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Drinking Songs – Good Clean Fun

admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 22:26:13 +0000

Boston Irish Pub Sing A long

Revels Pub Sings and Boston Harbor Cruises

For more info CLICK HERE

Revels seasonal pub sings at great watering holes around Boston are for anyone who loves to sing. They evolved out of the impromptu gatherings of cast members who wanted to keep singing after rehearsals or performances. Revels music director George Emlen leads an evening of sea chanteys, English drinking songs, rousing gospel tunes, and old favorites. Can’t remember the words? The Revels pub songbook is yours for the evening.

Pub Sing #2

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Doyle’s Cafe

3484 Washington St., Jamaica Plain, MA

6:00-9:00 PM

Tickets: $15.00 / Past Cast and Crew: $10.00

We’re back at one of our favorite watering holes – Doyle’s Cafe. Share a pint and a song with us. Order dinner and chat with friends: 6:00-7:00; singing: 7:00-9:00. Directions

For tickets, contact Jen Sur at 617-972-8300 x31 or

Boston Harbor Cruise and Sing #1

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Rowes Wharf, Boston

Boarding Starts: 6:30 PM; Cruise: 7:00-9:00 PM

Tickets: $35.00

This event is rain or shine

Join us for a fabulous sunset cruise around Boston Harbor and fill the night with singing, led by Revels music director George Emlen and musician/songleader David Coffin. Bring a picnic for dinner (but no alcohol please – that is available on board). This event sells out! Please note: our event happens on the second deck of the boat, up one flight of stairs.

For tickets, contact Jen Sur at 617-972-8300 x31 or

Reserve your space online

Boston Harbor Cruise and Sing #2

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Rowes Wharf, Boston

Boarding Starts: 6:30 PM; Cruise: 7:00-9:00 PM

Tickets: $35.00

This event is rain or shine

Such a popular event, we added a second cruise! Join us for a fabulous sunset cruise around Boston Harbor and fill the night with singing, led by Revels music director George Emlen and musician/songleader David Coffin. Bring a picnic for dinner (but no alcohol please – that is available on board). This event sells out! Please note: our event happens on the second deck of the boat, up one flight of stairs.

For tickets, contact Jen Sur at 617-972-8300 x31 or

Best Employee Handbook Ever!

admin — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:10:11 +0000

How to Write an Employee Handbook

Media Crush On…Valve!

Just when you thought you’ve seen it all, along comes something so innovative and disruptive you can’t help but fall in love – This week our office is crushing on Valve’s new employee handbook!

We went right ahead and aggregated a couple of pieces of delicious content for your enjoyment.

If you’ve ever wondered how some of the most successful companies in the world are able to attract the best talent around and produce outstanding products year in and year out, Valve’s Handbook for New Employees is a great place to start educating yourself. A PDF of the handbook was recently uploaded at Flamehaus that reveals just how different (and awesome) it is to work at Valve.

Unlike a traditional job where the employee is given a desk and a set of instructions from a manager, those working a Valve don’t have a manager. As outlined in the handbook, hierarchy is great for maintaining predictability, repeatability and managing a large number of people. But for one of the top entertainment companies on the planet, telling an employee to sit behind a desk and do one specific task kills 99 percent of their value.

CLICK HERE to read THE BEST Employee Handbook Ever Written!

As such, employees at Valve don’t have managers – there’s nobody to report to each day. Furthermore, workers get to select which projects they want to work on, have the power to green-light new projects and even ship products.

Every employee desk has a set of wheels on the bottom that serves two purposes. The first is a symbolic reminder that one should always consider where they could move to be more valuable. The other is literal – team members often move their desks close together when working on a project for obvious reasons.

The handbook paints a picture of an unbelievably fun and free work environment, including how all employees are equal, how employees are free to choose what projects to work on and that “for the most part working overtime for extended periods indicates a fundamental failure in plan- ning or communication. If this happens at Valve, it’s a sign that something needs to be reevaluated and corrected.” But my favorite passage has to be this:

Rather than spoil the entire thing for you, you can read the whole thing below, thanks to Scribd user matthew5034 or download a PDF copy from the Flamehaus forum.

CRUSH OF THE WEEK!!!!

Facebook Consumer Purchasing Habits “What’s NOT Hot”

admin — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 15:07:06 +0000

Eight Products the Facebook Generation Will Not Buy

By Charles B. Stockdale and Michael B. Sauter

Consumer tastes are changing at a greater rate than ever before.

Not surprisingly, the purchasing habits of the youngest generation present the most dramatic shifts — a reflection of what they find important. 24/7 Wall St. has identified eight popular products that the “Facebook generation” is not buying.

Generation Y, generally defined as those born between 1980 and 1999, have lost interest in many of the services and products their parents found important.

For example, younger Americans are less interested in cars. In 1998, 64.4% of potential drivers 19-years old and younger had drivers licenses. By 2008, that rate had dropped to 46.3%, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

[More from 24/7 Wall St.: America’s Nine Most Damaged Brands]

What young adults care about has shifted. A recent study by Gartner research revealed that, if forced to choose, 46% of all 18-to-24-year-old drivers in the United States would choose access to the Internet over access to a car.

However, many products that have declined in popularity among the youth are more a result of the changing tastes across all ages than a generational shift.

Examples include lower sales in traditional cell phones, maps and CDs. In 2002, compact discs had a more than 95% market share of music sales.

In 2010, they had less than half. Various reports suggest this decline is the result of all age groups moving away from CD sales toward digital sales.

24/7 Wall St. has identified eight of the country’s most popular products that are losing favor, either solely among young adults or at a significantly higher rate among that group.

To demonstrate these products’ waning popularity, 24/7 reviewed data from a number of major research firms and government agencies.

We looked at products in every major sector, including transportation, digital electronics, food, beverages and other miscellaneous consumer goods.

1. Email

In 2010, at the launch of Facebook’s then-new messaging service, Mark Zuckerberg predicted the decline of electronic mail, stating that “Email is too slow … email is too formal.”

Time is proving Zuckerberg right. From December 2009 to December 2010, time spent using email by the 12- to 17-years-old age group dropped a tremendous 59%.

In comparison, time spent using email by people 55 to 64-years-old has increased 22%, and it has increased 28% among those 65 years and older.

2. Beer

Light beer has become to the current generation of youth what regular beer was just a few decades ago. In 1990, more Budweiser was sold than the top three light beers combined.

Twenty years later, Budweiser has taken a backseat to Bud Light, which sold as much as the top four regular beers combined.

The country has taken a major generational shift in favor of light beers, which now account for four of the five most popular beers sold domestically.

As reported by St. Louis Today, Budweiser believes four out of 10 people in their mid-20s have never tried regular beer. In 1988, that rate was just 1.5 out of ten.

Beer Marketer’s Insights editor Eric Shepard said when asked about young drinkers turning to light beer, “The heaviest beer drinkers are young males and that’s where the market had been going over the last decade or so.”

3. Newspapers

While readership rates for print newspapers are falling across the board, the country’s younger generation has abandoned the medium the most.

As of 2010, only 7% of 18- to 24-year-olds reported having read a print newspaper the day before, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

This is the first time that figure has reached single digits. This age group also has among the highest rates of people reportedly receiving news through social networking sites or Twitter.

4. Cars

As recently as 1998, 64.4% of potential drivers ages 19 and younger had drivers licenses, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

As of 2008, that amount had dropped to 46.3%. Additionally, 46% of drivers aged 18 to 24 report that they would choose Internet access over owning a car, according to research firm Gartner.

People are also waiting longer to get their licenses. According to the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute, in 1983 one-third of all licensed drivers in U.S. were under 30.

Today, only 22% of drivers are under 30. Companies such as General Motors (NYSE: GM) have reached out to more youth-oriented advertising companies, such as MTV Scratch, to address this widening gap in their sales.

5. Landline phones

Landline phones are losing popularity among Generation Y, who are becoming increasingly content with only having wireless phones.

According to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics, 51.3% of Americans aged 25 to 29 lived in households with only wireless phones in the first six months of 2010.

This is the first time the number of adults in wireless-only households has been greater than the number of adults in landline households for any age group.

When looking at all ages combined, less than one-quarter of adults lived in households with only wireless phones.

6. Cigarettes

Smoking rates among young people have historically exceeded those of the general population.

