Death of the DM (Part II)

Just a few days ago, we posted a warning about a new Twitter spamming and hacking scam via Direct Message.

Guess what, we’ve found another one! Be wary of the following Direct Message through Twitter:

Here is a preview of the message:

Don’t click on these links and be sure to send a message @ the individual that sent it to you if it is from a known Twitter account. If not, be sure to unfollow, report as spam to Twitter, and block this user.

Luckily, unlike Twitter, Tinyurl is aware of the issue and here is the message you receive if the link is clicked on:

There are a large number of users on Twitter that rarely check their Direct Message Inbox, and not many Twitter users monitor their outbound messages.

If you find that your account is sending these out, be sure to promptly change your password and delete the spam Direct Messages.

You might want to monitor your followers count as well and reach out to any of those that received the spam message to clear up any confusion.

We began receiving these today around noon, so beware and Happy Tweeting!

Written by: Sara Paxton, managing partner, CTO, and Social Media Officer of Evans Media Group, Kansas City’s Social Media Agency, a boutique agency located in Overland Park, KS that specializes in traditional marketing, social media marketing, online marketing, and public relations.

Finding Love in 140 Characters or Less …

Recently, the partners at Evans Media Group, Kansas City’s Social Media Agency, were asked to be guests on a televised news segment at the local CBS affiliate station KCTV5. “We were to appear during the nightly news and be interviewed by the host of a web themed segment about our involvement in social media,” said Sara Paxton, the agency’s managing partner and CTO. Nothing unusual so far, Paxton and her partner, President and CMO Paul Evans had made television appearances before; had been interviewed for articles in newspapers and business publications and we are no strangers to public speaking.

The difference about this interaction is that the entire discourse took place via Twitter. No phone calls, no emails or texts, in fact right down to directions to the station and the announcement that they had arrived, were communicated with tweets and direct messages on Twitter. They had never met or spoken with the interviewer prior to walking through the door at the station, in fact he sent them a tweet to tell them he’d be right down to usher them into the station.

The host, a local Twitter celebrity himself that you might know, Kurt Kloeblen, was delightful, the interview a success and Evans Media Group, in true social media style, tweeted their followers and told them to watch. But after the interview, the partners were discussing the fact that all communication for the meeting had been conducted via social media, and decided to find out if the same thing might be happening in the dating realm. Were people interacting, meeting and eventually dating as a direct result of Twitter and other social channels?

Lonely tall, good looking gent, likes walks on beach, pets and fine wine, seeks attractive women for stimulating conversation and friendship (Yes … that is exactly 140 characters, spaces count). So dating, or at least date advertising is certainly doable within the confines of 140 character communication; Evans and his partner just wanted to know if it was happening, who was doing it, how often and whether or not they would talk to, or at least tweet them about it!

Their research quickly turned up LuvTweets.com, a dating site that asks users to log in through twitter, set up a dating profile and start connecting with others. Flirt140 was another find, a new site that provides a variety of options such as gender, location and keywords to search twitter users. A list of all Twitter users matching the search criteria will then be displayed. Members can then view the users profile, send them a private message as well as “wink” at them! The site isn’t visually appealing but for those looking at Twitter as a dating site, it’s a must visit.

So the move to dating in the social space, rather than the more traditional online world of eHarmony, Chemistry and the old stand-by Match.com was determined to be officially underway. “But we wondered if we could actually find some real world examples,” said Evans. “So we began casting about in our social circles for testimonials of found love (or at least found date) on one of the social networks.”

Paxton, who maintains several social network profiles for Evans Media Group and herself personally, admitted that they did not have to look far. “When we moved our agency from the East Coast last year, we immediately began connecting with the “locals” and “socializing” via Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and several other networks and have quite a large following ourselves. Among our active Twitter conversationalists we found two individuals who met through and began dating as a result of Twitter.”

@vivid13 and @arogersphotos are the Twitter handles of Jeremy Brooks and Amy Rogers, two very active tweeters who interact across severalsocial platforms with thousands of other known and anonymous individuals.Jeremy is a Pharmacy Tech transplant from St. Louis, now living in KansasCity. He is a sports fanatic of both the Saint Louis and Kansas City teams – He is also a self admitted addict of caffeine, bacon, Buzztime trivia, his HHR and, as his handle implies, the number 13. He has a sharp, if somewhat jaded sense of humor and over 1,100 Twitter followers.

Amy Rogers is a photographer, cat lover and sports fan. Her official Twitter bio states that she is a “Photographer/Pool Player/Customer Service rep by day, vixen by night. Or so I’m told. President of Twitter. Master planner of tweetups. @vivid13′s girlfriend”.  Jeremy and Amy’s tale is like an old fashioned love story, but it was 21st century technology that led them down the path toward eventual dating bliss.

They first encountered each other by swapping 140 or less character communication on their smart phones. In the old days, this would have meant they were “pen pals”.  But eventually they did actually meet as a result of a new phenomenon known as a “tweetup”. This is the Twitter equivalent of a meet-up, or meeting where several people gather at an agreed upon location for coffee, cocktails, a meal, bowling or any number of possible reasons.

These Tweetups are thought of as safe, because there are multiple people present, less awkward than a blind date because of the pre-meeting tweets and one can always just walk away if upon arrival you see that there is nobody in the group that appeals to you physically, since unless you announce yourself, nobody will know who you are.

