowd. Gary is all about connecting with people on a personal level. He stood at the door and personally thanked everyone for attending the keynote (did I mention there were about 1,000 people in there?).

Gary has a no-BS approach to his presentations that reallly make you just want to watch him again. Bottom line? Most companies don't care and consumers know it. When companies even show they care a little, they get rewarded (Zappos is a perfect example).

For a great summary of the keynote, check out Andrew Mager's post on ZDNet. And in case you're wondering, he's got a mean four square serve too.

For a more coloful view into the keynote, you can watch it here. The quality's a bit shaky, but you can still get the content. Keep in mind, Gary's a brilliant speaker, but he does have a potty mouth (in case you get offended by profanity).

#4 Twitter Launches @anywhere

While Foursquare and Gowalla drove the buzz, Twitter still managed to get its share of the lime light. Unfortunately, a good part of the chatter revolved around how boring the keynote was, causing about half the room to leave before it was over.

Dissappointing keynote asside, the launch of @anywhere was significant. @anywhere is a new framework that enables developers to integrate the Twitter experience into their sites. Early @Anywhere partners include eBay, Amazon, Salesforce.com, Bing, Yahoo! and MSNBC.

For the full scoop on @anywhere, check out the official Twitter blog.

#5 Can You Digg It?

Almost launched in the midst of SXSWi was the announcement that Digg is getting a major overhaul. Digg CEO Jay Adelson made the announcement at the "Bigg Digg Shindigg" (love the name). The overhaul will include personalized feeds and the return of the Digg leaderboard. You can learn more about the new version (and sign up for the beta) at http://new.digg.com.

#6 QR Codes

There were QR codes (Quick Response code technology) on everything at SXSWi, from everyone's name badges to the fleet of Chevys on display. QR codes, a special type of bar code, are becoming more prevalent in advertising and product packaging. They provide an added way for consumers to interact with content, typically through a mobile device.

For example, if you used one of the QR readers (like I-Nigma for the iPhone) to scan an attendees badge at SXSWi, you were able to save the person's information. It was a cool way to exchange information, despite the experience being a bit slow. Look for QR codes to show up more and more (more on the SXSWi QR stuff here).

Checking Out

In conclusion, when all the hype dies down, everyone will remember this year's SXSWi as the kickoff of LBS for the masses. If last year was the year of "What are you doing?", this year will certainly be the year of the "Check-in".

Were you there? What was your favorite part of SXSWi? Let us know.

(Image Credits: Danah Boyd Art by amanichannel)

Social media marketing is at the forefront of integrated interactive marketing programs underway at almost every Fortune 500 company out there. Corporate blogging, online video and podcasts are among the most popular strategies used by the world's largest comapnies. But what about Twitter?

What might surprise you is how quickly Twitter is growing as the social medium of choice among Fortune 500 companies. According to recent studies like “Fortune 500 and Social Media: A Longitudinal Study of Blogging and Twitter Usage by America’s Largest Companies,” conducted by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Financial Insite, a Seattle-based Research Firm, Twitter is the platform of choice for Fortune 500 social media marketers.

The study examined the 2009 Fortune 500 in an attempt to quantify their adoption of social media tools and technologies, finding that 22% of Fortune 500 companies have a public-facing corporate blog – six percent more than 2008. The study also found that 86% of these blogs link directly to a corporate Twitter account, a 300% increase over 2008. Even more corporations have Twitter accounts, but not all link to them from their blog.

It would appear that Fortune 500 marketers are moving fast to Twitter for engaging with their key audiences. Of course, upon further analysis, you’d find that only 35% of these Twitter accounts are active – described as having been updated within the past 30 days. If I’m reading the study correctly, that means 65% are not being actively used.

While Fortune 500 companies have realized they need to be on Twitter – probably as defense against username squatting – few have truly embraced Twitter as a social channel. 

Of the groups that have engaged most heavily with Twitter, the insurance industry is leading the way, with 13 active Twitter accounts according to the study. Of course there are also companies like Exxon Mobil, the #1 company in the Fortune 500, that have no presence on Twitter.

A separate analysis of Fortune 500 Twitter, “The Global Social Media Check-Up” conducted by Burson-Marstellar, found that 79% of Fortune 100 Global companies are using one of four popular social media platforms, with Twitter leading Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogging as the platform of choice.

65% of Fortune Global 100 companies have active accounts on Twitter, while only 54% have Facebook accounts, 50% have YouTube channels, and 33% have a corporate blog. There is still plenty of room for improvement here.