Now that group is dropping the habit quicker than anyone.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the share of people 18 to 24 years of age who were current cigarette smokers decreased by 17.6% from 2005 to 2010 — the largest decrease among any age group.

The share among 45- to 64-year-olds dropped only 3.6%.

The amount of Americans 65 and older who smoke actually increased 10.5%.

[More from 24/7 Wall St.: The 10 Most Hated Companies in America]

7. Desktop computers

Millennials are the only generational group to be more likely to own a laptop computer than a desktop. According to data from Pew Research Center, 70% own a laptop, while 57% own a desktop.

By contrast, 64% of those aged 57-65 own a desktop, while only 43% own a laptop. Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner, states in LAPTOP Magazine that those in Generation Y simply “are not buying PCs as their first, or necessarily main, device.”

8. Television

Adults aged 18 to 24 watch less traditional television than any other age group in the country, according to Nielsen’s most recent Cross Platform Report.

That group, on average, watches just under 24 hours per week. The national average is approximately 32.5 hours.

One of the leading reasons for this difference is Generation Y’s relationship with the Internet.

According to a report published in April 2010 by electronics review/research company Retrevo, 23% of those under 25 watch “most” of their television online, compared to 8% for everyone.

How Siri and Google effect Mobile Purchases

admin — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 18:12:27 +0000

Apple’s Siri to influence shopping

If you don’t think that Siri is going to effect the way consumers are shopping – think again everyone.

If you think that Android is going to sit back and not roll out an improved and more robust version of Siri – Think again – the gauntlet has been thrown down and the battle yet to begin.

Some areas of expertise that may help Google compete is their access to the immediate data. The Google assistant will be able to move and deliver information more accurately and effectively due to the ongoing data pull they employ. I’ve experimented with Siri and quite frankly those commercials they are broadcasting are not based in reality – they show us the final result of many layers of questions and answers with Siri – go ahead and ask Siri to call you a Rock God see what happens….

B. Gallagher – Mobile Market Review

For Google Assistant to succeed:

( courtesy of SEO Journal - CLICK HERE )

Move away from the returning search results model and towards the Assistant model. Instead of simply returning 10 results, the end user needs information related to a specific goal (i.e. suggest the nearest coffee shop with good reviews).
The information and data that Google has collected on end-users should allow the Assistant to personalize the suggestions and customize information in a way that specifically meets each individual user’s needs (i.e. know that a specific user is more likely to frequent a specific brand of coffee shops).
In order to be successful, the new Assistant has to be fun to use!

The iOS personal assistant is an attractive helper for checking prices, making lists and more…

Even while Siri is in the hands of relatively few consumers, Apple’s digital assistant looks to have serious potential to change how people use their smartphones, mostly by streamlining the fast-growing smartphone shopping experience both in, near and out of stores.

Data from February 2012, from Catapult Marketing, showed that more than one-third of shoppers have either already used or would be interested in using Siri to compare prices at the shelf, while nearly as many would want Siri to check inventory for them at another store.

Even more popular: sending Siri off in search of coupons and deals while the smartphone owner shopped

Grocery shopping will likely be most affected by Siri and her future competitors, with just under half of respondents saying they had used Siri for this purpose or would be interested in doing so. They also planned to use Siri’s price comparison, list-making and other capabilities to shop for electronics (39%), apparel and home appliances (33% each). Thirty percent weren’t interested in using Siri for shopping.

Axiom Mobile Marketing is leading the way with over 100,000 apps already being delivered.

Having delivered the mobile backbone of major retailers like Ebay, Starbucks and many more…Ease of integration with all process and systems will put a smile on your CIO and CTO and the entire IT department! The dashboard is intuitive and easy to use!

Contact us today for a free mobile audit, an initial strategy plan and a general overview of where mobile marketing fits in your overall strategy.

Whatever stage of development you are at we can enhance, review, supply and provide input for you.

Our development team has won mutliple awards and most recently we recieved the Mobi award for app dev of the year!

Changing the face of mobile one businesses at a time!

Engagement, Rewards, Customer Satisfaction

This article has excerpts courtesy of E-Marketing – Infographics courtesy of E-Marketing

For original content and more - CLICK HERE

Disable Google Personal Search

admin — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 18:33:34 +0000

How to Disable Google Personal Search Results

How to Disable Google Personal Search Results - Brian Gardner

Article Courtesy of: Brian Gardner

Recently Google announced that it will be rolling out a new kind of search – one that’s more personal to you.

This new search will include three different types of features – personal results, profiles in search and people and pages.

If you’re like me and do a lot of testing with keywords and rankings, you’re annoyed by the idea that your habits on the internet will show up in your search results. While I somewhat understand how this is relevant to me, it gets in the way of identifying what the outside world is looking for.

In other words – I want to know what YOU search for, and where my pages rank when YOU search for things.

Last month I Googled how to disable Google personal search results to see how I can search for things that aren’t tainted by my internet and social media habits.

I was taken to school and learned a few things. So if you are wondering how to disable Google personal search, you can follow any of the methods below.

Method #1

If you want to do it on the fly, and for just the search you’ve made simply look in the upper right hand corner of your search results page for this:

Notice there are two icons – the person represents the option to show personal results, and the globe represents the option to hide personal results.

Simply click the hide personal results button, and instantly all personal results will be removed from your Google search.

Method #2

If you want to take the first method a step further, and disable Google personal search results for good you can do it through your search settings screen.

In the same area where you disabled Google personal search on the fly, you’ll see a gear icon – which will drop down and look like this:

Click the “Search settings” option, and you’ll be taken to a screen like this, where you can select the “Do not use personal results” option:

Method #3

There’s an old-school method of disabling Google personal search, which isn’t practical as you have to append a parameter to the end of the search URL.

Let’s pretend that you were searching for StudioPress. The URL that you’d end up with would look like http://www.google.com/search?q=studiopress.

If you want to disable Google personal search, simply add &pws=0 to the end of the URL – resulting in http://www.google.com/search?q=studiopress&pws=0.

Conclusion

There you have it.

Now you can easily search for your keywords without your Google personal results showing up.

Not only will this allow you to identify your rankings better, it also gives you a head start on your competition.

Article Courtesy of: Brian Gardner

Automotive Customers “Deal from a Distance”

admin — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 19:47:24 +0000

Call Centers are Cool Again

Article Courtesy of: Call Revu

Automotive Dealerships have been amongst the companies that had to book the highest losses due to the worldwide economic crises and it’s aftermath.

Since then they have managed to make a huge comeback especially during 2011; both manufacturers and dealers are expanding their businesses at a large pace and business’ are recovering to pre-crisis states.

The surviving dealer body has become nimble and able to respond to all new marketing demands.

Among those are the increased demands of the buyer to “deal from a distance” until they feel safe.

The Telephone and the Internet combine to provide that distance.

Fast, effective, and transparent communication with potential customers is required to prevent losing market share to those that have recognized this wave.

Dealers are turning back to try again what once failed for many… The Call Center.

In the past, these were called different names and had much different design than what is demanded now. The most common of which was the BDC with rotating sales team members spending shifts on the phone…for the most part a huge failure who’s nick name became “Business Detention Center”.

The movement now is to staff the Call Center with non-sales experienced specialists, with very targeted training focused on skillfully providing fast, accurate information, with the singular goal of setting an appointment.

Communicating with potential buyers, or regular customers, properly is of key importance.

All channels of communication (email, fax, text, Tweets, Facebook comments, etc.) must receive attention, but the telephone is still the most important form of communication. When the phone rings, it is an immediate contact with a potential sales or service opportunity, and when answered immediately and effectively has demonstrated it will drive a better customer experience, more appointments and more sales… A good impression is a must during every phone call, to prevent both new and retained customer abandonment.

The incorporation of Call Center services has shown it can not only properly triage phone calls, but allow more efficient distribution of labor, and increase appointment set and show rates.

Statistics show that that when a high performing Call Center team answers the phone, some magic happens:

Callers hanging up on hold and going to Voice Mail is reduced by 26%
Connected Sales Calls setting appointments go from 29% to 55%
Service Appointment Rates go from 45% on the inbound calls to 65%

Statistics also indicate that the out bound follow up of “UN-Appointed Sales Calls” is doubled–from 20% to 40% in a Call Center environment… an increase from 43 total appointments set, to 73 !!

Dramatic performance enhancement that is measured where it should be—the Financial Statement.

