Reality Digital customer, Gurgle.com, was recently featured in a social networking brand case study that is a great insider's view into the social media solutions small businesses are adopting to create brand engagement and increase traffic.
Pettrina Keogh, Managing Director of Gurgle, speaks with The Engaging Brand Blog in an informative podcast and shares the social media strategies she's implementing to help drive traffic, membership, engagement and ad revenue for the new parent community social network. Some notable topics include:
How to attract members to your niche online community
How Facebook and Twitter are driving traffic to the site and building brand authority
What social media tools make sense for the community
Tools for measuring success and ROI
The importance of an integrated social media strategy
If you were to ask me what three things small businesses should know about social media branding, off the top of my head, here are my thoughts:
Social media branding doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg While the big brands are spending tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on new social media advertising campaigns, you don't need to. These large campaigns usually consists of multiple, complex components and ad buys. The audience you're trying to reach is probably a much smaller or more local demographic and you just simply won't spend as much per eyeball. You can keep yours simpler.
There are free social media solutions like setting up a Facebook Page (formerly known as a Facebook Fan Page), a Twitter account to microblog updates about your company and its products, and a company blog using one of the many free blog platforms out there. If you're looking for something more sophisticated that combines many of the more popular features in online social networking sites, for a reasonable cost, you can check out a self-service, white-label social media platform like Reality Digital's Harmony product.
Costs you may incur include manpower and time to manage these initiatives. But even then, you aren't seeing the massive traffic that a big consumer brand like Pepsi might see, so an hour a day or every week could very well suffice, depending on your goals.
There are multiple ways to implement social media branding Facebook. Twitter. Corporate blog. Online community. Social media contest. Where do you start and which ones do you implement? The answer is different for every small business. What you should be concerned with is determining what tools are relevant to your audience and how they will help you achieve your business goals. If you implement one and it fails, try something different. Consider a multi-program approach. Social media is not a magic bullet (at least not yet) and it takes time and patience to see results, as does all your other marketing activities. Try and try again.
Identify WHY you want social media Above all, you must know why you're implementing social media into your marketing mix and how it maps back to your business goals. You wouldn't invest in a piece of new equipment if you didn't know why you needed it, would you? It's not just the cool factor. Social media branding should serve a purpose, whether that's to listen more closely to customers and provide a forum for dialogue, build awareness for your company and product, increase product sales, improve site traffic or countless other reasons. Once you know why you want social media, you'll have a much easier time justifying its cost, if any, and integrating it into your business.
I'm sure there are plenty of other things small businesses should be aware of when considering social media. What would you add to this list?
This years' Streaming Media East conference (see: http://www.streamingmedia.com/east/) seemed to have a nice turn out and most importantly, there was a lot of engaging discussions throughout the event. Additionally, I happened to be speaking on a panel about "Best Practices: Marketing Video for multi-platform Delivery." The general description was...
"With the amazing consumer adoption of the iPhone and advanced smartphones, marketers today aren't just creating video for one screen-they are creating for up to four! What are best practices in the marketing and PR video for multi-platform delivery, and how can marketers make the most of the rapidly expanding mobile market?"
To this point, a good example I spoke about is a recent Hyundai Genesis Coupe campaign that Goodby Silverstein and Partners created. The campaign took advantage of broadcast television by playing commercials during the Super Bowl and Academy Awards, etc. where traditional media drove viewers online with an interactive call to action - see: www.edityourown.com.
Once on the site, viewers are placed in the drivers seat with a very immersive experience and through our partnership with Adobe, we powered the "Edit Your Own" contest experience. Through this social platform, online users could edit their own commercials, share them with others, while the winners commercial was played on air. This truly is a User Generated Content experience that allows users the opportunity to make very creative online content utilizing professionally produced content. As budgets are continually shifting and even being sourced from television buys, it's exciting to see a campaign that works on so many different platforms.
Having started my career in entertainment by producing television commercials, for me, this is pretty exciting stuff. Especially since the Executive producer of the Hyundai commercials is Frank Sherma of Radical Media, whom I met almost 17 years ago at MOMA in New York when I was a recipient one of the first ever AICP Awards for a commercial campaign I produced as a student. Frank inspired me then as a creator and I guess you can say he is still inspiring me to this day.
In addition to Streaming Media East, I had the good fortune to attend a panel held by a fantastic organization, 212 New Yorker's Interactive Advertising Club - see: http://www.212nyc.org/.
The panel was Moderated by Fran Hauser, President, Time Inc. Style and Entertainment Group and was about Consumer Packaged Goods Category Insight. The panelists included: a great group of executives:
- Gian Fulgoni, Chairman and Co-founder of comScore, Inc. - Brian Leder, VP Digital Director at MediaVest on the Procter & Gamble business - Andrew Markowitz, Director-Digital Marketing & Media at Kraft - Chris Meringolo, Director-Global Media & PR at Schering Plough Consumer Health Care - Carole Walker, Vice President-Integrated Marketing Communications at Mars
The discussion centered around "US Internet population is shifting...The signs: More women than men are online and the majority of Internet users are age 35 or older.* As more and more women go online, Consumer Packaged Goods advertisers will have a unique opportunity to grow their businesses by speaking directly to this demographic."
One of the things I heard over and over again from brand executives was taking a "video Neutral approach." Basically, it doesn't matter if it's a :10, :15 :30 second video or even Consumer Generated Content, it's all about creating engaging video experiences across multiple platforms and devices for multiple purposes. To me this speaks volumes to where media and consumer engagement has gone because as we all know, it is no longer about passive traditional media.
