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October 2009 Archive
The following posts were made in October 2009. You may subscribe to the RSS feed for this archive if you would like to take your time reading through our posts.
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Posted on October 20, 2009
Personality in a Social Media Campaign: Phish 3.0
BY INGRID GETZAN
"When the size of your audience gets too big, it's very difficult to interact with them in a personal manner anymore…and it's upsetting to the band [Phish], but they all have their ways to try and stay in touch." - from the Clifford Ball DVD 
All too often we see companies 'interacting' with their customers by merely posting brief status updates with words that include 'buy now,' 'click here for 10% off,' 'NEW!' Although these call to action items may briefly increase visits to their website, and may even generate a few sales, where is the personality? What else is that company doing online? Since launching your Facebook and Twitter pages, how is customer retention and repeat business? Who are your fans and followers?
How do you keep your personality when launching a social media campaign? In this example, I use Phish (not just for my love of their music, but because they have launched an incredible social media campaign). Phish is a band that has a long history of interaction with their fans and that doesn't appear to be stopping anytime soon.
Phish hasn't ever done things the 'normal' way; they have rarely used conventional advertising, or experienced popularity on MTV or the radio, yet they consistently sell out the largest venues in the US, and have held the "largest paid concert in the world on the eve of the millennium (1999, Big Cypress, Florida) with 80,000 fans." - Rolling Stone - How? They continuously adapt with their fans and have never lost sense of their community, or their personality - even in their social media campaign.
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Posted on October 19, 2009
Best Practices: The Importance of Facebook Profile Images
BY BRANDON WHALEN
Room 214 recently did a major overhaul of all of the Travel Channel's Facebook pages. We added a poll app, Youtube functionality, a live Twitter stream, and all sorts of great new tools. However, there was one area that we could still improve upon.
After taking a look at the profile images on all seven of the Travel Channel Facebook pages, I realized that there was a way for us to improve the look and feel of our pages. Take a look at a few of the profile images that were displayed at the time:
There were a few issues with each profile image:
- The formatting was inconsistent.
- The use of Travel Channel's logo and brand style was inconsistent.
- There was room for the images to look cleaner and more official.
Why is the profile image so important?
A profile image is the most used part of any Facebook page. It is the biggest and most noticeable design element when a fan is viewing your page, and it is also appears in the news stream of every one of your fans. If you have an active fan-base on Facebook (like Travel Channel has), there are tens-of-thousands of fans who see this image everyday.
See how I improved our profile images after the break:
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Posted on October 16, 2009
YouTube Promoted Video Campaign - How to Make it Work
BY ERIN PICKARD
A few months ago, Room 214 worked with one of our clients (I'm not naming the company for competitive reasons but they are in the real estate industry) to create a series of promotional videos to be used on their website, blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Since we also manage a Google advertising campaign for this client, a logical place to utilize a small advertising surplus was with a one-month YouTube advertising "test" campaign. I call it a test because no one at Room 214 had ever tried a Promoted Video campaign on YouTube and, while we were optimistic that the campaign would work well given the visual nature of real estate, had no real benchmark in mind for what the results would be. It went well - we decided to allocate 20% of the monthly advertising budget moving forward to YouTube - and I walked away with a few learnings that may help you get your YouTube promoted video ad up-and-running.
First of all, I recommend that you consider a YouTube promoted video campaign if your company fits this description:
1) You already have a Google ad campaign (if you don't have one, I recommend you make that your entree and consider YouTube as a supplement down the road)
2) Visual appeal has a direct impact on sales for your industry
3) You currently have or have plans to create a library of existing appealing video content (You probably don't want to advertise the first video you put up on your YouTube channel - more on that in a sec)
If your company fits that description, keep reading. If not, you may want to look more closely at social media and search marketing.
· A YouTube ad will, obviously, drive more views back to your YouTube channel so you'll want to make sure that your channel's up to par and that you have plenty of content/information available (re point 3 above). Create several videos and put them on your YouTube channel. Promote them via social networks, your website, blog, etc. Use audience feedback and YouTube insights to make an educated decision about which video resonates best with viewers and drives the most traffic back to your website and use that video for your ad.