Chip King

President

Call-Revu

Online Video Views Growing – 40 Billion in January

admin — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 03:43:28 +0000

181 Million Americans Watched 40 Billion Online Videos in January

Greg Jarboe | Article Courtesy of: Search Engine Watch

The comScore Video Metrix service reported this week that 181 million U.S. Internet users watched nearly 40 billion videos of online video content in January 2012. The average viewer watched 22.6 hours of online video content that month.

The top five online video content properties in January were:

Google sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube, with 152 million unique viewers.
VEVO (which is powered by YouTube) with 51.5 million.
Yahoo sites with 49.2 million.
Viacom Digital with 48.1 million.
Facebook with 45.1 million.

During the month, nearly 40 billion videos were viewed, with Google sites generating the highest number at 18.6 billion, followed by Hulu with 877 million, and VEVO with 717 million.

The comScore Video Metrix data for YouTube partners in January 2012 revealed that video music channels VEVO (50.6 million viewers) and Warner Music (29.7 million viewers) maintained the top two positions. Gaming channel Machinima continued to rank third with 23.8 million viewers, followed by Maker Studios Inc. with 12.5 million, FullScreen with 11.6 million and Big Frame with 8.2 million.

Among the top 10 YouTube partners, VEVO demonstrated the highest engagement (62 minutes per viewer) and highest number of videos viewed (696 million), while Machinima exhibited the second highest engagement (60 minutes per viewer) and number of videos viewed (347 million).

A Closer Look at Machinima

Last month, we took a closer look at VEVO. So, this month, let’s take a closer look at Machinima.

The word “machinima” is a loose hybrid of the words “machine” and “cinema” and is used to describe the process of creating real-time animation by manipulating a videogame’s engine and assets.

The company Machinima is a “next generation” video entertainment network for video gamers, providing a broad range of gaming-focused editorial and community programming for the hard-to-reach 18-34 year old male demographic. Worldwide, over 149 million unique gamers viewed in excess of 1.3 billion videos on Machinima January 2012, making it the top Entertainment Channel on YouTube. In addition to YouTube, Machinima properties are also found on other global distribution platforms including Facebook, Twitter, iOS and Android.

In addition to producing expansive editorial content, the company’s suite of applications, tools, and technologies motivates players to be highly engaged and active with their favorite games. Machinima builds enthusiastic communities around and in between game launches and DLC releases, distributing “official” videos and producing custom content.

Machinima’s channel on YouTube has more than 3 billion views and almost 4.2 million subscribers. The most popular video on the channel is “Avatar Trailer The Movie (New Extended HD Trailer) .”

But wait, there’s more!

Machinima has also launched other YouTube channels, including:

Machinima Respawn, which has 767 million views and almost 1.8 million subscribers.
Machinima Realm, which has almost 83 million views and close to 492,000 subscribers.
Machinima Sports, which has almost 56 million views and over 344,000 subscribers.
Machinima Trailer Vault, which has more than 35 million views, and close to 250,000 subscribers.

What Does This Mean to Marketers?

If your target audience is the 18-24 year old male demographic, you now know one of the places to reach them.

According to Nielsen @Plan Q3’11, 67 percent of all men 18-24, or 6.2 million out of 9.2 million online users in this demographic, are on YouTube.

Men aged 18 to 24 who are heavy users of vehicle navigation systems and they provide frequent advice on electronics. In addition,

67 percent attended a movie in the last 30 days.
56 percent rented a movie in the last 30 days.
42 percent provide frequent advice on music.
32 percent attended a movie during its opening weekend in the last 30 days.
32 percent listened to a saved digital file on their computer in the last 30 days.
31 percent watched a saved video file on their computer in the last 30 days.

This means that YouTube reaches 4.4 times more men 18-24 than ESPN.

As the father of two sons in the 18-34 year old male demographic, I can verify most of these findings.

And it’s worth noting that neither one of my sons owns a TV.

Red Sox Spend $78 Million on Jet Blue Park & Forgot to Register the .Com

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:46:51 +0000

Site Unseen: Red Sox Spring Training Park Gaffe

Article Courtesy of: THE POST GAME – Written by: Ben Maller

Jet Blue Park - Red Sox - Eric Engelman

Sure the Chicago Cubs can’t compete with the Red Sox most seasons, but a fan of the lovable losers just pulled of a World Championship move in cyberspace.

Boston’s beloved baseball team is moving into JetBlue Park this spring in Ft. Myers, Fla. The new crown jewel of the Grapefruit League cost an estimated $78 million to build … but they probably wish they’d spent a few more bucks.

A resident not far from the new ballpark owns the most likely web domain name for the Red Sox new spring home. Eric Engelman purchased the site last year.

“It was kind of funny to me because I couldn’t believe nobody checked it first,” Engelman told WINK TV. “I just went on to godaddy.com and typed in jetbluepark.com and its was available. So I went ahead, searched out a coupon online and bought it.”

So for a grand total of eight dollars, Engelman bought JetBluePark.com. But since he’s not a Red Sox supporter, he figured he’d have some fun with fans of the New England team.

“One day it just clicked in my head that it would be funny if I put it to the yankees.com,” said Engelman.

And now fans who visit Jetbluepark.com are instantly forwarded to the home page of the BoSox bitter rivals, the New York Yankees.

Don’t get Engelman wrong — he’s not a Bronx Bombers fan. His favorite team is the Cubs. ??”I just thought it was kind of a funny thing and I figured maybe a dozen people in the world would have ever see it,” he said.

Sam Kennedy, the Red Sox executive vice president and chief operating officer, told WINK TV he will look into the domain name ownership issue. Engleman said he already checked and neither the Red Sox nor JetBlue Airlines own trademark rights on JetBlue Park.

Since the Cubbies don’t win much at Wrigley Field, maybe they should play more games on the Information Superhighway.

###############################################################

Jetbluepark.com is not registered to Boston Red Sox

LEHIGH ACRES, Fla. — When you hear the words Jet Blue Park, you might automatically assume all things Red Sox. But it turns out, Jet Blue Park is connected to their Yankee rivals on the information super highway.

This is something Red Sox nation will not be happy about. Jet Blue Park, it’s the new spring training home to the Boston Red Sox but a Lehigh Acres man has the web domain to the park and it takes you to the home page of the New York Yankees.

“It was kind of funny to me because I couldn’t believe no body checked it first,” said Eric Engelman, owner of jetbluepark.com

If the Boston Red Sox thought Jet Blue Park was all Boston, all the way down to the same color green that is used at Fenway Park, they’re mistaken.

“Found a discount and purchased it for $8,” said Engelman.

Engelman thought of something else.

“I just went on to godaddy.com and typed in jetbluepark.com and its was available so I went ahead, searched out a coupon online and bought it,” said Engelman.

Type in the words jetbluepark.com and you’ll find something Red Sox fans might cringe at.

“One day it just clicked in my head that it would be funny if I put it to the yankees.com,” said Engelman.

Jetbluepark.com takes you to the home page of the arch nemesis of the boys from Boston, the New York Yankees.

“I just thought it was kind of a funny thing and I figured maybe a dozen people in the world would have ever see it,” said Engelman.

Engelman enjoys the favorite past time but these aren’t even his favorite teams.

“I’m not a fan of the Yankees, I’m not a fan of the Red Sox, I’m a Cubs fan,” said Engelman.

Our partners at the News Press say the Red Sox Chief Operating Manager, Sam Kennedy, plans to look into the domain name change but Engleman says its not up to the Beantown ball players.

“Red Sox don’t own the park, Jet Blue doesn’t own the park, you and I, we own the park,” said Engelman.

For the last year, Engleman has owned the rights to jetbluepark.com and says no one from the Red Sox organization has approached him. He doesn’t plan to change anything about it, he says he’ll enjoy the laughs for now.

“It was one of those things, for $8, I was willing to have a little bit of fun with it and I think I’m getting my money worth,” said Engelman.

Engleman did a little research and says there is a trademark on Jet Blue but not Jet Blue Park.

Total Recall – “Does anyone read anymore?”

admin — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:28:07 +0000

The Dramatic Impact Of Social Video Recommendations On Brand Metrics

Article Courtesy of: Real SEO & Greg Jarbo

According to new research commissioned by Unruly Media, viewers are far more likely to recall a brand name and engage with an ad’s message if a branded video has been recommended to them by a peer. The survey, conducted by Decipher Research to measure the effectiveness of social video advertising, found that social video recommendations had a direct impact on traditional brand metrics and ad enjoyment.