It is no surprise that user generated content, as well as professionally produced content in Social Media was a big point of discussion. It was very clear that brands and advertisers are partnered with Strong Business Video platform companies and constantly creating customized social media solutions to help power Social Media Advertising and customer engagement in brand safe environments.
The good news for all of us is that now more than ever, it is all about the consumer or audience. This means that if brands and advertisers want to have a meaningful dialog and engagement they will need to reach us where we spend our time and that is through social networking and all the electronic devices we love so much...
Congratulations to everyone at Reality Digital! We brought home the 2009 Red Herring 100 Award last night and are thrilled to be recognized as one of promising startups that will lead the next wave of disruption and innovation.
As a social media company, we are dedicated to helping businesses drive brand recognition, increase engagement and generate revenue through white label social media solutions. Whether you're looking for a stable and scalable online video platform, or the latest social networking features for your existing site, or a white label social media platform to build a branded online community, or robust UGC moderation tools and ROI analytics, Reality Digital can meet your needs.
Our white label social media software is used by leading global companies in multiple industries including media, entertainment, publishing, sports, travel and retail. Visit www.realitydigital.com for more details and ask to speak with a Reality Digital representative today.
I dropped by the Web 2.0 Expo yesterday at San Francisco's Moscone Center to check out who's touting the latest Web 2.0 technologies. What I discovered as I perused the aisles of the Expo Hall was a collection of vendors whose businesses mainly focused on two topics: 1) social media information and 2) SaaS (software as a service) offerings.
eMarketer predicts social media marketing spend will increase in 2009 and I expected to see a lot of people crowding around the booths, absorbing sales pitches and marketing messages, all in an effort to piece together their individual social media strategies with the latest offerings. But the expo floors were remarkably quiet even though there were a good number of vendors hawking their social media solutions and technologies. Looks like the economy really has taken its toll on travel budgets.
From an event marketing perspective, it can be difficult to predict ROI on show sponsorships that you commit to months in advance. Had any of these vendors known in advance that attendance would be so dismal, I'm sure they would've thought twice. But with lead times of 3 months or more for securing sponsorships and exhibit booths, it's near impossible to predict, especially given the way the economy tanked the last few months.
While there was a lot of social media information to be gleaned from the Web 2.0 Expo floors, people just weren't there this year. I can only imagine what other conferences are looking like this season. I'm not sure, as I won't be doing much traveling either.
As usual I start my day scanning through any interesting articles or blog on Social Media and other technology topics, and I came across an interesting article by P.J. Fusco, "For Pix and Clicks Go SMO" (http://www.clickz.com/3627123). This article was written in 2007, but it's still relevant to the current market and worthwhile mentioning.
I haven't heard the term Social Media Optimization (SMO) until today, and I actually like it. As we provide a social media solution, I talk a lot about social media strategy, but I haven't been articulating social media optimization in a way that it makes sense to pure media players. I frequently get a question like, "Do you support SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?" To someone coming from the search space, I have to take a deep breath before I can begin to address this question. Many people describe SEO like a feature. If you didn't know, it's not. It's a strategy. There isn't just one thing you do to achieve SEO. Social Media Optimization (SMO), which directly correlates to SEO, is also a strategy. So, what are the things you should consider to optimize your social media site?
Here are some collective tips from the article and Marketingvox.com (http://www.marketingvox.com/how-to-optimizing-image-use-in-social-media-043605/):
Use groups of images for targeted groups to add content.
Mark your images with a non-intrusive personal stamp, like your URL - these images are then easily copied, thus ensuring higher overall exposure.
Use large images, preferably of the same size when presented in group, and be sure to categorize them.
Host your images on to a hosting service to prevent your server from being overburdened.
Use breaking news photos and exclusive shots. (The Hudson plane landing is a good example of this.)
Add a unique title, appropriate to the image. Use a keyword or two and stay on topic.
Add a description for the photo or write an article to go with the image. Annotating images is critical.
Always tag your images with keywords. Be specific, and add as many tags as appropriate, using optimal terms as phrases. Be reasonable with the number and accuracy of descriptive photo tags - don't over do it.
Make photos publicly viewable. Consider loosely licensing your pictures; share your photos with the rest of the online community.
If your photos are location-specific, such as store fronts or travel destinations, geo-tag the pictures.
Now, let see how Reality Digital Opus platform supports SMO...
The Opus platform supports images, videos and audio and provides flexible ways to organize them, group them, categorize them, and share with others.
The Opus platform can stamp media with your logo or other branding you'd like.
The Opus platform can support the dimension and quality of media. Of course, the Opus platform follows the First law of Thermodynamics, "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms". (This is the only time you will see my geeky side, I promise...) If the original media is in a poor quality, Opus cannot enhance the quality. The Opus platform will change the format that is optimal for the web browsers and media players.
Reality Digital hosts the site for you, so no burden on your side.
You decide what content to be on your site - users can capture breaking news photos or videos in real time and upload them to the site from web or mobile devices, and you moderate the content as needed.
The Opus platform allows to add title, description, tags, keywords, and categorize the media.
The Opus platform is integrated with Google Maps.
I like Fusco's summary, "SMO benefits vary depending on your goals. Most sites and blogs can profit from some form of SMO, but a successful SMO strategy must spring from rock-solid business and marketing goals." Reality Digital has solutions to help with SMO strategy, but our customers need to defined rock-solid business and marketing goals to be successful.
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Reality Digital customer, Gurgle.com, was recently featured in a social networking brand case study that is a great insider's view into the social media solutions small businesses are adopting to create brand engagement and increase traffic. 
Congratulations to everyone at Reality Digital! We brought home the 
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