Why Is Twitter the Preferred Platform?

Nobody knows for sure why Twitter is so popular, but there’s a good chance that it’s because it’s the easiest platform to launch. Companies can have a Twitter account up and running in a couple of hours (or less). There is a lot more work to do to launch a YouTube channel, corporate blog, or Facebook presence. It also takes considerably less resources to manage content production and audience interaction on Twitter than these other platforms. It’s a relatively low-cost and low-maintenance option for getting in the social media game.

Are Fortune 500 companies getting any value out of Twitter though? According to the Burson-Marstellar study, the answer is “yes”. Twitter accounts to the Fortune Global 100 average 1,489 followers. This doesn’t seem like much when you consider the average Facebook fan page for these companies has more than 40,000 fans, but it's progress.

A full copy of the new research report can be downloaded here: http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesresearch.

 

 

 “The key question isn't "What fosters creativity?" But it is why in God's name isn't everyone creative?” –Abraham Maslow

The idea of creativity is held in high esteem by a great many people. When you see a fantastic work of art, or see a new piece of technology that blows your mind, you can’t help but feel appreciative of the creativity that went into making it. You may also feel envy. “Why can’t I be that creative? My world is too structured to be able to do those sorts of things.”

In my position at our creative advertising agency, it's my job to "be creative", but the truth is that anyone can, and everyone should, be creative. In many ways, I believe people are more creative than they give themselves credit for. It is easy to appreciate grand gestures of creativity: the Gugenheim Museum in Bilbao, the XBOX Natal project, Avatar. But you must realize that those large expressions are merely the accumulation of small frequent expressions of creativity. The people behind them are disposed to looking beyond the boundaries of the everyday. By opening yourself up to the idea that each choice you make can be infused with the unexpected, you will begin to see your life and your business enriched with the individuality of creativity.

So what does it mean to “be creative”? You may not have a gift for the arts, but that in no way hampers your ability to be creative. Simply doing something or seeing the world in a new way is the very essence of creativity. Break free of what you know and get outside of your comfort zone. In its purest form, creativity is anarchy. Of course that type of creativity is only useful in an abstract sense, wielded as a hammer to break through a wall of convention. Truly inspired creativity brings about brilliant new ideas within the constructs of necessary guidelines. For example, I can strap an accordion to a rodeo bull and record the “music” as it tries to throw its rider, but likely that will only result in a painful accumulation of noise. It certainly would qualify as a creative act, but that creativity would be wasted in the final product. It’s important to break out of our familiar way of thinking and acting, but do so while still respecting the natural boundaries of human perception.  Creativity is a delicate balance between spontaneity and limitations. Often “new” ideas will be criticized as derivative. That may be true, but that in does not diminish the achievement. No matter how “out of the box” you get, it is still related to the box in some way. Anything that ignores all conventions is only interesting in the abstract. A relationship to the world we live in and the conditions our lives and businesses thrive in is a necessity for success.

Not everyone can throw away convention and embrace the unknown, nor should they. Clearly, some level of control and stability is necessary in business and in life. But being comfortable with the unexpected will allow you to make more creative choices, and, perhaps more importantly, accept and encourage creative choices in those with whom you work. Start small: re-arrange your office, take a new route home, or run a meeting differently. These things have little risk, but will force you to see things in a new way. It may take you longer to get home, but you may see or experience something new that spawns new ideas or growth in your life. Each small act will make you more open to new ideas and change. Many consultants will tell you that a repeatable process is necessary to create an environment of measurable success, and that is certainly true, but innovation is equally important to business. Repeatable process is the antithesis of innovation. Even the most successful business will ultimately stagnate if it does not embrace change. Indeed you must go beyond simply rolling with the changes of industry and be an initiator of change to truly rise above the rest.

Whether you are a designer or an accountant, a CEO or a secretary, make an active effort to infuse creativity into your life. Train yourself to be open to the new and unexpected, whether it be a new, but accurate use of your brand or an off the wall execution for a social media strategy.  It will make you at least a little uncomfortable and anxious (it should or you are not doing it right), but even the smallest of gestures will also enrich you, both professionally and personally. Where should you start? I don’t know… be creative.

I recently read that the White House has chosen an Open Source CMS (Content Management System) to develop their government Web site. This announcement caught my attention for several reasons--not only are many agencies moving their clients to open source and praising it's virtues, I also started using Drupal this past year and found it remarkably fast and easy to setup and maintain my own Web sites with quality results. Despite some criticism of open source over the years--more and more commercial (and government) developers are choosing it.