The new research found:

Brand recall and brand association rose 7 percent among viewers who had peers recommend the videos versus viewers who found it by browsing;
73 percent of respondents who viewed a peer-recommended video recalled the brand when prompted versus 68 percent of viewers who had browsed to the video directly;
There was a 14 percent increase in the number of people who enjoyed the video following a recommendation versus those who had discovered it by browsing;
People who enjoyed a video were 97 percent more likely to purchase the product featured in the video.

The study, which surveyed online video viewers, aged 18-34, across four social video campaigns from top fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands Guinness, Coca-Cola, Unilever’s Cornetto and Energizer Batteries from July to November 2011, sought to determine the impact of peer recommendations.

“Social video is a powerful format for engaging consumers. If a brand creates great video content and makes it easy to share, it will see impressive results across the entire purchase funnel,” said Unruly COO Sarah Wood in a press release.

The survey, organized in conjunction with the brands’ agency partners Carat, Vizeum, Mindshare and MEC, was issued today in a free white paper entitled “Social Ad Effectiveness: An Unruly Whitepaper” and was part of a presentation at the iStrategy conference in San Francisco on Feb. 1, 2012, by Art Zeidman, Unruly’s President, Americas.

I dug into the survey methodology, because it knocked some of my assumptions into a cocked hat. Unruly commissioned Decipher, a leading research company, to determine a methodology and execute this study. Data was gathered from four FMCG brands, so perhaps results might differ for more considered purchases.

Viewers could opt in to the survey directly from an annotation within the Unruly video player or from the video’s YouTube page. The data gathered from viewers following a recommendation was compared with that of viewers who had arrived at the video by browsing, to determine the effects of recommendations on brand metrics and post viewing behavior. And 976 surveys were completed.

The data clearly shows that viewers enjoy recommended videos more than non-recommended videos: there was a 14 percent increase in the number of people who enjoyed the video following a recommendation versus those who had discovered it by browsing. Moreover, a recommendation reduced the number of people who did not enjoy the video by 41 percent.

Viewer enjoyment of branded video is important because it has a direct impact on key brand metrics. Viewers who enjoyed the video they watched demonstrated 139 percent higher brand association, 97 percent higher purchase intent, 35 percent higher brand favorability, and 14 percent higher brand recall than their counterparts who did not enjoy the video.

In addition, 68 percent of viewers who had browsed to the video correctly recalled the brand when prompted, compared to 73 percent of viewers who had arrived at the video following a recommendation. This 7 percent uplift suggests that video viewers are in a more receptive and attentive frame of mind following a recommendation, allowing brands that produce and distribute social content to benefit from closer communication with their audiences.

Recommendations caused a 7 percent increase in brand association: agreement with key brand statements increased from 41 percent among viewers who had browsed to the video to 44 percent among viewers who seen the video following a recommendation. This result reinforces the above suggestion that recommendations make viewers more receptive to brand messaging.

There was also a drop of more than one fifth in the number of respondents that disagreed with key brand statements. Recommendations have a large role to play for brands in changing off-message perceptions amongst their audiences as well as in actively cultivating on-message perceptions.

Brand favorability and purchase intent remained unchanged with recommendation. This is likely to be because all four of the tested brands were well established, high profile brands with a high favorability index. Seasonality could have skewed purchase intent, as both soft drinks and ice creams are highly consumed during the summer, when the campaigns took place. Also, the products advertised on the test campaigns were FMCGs, where purchase intent is higher than average vs. other sectors and unlikely to show much change. Running the survey against new product launch campaigns would be likely to demonstrate measurable effects for these two metrics.

Viewers of the social videos tested went on to perform a multitude of brand or video related actions, notably 49 percent of viewers purchased the advertised product within three days of the view. And 38 percent of viewers spoke to someone in person about the video, showing a social video view to stimulate real life conversation: what starts online becomes interchangeable with real life in the minds of today’s consumers. Interestingly, online sharing and emailing of the link are immediate reactions, highlighting the need for sharing functionality within a video player – users do not come back and share a video later, it is a spontaneous exercise. And 9 percent of users searched for the brand, and 4 percent of users searched for products of that type: so, social video viewing is having an effect across all aspects of the purchase funnel.

This research demonstrates that social video significantly increases brand attention.
The power of social video lies in the recommendation to view content. This recommendation comes not only from peers in social media environments, but also from authoritative blogs and news sources covering advertiser content editorially.

The impact of the recommendation on consumers is considerable:

Viewers are more likely to enjoy a video when it has been recommended than when encountered through browsing (14 percent higher enjoyment)
Viewers are more likely to recall a brand name when the social video has been recommended than when encountered through browsing (7 percent higher recall)
Viewers are more likely to engage with an ad’s messages when the social has been recommended than when encountered through browsing (10 percent higher brand association)

Ultimately enjoyment of the video correlated positively with all tested brand metrics in the sales funnel, including brand favorability and final purchase intent.

Hey, you can’t make this stuff up.

Source: The Impact Of Social Video Recommendations On Brand Metrics (Research) http://www.reelseo.com/social-video-recommendations-brand-metrics-unruly/#ixzz1lzPMidZ4

Search – Banners – Video “Where the $Dollars$ Go”

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:34:35 +0000

Online Ad Spending Consolidates Among Search, Banners, Video

Three ad formats will get at least 80% of online dollars through 2015

As US online ad spending closes in this year on $40 billion, the bulk of that spending will go toward just a few formats: search, banners and video advertising.

These three formats will make up upwards of 80% of all spending through 2016, eMarketer predicts.

Search is and will remain by far the leading format, although its share of total online ad spending will slip slightly from 2012 to 2016 as online video ad spending nearly doubles its share from 7.9% in 2012 to 15% in 2016.

Video continues to be the fastest-growing online ad format, with spending increasing by nearly 55% this year, following growth of 42.1% in 2011.

Strong double-digit growth will continue throughout eMarketer’s forecast period.

Growth for several other formats remains strong as well, especially with the prospect of a major national election and summer Olympic Games in 2012 to boost rates.

The continued dominance of search as the leading digital advertising format comes as little surprise, with its near-universal adoption rates among consumers and popularity on both the desktop and mobile web.

Meanwhile, the continued strength of banner ads across desktop and mobile devices, coupled with a surge in video ad spending on both platforms, constitute the two most important and related story-lines in display advertising.

Google Accused of Favoring Google Plus in Search Results

admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:52:07 +0000

Pages and profiles on social network given undue prominence, claim detractors

By Juan Carlos Perez | Article Courtesy of: TECHWORLD

The longstanding and persistent accusation that Google unfairly uses its search engine to promote its other online services is once again in the spotlight, triggered by new social search functionality the company is rolling out this week that more tightly links its search engine with its Google+ social networking site.

The complaints have come from different quarters, including competitors and industry experts, and have focused on various arguments, but at bottom all charge Google with using its dominant search engine to deliberately boost Google+’s popularity, by giving Google+ pages and profiles an artificially prominent position in result pages.

Unfair competition

One of the strongest arguments made so far comes from search engine expert Danny Sullivan, who described on his technology news site Search Engine Land how Google is now suggesting Google+ business pages that companies and public figures have set up on the site in a way that makes the Google+ pages much more prominent than similar pages these public figures and organizations have set up on competing social media sites.

Sullivan shows a variety of examples in which Google, via new query auto-complete suggestions for Google+ profiles and via the new Google+ People and Pages sidebar suggestions column, favors Google+ business pages over alternative ones that have more “fans” on Facebook and Twitter.

Sullivan ran his queries without being logged into his Google Account, and even using the Chrome browser’s “incognito” mode, to make sure that the Google search engine treated his queries as coming from a fairly generic user, and not tailored to him specifically.

“Is there anyone out there who still wants to say that being on Google+ doesn’t matter? Anyone? Because when being on Google+ means that you potentially can have your Google+ page leap to the top in those sidebar results, Google+ matters. It matters more than ever before,” he wrote, adding that Google is clearly “taking its weight in search and leveraging it to boost Google+ in a big way”.

Key product

Google, after many missteps in the social networking market, launched Google+ in mid-2011, and has made it clear, from CEO Larry Page on down, that Google+ will be a key, unifying product for the company, providing social sharing features and an identity layer across most Google online services.

