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Social Media Should Be Embraced Through An Entire Organization
Alex Pomer
Alex Pomer is a project manager and online media buyer at New Media Campaigns. He received a degree in Advertising from The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He has successfully launched sites for statewide political campaigns, national organizations and non-profits. Follow him on Twitter.
Organizations may have an individual designated as the Social Media Expert or Twitter Intern, but it's important for social media to be embraced at every level of the organization, even if not everyone is a guru. And here's why:
Everyone should understand at least the basics of social media
Social media marketing is expanding rapidly. A recent report by Forrester estimated that social media will grow 34% annually over the next 5 years. That's more than both mobile and email marketing. If the members of your organization don't understand at least the very basics of social media, you won't be able to keep up.
The best way for the less-than tech savvy people in your organization to get acclimated with this relatively new and ever-changing medium is to encourage them to participate in it. Not only will this prepare your company for the future but it will also have an immediate impact.
Social media keeps people in your organization creatively energized
You may think that Twitter and Facebook are just a waste of time but a recent article by Wired argues that social networks actually make employees more productive by stimulating the mind. Studies found that "regular breaks enhance problem-solving skills significantly, in part by making it easier for workers to sift through their memories in search of relevant clues."
Because social networks encourage participation and sharing, they may even be more valuable for enhancing creativity than regular breaks thanks to built-in incentives to entertain like Retweets.
Expanded social media means connecting with your customers, clients and prospects in more places
Each person who is participating in a social media environment is giving your organization another opportunity to both reach out to prospective clients as well as troubleshoot current customer issues as they happen. An amazing example of a successful company-wide embrace of social media is Best Buy's Twelpforce. Best Buy encouraged all of its employees to utilize Twitter for promotions and the company's online customer service. Employees could add the hashtag of #twelpforce to a tweet from their personal Twitter account and get credit for the customer service.
Whether or not your organization incorporates a specific strategy like 'Twelpforce', encouraging employees to participate in social media will expand the reach of your brand.
People inherently have different networks and more networks means spreading your message further
A social media guru may have 2000 followers on Twitter, 900 Facebook friends, and is a Super User on Foursquare, but it's likely all those connections are based on social media itself, and not on your product, brand or service. The connections that employees at every level of your company have made throughout their career are much more valuable and more diverse than that of a single user, no matter how popular.
That means a message will spread furthest when spread through every level of your organization and not just the PR and social media marketing segments.
"Entire Organization" does not mean "Everyone," there needs to be some order and structure
All social media was not created equal and some people are going to use Twitter more than Facebook, some are going to be more professional with LinkedIn, and some are going to get really excited about Google's new Buzz. That's okay. The key is to have participation at every level of the company and to be organized as a whole.
Ad Age wrote an article earlier in the week that discussed who should be in charge of the social media for a company, highlighting the dangers of keeping social media too centralized, not having a standardized practice, and lack of accountability.
Despite these dangers, encouraging social media and providing guidance can have an extremely positive immediate external and internal impact on your business as well as prepare it for the future of marketing.
Do you have any non-marketing people succesffuly using social media for you business?
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Looking forward to Internet Summit 2009 in Raleigh
Alex Pomer
Alex Pomer is a project manager and online media buyer at New Media Campaigns. He received a degree in Advertising from The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He has successfully launched sites for statewide political campaigns, national organizations and non-profits. Follow him on Twitter.
Clay, Kris and I are looking forward to spending today in Raleigh for The 2nd Annual Internet Summit! The Summit is designed to promote innovating thought on the Internet and surrounding technologies. As a Raleigh web design firm, this is right up our alley. Some of the big-name speakers we're excited to hear from include:
- Richard Jalichandra, President and CEO of Technorati Media
- Joe Kennedy, President and CEO of Pandora
- John Kosner, Senior VP and GM of Digital Media for ESPN
- Matt Van Horn, the Business Development Manager from Digg
- Brian Williams, CEO & Co-Founder of Viget. Viget is a local company that we especially enjoy hearing from.
Personally, I plan on attending panels on Search Marketing, Cloud Computing, Social Media, Design & Usability, Email Marketing and Real-Time/Twitter. I know Clay and Kris plan on going to more of the technological panels like Analytics, CIO/CTO Roundtable and Growth and Liquidity.