· The video you use should be entertaining and engaging. Don't get too caught up with trying to make your video professional quality or overly marketed. You don't need every line of the video to contain a keyword or marketing message - you need the video to be engaging and interesting so viewers will watch it and want to learn more. This is YouTube - some of the most successful viral videos have been amateur videos - this doesn't need to be overly produced, shot on an expensive camera or cost a ton of money to show some ROI. If you're not sure what I mean, check out Mashable's list of the Top 20 YouTube and Video Memes of All Time.
· When you create the ad, make a killer headline. The format of the ad is a still of your video, a 25 character headline and two 35 character lines of copy - so you need to make every word count.
· Use keywords and linking in your video description, utilize tags and add annotations to point out what you want viewers to see/know during the video.
· Create a Call to Action Overlay (they're free with a promoted video campaign) so that, once you've driven potential customers to your video, they know what to do next and can become a customer.
· Engage with viewers on your YouTube channel. You'll see an increase in comments (ours increased about 300%), messages and ratings as well as views to the video - so be sure to interact with individuals who reach out to you.
· Do a test run. I initially limited our campaign to one month and $3,000. Before you commit a large sum of your advertising budget to anything (in this economy?!) it's a good idea to gauge if/how well promoted videos will work for you. During this limited-budget timeframe you can prioritize keywords, adjust bids and determine whether you want to allocate budget for it moving forward.
· If you DO decide to move forward with a YouTube ad beyond the test-run phase - keep checking back with YouTube. This is a new ad platform for them so they're making tweaks and updates that could potentially improve your campaign. Stay in the know and give it a shot!
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Posted on October 16, 2009
Realtime Web is Coming, is your Brand on Board?
BY STEPAN MAZUROV
[Disclosure: Buzz Room is a Product of Room 214.]
What is realtime web?
The early adopter crowd has been joining in the choir filling our ears with realtime web, an way to get instant feedback and encourage participation in web applications. Not so long ago, all content on the web was old, research papers, thought out articles. When you searched, what you looked for was most relevant, tested information.
Boy, how things change, now its all about instant feedback. With tremendous adaptation of smartphones by everyone from heavyweight business users to teenagers, mobile access and easy publishing of geo/event-enabled information is more accessible than ever.
Enter Buzz Room, a way to follow live conversations and start your own. It's Room 214's premiere product to answer ever-growing need to attract the realtime web crowd.
What does Buzz Room do?
Buzz Room is a social network enabled chat room with provided commentary from keyword-based twitter feeds as well as facebook pages. In addition to pulling very relevant information from top realtime sources, it gives our clients full customization of the front end, keywords, banning of users, in-stream and in-app advertising, metrics and just a slew of other, awesome features which are in constant development.
It also allows us pull in special twitter users such as presenters or subject experts into its own tab as well as give them a premiere spot in the main stream. This allows for greater interaction as well as more relevant conversation.
Why Buzz Room?
We saw a need for a fully customizable app that our clients can drop into their web properties or large conference screens and it would seamlessly
blend in with the environment. Also as mentioned earlier, realtime web is a rapidly growing portion of the web that has seen limited adoption as a tool to drive conversation, and as pioneers in social media we saw the need to provide a marketable solution in that field. Lastly we wanted to capture the conversation and consolidate all the buzz inside one room (I can't even count the number of puns in that last sentence).
How does it work?
As some of you may know but I am one of three developers here at Room 214, other 2 being Dominic and Joe. We also just hired a full time designer, Andy, due enormous amount of need for creative work. One of the biggest things we recognized this year is the ever-growing need to have a development team inside the agency, because there is just so much opportunity to build awesome things. Every day a new API is released, new way to engage the audience is discovered and to make sense of it all, we want to create tools and apps help our clients achieve success.