However, there has been skepticism regarding the adoption and engagement level for Google+, especially when compared with social networking leader Facebook, which has more than 850 million active members who spend a lot of time on the site.

Google+ is also a rival to Twitter because Google+ can be used in similar ways as the microblogging phenomenon.

In fact, among the first to cry foul this week was Twitter. Its General Counsel Alex Macgillivray, who previously worked at Google, posted on his Twitter account that Tuesday was “a bad day for the Internet” after Google announced the new search functionality.

“Having been there, I can imagine the dissension @Google to search being warped this way,” he wrote. Twitter later followed Macgillivray’s post with a more formal statement, in which it reiterated and expanded on his complaint.

Meanwhile, Google answered back with a post on its main Google+ page, saying it was “a bit surprised by Twitter’s comments” because Twitter “chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer,” a reference to the now lapsed two year deal which gave Google special access to Twitter’s “firehose” of real-time tweets.

However, as Sullivan and others have pointed out, Google has continued indexing Twitter posts and has a massive collection of them in its index, including links to the official accounts of public figures, celebrities and organizations.

Silence from Facebook

Throughout the two day flap, Facebook officials have remained mum. Facebook has its own special search arrangement with its partner Microsoft, which gives the Bing search engine access to certain data that is out of Google’s reach. While Facebook keeps most personal profile content off limits to search engines, its business profiles are public, as well as some other content, and thus available to Google.

In fact, for a while Facebook has let individuals tag status updates as “public” and made those available to search engines, a good example of this is the site YourOpenBook, devoted exclusively to this type of public status update.

In its announcement on Tuesday of the new social search features, described by the company as “Search, Plus Your World,” Google focused on new things its search users will be able to do when signed into their Google accounts: find Google+ posts and Picasa Web photos they and their contacts on those social media sites have shared not only publicly on the web but also privately with each other.

This new functionality builds on the existing Google social search features, which let users logged into their Google Accounts see links in search results that their specific social media contacts tagged with the Google +1 button or shared publicly using a social media service.

Google didn’t respond to a request for comment about the controversy surrounding the new social search functionality.

Internet Statistics for 2012 – Digital Media Usage Grows

admin — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:53:45 +0000

25 Eye-Popping Internet Marketing Statistics for 2012

Posted by Pamela Vaughan

2012 is officially here, and what better way to kick off the New Year than with some data porn?

In its recent US Digital Media Usage report, eMarketer estimates how digital media usage will grow in 2012 in terms of the internet, mobile, social, video, and ecommerce.

So whether you need to justify your inbound marketing-centric strategies to your boss or convince yourself that inbound is the right way to approach your marketing program in 2012, check out these 25 eye-popping marketing stats that highlight the probable growth of digital media in 2012 and emphasize why you’ll definitely need inbound marketing this year.

The Internet in 2012

1) In 2012, the audience of internet users in the U.S. will expand by 3.1% to 239 million, representing 75.6% of the total population.

In other words…

2) More than 3/4 of the total population will be online in 2012

Mobile in 2012

3) Mobile internet users will reach 113.9 million in 2012, up 17.1% from 97.3 million in 2011.

4) Smartphone users will reach 106.7 million in 2012, up 18.4% from 2011.

5) In 2012, 94% of smartphones users will be mobile internet users.

6) All mobile phone users will reach 242.6 million in 2012, up 2.3% from 2011.

7) Mobile shoppers will reach 72.8 million in 2012.

Mobile buyers will reach 37.5 million in 2012.

9) Smartphone shoppers will reach 68.6 million in 2012.

10) Smartphone buyers will reach 36.4 million in 2012.

11) Tablet users will reach 54.8 million in 2012, up 62.8% from 33.7 million in 2011.

12) iPad users will reach 41.9 million in 2012.

13) In 2012, 76.4% of tablet users will be iPad users.

14) Adult-aged eReader users will reach 45.6 million in 2012, up from 33.3 million in 2011.

Social Media in 2012

15) Facebook will reach 143.4 million US users in 2012, up 8.2% from 132.5 million in 2011.

16) About 2/3 of web users will use social networks in 2012.

17) More than 90% of social network users will be on Facebook in 2012.

Online Video in 2012

18) Online video viewers will reach 169.3 million in 2012.

19) 53.5% of the population and 70.8% of internet users (up 7.1% from 2011) will watch online video in 2012.

20) Mobile video viewers will reach 54.6 million in 2012.

21) Smartphone video viewers will reach 51.2 million in 2012.

Ecommerce in 2012

22) 88.1% of US internet users ages 14+ will browse or research products online in 2012.

23) 83.9% of internet researchers will make at least one purchase via the web during 2012.

24) Online shoppers will reach 184.3 million in 2012, up 3.3% from 2011.

25) Online buyers will reach 154.6 million in 2012, up 4.4% from 2011.

2011 Social Media Highlights – “GOOD READ!” – by Heidi Cohen

admin — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 23:18:54 +0000

10 Social Media 2011 Highlights (Data Included)

Article Courtesy of: Heidi Cohen

2011 was a pivotal year for social media marketing (For those of you who are interested, here’s 2010′s social media marketing highlights. Driven in part by consumers who spend roughly one quarter of their time online with social media and blogging sites according to Nielsen, marketers tested and expanded their use of social media and integrated it into their overall marketing plans to achieve their business objectives.

Given the increased use of social media marketing, it’s notable that no marketing campaign had the reach or attention last year’s Old Spice videos or Pepsi’s Refresh did (Note: This campaign is still going!).

Here are 2011′s top 10 social media marketing highlights.

1. Facebook remains the global 900-pound gorilla of social media networks. Facebook reached 55 percent of the world’s global audience accounting for roughly 75 percent of time spent on social networking sites and one in every seven minutes spent online globally according to comScore’s October 2011 data. It’s important to note Facebook is blocked in China.

Source: “It’s a Social World,” comScore, Dec. 21, 2011

For many marketers, these sheer numbers make Facebook usage a must-have in their marketing mix. Before you jump in, make sure you understand what Facebook can and can’t do for your offering.

2. YouTube is still number two. YouTube doesn’t need to try harder. It’s the second largest social media site and the second largest search engine. Since online video consumption and engagement continues to increase, YouTube should be on every marketer’s to do list for 2012. To help marketers, YouTube introduced new analytics late in 2011.

3. LinkedIn starts to get respect. Aided by its high-flying IPO, LinkedIn made inroads on gaining attention of marketers, particularly those in the B2B space. Not sure how to use LinkedIn’s treasure trove of content marketing, think beyond job search paradise. In particular, spend time in groups and answering questions.

4. Twitter is where we turn for news as it happens. What’s interesting is the news shared on Twitter where content was personal, sports, and entertainment compared with the information shared across social media platforms was breaking news sprinkled with a bit of gossip. Throughout 2011, Twitter continued to grow while its advertising platform progressed.

Source: “It’s a Social World,” comScore

Source: “Sharing Trends in 2011,” AddThis

5. Google half-heartedly enters the social media fray. Google introduced its latest social media platform, Google+ and it broke records in terms of gaining 25 million visitors.

Source: “It’s a Social World,” comScore

It lacked real buy-in from Google’s senior management team. It took them months to get involved and then without embracing social media’s principles. Further, despite being late to the game, they didn’t learn from Facebook’s mistakes. As a result, Google+’s initial momentum has lost most of its steam. That said, omit Google+ from your 2012 marketing plans at your own peril since Google will eventually get the product on track. As a point of reference, look at Gmail’s history.

6. Blogs remain underused by marketers. Despite the ability of a well-executed company blog to feed social media, support sales, and aid search optimization, many senior executives still consider them a cost of doing business. May be it’s that they’re just not sexy. For my marketing dollar, they’re worth the investment if done well. (Here are some blogging examples to show you how.)

7. Social media is not just for kids anymore! What a difference a year makes. Across age groups social media usage is similar. There’s more difference between men and women. This is attributable to the fact women tend to be more social via communications platforms.

Source: “It’s a Social World,” comScore

In terms of time spent, there’s a bigger discrepancy between teenage social media users and older segments. This difference is attributable to the fact teens communicate via social media instead of IM, text, and phone.

Source: “It’s a Social World,” comScore

8. We’re connected. Mobile, specifically smartphone and tablet usage, support social media engagement. Across mobile operating systems and age groups, Facebook is the number two site or app accessed. Across age groups, YouTube’s app is accessed by over 50 percent of users and Pandora’s app is accessed by over 20 percent of users.