It's hard to argue against the benefits of free software, especially when results show that the software does what we expect, often exceeds expectations, and provides more opportunities for expansion than many proprietary products. While relative newcomers Drupal and Wordpress lead the pack for CMS offerings, open source mainstays such as Linux and Perl have been around for many years--not only surviving, but thriving over time. In a study by Amit Deshpande and Dirk Riehle of SAP Labs, LLC, Total Growth of Open Source results have shown that "the total amount of source code and the total number of projects double about every 14 months." Open source enables freedom for both users and developers to move & change quickly when needed, as well as providing more flexibility with software decisions such as to upgrade or not to upgrade. It's really no surprise that businesses and individuals are moving to open source at exponential rates.

Of course, Open Source has always been very much associated with Free, although there are other solid reasons to choose it beyond its cost. The pool of development resources is not limited to a specific company or provider, but instead is seemingly unlimited. As a specific open source project becomes popular, more and more developers start contributing, growing and adding to the code. Not only do they enhance the software to make it better for everyone, but they also create markets for their own support services. The better the code is--more people will use it-- and the more support is needed. Large developer communities have evolved around each software project, contributing to its growth, and administering its support. These open source communities are continually coming up with new innovations, powerful add-ons, extensions, and effective tools.

With so many open source choices available, even the ubiquitous LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl) has come to be accepted as generic term for any completely open source application stack--substituting interchangeable parts from other sources that include "PostgreSQL, SQLLite, Apache Derby," as well as "PHP, Python, Ruby, Groovy and JavaScript." Even behemoth Microsoft has entered the game with their own Open Source CMS Platform.

Additionally, interactive ad agencies are able to offer their managed computer services at lower rates when developers take advantage of Open Source technologies. This enables clients to do more within their budgets. Every size company can now take advantage of Website integration, online advertising, and interactive media development due to the emergence of open source and accumulation of knowledge brought to us by the developer community. Businesses across industries are now embracing these technologies, taking advantage of interactive media, and using a more integrated approach to marketing with the vast number of new tools that are now available from these creative, innovative communities of developers.

I've been hearing the phrase "Drinking from the fire hose" more often than usual lately. The curious thing is that it's coming from Interactive Media Professionals (including myself), as much as from end users. With the exponential growth of the Internet and its related technologies, we now have access to more information, in more places, in more ways than ever before. Web 2.0, Social Media, Application Software Development, Mobile and related technologies are having a profound impact on Interactive Marketing Strategies. Many agencies are capable at traditional & online media marketing, or they may have strong technical capabilities--but, it is rare to find an agency that has all of these abilities and deep technical resources such as Definition 6.

To follow the fire hose analogy--anyone faced with that situation would get out of the way. The high volume and velocity of incoming data require some type of control and direction to be useful to ourselves, our clients, and our business.  Developers, interactive designers, and marketers are faced with the same questions as consumers--how to manage the onslaught of incoming information. Interactive Ad Agencies are faced with the additional responsibility of creating new tools to distribute information in a clear and meaningful way. These interactive professionals are the firemen holding the hose. 

At the height of the dotcom boom, an old colleague used to remind me that technology is simply a way of doing things. As the old broadcast model of advertising becomes obsolete, and user discovery & social interaction drive engagement, the function of marketing itself must now change to meet these communication challenges. This new model now poses new questions about where marketers should be, how they communicate, and when that interaction will occur.  I still remember the first  7-Eleven convenience store that opened in my neighborhood, and discovering that name comes from its operating hours—--it was a big deal to be open until 11PM! Marketers didn’t create more ads to attract customers from 9-5, they simply changed to meet customers on their own terms.

Integrated interactive marketing campaigns must be open and immersed in the culture to create value and be relevant. Successful marketers are positioned alongside their target market, making use of tactics such as Branded Content and Branded Entertainment to engage the user, enabling them to discover that value on their own, and decide what truly fulfills their needs. This is not an easy task, and creating meaningful user interaction grows out of qualified analysis of users and their interactions. Those of us in Media and Advertising have been exposed to these ideas before, but never before have these been more important to interactive design. Today's consumer has become a partner in the design process, and defines how we approach our interactions with them. Social media tools such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter provide marketers with a limitless cache of information to help segment, target and engage users as never before— which only highlights the need for efficient processing of data.

