At the risk of paraphrasing, she basically indicated the importance of optimizing web pages is going away. If you consider how referral traffic is migrating from search engines to social networks, I'd say it's easy to agree.

Of course, what we are seeing is search engines staying relevant by indexing social content. Case and point: I do a quick search on Google for "iPad" - and what do you know: My friend and business partner, James Clark, shows up on the first page of the search results.

Wow, over 48 million results, and his mug comes up on the first page? Yes, because Google is now recognizing and leveraging the relevance of social connections.

And although the optimization of web pages may be bearing less weight, I'm not throwing out the baby with the bath water (ugh, I used that phrase). Keywords, for example, remain foundational to online visibility from both a topical search, and monitoring perspective.

There is a great deal more to the social search discussion recently written by Brian Solis. One of our (Room 214's) responses has been to create a formal Social Search Optimization program for our customers.

What are you doing to optimize for social search?

However, Facebook musician pages leave a lot to be desired for those promoting their music within the world's largest social network. The Facebook music player is either tucked away in the box tab or it is halfway down the page in the side bar. Even worse, the fans who actually look hard enough to find the music player are unable to share the songs with their own friends.

RootMusic is working to make Facebook pages more musician friendly with BandPages. Their simple tool creates a tab for your Facebook page where your fans can hear your music while they interact with the page. BandPages also pull in your Twitter stream and offer a functioning Facebook wall, along with providing a shareable music player.

The process of setting up a BandPage incredibly quick and easy. Any band with a Facebook page can head to RootMusic.com and have a functioning Facebook BandPage in about five minutes. One of the really nice features is the music player powered by SoundCloud. It gives your fans the ability share your music with their friends on Facebook or a number of other sites. The music player even expands the functionality for musicians by giving them the option to offer free song downloads.

One big criticism of BandPages is that the music player is still tucked away in a tab. However, this is more of a critique of Facebook music pages themselves. The best way to direct traffic to your tab is to make your BandPage tab the landing page for all non-fans (Once again RootMusic has made it very easy to do this).

Musician pages on Facebook may not be substantially improved until Facebook decides to do a major overhaul. In the mean time, a BandPage is one of the easiest and fastest ways to customize your musician page and expand it's functionality.

Check out a few BandPages in the wild:
OONA
Con Brio
BATTLEHOOCH

J Slider, CEO of RootMusic, was nice enough to answer some questions for me in a quick interview:

Interview with J Slider, CEO of RootMusic

Q: Can you give me some background information on yourself and RootMusic?

Answer: We are made up at the intersection where music and tech folks meet.We have a great time working on RootMusic and have in depth experience in our respected fields. As musicians, band managers, venue managers we were frustrated with the lack of good clearly organized tools that were available for the music community. So now we are building them, and always keeping an open ear to ways the music community would like to see things improved.

Q: How many musicians are currently using BandPages and how long have BandPages been available?

Answer: There are right around 100 currently using BandPages and we really just opened it up to the public a few days ago. We had about 15 bands helping us test it out before we opened it up to the public.

Q: How can you offer BandPages for free?

Answer: Well first off this is a very basic need that every musician should be able to afford. That is to represent yourself well on the biggest social network where your grandma, next door neighbor and fans all are. Instead of making them come to your site go to your fans. We have many things already in the works for the future that will be affordably priced , but this is a basic version that everyone should be able to have it they want it.

Q: What are you looking to provide for musicians with BandPages?

Answer: A place that is informative and clean for musicians to represent themselves on the biggest social network. It provides a way to bring all your Facebook tab's,Facebook Wall, music player and more into one easy to use page. One of our users said "Myspace musicians welcome to Facebook"

Q: Why is there a need for your tool?

Answer: Because every single musician/fan we have talked to has asked for it. To this point we have not heard anyone say..."eh thats not really a good idea" so we figured there's a pretty big need.

Q: What do BandPages do better than any other Facebook tool for musicians?

Answer: There are a lot of apps out there that were built to do one thing to help musicians. BandPage brings together many of those tools onto one page. Where it makes it easy for new fans and current fans to check out your band. We also keep the music playing so it is more likely for your fans to read your bio, look at your shows etc, because they are free to move around as the music is playing. There is much more to come and things we plan to make better and more useful, can't wait to share those with you!

Q: Most of a Facebook page's activity happens within a user's newsfeed. How can a BandPage help a musician utilize his/her fans to spread content virally?