Source: “Mobile Media Report,” Q3 2011, Nielsen

9. Shopping is social again. Social commerce evolved and took off in 2011. It wasn’t just social media engagement. Social commerce came in a variety of forms. Driven by smartphones, they were used in retail establishments to get product information and customer reviews.

Sources: Nielsen, NM Incite

Also, it included snapping a photo and sending it to family and friends before purchase. Marketers should understand that if shoppers discover a lower price via mobile, they may buy from your competitor before they leave your store.

10. Social media metrics gain attention. No surprise here. As social media becomes an increasing portion of marketing budgets, marketers must be able to show measurable results for their investment. For many, tracking social media return, particularly ROI, remains elusive. Chief Marketer research revealed 40 percent of marketers weren’t effective at assessing social media results.

Sources: eMarketer, Chief Marketer

To ensure that your social media marketing can be tracked, incorporate a call-to-action and a related, targeted promotion code. Further, before you start your marketing campaign, ensure you can measure these elements after your campaign.

What’s notable about this list? Social media continues to be an important element of every marketer’s plans regardless of whether you’re focused on B2C, B2B, not-for-profit and solopreneurs. Over the coming years, businesses will become more adept at handling social media and integrating it into their marketing mix in a way that yields positive, measurable results. Additionally, it’ll be incorporated across corporate functions so it’s no longer just marketing’s responsibility.

What do you think of this list? Are there any other social media events that you’d add to it? If so, please include your suggestions in the comment section below.

Wishing you and yours a happy and healthy New Year.

Happy marketing,

Heidi Cohen

Article Courtesy of: Heidi Cohen

Benefits of Blogging as Part of Your Inbound Mix

admin — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 22:22:57 +0000

Everything You Need to Sell Your Boss on Business Blogging

Posted by Paul Rios

Article Courtesy of: HubSpot

Image credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

You’re an inbound marketing convert. You believe in the importance of creating relevant and interesting content for your prospects to consume. You’ve been reading up on search engine optimization, and have started applying the best practices to your website. You even opened up a company Facebook page and Twitter account, though your venture into Google+ is still tenuous.

All of that has been pretty easy to integrate into your day to day marketing responsibilities, but there’s one thing you really want to make more time for: blogging.

There’s just one problem. Writing blog content on a regular basis requires time that you just don’t have. To get the time, you’ll have to lobby your boss for more resources, and that means convincing your boss that blogging is actually worth your time, your effort, and his money. So how do you go about doing that? This blog post (how meta is that?) will give you the facts, research, and know-how to explain the benefits of business blogging to a tentative boss and debunk many of the common myths inbound marketing professionals are frequently faced with during these difficult conversations.

Is blogging really effective? What results will we see?

Nothing like some cold, hard data to prove a point. How does this sound?

The average company that blogs generates 55% more website visitors, 97% more inbound links, and 434% more indexed pages.
HubSpot’s 2011 ROI Study shows that 69% of businesses attribute their lead generation success to blogging.
57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog.
The Nielsen Company shows that US internet users spend 3X more time on blogs and social networks than in email.
Inbound marketing, of which blogging is a crucial part, costs 62% less per lead than outbound marketing.

Bet you got your boss’ attention now, eh? You can find more statistics to impress your boss and make your point in this compilation of 100 interesting inbound marketing data points.

But won’t blogging open us up for negative comments?

Whenever you put anything out on the internet, you open yourself up to negative comments. You can’t let that stop you from creating a meaningful internet presence. That being said, blog comments are not only far less frequent than they were even just a few years ago, but the importance with which they are regarded has also decreased. If you’re operating your business on the up and up and your content is honest and genuine, you have little to fear in terms of commenter backlash.

And just as with any reputation management issue you’re confronted with in business, if you face it head on and operate as a compassionate human being instead of a faceless corporation, you have the opportunity to turn those naysayers into your biggest fans.

This sounds like a huge time investment. Who is going to write it all?

To determine how much time you’ll need to dedicate to your blog, you have to take a look at the competition. Are your organic competitors blogging twice a week? Multiple times a day? Not at all? To outperform them with your inbound marketing, you need to also outperform them with blogging.

Once you’ve determined the frequency, you’ll know how much support you need. Can you handle this yourself? Or do you need a new hire dedicated exclusively to blogging? Many organizations, including HubSpot, require specific employees to contribute a minimum number of blog posts a month. This solution helps feed your blog with quality content, provides more than one voice for a valuable mix of perspectives, and doesn’t put undue burden on any one member of your organization.

Does anyone here even know how to blog?

Blogging doesn’t come naturally to everyone, but the barrier to entry is very low. Think of it this way. If you’re in sales, you can answer questions about your products and services, right? If you’re in marketing, you can write copy that positions your company correctly, right?

If you’re a C-level exec, you sure didn’t get to that position without knowing a thing or two about your industry, right? You have the knowledge you need to blog, you just need to learn the best practices that make up a great blog post. Luckily, those best practices are not only simple, but we’ve already written them all down for you.

The best blogs aren’t long, complex, and full of stuffy language and industry jargon. They’re succinct, specific, and engaging. As long as your topic is helpful, you can write just like you talk — and your prospects will love it. Oh, we also came up with 100 content ideas to make it even easier for you to get started.

Will this help with our SEO and social media presence?

Yes, yes, yes. Not only is blogging one of the most important means of achieving SEO greatness, it will be extremely difficult to see consistent and meaningful SEO improvements without blogging. One of the most important ways a search engine knows to return your website in search results is based on the quality of your content and the frequency at which you publish it.

Blogging is a simple, low-cost solution to this. Blogging also makes it far more likely that your content will be shared on social media networks and receive inbound links from other websites, two more crucial aspects that boost your SEO street cred.

Speaking of social media, you can (and should) add social media share and follow buttons to every blog post you write. If you don’t know how to create these buttons, here’s a cheat sheet that will tell you everything you need to know. Your blog content will not only help you get more followers on your social media networks, but your social media networks will help you get more blog readers. Blogging and social media are two peas in a pod; as your reach expands on one, so it does on the other.

Blogs: Good for Automotive & Good for Business

admin — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:31:51 +0000

Dealers, Why Aren’t You Blogging?

4 Reasons to Create and Leverage a Dealer Blog

Posted by Justin Braun
Article Courtesy of: Automotive Digital Marketing

“Blogging is the most underutilized yet powerful marketing force that dealers have at their disposal.”

That’s what automotive thought-leader Ralph Paglia said in a recent interview.

No matter if you love Ralph and his advice or think he’s ‘full of it,’ studies indicate that he is absolutely right on this matter.

According to data analyses by HubSpot, a leading Inbound Marketing company, small businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors, 102% more Twitter followers, and 126% higher lead growth than non-blogging businesses.

A successful blog is one that is updated on a regular basis and discusses topics of interest to your current and potential customers (but we’ll get more into best practices at a later time). Naturally, a blog’s ROI will vary from dealership to dealership but there are several clear benefits to blogging that should not be ignored.

4 Reasons to Create and Leverage a Dealer Blog

1) Tell your story and demonstrate industry knowledge

Information has empowered consumers to educate themselves about what product to buy, how much to pay, and where to shop. Consumers do the majority of their purchasing research online and, moreover, consumers read blogs to find the answers to their questions.

Why not provide them with that information yourself?

Help the consumer make an educated buying decision through your writing and you will find them more inclined to do business with you because you have established yourself and your company as reputable, transparent and knowledgeable.

Additionally, consumers will be more inclined to do business with you if they can form an emotional connection with your dealership. To do this, you need to tell your story.

“Dealers have to find the compelling stories that will make people want to do business with their dealership,” says Ralph. “Every dealership has something very interesting or compelling about them that would make great fodder for a blog.”

2) Higher Google Ranking (SEO Opportunity)

I think HubSpot said it best in its Inbound Marketing University white paper How to Blog Effectively for Business:

“Search engines favor fresh over old content. Old content might no longer be accurate or relevant to the searches. Fresh content, in contrast, signals to search engines that the information is up-to-date and more relevant to searchers’ needs. As a result, blogs, a generator of fresh content, help with search engine optimization, which in turn drives site traffic and promotes a business.”

A regularly updated blog ranks highly on Google. Additionally, dealers that blog can optimize their posts for commonly-searched keywords specific to their brand, vehicles, or frequently asked questions so that their dealership is easy found during the consumer research process.