Jeremy and Amy’s meeting and several more that followed led to a “real” date and the eventual announcement, via Twitter of course, that the two were officially a couple and Amy’s posting to her bio that she is in fact @Vivid13’s Girlfriend. We are happy for them, but still curious. Please take a moment to answer our Twitter Dating Poll and we will case study the results in a subsequent blog in a few weeks.

Happy Dating!

Written by Paul Evans is the President and CMO of Evans Media Group, a boutique agency located in Overland Park, KS that specializes in traditional marketing, social media marketing, online marketing, and public relations.

Will Google Buzz Kill The Social Media Star?

For all of you little guys on the internet that have been leveraging your brand using social media and social search – sit up, and pay attention.

Last week, Google launched their own social network, called Google Buzz. For those of you just getting up to speed on Twitter and Foursquare, did your shoulders just slump with the burden of another social media network to manage, monitor, and update? Especially one with the likely impact of Google Buzz? It’s Google, for Pete’s sake. No one can ignore this one. Perhaps this is based on Google’s fear of Facebook, with the recent numbers in showing that Yahoo’s traffic has now been surpassed by Facebook. Even if you have the resources and time, the short answer is your time online just increased. Our advice? Pay special attention to this one. It will be tied to and directly impact your marketing, public relations, and social media marketing efforts. This social network, yes, the one backed by the heavy hitting search engine, is likely to most dramatically affect the search engine results for your brand. If you were impressed or intrigued by SEO drivers tied to Twitter search results, blog results and how your Linked In profile appears with decent ranking, be sure to invest some serious time in developing your Google Buzz profile for your brand.

How do you start that? Make the connection that they intended with your Facebook profiles and pages, and your Twitter profiles. Connect your friends on Facebook with your friends on Google Buzz. Currently, Twitter and Facebook are the two most prevalent sites from which Google Buzz accepts updates. When most social networks launch, it takes at least a year to gain traction, and much longer to become mainstream as evidenced by Facebook’s 6th birthday and Youtube’s 5th.  Twitter, often named the fastest growing social network, has surged to nearly a 300% increase in unique visitors over the past year, will celebrate its 4th birthday in the middle of March.

There is a lot of Buzz out there, good and bad, but the quick and dirty verdict is that it will be neat and fun to explore, but it won’t kill Twitter or Facebook. One of the biggest questions is what the adoption rate will be by bloggers and webmasters. Early indications show that Google Buzz will become mainstream and probably in record setting time. Tech Crunch and Mashable both added Google Buzz button’s to their sites and blogs nearly immediately. Most sites haven’t clamored to throw Google Buzz buttons on their sites. Though, just as businesses need to be found in Google search results to be deemed “successful,” it only makes sense that adding a Buzz profile on blogs and other sites will soon prove to be critical to success.

Just as Google revolutionized search and the online market, they are looking to do the same with social media. For such a big brand, there have been some serious blunders in the social space with the launch of Google Buzz. One of the biggest negative trends associated with Google’s Brand Buzz is the concern over privacy settings, or lack thereof. Other grumblings have been tied to the allegiance to their own email service, Gmail. Google Buzz is structured with Gmail as the nucleus of all of your social media activity. Given some of the recent publicity with Google and their privacy standards, and with the information coming to light that every search ever performed in Google is saved, stored, and most of all, linked to you, and your IP. That’s a little scary. Google, who has learned a bit about managing their online brand, and responding to negativity in the social space, took their user feedback about the useability and privacy issues, and made improvements, and detailed their feedback using a popular social media tool, their blog. They leveraged their resources and went to work very quickly, and made three changes in two days.  They enabled a feature to hide your followers/following list, an option to block anyone that is follow that you opt to, and have enable a distinction between public and private profiles. Very basic, but critical to their success.

It’s still new and many are still learning how to use the social media network and tools within. New or not, one thing is clear – usage is there. The current rate is over 160,000 Google posts and comments per hour. In approximately 48 hours, Google Buzz surpassed 9 million posts and comments. That’s a staggering number, even for Google. Another staggering statistic? The mobile usage is up there as well, the search giant cited over 200 posts per minute by mobile devices. The early stats that Google released are:

• 9 million posts and comments in about 56 hours, amounting to around 160,000 posts and comments per hour
• over 200 mobile check-ins per minute, nearly 300,000 mobile check-ins per day

Keep in mind, most users didn’t get Buzz until Wednesday the 10th.

This is not a small add on to an email client. It’s huge for search and it is huge in the social space.  It is unclear at this point how greatly this will alter the social media landscape permanently.  The leaders in the industry are simply amazed at the utter response and immediate acceptance. But, Google is leveraging their brand and their customer base in the social space the way many large brands could be.  Taping into their existing customer database of Gmail users was genius for guaranteeing a quick adoption rate by its users. Couple that with the brand equity that Google has, and the trust that most users instill in Google, and you have a great formula for success in the online space.

Other reasons we think Google Buzz has gained traction so quickly?

• Ease of use
• Easy set up
• Visible location right under the Inbox
• No new lingo to learn – people are still trying to figure out twtup, tweet, twitter, RT and more of the terms associated with Twitter.
• Search and easy tie into other people, topics and discussions.
• Google Buzz is linked to Gmail which people identify as a work related task, their calendar, their to do/task list – psychologically, Google Buzz has users thing it will be more efficent and productive than some of the more “distracting” social media sites.