Keeping in spirit with its purpose, the Summit emailed all attendees early in the week and established a Twitter hashtag for the event, #isum09. So if you're interested in what's going on at this very minute of the Summit, be sure to search Twitter!
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Twitter for Business - Monitoring and Contributing to the Conversation (Part 2)
Alex Pomer
Alex Pomer is a project manager and online media buyer at New Media Campaigns. He received a degree in Advertising from The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He has successfully launched sites for statewide political campaigns, national organizations and non-profits. Follow him on Twitter.
As a new media web design firm, we're often asked by clients how they can improve their online presence. As part of the solution, we almost always advise that clients begin or more effectively utilize Twitter as an online marketing resource. But what does that really mean? This post is the second in a 3-part series that takes businesses through a variety of methods and tools that will help improve their presence in the Twitter universe.
If you're not a Twitter newbie but aren't exactly sure how to take advantace of the service and benefit your business, this post covers:
Part 1 of the series discusses the very basics of Twitter. For strategy on how to efficiently manage the increasing amount of information coming into your Twitter feed, stay tuned to our internet marketing RSS feed for part 3.
Twitter Search
Just this week, both Microsoft and Google partnered with Twitter to incorporate real-time search into their results, proving the increasing importance of Twitter Search. Real-time search is here to stay with it are several opportunities for your business.
- You can and should be monitoring what people are saying about your brand (and your competitors) in real time. The real advantage of search on Twitter is not seeing what people are saying about you, but is being able to build a relationship with them by answering concerns and showing appreciation for praise.
- The Twitter community is very vocal about the brands with whom they use and interact because they know that many compaies are listening. If you can quickly respond to or explain a bad experience with your company, you may be able to turn a critic into a fan. (If that's not valueable, I don't know what is.)
- Also, if someone is happy with your product or service, showing them that you're listening will further build trust towards your brand. A simple direct message or @mention saying "thanks for the comment, we love the support" can make a big difference.
Be a Thought Leader
The best way to increase your number of followers is to consistently create and share interesting, relevant information. Hopefully, that includes exciting things you're doing with your own products or service but your tweets should also include industry news, recommendations, facts, questions, answers and anything else that shows you know what's going on right now in your field.
Your goal should be for people to use your Twitter feed as a human RSS feed for real-time information on your industry.
Even though it has nothing to do with our company, as a Raleigh Web Design Firm, many of our followers would find the above tweet by @newmediaclay extremely useful. By providing followers with valuable information, a company can use Twitter to become a resource and build trust towards the brand.
Encourage Conversation
Twitter is categorized as a social network because at its core, it's designed to be social. Since relationships on Twitter oftentimes don't exist in the offline world, encouraging conversation is a great way to nurture those relationships and can turn your followers into fans. There are a few easy ways to encourage conversation:
- Ask questions: If you're not sure what to do in an upcoming situation, curious what the public thinks about a current issue, or want to know how your opinion compares to others, you should ask your Twitter followers! If you're using Twitter correctly, your followers should represent a nice sample of your target audience. And if that's the case, knowing their opinion will be very helpful when anticipating how your entire audience will think.
- Answer other people's questions: While it's easy to use Twitter to get information, because you want to your followers to benefit from your Tweets, it's important to give back as well. Answer other people's questions, remark on their tweets, retweet them, support them and they'll do the same. Build your community by giving and not just taking. It'll benefit you in the long run.
Listen and Learn
There are many businesses that, just like you, are trying to be a thought leader and encourage conversation. Don't use Twitter only as a means to market your business, use it as a resource too. Click on the links of the people you follow, read their blog posts, and expand your knowledge base. You're on Twitter to provide value by spreading information and expanding trust in your brand. Let other people teach you too. Twitter has spread so rapidly in the last few years because it can be useful. Take advantage of its utility in addition to molding it into your own marketing tool.
What other ways are you using Twitter to help your business? What have you seen other businesses do? Let me know in the comments and be sure to stay tuned for part 3.