Buzz Room uses Twitter OAuth to login into your twitter account so we can post on your behalf and Facebook Connect so we can do the same with facebook. This also allows us to provide very detailed usage statistics to our clients.
We also pull in Twitter keyword stream via very powerful search APIs, grab specified special users as well as pull in chatter from specified Facebook Pages. What this does is helps us fill the room with relevant, real-time content.
Check it out
You can see Buzz Room in action over at Lifetime's Project Runway page. With this and other exciting new apps we are constantly cranking out, I have no doubt this isn't the last time you hear from our development team.
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Posted on October 15, 2009
The Progression From Search to Social Media Marketing
BY PETE HALL
**This article outlines a personal experience with a client, leading them from search marketing success into social media and word of mouth marketing. To respect their privacy, I will only refer to them as 'The Client'.**
Five years ago, search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising were only beginning to take shape as legitimate lead generation and marketing strategies. At the time, SEO and PPC were cutting edge marketing strategies - many brands and companies had heard the buzz surrounding SEO and PPC, but were unable to pinpoint strategy or purpose behind it.
Today, SEO and PPC have evolved into common marketing strategies for brands to place their marketing budget. Companies understand the huge opportunities that exist within search marketing for return on investment. Social media, conversely, exists much like SEO and PPC did five years ago. Companies and brands are keen to explore the social media space, but are often unable to define social media marketing success or execute a defined strategy.
Within our niche in the industry, we execute both search marketing and social media marketing for clients. As such, there exists a unique opportunity to take learnings and success from search marketing efforts and transition into the social media space. This is what happened with an opportunistic client of ours.
We were initially hired to restructure The Client's AdWords account and increase conversion volume. They had managed their PPC efforts internally, and reached out to us to take their account to the next level. After much research and testing, we were able to determine what converted within their account - what calls to action best resonated with users, what keywords and themes were most effective, and what landing page variations were most conducive to converting. We branched out their PPC efforts into Yahoo! and Bing with continued success. Eventually, The Client began asking, "what next?" - their PPC accounts were converting in record numbers at the lowest cost per conversion yet.
Moving forward, we thoroughly researched The Client and their presence online and saw a huge opportunity for them to improve their organic search rankings. Therefore, our next step in their overall strategy was an SEO overhaul. We were able to construct an SEO blueprint based upon their PCC successes and laid out a clear strategy with actionable goals. This SEO strategy is still being executed, but we have already seen important gains in organic search results for several search terms. Recently, The Client again asked "what next?" with their sights set on entering into the space of social media.
The next phase in the overall strategy for The Client was taking the business intelligence learned from successful PPC and SEO implementation and applying it into the space of social media. Sometimes, depending on what industry you are looking to engage with, simply setting up a Facebook page or a Twitter handle is not a priority for a client. After all, you cannot fit a square peg into a round hole. With The Client being in a niche industry, there simply was not enough chatter or interest on Facebook or Twitter to warrant developing a strategy. Therefore, we researched alternative, more relevant opportunities in the social media space for The Client to engage with.
After meeting with key stakeholders and discussing goals, we were able to conclude that the next logical step was for The Client to begin a blog. A blog strategy presented the best opportunity to base conversation in the social media space around learnings from search marketing. Why? Because through search marketing, we are able to pinpoint what inspires potential customers to engage with the company. The Client will be able to create engaging conversations based around these learnings through a blog. They will be able to reach their target audience, reach industry influencers who act as information-hungry word of mouth propellers, as well as comment on other niche blogs, message boards and forums.
As it was with search marketing five years ago, social media marketing today poses a conundrum for brands - they realize that they should probably participate in the space, but are unclear how to enter in and achieve success. For a company like The Client, calculated steps and a logical progression from search engine marketing to social media marketing proved to be the best strategy. The calls to action that have worked best through SEO and PPC now act as a road map for content creation we know will be relevant to prospects, customers and influencers in the social media space.
Has anyone else had success transitioning learnings from search engine marketing into social media? Have any questions or comments? Leave them here!
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