Here is one of the comparisons we found online between the top social media sites and the newest one, Google Buzz:

Web Strategy Matrix: Google Buzz vs Facebook vs MySpace vs Twitter (Feb 2010)

	Google Buzz	Facebook	MySpace	Twitter
One-Liner	A dark horse that has big backing and access to existing platforms.	A mainstay platform that needs to grow out of its shell.	The MTV of this generation is at risk during an ugly transformation.	Has opportunity to become utility-like infrastructure, but not a destination.
Vitals (see more stats)	Estimated to sit on a user based of over 100mm active gmail users, they have access to the most popular webpage in the world, google.com.  Has access to mainstream users on Google.com and advanced email users on Gmail.	Boasting over 400mm users in just a few short years, they’ve saturated Gen Y in US, and show global expansion at record rates.	Recently reported at 57mm US unique users most of which are heavily engaged with site.  Has saturation of coveted youth, working class and small businesses within US.	Although difficult to track, estimates indicate 75mm active users, but doubts are emerging about reduced rate of growth.  Usage by tech savvy, media, and celebs.
Strengths	A large talent pool of engineers to pull from, Buzz stands on top of existing Gmail, mobile devices, and dominant search portal.  As Buzz grows, they can integrate with all Google apps –and aggregate the entire internet.	Rapid US and international growth over last few years bodes well as quickly evolved feature set of platform and and FB Connect gain traction.  Attracts top talent from Google –which are quickly defecting.	Big backing by a media giant, a super engaged audience, and rich history of reaching media starved young consumers.	Has clinched adoption over media elite, celebrities, and tech influencers. Incredible media buzz, and easy-to-use features.
Weaknesses	Late to the party, Google has had a series of social networking misfires from Wave, Dodgeball, Orkut their culture shows signs of becoming corporate –like Microsoft.	Struggles with the conundrum of having promised users a ‘closed’ experience where to be successful requires them to be ‘open’. Historically poor track record in meeting privacy expectations of customers, and overall complex interface.	Complacent: they really let themselves go. In the eyes of the tech world, they are becoming irrelevant or even worse, a niched media play –not even a lifestyle network.  This leaderless ship without a captain is undergoing radical internal turmoil and innovation has stalled.	Although features are dead simple, they are now a commodity –status update features are ubiquitous. Mainstream users confused by how to get started. Overhyped, the infrastructure has shown strain.  Brands generally confused on how to interact.
Opportunity	The more information users share, tag, or create, the more data is created on Google’s platform to organize, giving them opportunity to monetize.	By integrating Facebook Connect everywhere, the service becomes ubiquitous, and therefore the default identity and default address book for consumer behavior.	A few hours ago, the CEO Van Natta was let go. Now a new chief can step up, and lead the recently formed executive team, fostering innovation and solidarity.	Must develop more features to increase the overall value of this utility of the this simple status messaging tool.
Threats	Mainstay email companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL have already shown social features ‘bolted’ onto their email systems, and could pose threat, although success hasn’t been proven by any. Secondly, Facebook has made notions to develop an email web client “Project Titan” that will threaten tech savvy users competing for Gmail’s attention.	Facebook is a conundrum as they must make experience open –yet this provides Google the opportunity to monetize as an intermediary. Social networks come and go, before MySpace was Friendster, they run the risk of becoming complacent, losing talent to Twitter and failing to innovate over the next few years.	Self-implosion from internal instability causes stalls, forcing media brands to develop their own social networking on their own sites, rendering MySpace a duplicate. Worse yet? Cool kids jump ship, and establish a colony elsewhere, leaving MySpace a wasteland of clueless advertisers.	Overhype from media leaves Twitter at risk for burn-out-syndrome like a Hollywood child star turned skid row.  Secondly, the more successful they are, the more strain it put on the already questionable infrastructure.
Marketing Platform	Although not fully developed, expect advertising options to appear for brands who want to promote relevant ads wherever Buzz is located, especially on SERP pages	Confusing and overly complicated, there are too many marketing options perplexing brands.  It’s not clear if brands should advertise, interact in pages, create widgets or do a combination of all.	Strong and straight forward. Established team has cut deals with many media companies and has legacy culture of understanding media.	Nascent. Although promises have been made for branded experiences, analytics, and other premium features, for most marketers it’s being treated like a chat room –not a marketing platform.
Future State	Buzz will aggregate the voices of their users –and those of other social networks, aggregate and serve up monetization options.	A communications platform for consumers and brands.  Expect Facebook experience to be in many public experiences and mobile devices.	There are two paths: Integrate MySpace into TV and mobile devices or fade into pit of irrelevance like Friendster.	Like gas, water, or power, Twitter is likely to fade into the background and become a utility that’s integrated into everything –someday, even your fridge will Tweet.
What They Don’t Want You To Know	The collective already owns you –you just don’t know it yet.	They’re trying so hard to shift from closed to open, and like a nasty divorce, it’s tearing them apart from users.	Like an internal disease, the insiders are hurting, morale sunk, teams in disarray, yet they don’t want the public to know.	Not sure what they want to be when they grow up.
What They Should Do	Demonstrate success with Buzz, then quickly integrate into other tools like Search and Chrome. Kill off the confusing Wave, and consolidate teams and efforts.  Aggregate public content from Twitter and Facebook, intermediate them and monetize their own content.	Get open now. Build a browser to quickly go transcend the web. Reward users to share more information in public like restaurant or media reviews in exchange for other values. Double down efforts on Project Titan email feature.	Quickly establish a chain of command and execute based upon a single vision. Have regular talent turnover to avoid complacency. Develop a white label product that can compete with Cisco EOS, Kyte, Pluck, or Kickapps (Altimeter client).	Develop a vision to become the dominant protocol over SMS, where teens and international cultures are already heavily texting. Continue to build out platform for developers to build on top of, becoming a data play, like a utility.