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Social Media is Not a Strategy
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
Photo Credit: The Brand Builder
With the onset of every new technology and business tactic unqualified vendors are born, each trying to make a quick buck through the gratuitous use of buzz words and confusion. One large scale example is the Dot Com Bubble where unqualified entrepreneurs were able to raise millions and millions of capital, but had no business plan except for the Internet.
Social media is the latest strategy to fall victim to this abuse.
Many companies, large and small, have been somewhat sideswiped by the whole social media phenomenon and have gotten lost in the fog. This slip is understandable as it is fairly new and confusing, and the space is much different from what decision makers have seen in the past. However, it’s inexcusable that so many firms and individuals ride in on a social media strategy flying carpet and promise magic.
Executives should not be fooled, they should recognize the fact that: Social media is not a strategy; it’s a vehicle with which to enact your strategy.
As Facebook crossed more traffic milestones and Twitter brought millions in revenue to large companies, more and more agencies started touting social media as the silver bullet that would increase your company’s revenues and your clients’ happiness. I mean the only reason that Zappos had a near-billion dollar acquisition was because they tweeted, right?
However, it’s not that companies tweet or post photos to flickr that is behind their success; it’s the fact that these efforts further their overall strategy of content creation, customer acquisition, and product positioning. Southwest would still be a very successful airline without Twitter, but a core tenet of their business is service and responsiveness, and social media allows them to carry this ethos through more channels.
Too many firms haven’t done their research and convince potential clients that just being in the space is the entire battle. I’m warning you that your overall marketing is the battle and social media is simply another weapon in your arsenal to help win it. Don’t miss the forest for the trees and allow a blind investment into social media that results in participation but no interaction or measurement.
Don’t get me wrong, I love social media (dorkiest sentence I’ve ever typed). It has paid dividends for our firm through inbound marketing, client relations, new business, and in countless other ways. Furthermore, I think there are tons of great firms out there that do social media the right way, such as our partner PR 20/20 and social media firm SHIFT.
These firms understand that it’s about an integrated online marketing strategy and there are a lot of steps before and after social media to have a truly successful campaign. However, it seems that for every firm that gets it, there are a half dozen impostors faking their way to invoices.
So, the next time someone comes to you promising the moon based simply on social media, ask some hard questions, review their metrics, and then look elsewhere.
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Should You Build Your Own Private Social Network?
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
As social media have become more popular, organizations have frequently wanted to create a more branded and controlled experience for their target. A common (and expensive) solution to this problem has been to build a private social network aimed at connecting your users with one another while bypassing the “distractions” in other networks.
These attempts range from a few wildly successful cases such as MyBo and Pickens Plan to many failures that just turned into virtual ghost towns.
The successful private networks are definitely the exception and not the rule. You’ll notice all the successful cases were supported by organizations with really, really deep pockets. It’s very difficult and nearly impossible to start a private, niche, network that organically takes off.
However, the very popular and high profile cases catch a lot of headlines and thus lead people to consider launching one for their own organization. I frequently speak with great non-profits, corporations, and individuals who are toying with the idea of launching their own network.
My answer is almost invariably no.
Save Resources and Go To Where Your Audience Already Is
Even though services like Ning have reduced the dollar amount to almost nothing to build a private network, the cost is still too high. The true cost is your time and resources devoted to attracting and engaging users on a new network when they’re already herded and conversing on others, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more.
Your audience has already set up shop in their desired social media, and to convince them to leave and spend the time to launch another presence is a nearly impossible task. Rather than building your own space from the ground up, you should focus on leveraging the organizing tools in place on popular social networks that your target already inhabits.
From Facebook Fan pages to LinkedIn groups (read more on using LinkedIn for business) to Twitter discussion, rather than trying to slowly build an audience from scratch and then engage them, you have the power to immediately connect with them in a space they’re already accustomed to.
Making Sure It's the Right Decision for Your Organization
Before you build your own network, you have to be able to answer the following questions with a definitive yes:
- Have you already built a formidable community (I’m talking thousands and thousands of folks) through other social media?
- Do you have the available resources to support and promote the new network with other media?
- Has your brand cultivated an audience that is passionate enough to sustain its own community?