Blogging is a practice that doesn’t cost a lot of money and has the potential to result in a continuous payout in the form of increased traffic, engagement and lead-generation.

3) Crisis management and humanizing your brand

Blogging can put a face and a voice to your dealership, communicating the subtle aspects of your brand’s personality. Blogs can help consumers get a sense of how you do business and how your employees treat customers. By being less “corporate” than your website, blogs can add the personal touch of 1-1 customer service and relationship-building to your digital showroom, similar to the benefits of live chat.

Furthermore, blogs can help manage a crisis and prevent damage by online negative word-of-mouth. To survive any online reputation crisis, it is essential to embrace Coca Cola’s motto of“our consumers control our brand.” Dealers can use their blog as a forum for customers to share their issues and for you to address them in a personal and transparent manner.

4) Involve potential and current customers in your brand’s discussion

Social Media has empowered consumers to share product and brand insights with their peers, transforming them into brand advocates and authorities. If you give readers of your blog the information they seek end encourage interaction, you will be able to develop and nurture a relationship with them early on in the sales process. The opening up additional channels of communication between your dealership and its customers is always a good idea.

According to HubSpot, “Folks who comment on your blog may be sales leads, or they may just challenge or support your views.

Either way, comments beget comments, and you will soon be at the center of an industry-relevant dialogue with customers and partners.”

This dialogue is the core benefit of the practice of blogging and is what drives traffic to your site and highly qualified leads to your showroom.

Media Crush Takeaway:

It’s very simple. This informative article applies to everyone.

Plug in the category of your business and start blogging!

Media Crush has set up and launched scores of blogs on behalf of customers, for both large and small businesses.

Contact us for more information.

Social Media Tips

admin — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 23:11:52 +0000

8 Small Business Social Media Tips From the Pros

By Cindy King

Are you looking for some social media tips to grow your small business?

We asked eight small business pros for their hottest social media tips.

Here’s their advice for you to take your business to the next level.

#1: Show Them the “Real You”

Ed Gandia

Use Facebook to show prospects, clients and customers the “real you.” Sure, provide the occasional business tip. Or link to your new blog post. But that’s what everyone else is doing. So why not show them you’re a real person by posting updates about things you’re passionate about?

I love to cook, so I’ve been known to post pictures of my grilled masterpieces. Or I’ll quote something one of my silly kids just said. Or I’ll pose a question, such as “How can we encourage more young entrepreneurs?” Either way, I try to keep it interesting, humorous and different. And always authentic.

Oh, and I know I’m going to ruffle a lot of feathers by saying this, but I really do believe that less is more. I get more engagement by updating five times per week than five times per day. Plus it fits my personality. Because offline, I would never call attention to myself that frequently.

Ed occasionally shares personal stories on Facebook.

Ed Gandia, founding partner, International Freelancers Academy.

#2: Pick One Thing and Do It Really Well

Nichole Kelly

Small businesses are faced with having to prioritize their resources toward the activities that deliver the most impact. With social media, it’s easy to feel like you need to have a presence on every social media channel. It’s also easy to get lost in managing too many networks.

Being on 5 social networks and giving all of them half-effort will not generate results. Therefore, I recommend that small businesses first find which network has the highest concentration of their audience using tools like Follower Wonk, Facebook’s free advertising platform and LinkedIn’s search features.

Once you’ve found which social media network actually has a concentration of your target audience, develop a strategy to engage them. Rather than spreading your energy across multiple channels, put 100% of your “social focus” on the best channel for your audience and do it exceptionally well. If you’re successful, you’ll have a much easier time justifying the additional investment to replicate your success on another social media network.

Nichole Kelly, founder of Full Frontal ROI.

#3: Turn Your Facebook Page Into a Lead-Generating Machine

Amy Porterfield

One necessary component of a thriving business is a strong list of qualified leads. Collecting names and emails is essential to any small business because you can communicate with your ideal audience on a regular basis. Some business experts say that without a list, you don’t really have a business!

There are many ways to grow your list and one of the smartest marketing moves is to create an opt-in strategy on your Facebook page. To keep it simple, use iFrames to create a custom welcome tab. On this tab you can create a 2-step process called a “reveal tab.”

Step #1: Include a call to action to encourage non-fans to click Like and become a fan.

Step #2: Once you get the Like, offer a valuable giveaway in exchange for name and email.

With this model, you are increasing your fan base and growing your lead list at the same time. It’s a double whammy for your business.

Liz DiAlto, a NYC personal trainer, created a 2-step process on her Facebook page to grow her community and her lead list.

Amy Porterfield, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Dummies.

#4: Invest in a Great Twitter Design

Cliff Ravenscraft

If your business or brand is geared toward a particular niche market, make sure that you go all out when designing your Twitter profile. For an example, see @HungerGamesPod. Make sure that it shows how serious you are about your niche and that by looking at your profile, people will see valuable content that they could get if they were following you on Twitter.

Next, go find other Twitter IDs that market to your exact niche market. For my Hunger Games brand, I did this with @TheHungerGames, which has over 76,000 followers. These 76,000 people are obviously interested in The Hunger Games niche and therefore might find my podcast on the subject interesting and want to follow.

Go through and follow that account’s followers. Most will get an email notification from Twitter, because they never turned off email notifications, telling them that you just followed them. Many will click through to your Twitter profile, check it out and if they’re interested, they’ll follow you back.

This is how I added over 4,000 followers to my Hunger Games Twitter account in less than a month.

Cliff invested in a great design for the @HungerGamesPod Twitter backgound.

Cliff Ravenscraft, founder of PodcastAnswerMan.com.

#5: Bring Your Company Onto Video

Michael Crosson

Without question, the hottest and most effective use of social media today is VIDEO. With all the recent changes in how Google and other search engines index web pages, adding short videos is the #1 way to get into the top of search results.

Creating a custom channel on YouTube is very easy. Creating a series of short instructional videos around your product or service and using testimonials from happy clients/customers are great ways to add credibility to your company and dramatically increase the chances of a viewer going to your website.

Use humor and graphics to get your key messages across. Remember, shorter is better—no more than 3 minutes.

Michael Crosson, founder of the second-largest LinkedIn group, “the Social Media Marketing Group,” with over 230,000 members.

#6: Learn How to Master Video Marketing

Gregory Ng

My hottest tip for small businesses to take their business to the next level is to learn how video content—when tagged, titled and published correctly—can increase your exposure in search results.

Video thumbnails in search results attract the eye more than text and can get your content seen over traditional text delivery. Plus, video can really highlight your company’s personality!

Flyte New Media uses YouTube marketing to develop their business.

Gregory Ng, an advertising executive by day and the host of a popular webshow by night.

#7: Monitor Your Clients and Prospects

John Jantsch

Create alerts for all of your important clients, add their blogs to your RSS reader, create a Twitter List and add it to a tool like TweetDeck. Explore whether your CRM tool allows you to add the social connections for your clients (BatchBook, Highrise or ACT!all have this function and the Rapporative plugin for Gmail can do this as well).

Monitor what your clients and prospects are doing and saying in social networks to anticipate and serve their needs and build relationships much faster. Next you can do the same with key journalists and strategic partners.

This step alone will make your social media efforts pay off immediately.

It’s easy to find Duct Tape consultants thanks to this Twitter list.

John Jantsch, a marketing consultant and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

#8: Give Away the Secret Sauce

Joe Pulizzi

In other words, start developing content about those industry secrets or how-to tips that no other competitor of yours would dare touch. This can be your competitive advantage. By creating the kind of content that really solves your customers’ problems, you’ll be linked to and shared. Your content will rise in the search rankings and be actively shared on Twitter and Facebook.

How do you get started? Write down all of the most interesting and hard-to-answer customer questions and create online content from each question.

Do this every day for six months and you’ll see a significant difference in your business.

Joe Pulizzi, author of Managing Content Marketing and co-author of Get Content, Get Customers.

New Car Networks – Automotive Marketing

admin — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:51:47 +0000

Social Media Marketing: Creating a Community

In recent posts authorDavid Johnson has had a LOT to say about Social Media in the Automotive industry. In his post “Creating Word-Of-Mouth Through The Creation Of Community” we find so much community in our perspectives on methods to achieve great results. Perhaps you are already ahead of the curve and are already working on developing a community – if so congratulations for getting it! If you read this article and want some help in finding a path to success get in touch with Media Crush / Media Garage / New Car Networks - CLICK HERE we will create a custom plan for you!