As the leading search engine globally, most people sit up and pay attention when Google introduces new features and tools. They revolutionizes social media and search when they began introducing social updates into their search results.  This reduces the value of some of the high priced Google Ad Words, and Search Engine Optimization experts out there.  But it also means that the freshest content will rise to the top, whether it is what your marketing has been working to get into the online space or if it is the disgruntled tweets of an employee or a dissatisfied customer trashing your brand like Southwest Airlines recently experienced with Kevin Smith.  When you have to combat all of the negative results that end up on the first page, social media will get your attention, one way or another.

Your PR and marketing teams need to have their ear pressed against the door, and their finger on the pulse to see trends as quickly as they arise, and before a groundswell occurs. It goes back to the basics of PR and the concept of nipping things in the bud.

Expect to see a revenue stream for Google in this space, allowing you to combat this negativity with some PR and marketing dollars as well.  Most of Google’s strategies are fairly transparent and have an ad budget as the backbone. Getting into the social space is key for every business in 2010, and monetizing it is a high priority for everyone, including Google.

Google Buzz basics are not that much different than the other channels:

1. Establish a branded presence and monitor the buzz surrounding your brand and your competitors.  Be sure to link all of your social media networks and link to your twitter profile, your facebook page, your blog, and your website.  One upside is the verification factor behind Google Buzz.  There is an added protection level behind Google Buzz that Twitter and Facebook have yet to offer to all users.

2.  Identify the connectors, the influencers, the interactors, and the brand ambassadors through this channel just as you would on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites.  Tools are already cropping up to ease the integration and to locate users on other networks.

3.  The key with any social media network is engagement. Share useful content and react and respond to positive AND negative feedback from your business partners, brand evangelists, clients, and yes, the nay-sayers.  Utilize this feedback to refine customer experiences, products, campaigns and other business and marketing initiatives. Social media is the new age focus group, with an added  layer of anonymity.

4. The key to any social network is the social aspect. The desire to share aspects of your life, where you are, where you are going, what your plans are, what you read that was interesting today, and, yes even those not so pleasant moments. Integrate your videos, photos, website and other content. The key to engagement is ease of use and easy tools to share pictures, info, and videos.  The key to search engine ranking is fresh and updated content. Social media enables you to utilize the available tools to get your new content out in front of targeted audience in unprecedented amounts.

Written by: Sara Paxton, managing partner, CTO, and Social Media Officer of Evans Media Group, Kansas City’s Social Media Agency, a boutique agency located in Overland Park, KS that specializes in traditional marketing, social media marketing, online marketing, and public relations.

My Blog Has a First Name … It’s B.R.A.N.D.

In the old days … that is, before the web and more recently social media … choosing the name for your business was a simple matter. If your name was Bob and you were a plumber’s apprentice, there finally came a time for you to spread your wings and go off on your own. Now in charge of your own destiny, you set off for the local print shop to buy your first business cards and maybe some flyers and post cards. “Bob’s Plumbing Service”, you proudly said to the typesetter … “Serving the Metro Area Since …. well, today”.

The story repeats itself a million times worldwide. Naming conventions based on heritage, location, cute iterations (we love the myriad combinations of “Shear” when it comes to hair cutters), rhyme, industry or size. Historically, this was never much of a problem, in fact sometimes it was downright funny.

Examples of humorous names abound; Juan More Taco, A Den of Antiquity, Wok Around the Clock and Mickey Mao’s. But none of these businesses face the problem that arises today when a “commonly named” business tries to brand itself online or in the social space. Businesses with names longer than fifteen characters can forget about owning their brand on Twitter, and if you are thinking at all about (and you most definitely should be) extending your brand online, remember the web is global … so there is always a chance that one of the other 6.9 billion people on the planet might have already registered your name.

So what’s a new business to do? Well for a truly new business, as in one that is still in the planning stages, it is fairly simple. Research. Research, before you name your new business. Find out if the name is available online, on Twitter, on Facebook. Be sure the dot com is available if you have your heart set on that most popular of URL extensions, rather than dot biz, dot net, or dot tv. Plan on naming for ease of recall and intuitive keyboarding, for instance if your name is to be BiState,  don’t get cute and call it BuyState, unless you plan on spelling it every time you mention it, and buying both domain names so that someone doesn’t squat on it or worse, link it to a pornographic site.