If the answers to those three is yes, I congratulate you on having a great organization and taking advantage of social media. However, it still doesn’t mean you’re ready to launch your own presence. You then must be able to pledge your continued and persistence efforts to the following:
- Creating loads of content that provides valuable information and fodder for discussion to educate and engage the community.
- Continually interact in the community by answering questions, greeting new members, posting content, and encouraging interaction.
- Progressively upgrade the network with exciting new features, offers, and opportunities.
As I stated above and these checklists demonstrate, it's very very rare that it's appropriate for an organization to build its own social network, it's even more rare for that intiative to actually succeed.
Your resources would be best utilized to engage your target on their ground and terms rather than trying to dictate a new gameplan. Have you seen other organizations that don't fit this mold successfully build their own networks? Have you been a part of a winning private network?
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Connect the Dots Between Your Online and Offline Marketing
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
I took a trip to Charleston, SC this past weekend, and even though it was a “vacation,” I found myself catching some interesting marketing techniques used by different groups.
I’ve noticed for a while that many organizations don’t have a fully integrated online marketing communication plan, which is somewhat understandable as it is hard to adjust to all of the different online marketing media available. What is more shocking to me is that so many businesses still fail to connect their online and offline marketing.
That’s why a huge smile came across my face on the trip after seeing a couple of great examples of online/offline integration.
The first example is a small boutique store named Bijuju (formerly known as Vanity). This little store out thought most national brands by having cards pushing their different social media presences strewn across the store. In addition to simply having these cards, they also provided a compelling offer with the taglines “Be a fan on facebook. Be rewarded” and “The early bird gets the deal.” Kudos to Bijuju for connecting the dots and doing some great marketing.
The second, larger example were the state of South Carolina’s license plates. They did something that I haven’t seen (or at least noticed) on any other state’s: they put their tourism website’s address, www.sctravel.com. For virtually no cost, this strategy allowed them to increase the site’s exposure and impressions by millions. They essentially purchased several million moving billboards to promote their state.
These are two simple examples that likely have big results for these two businesses. Here’s a quick checklist of three things your organization can do to tie together your offline and online marketing.
- Have your website and social media on your business cards (if you still use business cards). Most people hold onto a business card and let it go through the wash at least once. While they may not remember you or the discussion, by putting your web and social media addresses on your card, you increase the likelihood of them interacting with your brand in the future.
- Push in-store specials through the web and social media. Just because you’re talking to someone online doesn’t mean they don’t exist in the real world. Use social media updates, blog posts, online news releases, and more to let your online community know about specials or events happening at your physical location.
- On-site email signups. Ask customers, volunteers, lurkers, and everyone else for their email addresses. It can be as simple as a pen and paper (trust me, it’ll be worth spending the time to type them into your contacts database) or you can have a laptop station set up, but always push for an email address to stay in contact with them and give special offers.
There are infinite other connections and I encourage you to add them in the comments.
Remember, that by taking a page from Bijuju and also presenting a compelling offer of special deals or offers, you greatly increase the likelihood of people actually following your push. Have you seen any other great offline/online marketing connections?
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Twitter for Business - The Basics (Part 1)
Alex Pomer
Alex Pomer is a project manager and online media buyer at New Media Campaigns. He received a degree in Advertising from The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He has successfully launched sites for statewide political campaigns, national organizations and non-profits. Follow him on Twitter.
As a new media web design firm, we're often asked by clients how they can improve their online presence. As part of the solution, we almost always advise that clients begin or more effectively utilize Twitter as an online marketing resource. But what does that really mean? This post is the first of a 3-part series that will take businesses through a variety of methods and tools that will help improve their presence in the Twitter universe.
If you're new to Twitter or just want a refresher on the basics, this post covers:
For more advanced strategy on leveraging Twitter for your business, part 2 discusses specific strategies for engaging and increasing your followers and stay tuned to our internet marketing RSS feed for part 3 which will discuss how to efficiently manage the increasing amount of information coming into your Twitter feed.
What exactly is "Twitter"?
At its core, Twitter is a tool for communication. Twitter's site suggests that you share the answer to the question "What are you doing?" The real value in Twitter however is not in sharing what you're doing but instead sharing "What has your attention?" Most people don't care that you had McDonalds for breakfast. What they may care about however is that "you're realizing that you're more frequently going to McDonalds for breakfast since their rebranding effort... accompanied with a link to an article about McDonalds' rebranding."