Our obligation to clients is to find the relevant information, manage and organize it, and disperse it to potential customers.  To do this, we interpret client requirements and translate those requirements into a meaningful Interactive Experience. We need to collect and analyze enough user data to create strong, branded messages that reach the intended target. In addition, we must combine data with the tools and applications that make it meaningful to those target consumers.

In this new age of discovery, the true Integrated Interactive Agencies are taking the time and effort to find the tools necessary to do the job, or when needed, create them. With information coming constantly from every direction, those who are efficient at organizing, managing, and presenting it will be successful. Otherwise, we're just spraying a fire hose.  If we attempt to do that, consumers will just get out of the way.

With new businesses and new business models popping up on the Internet like a bag of microwave popcorn, differentiation is far more transitory these days than it once used to be.

Let's take this summary of the 21st Century Corporation from Business Week in August, 28, 2000*, over 9 years ago:

1. Everything gets cheaper faster. The Internet commoditizes every new service or product idea so rapidly by providing the ability to not just compare one or two sources, but 100 or 1,000 sources, that price reduction has accelerated almost out of control.

2. Cutting costs is the answer. With significant downward pressure of margins it is imperative to reduce expenses to maintain profitability.

3. Innovation builds profits. Since you cannot raise prices, and must consistently reduce prices, innovation is required accompanied with rapid expertise development and ingenuity. This advantage is temporary, so innovation must be constant, reflexive and accelerate (rather than coast forward) to address #1 above.

Adaptability

That article was almost a decade ago, and is still relevant, if not even more significant now than it was then. It was published prior to the dot com crash.  Unlike 100 years ago as the Industrial Revolution and the Carnegie's, Rockefellers' and Fords' were taking assembly line production to it's maximum potential, we clearly know it's weaknesses and limitations. One of the most significant limitations is adaptability. Workers specialize so much on their individual task that they cannot readily adapt to other tasks or provide generalization or see the whole picture.

The transition from the assembly line mentality of large deparments and silo style development is a slow one. Integrating departments and collaborating by increasing communication between sales, project managers, creative development, application development, product managers, production and delivery is not as simple as it may sound. Your value chain may involve a very large set of people and keep communication clear requires expertise and training.

New Models for Development

In application software development and internet software development, the models over the last 20 years have evolved considerably. Agile methodologies are gaining traction as a way to create adaptable solutions and modular approaches. This keeps the customer focus as well as the requirements together, and allows flexibility with solution delivery as the landscape changes. Social Media strategy is a fabulous example of this, requirements change so quickly that modular frameworks are developed so that new quick features can be added onto the framework rapidly to meet social change and social needs and Facebook is a fantastic example of this type of structure and development.

Clearly, to stay on top and to consistently provide value, you must value education exponentially, foster creative thinking, be vigilant with the technological landscape, and be able to generate ideas and critical thinking. In Interactive Media Agencies such as Definition6, we constantly strive towards an integrative approach, with all skillsets and all mindsets sharing information and cross-pollinating ideas. We dedicate ourselves to innovation through cross-department research and landscape analysis. Our Innovation Team is specifically dedicated to meeting the demands of the 21st Century business.

* "Twenty-First Century Corporation," Business Week, August 28, 2000, p. 278.

Intuition can guide you to the place of innovation, and analysis guides you to the method of innovation.

Driving down costs is the goal of every business in every industry. Identifying and nailing down Cost Drivers in a Interactive Media Agency is one of the most challenging aspects of Innovation due to the service model and diversity of projects. The more diverse the services and the more capabilities an organization has, the harder the cost drivers are to innovate. This is the challenge.

Create Measurability

In order to analyze data, you need to collect data. The first step is to establish a normalized set of information, and discover commonalities that you measure over time. It's difficult in service business models to identify measurable practices since commonality between projects may not exist. In contrast, it is much easier to find measurable actvities within consistent services. For example, in the realm of public service such as law enforcement, response times can be measured which can lead to innovation in terms of communication technologies, route mapping, and routine patrolling route generation to optimize the response times and measure improvements. In the same light, commonality and metrics need to be put in place so that you can innovate. Without this baseline set of metrics, most improvements are subjective and can be hit and miss.

Measurability and Interactive Marketing

Interactive marketing strategies and improved search engine optimization follow the same metaphorical principle. Because optimization is always a moving target, you have to establish a control on your marketing practices and only change a few independent variables at a time, such as keyword density, or keyword targeting in ads, in order to see their effect. In the case of organic search results, the effect of changes may take weeks or even months before they actually show results. To top it off, search algorithms and prioritization change "without notice." To discover these changes requires a scientific mindset for the search engine optimization consultants.