Answer: Oh you just wait, its gonna be pretty sweet! Currently when you use the wall on BandPages it's the same as your regular wall, so it posts to your news feed like it normally would.

Q: Tracks uploaded on a BandPage go to the RootMusic SoundCloud account. Why did RootMusic choose to use SoundCloud within BandPages?

Answer: SoundCloud is the best music player we have seen, if you have other suggestions, we are all ears! They have a great reputation a mature api, built in sharing functions,stable, and the public already trusts them.

Q: Are there any new features in the pipeline for BandPages?

Answer: Yes! We will be around for a while and you will see new features coming out in the next few months. We are currently building them for you as we speak! And again we want to hear the public opinion as to what you would like to see. So if you have any suggestions about what features to add let us know. At the end of the day we build what the people ask for.

Q: Are there any new features in the pipeline for BandPages?

Answer: Yes! We will be around for a while and you will see new features coming out in the next few months. We are currently building them for you as we speak! And again we want to hear the public opinion as to what you would like to see. So if you have any suggestions about what features to add let us know. At the end of the day we build what the people ask for.

The Story
Everyone kept talking about the story and how it's the most important part of content creation. Key takeaway: it doesn't matter how cutting edge the technology is. If the story isn't there, then consumers won't stick with it. An issue that comes with this is that everyone gets to tell a story on the web. Which leads us to…

Curation
As everyone on the internet is now a content creator, curation has become a key part of filtering the web. Enter voting. Whether it be through Digg (for the internet at large) or through simple voting systems (for the children using Kerpoof), voting ensures that we don't have to wade through the bad content.

Attention Spans
With an iPhone app, you have 10 seconds to pull someone in. With a movie, you might have 10 minutes (funny anecdote from Don Hahn on The Lion King choosing to have every animal in Africa appear in the first scene to achieve the "wow"). You need the initial punch in the stomach or, as David Rolfe said, you need to constantly find new ways to interrupt. Interruption gets harder as we multitask our way through life.

The Elephant in the Room
The theme of the conversation was story, story, story. All content creation, all one-way conversation. This notion seems terribly out-of-date. Consumers expect to be listened to, and if there isn't a forum for conversation, they'll move on.

Curation is a good first step, as it asks for interaction. But what about content creation that has always been one-way? My own key takeaway for any content creation, including tradional (film, TV) and new (blogs, Facebook and Twitter): Make sure you have a captivating storyline, functional if not innovative technology, and a feedback loop that opens the door for conversation. I do wonder what the film industry will look like in 2020.

The number one influencer of 16-24 year olds is 16-24 year olds. I love this statement. It says so much about the power of peer influence within an age group that is so easily influenced.

It's not a surprising statement, either. What is interesting, however, is that this statement is becoming relevant for consumers in all age brackets. 78% of consumers say they trust peer recommendations. We're all easily influenced by each other, meaning that information sharing in social media is very valuable.

Enter this:

What you are looking at are screenshots of Google Buzz mobile. Not only can I see who near me is buzzing, I can see where they are. If someone is in a location I'm heading towards, I can see what they are saying. In this case, one person has just told me that the Florentine's at a local coffee shop are more expensive than at CU Business School.

Real-Time Reviews

As more people adopt buzz, the aggregated conversations in one location can paint an incredible real-time picture of what is happening around you, based on the opinions of other people. Is your favorite restaurant out of their nightly special? Did someone have terrible customer service at the running store you're headed to? All of this information is immediately accessible, in addition to being timely and relevant.

Large User Base

Geo-location services are by no means new. Consider, though, that Gmail's active monthly user base is rumored to be around tens of millions (compare that to Foursquare's 350k and MyTown's 1mm total users). Add that to the fact that buzz is an opt-out rather than opt-in feature, and we're likely to see a much higher adoption rate.

It's Google

I've had a few debates about this since Buzz launched Tuesday, and I continue to argue this: A lot of people use Gmail. Through Gmail, a lot of people who aren't early-adopters have tried out new Google products like docs, calendar and wave. Because these people have an established trust for what Google can bring into their lives, they'll be willing to try out Buzz, much more so than they'd be willing to try out a similar product from an unfamiliar company. And as our designer Andy Stone pointed out, Google's "Do No Evil" policy has also helped build trust within a distrusting consumer group.