Twitter is a way of communicating. And just like when you're talking to someone in person, the more you engage your listeners and discuss things that interest them, the more closely they'll pay attention to you. As a business, being able to consistently demand the attention of consumers, clients, or your target audience has incredible value.
The Language of Twitter
Because Twitter dialogue is limited to 140-character statements, Twitter users have established several abbreviations and notations that have become essentially standard. These widely understood and generally accepted shortcuts provide efficiency and increased usability for practiced users but make jumping right into Twitter and fully taking advantace of its functionality a little more difficult.
After taking a few minutes to learn the lingo however, anyone can quickly join and fully participate in the Twitter community. Below is a list of the basic notations and vocabulary and what it all means to get you started:
Tweet
A tweet is simply a status update or post. It's what you're sending out when you answer the question "What are you doing?" or "What's got your attention?" If you're still confused, think of it this way: sending a letter is to mail what posting a tweet is to Twitter.
Follow
You follow someone if you have signed up to receive that person's tweets (updates). Since it is common curtesy to follow people back who follow you (or at least take a look at their Twitter feed and consider following them), a good way to increase your number of followers is by following other people first.
Twitter unlike Facebook is a social network with a very low barrier of interaction. Do not be afraid to follow someone you don't know and by the same token, don't worry about unfollowing someone. You wouldn't expect someone to follow you that doesn't find what you have to say interesting and you don't need to follow anyone whose updates you don't want to read.
If you're not sure where to begin, FollowOnTwitterLists.com is a collection of all the lists of people that you should be following on Twitter (in order of Google Page Rank).
Mention (@)
Our first symbol, the @ sign is used to indicate that you are mentioning or replying to a specific person. The format for a mention is '@twittername' (no space).
Instead of saying, "I didn't know Oprah Winfrey was the most influential woman in the world.", you would instead say, "I didn't know @Oprah was the most influential woman in the world."
This not only indicates that someone is using Twitter, but also gives your followers a chance to look at that person's Twitter feed and even begin following her, thereby expanding the Twitter community.
Note: Twitter will automatically link to the Twitter feed of any name following an @ symbol. Replies are public and anyone looking at your Twitter feed will see them.
ReTweet (RT)
If someone has an interesting Tweet from which you think your followers would also get value, you can ReTweet that person and give them credit for their post. To do this, simply type 'RT' in front of their Twitter name (ex. "RT @twittername ...") and copy their tweet into your status update. The 'RT' concept was created by users but Twitter began officially supporting the notation recently in order to set a standard format for newcombers like you.
Direct Message (DM)
Whereas Mentions (@) are public, direct messages are private. Only the person who you direct message will see the post and as a result, as opposed to most of Twitter conversation, direct messaging is for one-on-one communication. The DM format is "D Twittername" (single space, no @ symbol).
There are some restrictions to Direct Messages:
- You can't send a DM to someone who does not follow you.
- You can't use the reply (@) button to reply to a direct message with a direct message (the message will be public)
- While DMs are private, they are not secure and you should not send DMs with information like passwords or bank accounts.
You should use DMs when having a conversation that you think only one of your followers will find interesting or relevant.
Hashtag (#)
Twitter users established the # symbol as a way to assign categories, groups or topics to tweets that other users can also use. For example, Gmail has gone down several times in the last months. Twitter users, when trying to get updates on the status of Gmail, would end their tweets with "#Gmail #Fail". This way, people can search Twitter for only tweets about Gmail going down. See below for examples of its use.
URL Shorteners (bit.ly , tinyurl.com)
Because you're only allowed 140 characters in each tweet, people use URL shorteners which redirect URLs from a short domain so that users can save their valuable characters for what they actually have to say. Twitter officially sponsors bit.ly. But the five most used shorteners are:
Twitter Profile
Your Twitter profile is where people decide whether or not to follow you so you'd better make it creative and informative. Here are a few tips for how to make sure you stand out:
- Pick a picture of yourself unless you're tweeting as your company.
- Twitter is a place to give your business a little personality. Having an image of a real person instead of a logo will re-inforce that down-to-earth-ness and encourage people to talk to you as an individual.