For an established business, the challenge is much greater. Some true giants of industry have been caught embarrassingly unaware by the fact that somebody already owned their name. McDonald’s had to buy their domain name away from an individual, and Hyundai, GM and Kellogg were not fast enough to claim their names in the social space. In fact, some of the smartest marketers in business do not own their own names on Twitter. Surprisingly, Bank of America, Walt Disney, Sears, Macy’s, Walmart and Nike, Comcast and Volkswagen all blew it when it came to preparing for the social media wave. Even Burger King, Master Card and Berkshire Hathaway, a company owned by one of the smartest and wealthiest businessmen in the world, Warren Buffet do not own their own Twitter handles.

For business owners today, there are a few options. Some have actually (marketing shudder here …) changed or shortened their existing names, or added numbers like the Kansas City Chiefs with @KC_Chiefs1. Others have opted to incorporate a part or all of their USP or tag line or a convolution of their name that makes sense. So Bob’s Plumbing Service, while too long for Twitter, may settle for @PlumbBob, or @DripsNoMore.

So while http://www.juanmoretaco.com is available as a URL and as the @juanmoretaco Twitter handle (hurry if you want them), http://www.BobsPlumbingService.com is not. They are Proudly Serving the Columbia, SC Metro by the way. Need help with a naming convention? Seek out a professional. Seriously, this is not something left to amateurs. there are naming laboratories that charge six figures to come up with business names. This is not something the average business needs or can afford, but at least consult with a creative team, or spend time thinking about what makes the most sense, long term for your name or brand across the many social and online channels of today.

And for Pete’s Sake, (@ForPetesSake is gone by the way) … ask your customers to fan you, follow you and interact socially with you, but tell them how. Don’t just generically send them to the social media channel you’re on, give them a direct link to your profile. Search, in social media is not as intuitive as it is in a search engine, without a direct link, they might not even be able to find you. Just one more challenge in the brave new world of online and social marketing.

Paul Evans is the President and CMO of Evans Media Group, a boutique agency located in Overland Park, KS that specializes in traditional marketing, social media marketing, online marketing, and public relations.

So, You’re On The Social Media Bandwagon. Now What?

In previous posts, we have discussed ways to monitor your online reputation, but what if you are the small to medium-sized business owner that is late to the game?

Step 1? Start listening.

How do you do that? Well, this can be done internally, or it can be outsourced, but don’t think because that twenty-something in your office that texts, tweets, and has a Facebook status update for each hour of the day, that they are the candidate to manage your brand, your online marketing strategy, or equally important, your marketing budget. Think you can’t afford to outsource it? Shop around, you might be surprised.  Either way you go, the brand ambassador who manages this task must be reading blogs daily, be familiar with the people who are interacting with you on all social media networks, whether they are tweeters, vloggers, bloggers, or just merely commenters.

Listening is only as effective as the content that you choose to hear.  You will want to find content that has high relevancy to your industry, your company and your competitors.  There are hundreds of millions of blogs out there, which doesn’t include all of the videos uploaded to YouTube, the millions of Tweets, forum posts, and pictures that are shared across the ever-evolving multitude of social networks.

Overwhelmed yet? It’s okay. You read at over 1,000 words per minute right? If not, don’t sweat it. Even if you could, and you couldn’t possibly find everything that is relevant, wouldn’t be able to follow it all, and luckily, you don’t need to.  It varies by business, but generally there are less than 20 blogs that generate the majority of conversations in your niche. So, how do you determine what to follow and what is not worthy of your precious time?  Go for the biggest fish in the pond.  Find the biggest blogs in the community, and monitor other pieces of the digital conversation from other sources.

Here are some of the tools  you can use to search for conversations about your brand, your competitors, or your industry, by searching for industry buzzwords, your brand name or your competitors name:

Discussion Forum Searches – BoardTracker is currently tracking 69,230,256 threads in 37,284 Forums

Monitoring the Blogosphere – Google Blog Search is a great tool, but can yield a lot of splog results (spam blogs generated automatically by keyword searches). This would be an alternative to Google News Alerts, if you already subscribe to these. Ideally, you would want to monitor key company executives, your brand, your competition and your industry. (Get the picture yet?)

All of these search results can be subscribed to via email or as an RSS feed, and then you can share the appropriate feeds with any key individuals in your organization that you feel should also be plugged in.

Summary?

The most important step in any successful social media campaign launch is listening. By listening to the buzz about your brand – you will best position yourself to identify the brand junkies in your niche, find out what your audience is most interested in, and determine the best strategies to introduce your company into these conversations.

Still lost? Feel free to email Kansas City’s Social Media Agency for questions, additional details, or to schedule your complimentary on-site analysis to determine the strategies for your 2010 social media campaign.

Written by: Sara Paxton, managing partner, CTO, and Social Media Officer of Evans Media Group, Kansas City’s Social Media Agency, a boutique agency located in Overland Park, KS that specializes in traditional marketing, social media marketing, online marketing, and public relations.

Have you been beat by the tweet?

Tired of hearing about social media? Still can’t figure out if it is tweet, twit or tweeter? Haven’t figured out your Facebook page from your profile or your group?

Well, a great new video from the Socialnomics guys that told us all that Social Media is not a fad has been released and it showcases some of the numbers and statistics behind successful launches and implementations of Social Media Campaigns.  Will this be the result for everyone? Who knows, but if you haven’t even claimed your Twitter url or sent a single tweet, how will you ever know? What’s the worst that could happen? As the video shows, here are a few ideas:

Increase in sales?