It's Social

Now the medium that we (or at least, I) need most on a daily basis to communicate is directly connected with a sharing function that isn't tied to a type of content (ie Yelp for reviews, Foursquare for tips and frequency). Buzz is just thoughts. I, for one, am going to share, and I'll share whatever is on my mind. Freed from the constraints of types of reviews, I think we'll soon be seeing a geo-tagged map of candid consumer thinking.

Good, Bad, Viral

This is great for the way your brand engages with individual consumers. Fast Company already took a look at user-targeted advertising through Buzz. You may soon be able to target individual consumers based on very individual habits, an act which can help build relevant and meaningful relationships, one person at a time. It also means you need to monitor and play an active role in the buzz (Buzz?) going on around your company. You can respond to any comment that is public, so any time your brand shows up on a map, you should be there to discuss. More importantly, you should be there before the discussion starts, letting us know what's going on in your kitchen, your factory, and your main conference room.

Take, for example, Bonnaroo's decision to let individual bands announce their presence in the 2010 lineup (along with individual announcements through MySpace). It took resourceful individuals to piece together the entire lineup, and the news spread like wildfire. What if you had a single person in your brewery Buzz about your latest creation, rather than announce it through press release? Which one would spread faster? Which one would spread organically?

Google Buzz has the potential to create huge buzz, both positive and negative. So get to using it. I am.

Velocity of Conversation

Trophy Room put together a little video recap of our fishing trip to Antero reservoir. It is a beautiful location and an amazing place to fish.

Enjoy!

-Brandon

In an excellent blog post this week, Brian Solis outlined his predictions for the role of a marketer in 2010. Out of eight high-level points, he made four that seemed particularly relevant to the building of strategy in a campaign:

- Listen to and engage customers one to one

- Build relationships and not campaigns

- Create experiences not impressions

- Earn media and not buy it

What he's talking about here is a set of things I hear often. Listening. Engagement. Relationships. Experiences. I'd lump these under "feelings", something that doesn't mesh well with the traditional concept of measurement and ROI.

Measuring Intangibles

Just yesterday, Facebook rolled out some changes to Fan Pages that give a helpful boost to our effort to measure these intangible feelings. Fan Page administrators will now be able to get numbers on impressions for status updates. This means that we can gauge how many people see the information placed on a page through their own news stream; it no longer requires a user to come directly to the page.

Facebook also gives us a handy impressions-to-interactions ratio which shows up as a feedback percentage.

What does this mean?

As astutely noted by our own Wendy Hofstetter, this relatively simple change could have some big impact:

- Reporting numbers on Facebook will be more accurate than the standard "pageviews" statistics previously provided.

- We can more easily compare the return on Facebook versus other more traditional media by calculating a CPM (cost-per-thousand). Most companies use CPM as a way to gauge how expensive their advertising is (that's how TV, outdoor, Radio, Magazines, etc. are purchased).

- We can begin testing what time of day is best for Facebook engagement.

- We can understand what kinds of posts (videos, quotes, etc.) get the most engagement.

Why is this important?

Brian Solis had another point in that list: Look beyond the quantity of friends, page visits, eyeballs, readers, and viewers to measure changes in consumer attitude and intent.

Facebook allows brands to create meaningful interactions with consumers. At Room 214, Facebook allows us to keep our clients' fans updated with relevant information and content that the fans wouldn't necessarily find otherwise. We can solicit feedback, engage in direct conversation and create content that, if worthy, can be shared over and over again by interested parties.

That being said, a bottom line is a bottom line. Our clients need to understand how their money is being used. And we need to continue to interact with consumers in ways that produce repeat engagement, support, sharing, and evangelism. This new feature from Facebook gets us closer to creating relationships that we can quantify. It also helps us better understand what content isn't interesting; we can then refine our strategy and provide our loyal fans with things they'd prefer to hear, see and discuss.

Supporters of Conan O'Brien have joined forces to (loosely) create Team COCO. This team has some major traction, and it's all because Conan O'Brien's core audience is a group of Facebooking, Youtubing, non-traditional TV watching 20-somethings like myself. What I find most interesting is that the online conversation, one large enough to effect a sea-change in the world of late-night, is being held almost entirely outside of the reach of Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno and NBC.