- Create a custom background image.
- Here's where you can let your company brand come in a little. Keep the colors in your brand or put your logo in the upper left-hand corner if you want to tie in your business. Add some text as an image in that blank area on the left-hand side. Here's a great article on exactly how you can customize your Twitter background.
- Take some time to think about your bio.
- Twitter is all about saying what you want to say in a clever way so people will want to read it. And of course, you have to do it in a very limited amount of space. Your Twitter bio is your first test. You have 160 characters to sell yourself as someone people want to follow. Think of it as an elevator pitch for your Twitter page.
- Create a Twitter landing page for your more info link.
- You could use the homepage of your business as your more info link... Or you could create a page that specifically targets your Twitter audience. Use the language you would use on Twitter and give them the more information they want without losing your Twitter personality.
That's it for a Twitter introduction. Rememer to stay tuned for part 3. And if I missed anything, please be sure to let me know in the comments!
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Using Social Media in Political Campaigns (Part 1)
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
Since we do a lot of political website design, we frequently find ourselves helping candidates navigate the confusing landscape of social media. It’s a place where campaigns know they should be, but they don’t always know all of the nuances behind it. So, we’ve put together this multi-part series on using social media in political campaigns to help you effectively and efficiently leverage this exciting space.
Social Media has become the marketing strategy du jour for corporations and organizations of all sizes. From crowdsourcing vehicle designs to delivering excellent customer service, marketers are using social media in a variety of manners to derive input and value from their target.
Social Media also offers the rare example of a marketing strategy on which politics isn’t twenty years behind. Candidates and elected officials have been quick to adopt and leverage social media to engage and educate voters. For example, Barack Obama had dozens of social network profiles, ranging from MiGente.com to Facebook to BlackPlanet. However, as candidates continue to learn everyday, they’re not Barack Obama.
He was the once-in-a-generation-type candidate who had the type of celebrity appeal that made people excited to actually be his friend and network online with him. However, even though Obama is the exception and not the rule for extreme social media success, it doesn’t mean that your campaign can’t still have a formidable online presence that supports your offline efforts. It’s no secret that the campaign website is the hub of a campaign’s online activity, but social media are an important supporting cast that can drive valuable traffic to the site and engage voters on a more personal level.
This post, the first in the series, aims to educate campaigns on the most important social media and where you'll see the most bang for your buck.
What Social Media Should a Political Campaign Use?
This question is a difficult one to answer. When deciding how many social networks to join, it ultimately comes down to the candidate’s appeal and the campaign’s resources.
The number one rule is to not have any social media presence become a “ghost town,” meaning don’t join networks that you don’t have the available resources to update or be active in. It reflects horribly on a campaign to have a vacuous social network profile – a rarely update presence makes it appear that the campaign doesn’t value that network and its demographic while also suggesting that the campaign is more of a spammer than general conversation constructer.
While the first rule is to not overextend yourself into too many networks, that doesn’t excuse any candidate from not having a presence on at least a few of the top networks. We believe it’s absolutely necessary to have presences on at least: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.
I like to call these networks the Big Four. They’re the fastest growing and farthest reaching of social networks; also, they represent four distinct ways of publishing to and connecting with voters.
- Facebook is comprehensive and allows you to post pictures, add videos, send detailed mass messages, publicly interact on Walls, and more.
- Twitter excels in short message bursts, event updates, blog post pushes, and breaking news. It allows a campaign to instantly send a succinct message to 1000’s of followers and also lets the campaign interact with other people in a one-on-one manner.
- YouTube is purely a video medium. However, its reach cannot be underestimated. The service’s search engine is second in use only to Google! This staggering number of searches makes it essential to own your candidate’s name for search on this platform.
- Flickr should be used to publish campaign photos. With more than 4 billion images and over 30 million monthly visitors, it’s an important place to be and exposes your campaign to an important network.
As you can see, each network is totally unique and allows you to connect with a huge audience. Voters expect every campaign to be on these media. In addition to simply having a presence on each of these networks, you should update them frequently and make sure that they are linked to from your main campaign website, allowing voters to easily get access and engage you in the different networks.