The cost drivers in Search Engine Marketing involve keyword market prices. Camping a commonly used keyword for PPC can cost you a fortune. Using longtail strategies and finding ways to effectively identify your product, service or company is the innovation point, and only good analysis and keyword research will get you there. Consistency is the rule of the game to establish and maintain hold of brand loyalty, market share, market segment, and also online in terms of keyword ownership, and search engine rankings.

Internet Application Development

With Internet Services, the identification of cost drivers needs to be built into the process by abstracting out parts of the process that show commonality and measurability. This should be the starting gate through which your innovation charges. Like online marketing, application development is a moving target. New technologies explode onto the marketplace on a regular basis, tempting you to change how you do business. Again by using a scientific approach, by controlling your process and making sure you change a few things at a time, you can drive changes from the right point of view rather than hype, and effectively make improvements on your cost drivers.

I read an article on MediaPost that showed how 2 major retailers, The Home Depot and Best Buy, targeted the U.S. Hispanic community.  One company failed while the other is gaining more sales.  What is interesting to me is that it appears that they both took the same approach, got back the same unexpected results, and then went in two different directions.

Both companies created a "U.S. Spanish" website.  Their target was U.S. Spanish speaking consumers.  What they discovered was that they were getting a lot of non-U.S. Spanish speaking visitors to their websites.  These visitors wanted to buy online just like U.S. consumers.  In many cases, the non-U.S. consumers were either visiting relatives or friends in the U.S. or were Mexicans crossing the border to shop.  The prices in the U.S. were cheaper than in their country and so they wanted to get their items in the U.S. and then bring them back home.  So what is the problem with that?

For Home Depot, the problem is that they did not take the foreign credit cards on the U.S. Spanish site.  Best Buy on the other hand embraced the additional and unexpected consumers and did allow the foreign credit cards.  Best Buy is finding that, even though they don't ship overseas, people will order online and ship to friends or family where they will pick up the items later.  They also have found that U.S. Hispanics are using the website to print out information before they go to the stores to purchase the items.  In many cases it is easier for them to understand the information in Spanish.

One of the more interesting sides to this story is that The Home Depot has stores in Mexico, they have a Mexican website (in Spanish, of course), they have an English Canadian website and they have a French Canadian website.  So they are marketing to everone across North America except the the growing number of Spanish speaking Hispanics in the U.S. and those Spanish speaking visitors who wish to purchase in the U.S.

Not knowing the full details of the costs involved, it would be interesting to see the cost for Home Depot to maintain the U.S. Spanish site and the revenue the site could bring in (if they allowed foreign credit cards) and the revenue brought in by those in the U.S. who used the site to gain more information about products they wanted.  It seems to me that 4 months of running the U.S. Spanish site is not enough time to determine its impact and that if Best Buy can make it work for them, The Home Depot should be able to make it work, too.  Besides, if a French Canadian site can work for Canada, why can't a Spanish U.S. site work here?  I wonder if Home Depot is looking for a way to recreate the U.S. Spanish site in a way that will embrace those consumers that liked having the site available.

Are you looking to build a website to market your products or services to the fast growing U.S. Hispanic community?  Definition 6 is an Atlanta interactive marketing agency that can help you.  Besides doing website development and web application development, we can manage your Search Engine Optimization, your Search Engine Marketing and your email marketing campaigns while providing web analytics that ties everything together.  As we gather more and more valuable information about your consumers, we can tweak all methods of marketing to maximize your dollars.  Contact us and let's get a plan in place for you.

I've compiled a small list here of Social Media success stories.  One of the interesting things that I find about most people who have already started marketing and consumer communications using Social Media is that they often say "don't be afraid to try something new" and "don't be afraid of failure".  Some failures have lead to even better campaigns.  If these companies (and more) can try a few ideas, so can you.  Most people familiar with social media agree that if you really want to connect with your consumers and help establish or reinforce brand recognition, you need to get on Social Media outlets now.  For one thing, it is often very cheap to do this while being able to reach out to thousands or even millions of potential and long-standing customers.  So please review these stories to see how easy some of them got started and the great successes that they had.