There's also an online store where you can buy a tshirt and print of this now well-known image. In case you're too broke and/or busy to buy a t-shirt and attend a rally, you can simply download and print out an image of Conan's hair and either wear or display it. He's also had tremendous celebrity support (catch this great video of Jimmy Kimmel on Leno).

Even google search appears to be on Team COCO.

So what?

Conan's ratings, which have consistently been lower than his CBS counterpart David Letterman, have been up dramatically this week. Last night he beat out Letterman's 1.0 rating with a 1.9, a number which represented Conan O'Brien's all-time high. And, regardless of all the negative press, NBC has enjoyed a huge increase in viewership for The Late Show with Conan O'Brien.

Does this mean NBC will reverse its decision? No. The timing and fate of both NBC shows remains undecided. But it is without a doubt that NBC, any other network shopping a Conan show, and Conan O'Brien himself will take this extremely vocal audience into account as they move forward with decisions. It's a tough debate with this group; you've got an audience who doesn't affect a traditional metric (live viewership) but still will take the time to speak in a collective voice loud enough to make headlines.

So if you've got a group who is going to talk, it's important prepare for their reaction. I'd venture to guess NBC had no clue the effect of their conversations regarding late night. It looks like it's had both positive and negative effect thus far. I'm interested in the outcome.

Hi, I'm Lauren, the newest addition to the Room 214 team. As the company's new research maven, I'll frequently share my thoughts about all things social media and WOM. I'm looking forward to opening up some conversations with our readers about the way that you and I view and understand the ever-changing online world.

As this is my first proper post for Room 214, I've done a lot of thinking about the concept of voice in a company blog. I've spent the whole week obsessing over this post. What should I say? What do you, the reader, feel like reading? Will you connect with me? Will you comment? How does one begin the practice of being a consistent, passionate blogger for her company? I began to search around.

Forming a Relationship

Spend some time Googling best practices for corporate blogs and you'll find an overwhelming amount of information. You'll also find this depressing study from Forrester, which says that in 2008 only 16% of those who read corporate blogs trusted them. Yikes. People think corporate blogs lack honesty.

Knowing that stumbling block, it's important to consider why successful corporate blogs create a sense of trust with their readers. Jason Keath compiled a list of great examples of corporate blogs that I spent some time looking through. The radically different styles of each of those blogs reminds me of the importance of knowing your audience as a basis for forming trust. So do you know your audience? How is it that you come to understand your audience?

Jeremiah Owyang took the time to poll his blog readers and was kind enough to share the results here, which gave not only him but also his readers a chance to understand why people chose to connect with his website. Here at Room 214, we do this on a much larger scale, asking who, what, where, when, why and how as a basis for shaping communication with our clients' consumers.

Creating Space for Dialogue

But it's not just about knowing your audience. It's about having a conversation with them, a notion that Jason Cormier explained as the top of the Conversation Maturity Model. Marriott shared a lovely, simple detail on hosting Cleveland's 18th annual Polka Festival, letting me know about their engagement in the local community. Zappos taught me the best way to wrap a package for return, which is helpful to both me and them. All the blogs on this top ten list, because they are blogs, are clearly sharing with me. But, as explicitly clear with the Zappos example, they let me know that they are listening to me or, rather, the collective "me" that makes up their blog consumer. I enjoy this. I feel empowered to let them know what is on my mind.

Where Do We Go From Here?

It's funny to me that, on a high level, the basic tenets of a good corporate blog sound like the same basic tenets of a healthy romantic relationship: establish trust, listen, create a forum for open dialogue. Interesting. So here I am, pondering what to do with all this and hoping that I can begin a conversation. In the coming weeks I'll spend some time highlighting interesting conversations I find online. To kick it off, I'd love to hear of the ones you think are most interesting, whether that means successful, bizarre, failed, or other.

What's Next
Tomorrow, I'll be posting an introduction to what we at Room 214 refer to as the Conversation Maturity Model - a simple point of reference illustrating the path from listening to leading. I'll also offer some top line consideration on the value of starting a conversation.

Over time, Tremor has developed a community of about half a million moms through its Vocalpoint platform, and now successfully leverages the data, learnings and continued engagement to help brands outside of its own. Pretty impressive. The following are some of the things Steve had to say in consideration of working with potential partner agencies:

• If there is zero unique IP that a potential partner agency brings to the table, then anything they can provide is essentially a commodity.
• A successful agency is able to demonstrate that they care about the brand, and have a real understanding of its core equity.
• I don't want to talk to agencies overly focused on digital and tactics. Agencies need to demonstrate they get how offline conversations are going to be activated.