Depending on your campaign's message and target, other networks could also prove to be very useful. For a candidate with a strong business background, LinkedIn is a logical choice. For campaigns that are targeting an edgy or urban crowd, Myspace can still be a viable and effective network. There are dozens of other networks out there, with niche focuses ranging from veterans to volunteers.
If you have the available resources, the first networks to focus on after the "Big Four" are those focused on niches to which your candidate has specific ties. This strategy allows you to use natural synergies and capitalize on the base character of the candidate and campaign. No matter which networks you focus on though, it's important to never break the first rule by allowing any of your presences to become a ghost town.
This first post was more of a general overview. Part 2 will focus on how to specifically use and leverage each Big Four network. We invite you to stay tuned through our RSS feed or to join our Online Campaigning Linkedin group, where we hope these posts foster some creative and engaging conversation. Let us know your thoughts on social media and politics and any success you may have had in the comments.
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10 ways to easily improve your website using embed codes
Alex Pomer
Alex Pomer is a project manager and online media buyer at New Media Campaigns. He received a degree in Advertising from The School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC Chapel Hill. He has successfully launched sites for statewide political campaigns, national organizations and non-profits. Follow him on Twitter.
Companies (or third parties) can provide an embed code to make using a service as easy as copying and pasting. Not only is using embed codes extremely simple, it also allows for people to view content on the web without leaving your site. Here are 10 examples of how you can improve your site by simply pasting in a little HTML.
YouTube Videos
Over 1.2 billion YouTube videos are watched everyday and many of those are not at youtube.com. That's probably because YouTube makes nearly all their videos readily available for embedding. Just look on the right-hand side of the page, click on the... well... take a look at the embedded YouTube video below which explains how to do it.
Flickr Slideshows
While Flickr allows you to share a slideshow through email and not lose any of its elegance, in four simple steps you can generate the embed code to place it on your web page.
- Go to idgettr.com and type in the URL of your Flickr page.
- Go to fabiocavassini.com.ar/SlideShowGenerator.html and type in the ID you just got.
- Ctrl + C
- Ctrl + V
Basic RSS Feeds
Trying to promote another site's feed? Maybe you've built a microsite with a content-rich blog? Google provides a neat little gadget that not only provides the code for you to embed that feed onto your site but it also lets you customize the color, font, style and number of posts that display. Just go to Google's RSS Gadget page and customize to your heart's content.
Twitter Feed
People don't need to be following you to see your latest tweets, they just need to go to your website. You can embed your Twitter feed by going to twitter.com/badges and following the all-too easy instructions. You can choose from a variety of formats including a basic HTML feed and a flash feed (shown below if you've got Flash 9).
Facebook
While we're on the subject of social networks, Facebook provides two ways expand/share your community... depending on whether you're a person or a business.
If you're feeling a little unpopular and want to attract a few more friends via your web site, you can add a profile badge by going to the bottom of the left sidebar in your profile and clicking on Create a Profile Badge.
If you're more in the business of building your fan base for your company page, embedding a Fan Box is the way to go. As long as you're an admin, simply go to your fan page, click Add Fan Box to your site, and voila!
New Media Campaigns on FacebookGoogle Maps
Why list only the address of your company when you can throw an interactive map with notable landmarks and varying street views with a few clicks of a mouse? You can embed both a single location as well as directions at maps.google.com. Show the quickest route right on your web page by clicking on the 'Link' button in the top right-hand corner.
Audio
Google's got a lot of face time in this post so I thought I'd give a shout-out to Yahoo. Their media player takes the cake when it comes to embedding audio on your web page. Follow the steps below and let your readers really hear what's on your mind:
- Insert URL of audio file into HTML in the following format: <a href="Your-Audio-File.mp3">Your Song Title</a>
- Copy and paste this mediaplayer code: <script type="text/javascript" src="http://mediaplayer.yahoo.com/js"></script>
- That's it.
And when it's that easy, why wouldn't we pay our respects to Patrick Swayze...
Tweetmeme
You may notice the retweet button at the top of each of our (and many other people's) blog posts. It's a great way to track how often your content is being shared across the twitter universe. Thanks to Tweetmeme, it's incredibly easy to add to a post. Just go to their Feed Buttons page, follow the semi-HTML-knowledge-needed instructions and away you go!