Decrease in call center costs?

Traffic to your website?

Boy, any one of those would be terrible in this economy.  The simplest benefit that I could see would be preventing someone from squatting on your name and your brand.

Don’t think that would happen? Check out these examples:  vw, Kellogg,  Walmart or even Ad Age’s Marketer of the Year, Hyundai. Big brand names that were beat to the tweet and now are left wondering if their brand reputations are left at risk.  Maybe, maybe not, but if I had worked to build my brand, been recognized as a Marketer of the Year, in a year when there was little good news out of the automotive industry, I would hate to see it fade due to some ill-fated tweets about oysters, cellphones, and Yankees.  Not a big deal? Interestingly enough, if the course of writing this blog post and following the recent article in Ad Age regarding squatters, Twitter has finally taken the action to suspend the account. But don’t think it is easy to get them to sit up and take notice. This only happened after they contacted the social media site’s headquarters and began to contemplate legal action.  This account most likely was suspended due to inappropriate content like their bio that previously read, “Have a Lustful Day,” more so than due to any interest on Twitter’s behalf to protect brand names.

So, if you decide to join the Twitterverse to engage and interact and see if you can get a good ROI or if it is just online reputation management, please do so and do so quickly as this Social Media Revolution is not going away.

But when you do, don’t think it will happen overnight or that there is any “easy” way to gauge and measure ROI on social media.  There isn’t some nifty Google Analytic (yet) that you can track all of the ties to Social Media. You have to bear in mind the indirect and direct traffic, the benefit of the buzz around your brand, a positive reputation, and sometimes, just being considered a trendy brand by engaging consumers through this new method.  The diversity, the sheer number of social media networks out there make this an ever changing environment.  That may not fit well into the single page report your CEO wants to see, but it is a reality.  Erik Qualman (author of Socialnomics) uses what I think is a great analogy “What is the ROI of your Phone?”  Any ideas on how to quantify that? We haven’t come up with anything yet either.

Bottom line, you can look around at your competitors and see if you are going to be first or if you will just be left behind. You can’t afford not to engage, and I haven’t met a company yet in this economy that can afford to wait.

Check out this great video, focused on Social Media ROI by Socialnomics, with all of their amazing stats. We summarized them below for you. If at the end of the video, you are ready to jump on the Social Media Bandwagon, feel free to check out  Kansas City’s Social Media Agency to begin analyzing the steps to launch your social media campaign.

Here are the stats and quotes used in the video:

Over 300,000 businesses have a presence on Facebook and roughly a 1/3 of these are small businesses.

Gary Vaynerchuk grew his family business from $4 million to $50 million using social media. Gary’s eccentric personality and offbeat oenophile knowledge have proven a natural path to success with his Wine TV Library.

Vaynerchuk found first hand that $15,000 in Direct Mail = 200 new customers, $7,500 Billboard = 300 new customers, $0 Twitter = 1,800 new customers.

Wetpaint/Altimeter Study found companies that are both deeply and widely engaged in social media significantly surpass their peers in both revenue$ and profit$. The study also found the company sales with the highest levels of social media activity grew on average by +18%, while those companies with the least amount of social activity saw their sales decline -6%.

Lenovo was able to achieve cost savings by a 20% reduction in call center activity as customers go to community website for answers

Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice Facebook program incented users to give up ten of their Facebook friends in return for a free Whopper. The estimated investment for this program was less than $50,000 yet they received 32 million media impressions which roughly estimated equals greater than $400,000 in press/media value. Which to put in context is somewhat like reaching the entire populations of 19 states (understanding this doesn’t account for unique vs. repeat visitors, etc.)

BlendTec increased its sales 5x by running the often humorous “Will it Blend” Videos on YouTube blending everything from an iPhone to a sneaker.

Dell sold $3,000,000 worth of computers on Twitter

To put things into perspective, only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive return on investment. This is where the majority of media dollars reside today. I don’t believe the majority of media dollars will reside there tomorrow.

“You can’t just say it. You have to get the people to say it to each other,” says James Farley, CMO Ford. Ford seems to know what they are doing, especially with Scott Monty leading the social media charge. By giving away 100 Ford Fiestas to influential bloggers, 37% of Generation Y were aware of the Ford Fiesta before its launch in the United States. Is it any wonder why 25% of Ford’s marketing spend has been shifted to digital/social media initiatives? Ford is the only US auto company that didn’t take a government loan.

Naked Pizza, a New Orleans Pizzeria that specializes in healthy pies, set a one day sales record using social media. In fact 68% of their sales came from people “calling in from Twitter.” On top of that (no pun intended) 85% of their new customers were from Twitter. So, yes, social media does work for small businesses. Feel free to have a bottle of Vaynerchuk wine with your pizza.

Volkswagen goes 100% Mobile for launch of GTI. The reason that I mention this is that mobile drives social media usage and social media usage drives mobile. More and more we will see most social media usage on the phone.

Tweets for a Cause sent out a tweet from Atlanta to encourage support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. As a result of retweets from such notables as @mashable, @G_man, @zaibatsu and others, the Atlanta Chapter site received 11,000 visitors in 24 hours as a result of this initiative by ResponseMine Interactive.