1. Taco Mac on Twitter
Followers of Taco Mac can follow the individual Taco Mac location of their choice.  They get updates on Taco Mac's latest specials and reminders of special events.  Taco Mac gets a lot more people attending special events because many of them might have forgotten.  On Pint Night they are running out of free pint glasses in 1 hour instead of 3 hours like it was before Twitter.  What else could your company do if you were sending constant "reminders" to your customers?
(http://www.ajc.com/business/taco-mac-uses-twitter-102656.html)
(http://twitter.com/TMacLindbergh)


2. Masi Bicycles on Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube
New Masi Brand Manager, Tim Jackson, was given a very small budget and they were already spending much of that on some magazine ads.  So he had to come up with an inexpensive way to better market the Masi brand.  The easy (and cheap) way for him was to create a blog that he regularly posts to.  This actually helped him to establish good relationships with some of his vendors.  He is also actively using Twitter and Facebook and is moving toward podcasts and video.  With a new "cult" following, sales are really starting to grow.  What's really interesting is that Tim had never done any of this before.
(http://mediahunter.typepad.com/media_hunter/2008/07/social-media-su.html#more)
(http://twitter.com/MasiBicycles)


3. CNN with Facebook
CNN had a huge success when they teamed up with Facebook to present the Presidential Inaugaration and Michael Jackson's funeral.  21.3 million live video streams!  That's a lot of people.  Oh, and guess what?  CNN's first attempt failed (The Primary Debates).  But they figured it out before the inaugaration.  What can your company do that would attract watchers, even if you don't get 21.3 million?  Maybe a live fashion show for a new line of clothing?  Perhaps a live demonstration of how your product works or a new product offering? Or maybe a conversation with your CEO?
(http://vmarketingblog.com/2009/07/31/cnn-and-social-networking/)
(http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/01/21/inauguration.online.video/index.html)
(http://mashable.com/2009/01/20/cnn-facebook-inauguration-numbers/)
(http://newteevee.com/2009/01/20/facebook-cnn-is-future-of-tv/)


4. Zappos on Twitter, Blogs
Customer satisfaction and relationships.  That is what Zappos is all about.  QUALITY interactions.  Not only do the CEO and COO get online, but many of their other employees do too.  It is like they are your friends.  What would it be like for your company if people considered your brand as their friend?  Zappos has come to the realization that your brand isn't what you say it is, it is what the consumers say it is.  They proudly look for and respond to negative comments about them.  They are all about "making things right".  They want people to be comfortable not just with Zappos' products, but with Zappos' employees.  How would people respond to your employees if they were responding to and interacting with consumers online?  To quote from the article below "we may not always remember what someone tells us, but we generally remember how we felt when we were interacting with the person. And when people feel respected and engaged, whether it is in-person with a co-worker or online on a social network, they have a natural desire to tell other people about the experience."
(http://mashable.com/2009/04/26/zappos/)
(http://twitter.com/zappos)


5. Common Wealth Credit Union (CWCU) on YouTube
CWCU wanted to target a specific demographic.  People between the ages of 17 and 25.  They wanted a way to keep the buzz going while acquiring new customers for life.  They created a microsite for this campaign that is managed by someone who is 17 - 25 years old and use YouTube to upload videos that will appeal to people their age, usually videos of themselves.  People can interact with the website by answering poll questions, watching videos, sharing pictures, submitting job postings, adding information about free stuff in their communities, and of course, applying for a chequing account.  The site "spokester" also blogs about money with fun little YouTube videos.  They opened up 2400 new accounts in the first 8 months after the campaign started (Note, the article does not say how that compares to previous months, but it must be good because they are still going and have a new "spokester" with lots of new material).
(http://mediahunter.typepad.com/media_hunter/2008/08/social-media--1.html#more)
(http://www.youngfreealberta.com/)


So those are just a few examples of companies making the most with Social Media.  In many cases it involved very little cost.  In other cases there was quite a bit of time, effort and money put into it, but the results were out of this world.  Given that there are several very active social media sites, it would be a smart move to get your company out there and in touch with your current and potential customers.

If you are looking for great ideas, let Definition 6 help you.  We are an online interactive marketing agency with experience in Social Media efforts.  There are so many good online marketing techniques and we can help you find the one (or more) that are right for you.  If you go to www.definition6.com, you can check out our new game that interacts directly with Twitter called TwitterINGO.  Or you can check out how we integrated AutoExtra's campaign with MySpace.  We can also help you with mobile marketing strategies.

If any of the above stories don't convince you to get on the Social Media bandwagon, then check out Mashable.com's "10 of the Smartest Big Brands in Social Media".