Chat
Ever wondered who was looking at your site? Want to talk to them in real time? Get some feedback? Discuss a blog post? Well Meemo Me is right up your alley. That is as long as you're a Meebo member... which you probably aren't. That's okay though. All you have to do is go to meebo.com and register which takes all of 30 seconds. Meebo Me allows you to create a custom chat box anywhere with a little cut and paste code.
Go to meebome.com, type in a chat title and display name, enter your meebo log in information and generate that code. If you have any trouble figuring it out, chat me up below if I'm online and I'll walk you through it!
Google Presentations
Put a Google Presentation onto your website by clicking the 'Share' button in the top right-hand corner and going to 'Publish/Embed'. The real advantage here is being able to upload your PowerPoint presentations into Google Docs and having the ability to share the presentation that you put so much hard work into with anyone who visits your site.
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Our Favorite Internet Marketing Tools and Resources
Clay Schossow
Clay Schossow leads New Media Campaigns' project management and business development efforts. A graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, he has guided more than 200 websites from concept to launch. He is a frequent writer on Internet marketing and online campaigning. You should follow him on Twitter.
On our web development blog, Joel recently compiled a great list of our favorite development tools and resources that we've created over the past year. I wanted to take this opportunity on our Internet Marketing Blog to do the same.
Search Engine Optimization
Organically ranking high in search engines is a key component to driving quality traffic to your site. These resources cover a variety of tools to better optimize your site and some basic strategy behind why SEO is important.
New Google Tool Suggests Competitive Keywords Based on Site ContentGoogle now allows Adwords users to run a report on their site that suggests keywords to target. This new tool is very valuable to many different marketers, ranging from people running their first Adwords campaign looking for good terms to experienced advertisers trying to devise new keywords to target.
Three Basics of Search Engine Optimization
SEO vs. PPC: Analyzing the Value of Each with Heat Charts
The Importance of Geotargeting Your SEO Campaign
Blogging
One of the most effective and efficient ways to market your business online is by having a company blog. The following articles explain the concept of Inbound Marketing and feature our series on blogging for business.
Preparing to Start a Business BlogThis is the start of a three part series that covers the basics of Blogging for Business, from the initial build to making sure you're getting the most out of your blog through social media promotion.
Strategy for Writing Business Blog Posts
How to Promote Your Blog Posts
Gathering Data
One of the most important goals of a site is gathering data and leveraging it in the future. From landing pages to registration splash pages to iterative data collection, the posts below provide good strategies to successfully build out your own list.
Example of a Great Landing Page Design: Netflix.comA landing page is an important component of your online marketing campaign strategy. The number one goal of a landing page is to convert a prospect by having them register information with your site. That information could be for a free whitepaper, an online newsletter, free demo, or another call to action.
Make It Easy for Visitors to Register Their Data: A Close Look at USAirways.Com
Political Splash Pages: Are They a Good Idea?
Social Media
As the web has become more and more social, we've wrote several articles exploring what exactly are social media and how to best leverage them.
4 Innovative Uses of Twitter for Social GoodOne of Twitter's strengths is content sharing both in the form of links and retweets (RTs). As the popularity of retweeting has grown and Twitter has improved its search capabilities, many people have come up with some creative and powerful ways to take advantage of the Twitmosphere to help fight for a cause.
Selling a Date: A Case Study in Facebook Advertising (very funny)
Online Advertising
A good, and sometimes essential, compliment to your online presence and marketing effort are paid ads, especially Google Adwords.
Google Adwords Tips: Improve your results in 3 stepsGoogle does a great job of providing a venue for you to reach millions of people from your computer at home. Running an effective Adwords campaign takes dedication and attention to the many details that Google provides you. I like to think of it in 3 connected but distinct phases: Create, Track, Adjust.
Optimizing Adwords Campaigns: Different Strategies for Search vs. Content Ads
Selling a Date: A Case Study in Facebook Advertising (very funny)
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Go to our Development Blog to read about new technologies, techniques, and tutorials for developers and designers.
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Go to our Internet Marketing Blog for strategies and discussions on how to fully leverage your web presence.
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