Intuit introduced “Live Community” into their TurboTax® products 2 years ago. Due in part to the resulting word-of-mouth, they have seen unit sales increase +30% each year and have now integrated “Live Community” into their other products like QuickBooks, Quicken, etc. “Live Community” allows customers to ask other customers questions which has proved both beneficial to the customer and to Intuit. In some instances, the customer can answer questions that Intuit isn’t allowed to answer because of regulatory restrictions.

Software company Genius.com reports that 24% of its social media leads convert to sales opportunities

During Barack Obama’s rise to the White House, he garnered 5 million fans on social media and 5.4 million clicked on an “I voted for Obama” Facebook button. Most importantly this resulted in three million online donors contributing $500 million in fundraising. An astounding 92% of the donations were in increments of less than $100.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center witnessed a 9.5% increase in registrations by using social media.

Web host provider Moonfruit more than recouped its $15,000 social media investment as their Website Traffic soared +300% while correspondingly sales increased +20%. They also saw a huge lift in their organic search engine rankings getting on the first page for the term “free website builder.”

eBay found participants in online communities spend 54% more money

Co-Chairman Alex Bogusky of Crispin Porter & Bogusky puts it best when he states: “You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in social media…The old media paradigm was PAY to play. Now you get back what you authentically put in. You’ve got to be willing to PLAY to play.”

“Think of Twitter as the canary in the coal mine.” – Morgan Johnston, JetBlue

71% of companies plan to increase investments in social media by an average of 40% because: a) Low Cost Marketing b) Getting Traction c) We Have To Do It

“Our head of Social Media is the customer” – McDonald’s

East Coast Social Media Agency Relocates to Kansas City Metro

Overland Park, KS (EMG) – November 17, 2009. When a series of events brought about the opportunity for Paul Evans to relocate Evans Media Group, a boutique advertising and social media agency to the Midwest from its original location just outside New York City, Evans and his partner wasted no time. “Over the years, business had brought me to Kansas City many times and I had always been intrigued by this center of culture and diversity in the heartland” said Evans from his Overland Park, KS office.

“My partner was originally from Missouri, although meeting and dealing with her, one would assume she hailed from Madison Avenue in New York, the heart of the agency business”, he quipped. “But between her urgings and my growing love of the KC metro, we took the plunge and moved our entire operation”.

The nature of the business at Evans Media Group had been in a state of change anyway said EMG Managing Partner and CTO, Sara Paxton. “The move from a more traditional media agency to one that focused more on the social aspects of marketing had been underway for some time at EMG. The sheer virtuality of our clients and our agency were becoming more apparent every day. While our closeness to New York City and our 300 year old farm house office was attractive to us personally, our physical location was diminishing in importance as our client base became more mobile and less brick and mortar”, she said.

The agency focuses primarily on smaller businesses, although both partners have worked for multi-national corporate entities, they are sworn to help grow small business and as a founding principle, believe that America runs on small business. President and CMO Evans explains, “We try to provide small business with all the tools and opportunity available to big business but at a fraction of what it would normally cost to access those contrivances. With social media at the forefront and traditional media experience providing the historical skill set, EMG clients can leverage the best of both worlds.

EMG clients range from manufacturing and web development, to mail order distributors and food and beverage purveyors, luxury day spas, high end magazine publishers and a division of Kraft Foods, but as Paxton underscores, “We are extremely fluid … changing and morphing into what our clients need us to be as the tides of social media shift and look different from week to week”. Evans adds, “As an example of how the landscape changes offer greater opportunity, we now offer something that is so new I don’t think anybody else is doing it yet … live managed social media updating from an event or happening.

Managed being the operative word here … this is not a group of text-fervent fans, but an actual, planned and managed effort directed at disseminating branded messaging in real time, targeting fans and followers that are not at the event”.

Recently an annual charity boxing event was updated with text, images and streaming video to Facebook and twitter, live by a team from Evans Media Group from ring-side. The resulting push generated a unprecedented flow of activity and brand awareness for the event and contributing sponsors. Like a radio station live-remote, gone web 2.0!

This kind of think-on-your-feet functionality, coupled with solid public relations and marketing practice is what sets Evans Media Group apart in the agency world. “Yes, said Evans, “We’re quite a bit different from most traditional, or even social media agencies … we are a little off the wall, willing to try anything new, based in traditional marketing, but with a full grasp on the new”.

As their website proclaims, Evans Media Group, Kansas City’s Social Media Agency uses a combination of Research, Media Relations, Publicity, and Social Marketing Communications to promote clients to the widest possible segment of the public and business communities. They still believe that the most significant person in an agency/client relationship is the client. That may be an old fashioned set of principles in a new aged world, but according to Evans and Paxton, it’s what makes their clients happy to see them when they walk through their door.

Says Paxton, “We can be your local resource to kick start a stagnant social media marketing campaign across the top social networks, like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. But we still talk to businesses every day that have yet to venture over to the social media side … and that’s okay too. We specialize in launching social media efforts where no prior presence, experience or online reputation has been established”.

Evans concurs, “If a business is not sure what they are looking for, or how much they should invest in social media, or any advertising for that matter … just give Evans Media Group a call and we will perform a no charge on-site analysis of what it will take to get the Twitterverse abuzz about you, your business and your brand.

For more information or to contact Evans Media Group, go to their website at Evansmediagroup.com

Paul Evans is the President and CMO of Evans Media Group, a boutique agency located in Overland Park, KS that specializes in traditional marketing, social media marketing, online marketing, and public relations.