David Witt, Manager, Brand Public Relations, General Mills: David brought a different angle to the conversation, along with a level of humility and humor I think most in the audience recognized quickly. Here are some of the items I noted from his participation:

• From an agency, David is looking primarily for the emergence of creativity and execution
• The first focus should be on customer loyalty, then word of mouth and brand advocacy
• Ideas are power, and are of greatest value when they sustain engagement over the long haul.
• For brands to be social, they must realize it is about giving (example: General Mills just launched tablespoon.com, featuring over 25,000 recipes for consumers to engage with, ratings, coupons, etc.)
  

Christine Morrison, Social Media Marketing Manager, Intuit: I have followed Christine on Twitter almost since she began her most recent marketing position at Intuit. She has lead award winning efforts (including a Gold WOMMY Award today) for Intuit, and continues to demonstrate what success with social media looks like. Here are the highlights I outlined around her input:

• We look at the hows and whats of social media - and are interested in social marketing assets that are user generated and can be used in conjunction with advertising assets.
• We like agencies that are ahead, out in front, trying new things and have thought through why they are trying them.
• I like to ask, "do you know something I don't know?"

The main theme I pulled from each of the panelists viewpoints is the value they place in people who get the big picture. Social media and word of mouth marketing are a component of a larger marketing mix. These kinds of professionals (and brands) are past the point of "buy in" when it comes to social media. The more relevant questions pertain to how it social media most effectively fits and benefits their customers and business goals.

As of a few weeks ago, their biggest social media promotion was the puzzling 'Save the Date' announcement for their Halloween festival, in which various US states would be eliminated from a map by way of darts, hot air balloons, and tug boats, just to name a few. From early July until they announced the Festival a few weeks ago, fans were fixated on the outcome, creating massive buzz. Hidden Track, voted the Best Music Blog by 2008 Weblog Awwards, received 642 comments on their continually updated post about the 'Save the Date' map.

The biggest promotion now: what album will the band cover for their Halloween show during Festival 8? In the past, Phish has preformed albums by The Beatles, The Who, Talking Heads, and Velvet Underground. They have continued to engage fans by killing-off (Halloween style) the images of possible album covers. Once again, fans are hooked on the cliffhanger waiting with baited breath for the outcome.

Phish posts about the festival on Twitter, as well as Facebook, and practice cross-promotion between their main sites and various social media sites. They continually keep their social media campaign interesting for their audience, they incorporate video that encompasses their brand's personality and most importantly, they have fun with it.

Does your social media campaign have that much personality?

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:

1. The formatting was inconsistent.
2. The use of Travel Channel's logo and brand style was inconsistent.
3. 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:

Your profile image can send unintended messages (negative and positive) about your brand. When you are exposing yourself to thousands of people in social media everyday, it is important present yourself in the best way possible (In other words: look official).

I took it upon myself to create a new design and I kept a few goals in mind along the way:

1. Create consistent messaging and formatting.
2. Be consistent with the use of Travel Channel's brand styling.
3. Improve the overall look and feel of the images.

Here is the final result:

In the new design, each profile image uses the Travel Channel logo and brand styling in the exact same way. they help to reduce confusion on the user's part since the new formatting places the same information in the same place on every image. Overall, the new design is also more sleek and much easier on the eyes.

The old profile images may have been sending an unintended negative message about Travel Channel. Now, every time a fan visits one of the pages it looks and feels like an official representation of the Travel Channel brand.

What did we learn in the process?

Every move you make in social media sends both intended and unintended messages to your audience. This applies just as much to the design of your profile as it does to the content you post on your profile.

Social media users have been in the communities longer than you, and they can point out a faker or a new-comer quite easily. You have to prove to this audience that you understand the medium.

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!

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.

**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!

1. Basic but scalable for more advanced monitoring once comfort levels grew
2. Easily shared with other individuals in the organization and easy to learn
3. Affordable - no budget for an advanced social media monitoring tool such as Radian6.
4. Ability to monitor real time conversations across multiple social media platforms including blogs, forums and twitter

To accomplish this list of asks "on the cheap", a one tool solution wasn't an option and a strategy that integrated several tactics was needed. There are dozens of monitoring tools available and selecting the right tools often adds to the complexity of starting a monitoring program. Below is a mix of tools that we have recently proposed and implemented to better monitor relevant online conversations and help companies get started in the first phase of a social media marketing campaign: Listening.