Creating, working with and the continued growth of smaller individual communities within the larger brand community is the best way to create word-of-mouth, both online and off. The traditional definition of community was defined as a group of interacting people living in a common location.

With the onset of the internet and web 2.0 in particular we now hear the term global community thrown around a lot, the reason being that we no longer have to be in the same location to form a community.

With that being said the new definition of community would sound more like: a group of interacting people that share a common belief, passion, preference, need or a number of other possible conditions that people can connect around and identify themselves with. It’s important to note that when I refer to the term community that I am referring to a group of people that are passionate (The Social Cause, In Search of A Higher Social Media Calling) about your brand and about spreading positive word-of-mouth about it. In other words the bigger, more passionate and engaged the community is the more business you will have.

When developing an engaged community it’s important to note that there are three types of connections that must be present in order to call your community truly engaged, or at least fully engaged and they are:

Employee – Community Member
Employee – Employee
Community Member – Community Member

While each of the above connections are important we are going to focus solely on the employee – community member connection in this post, after which you will have a better understanding of why it’s important and how to use it to explode the amount of people talking positively about your dealership.

It All Starts With The Face-to-Facers

By definition social networking is the process of connecting with others to create business and/or personal relationships. By and of its self people don’t feel connected with or have any desire to connect with a dealership. Which is why it’s important for the employee – community member connection to take place, it will be the foundation of your community and how you will be better able to influence word-of-mouth, thus increasing your bottom line in both sales and fixed-ops.

The best way to create a community around your dealerships brand is to first have your face-to-facers, that is the people that actually work with customer face-to-face such as your sales people and service advisers, work to develop their own community around their own personal brand. From there they feed the larger brand of the dealership by directing their community members to the dealership-wide community.

As an example both your service advisors and sales people would work to connect and build relationships with their respective customers on Facebook while at the same time referring them to like the dealerships page on Facebook. From there they would interact with their customers on both their own news-feeds/profiles and the dealerships Facebook page. As you know most dealerships have a Facebook page that they are active on but what most fail to realize is that it’s managed by some faceless individual that has no real connection or value with the people that like the page, by having employees interact using their own profiles, on the dealerships Facebook page, it creates a family-like atmosphere that people understand.

The Influence Is In The Relationship

Since I started the last two sections off with a definition I might as well do that here as well with the term relationship: A relationship is an association between two people based on some type of social commitment such as love, family, or regular business interactions.

Sounds pretty straight forward doesn’t it? It’s important to note that relationships will usually involve some level of interdependence, which means that people in relationship with each other tend to be influenced by one another, share some of the same thoughts & feelings, and engage with each other.

In fact I can say very simply that if you want to influence more word-of-mouth then you must first be in the type of influential relationship with your customers that they actually want to say positive things about you and your dealership.

Building It From Within

The best way to build a highly engaged, word-of-mouth creating dealership community is to build it from the inside-out. It’s time to take your social media marketing to the next level and integrate it into the daily processes of your day to day business. By doing that one thing you will start to see your efforts being repaid back to you tenfold. Isn’t it about time that you see a return on your social media endeavors?

Then take the time to integrate, strategize and implement it into your every day.

Here’s to your social media success!

David Johnson
ADM Social Media Editor
PersuasiveConcepts.com

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The Social Cause – In Search Of A Higher Social Media Calling

by David Johnson

2010 brought with it main stream social media for the auto industry, some embraced it and ran with it while others (most) knocked their head against the wall wondering what they were doing wrong. 2010 was more or less a trial, a yearlong test in the field of relationship marketing, what did you learn from it? If you’re like a lot of dealers you pushed social media to the side as a failed experiment and went back to what worked, more or less.

Social media has evolved and will continue to evolve, its only constant is change and if you take the time to learn it before you tackle it then you will be behind the moment you start. But, if you harness the human element of social media and stop trying so hard to learn the ever evolving tools, then you are well on your way to building a true social business, one that even the oldest school car dealer can get behind, grasp and run with.

In the beginning social media was seen as an extension of traditional advertising, as a way to get your marketing message heard by even more people, but that quickly fizzled out as you learned that people considered what you were doing as spam and only served to hurt your dealerships reputation. As time progressed you learned that the less you pitch, the more you sell. You learned that in order to build a social following that you needed to engage your online community in other ways, besides just your inventory.

Building A Purpose-Driven Community

Building an online community around the dealerships brand will often lead to failure, as participation is mainly driven by advertising dollars and costly promotions. I’m not taking anything away from this type of “community marketing” because it’s often the best way to get things moving along in the right direction, but what happens if you stop doing promotions ? That’s right, participation stops as well.

By anchoring your social initiatives in something larger than your brand, a higher calling, you drive community participation through passion. By building a purpose-driven community you create a common bonding point between the dealership and it’s community, this is the surest way for community growth, participation, and an increase in ROI (return on influence).

The appeal to a higher calling builds organic growth that unites employees and communities behind a common cause that’s larger than both the dealership and its community members. The higher calling can be a shared passion, a way of life or a cause, as long as it’s something that people can rally behind and feel like their part of.

As an example let’s talk about Metro Honda of Union County and their recent initiative to help fight hunger in their community. Wal-Mart, during their Fighting Hunger campaign, put up $1.5 Million to be donated among the top 6 communities with the most support. $1 Million to number 1 and $100,000 to the next five communities. During that time Metro Honda created videos, sent out emails and engaged their Facebook fans in order to get them to “like” their community. During this time they saw a tremendous increase in their post views, and daily active users.

A lot of dealerships fall into the trap of looking at their “likes” as a gauge as to how well their doing on Facebook, when the best stat to look at is their daily and monthly active users. During the Fighting Hunger campaign Metro Honda saw an increase in their Daily Active Users (people consuming their content) from an average of about 200 per day to over 1000, with their daily post views going from around 5,000 per day to upwards of 25,000! Now that the campaign is over they are still seeing double the number of daily active users and post views than was the case before the campaign begun. That’s the power of a purpose-driven community.

Finding Your Purpose

It’s important when finding a purpose that it’s aligned with who or what the dealership is. It’s important that the cause be the focus and that community members don’t start to think that the only reason you are pushing that specific cause, way or life or passion is because you are trying to earn more business. While that is most certainly the case, don’t approach it with that thought in mind. Instead just give, promote and grow the higher calling. I know that sounds counterintuitive, especially since marketing is all about pushing the dealerships agenda but if you spend your resources pushing fighting hunger, as an example, then you create a bonding point between the dealership and the community. It’s that bonding point that will spur organic growth and create good will.

Going forward, 2011 will see the rise of the human business and dealerships will be wise to approach social media this way or they run the risk of going by the way of the dinosaur. We are in the midst of a relationship economy and more and more people are putting emphasis on what others are saying, what others are thinking and what businesses are part of. Keep in mind that there is more to a dealership than the brick and mortar building, the lot, and the inventory, there are also people, people that make up the business and its the connection between those people and the community that will drive the dealership to new heights in the new year.

Starting today it’s time to redeveloped the core message of your dealership. Make it something community oriented, something that people can rally behind and become part of, something bigger and more grand than all of those involved, an ideal that goes beyond selling cars, beyond selling service and F&I products and becomes part of what people are passionate about.

David Johnson

Digital Marketing Strategist

Blog: PersuasiveConcepts.com

Your Invited to a Brugal Rum Event @ Royale

admin — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:22:41 +0000

Media Crush Invites you to Brugal Rum Tasting!

CLICK HERE to RSVP!

Secrets Revealed… # 1 Rum in the Caribbean!

CLICK HERE to reserve your invite!

Macallan Scotch

admin — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:11:52 +0000

Media Crush is working the online segment on the Macallan Scotch branding campaign.

Macallan Single Malt Scotch is pleased with the services we have delivered to them!

We are driving interest in the product and events associated with Macallan Scotch.

Axiom Mobile Tech – Mobile Marketing Strategy

admin — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:03:41 +0000

Rewards and Loyalty, Geo Engagements, Inbound Marketing and more

Media Crush is working along with Axiom Mobile Technologies on brand and marketing strategies; Media Crush is also involved in their online commercial and social network build-out.

We are very excited to be part of the team that will bring the one stop Mobile APP to market!

More to come…