Get STICKY!

Sticky that is … in marketing speak. Sticky is a term we use to describe how memorable something is .. like a tag line. Just Do It. That was pretty sticky for the folks at Nike … or Got Milk? for the Dairy Board. On that note, and as a word of free advice … stop reusing the Got … anything, it has now officially become the most plagiarized tagline in advertising history and has begun to have a subliminally negative effect on those silly enough to try to reinvent it for actual marketing value. It’s fine on a funny T-shirt, but I don’t want to see any of you guys asking Got Dent? OK?

Some in the ad world are saying that the tag line is dead … they would be so far from wrong as to bring into question their place in the business .. and I’m talking about some heavyweights here … But just ask consumers today how sticky tag lines have “stuck” in their heads … for years in some cases. Like, “Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee”, Reach Out and Touch Somebody” or “Put a Tiger in Your Tank” … I could go on for hours. The point is that a tagline is the second most important piece of brand identity, behind your logo or company name and should be given an appropriate place in your thought process.

A tagline is a unique cluster of words that conveys a thought about your brand and how people should feel about you and your company. It is essential in the compressed, byte-sized world we live in … you have mere seconds sometimes to sink your message into grey matter. In the words of Master Po as he taught young Caine in Kung Fu … Choose wisely. Choose wisely, or find a good copy writer, because coming up with “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard” is no simple task.

Be wary of punctuation in a tag line … stay away especially from exclamation points and question marks. Use iteration when possible, they help the “sticky” factor … Lulu’s Dim Sum and Then Some, for instance. How about … Big Al’s Collision … “Fender bent, a door with a dent … When we’re done, you won’t know where it went” or Tom’s AutoBody … “We’ll make you forget you ever had an accident”.

Look, the key here is to come up with something that makes somebody feel a certain way about your brand … the way YOU want them to feel about your brand actually. So test it on a few people before you hang it on the wall. Get some feedback and trust what you hear. Don’t get attached to something because you wrote it. There is no room for ego in tag line writing, it must resonate with the recipient, be “sticky” enough for them to remember and convey your brand message effectively … if it doesn’t do all that? … Just Don’t Do It.

Of course, that’s just my opinion … I could be wrong.

Comments welcome, call if you like 203-512-0250

Twitter And Your Brand …

Recently … we stumbled across a question in one of our linkedin groups, “Twitter Power for Business” posted by Tara Cain, a former newspaper journalist, communications specialist, currently working with global consumer giant Reckitt Benckiser.

“The consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser wants graduates to be aware of the exciting career opportunities within the company. They have utilised Facebook, Linked In and run an employee blog – but can Twitter help with an awareness-raising initiative too? Should it be used for those purposes and will the right people be listening? “

http://twitter.com/edd_at_rb

Our response from EMG was posted by our President and CMO, Paul Evans:

“At the risk of waxing Gen Y …. Duh! Asking if brands should use Twitter is like asking if the pony express should have used … well, ponies! And technically speaking … Twitter is actually faster and not resplendent with options for joining groups, taking quizzes and becoming a fan of the cause Du Jour … Hence, more efficient. “

The fact that someone actually is still asking that is kind of funny to us … Granted, we didn’t adopt Twitter ourselves until about 21 days ago… We had dabbled in it, set up personal accounts, but made the decision as a company to migrate to a full-fledged professional tweeting team … So, when we did,  just as all initiatives at Evans Media Group, we went all out.  We maintain a professional reputation on twitter by tweeting on topics related to our market, our clients, and  our industry and have successfully grown our followers to nearly 1,000 in 3 short weeks.

These followers, in addition to connections on other social media networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) enabled us to claim our Facebook url for Evans Media Group in 12 hours.  This quickly taught us the strength of social media as it relates to networking as well as building your brand.

If you are going to use Linkedin and Facebook, why wouldn’t you use Twitter as a company? That is like eating and drinking without breathing.

However, I would not recommend setting up a Twitter account, just for the sake of being able to check that off your list. There are daily activities that you should be engaging in on Twitter. You should be actively reading your followers tweets, following other people on Twitter, and most importantly, re-following those that have followed you as a professional courtesy. You should treat Twitter as the modernized version of email. It would not be considered good business etiquette to receive an email from a co-worker, vendor or client, and simply ignore them. In the same sense, you should not ignore your followers. Furthermore, if you are tweeting – do it right … The learning curve is not that steep … A few hashmarks here, an @ sign there – Read a few good tweets from some reputable tweeters, and you should be able to pick it up pretty quickly. If not, at least take the time to do the research. This is your company brand you are promoting … or trashing, if not done properly.

Now that Tweets show up in Bing search results, the professionalism, brand building, and opportunities are just exploding with the potential to make your company succeed, even on a global level.  Twitter’s searching capabilities are somewhat limited, but even Google or Bing will not find your twitter page with a naming convention such as Edd_at_rb … And, if for some reason it did – would that tie to your company brand?

IMHO …

Written by: Sara Paxton, managing partner, CTO, and Social Media Officer of Evans Media Group, Kansas City’s Social Media Agency, a boutique agency located in Overland Park, KS that specializes in traditional marketing, social media marketing, online marketing, and public relations.