1. Filtrbox
For: Blog, Forum, Mainstream News Monitoring
Filtrbox analyzes online content and uses keywords to filter results. We set up Filtrs with keywords based on themes and included negative keywords to exclude irrelevant traffic. After several days of monitoring and adjusting the keywords we were able to receive a consistently relevant stream of blog, forum and news posts/comments. We then configured daily email alerts for all posts that met our filtr criteria (forwarded to the entire internal team). As an added level of reducing volume of posts, you can raise the FiltrRank to exclude lower quality sources. As a next level of reducing volume, we recommend identifying who the top influencers are for you company/industry and enter their RSS feeds to monitor them specifically.

2. Hootsuite
For: Twitter Monitoring
When it comes to Twitter monitoring it's gotta be real time. While Filtrbox does have real-time Twitter alerts, for up-to-the-second monitoring and particularly engaging we recommend a Twitter client such as Hootsuite. In Hootsuite, we set up multiple tabs each containing multiple columns to better organize relevant conversations by brand, industry, co-workers, Twitter keyword searches etc... We also compiled a list of all known online influencer Twitter handles and created a group on TweepML so the internal team could easily follow known influencers and organize them into a column in Hootsuite to track them. Another benefit of Hootsuite is that you can login from any computer and multiple users can access the same account.

3. Google Reader
For: Discovering and Monitoring Influential Blogs
Google is our RSS reader of choice for its ease of use and many options for starring/sharing. For this project we had a list of known influential industry blogs and competitor blogs that our client wanted to track. We simply compiled all of the RSS feeds from the blogs and entered them into an OPML file generator. We then had each team member import the OPML file which automatically adds the blog subscriptions to your reader, versus having to add them one at a time. Google Reader also helps you indentify new blogs to subscribe to via the Browse for Stuff link. This is a great tool for searching via keywords and identifying blogs with the most subscribers.

4. Delicious
For: Additional Monitoring, Tagging, Sharing and Collaboration
Delicious is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks. We set up a new Delicious account and recommended the internal team sign up for individual accounts and install the Delicious tool in their browser. We then set up specific tags and trained team members on how to tag relevant posts. Team members could either subscribe to the specific tags in their own Delicious account or subscribe to the feed in their Google Reader to see all tagged content.

The combination of the above 4 tactics was key to a successful, comprehensive monitoring program, i.e. the sum was greater than the parts. After implementation and training on each system, companies were better able to integrate social media monitoring into their busy daily schedules because for the most part, the content was coming to them. This greatly improved awareness for internal teams and identifying opportunities for engagement became much easier.

It's important to note that the stream of content you receive is rarely perfect right off the bat and some tweaking is required. However, a little diligence in the first few days really pays off in delivering an efficient monitoring system with less noise.

Do you have a favorite mix of monitoring tools? Let me know.

The Task
Take our existing Facebook pages for Travel Channel and make them more viral, more informative, more interactive, and more targeted.

How We Did It
In order to make the Travel Channel pages more viral, we took advantage of the sharing functionality accessible through Facebook's API. We built a unique left-hand sidebar for every featured tab, which enables visitors to share specific content with their friends. We also included share buttons on video and blog posts to allow users more flexibility when suggesting content.

We made these pages more informative by featuring content frequently requested by fans. In this case, that content was episode information for each show. We created a custom tab with information on when an episode would air and provided links back to TravelChannel.com for pictures, travel guides, and episode descriptions.

The pages became more interactive through our custom polling application. If you use Facebook, you know how popular polling is within the system. We took this concept and created a tab where users can tell us what they think about recent episodes. This application also provides Travel Channel with a way to gather feedback quickly from viewers.

Finally, we strategized to make Travel Channel's pages more targeted. Brands are all about gaining new fans on Facebook, but they often neglect to tell users why to become a fan. We solved this problem by creating a landing page where all non-fans would land. This tab includes a welcome message, an overview with information about the show, and a call-to-action suggesting they become a fan of the page.

The Results
It's all about meeting business objectives, so here are the results of the re-design. In addition to the four objectives I listed above, our goal was to increase traffic back to TravelChannel.com. Within one month after re-designing their show pages, traffic has increased significantly and Facebook has become a top-referring source for the site.

Do you have a Facebook success story? I'd love to hear about it!

1. All your subs are too busy to start anything within 2-3 weeks.
2. This is my favorite: Your best subs are thinking they'll leverage the design work they've done for you to start a new social media agency
   
3. The few people you have inhouse that can actually do some design don't have time to do any design.
4. Your developers are complaining "there is nobody to design this."
5. Your account managers are asking "who should we give this to design?"
6. Each new project signed or in the pipeline seems to have associated design work
7. Your list of design-related work is growing
8. You are unafraid of a designer running out of things to do (this especially holds true if you get the right one - i.e. one who enjoys a little HTML/CSS front end web development)
9. You realize your own brand benefits as somebody is dedicated to visually nurturing it (this should result in better brand representation in presentations, proposals, case studies, articles, print materials, icons, web properties, etc.)
10. You understand good people will grow the value of your company, pushing beyond the scope of any given job description.

Feel free to submit comments regarding things you think I should add. I'll be happy to update this list. Please also refer yourself / all potential applicants you may know of for the J-O-B to http://room214.com/jobs

Today, I wanted to share with you about a local organization Room 214 supports to end child sex trafficking, called iEmpathize - and also let you know we are donating free tickets to the Launch party at the Boulder Theater on Monday (9/21) by being one of the first 100 people to tweet about this event using #iempathize.

People interested in supporting iEmpathize also can purchase tickets to the event for $20 at www.iEPresents.com. Be sure to learn more about iEmpathize and the Launch event on Monday by checking out the press release that went out today at http://bit.ly/2vBze

1. Knowledgeable of social media tools, techniques and philosophies
2. Maintenance and consistency for company accounts on social media sites
3. Evaluation, guidance and implementation of social media analysis and monitoring tools
4. Maintenance and distribution of social media guidelines
5. List maintenance and applicable display of work related personal blogs of employees

I'm sure this description will be updated as comments continue streaming in on David's blog. As I commented to this post, Jeremiah Owyang began talking quite a bit about the need for a Social Media Strategist in early 08' - as well as the need for a Community Manager to be the online face of the company.

I think the SM Admin role David defines bleeds into both of those roles - but one of the greatest values in my mind relates to the ongoing research and evaluation ultimately required to stay "fully knowledgeable on the tools."

One of the sustained demands on Room214 (our social media agency), is staying on top of the tools - and monitoring tools are only a subset of social media related applications we must pay attention to.

When you consider other emerging technologies like social CRM solutions, it is easy to conclude the evaluation and implementation of those kinds of items will likely be far more demanding than monitoring tools. I'd say the area of evaluation alone could justify the hiring of a Social Media Administrator. Obviously, there are other highly relevant duties, as listed, that further build the case.

If that doesn't tell you how seriously he takes his tweeting, consider this: Someone asked him if he was affected by Twitter's outage a few weeks ago, he responded by asking if that person was affected by waking up in the morning.

The man follows 30,000+ people, so he of course does not see every tweet. However, Hammer has several huge monitors at home so that he can see as much Twitter activity as possible. In fact, while promoting one of his projects, he randomly saw a negative comment come into his stream. Rather than letting it be, and letting the negativity grow unchecked, Mr. Hammer decided to inject his opinion into the conversation. The negative commenter, was basically blown away that Hammer paid enough attention to his stream to catch his comment. The negativity ended there.

To sum everything up, MC Hammer cares (A LOT). It has helped him to build a Twitter following of 1.5 million (give or take a few hundred thousand.

The point I am attempting to make is that social media is not a set and forget process. You have to dedicate a lot of time and effort into building connections. If you aren't willing to put in the time to make the little connections, nobody is going to want to connect with you.

This time and effort is so important that it can encompass your very being as in MC Hammer's case. But the payoffs will come back to you in ways you never thought could happen.

There is an excerpt of his keynote below:

So you've got 10,000 Twitter followers. Your Facebook page is blowing up. You have a huge following and you are feeling pretty good about yourself. You have built up a great community and you have spread your message, but you are also sitting on the power to create some real positive change.

I am inspired by Mashable's latest effort, Summer of Social Good. They have made it quick and easy to donate to some great organizations and they have harnessed the power of their influence to encourage their readers to do some good.

Honestly, this is something we should all be doing as marketers in the social media realm. You may not have the cash on hand to donate, but you can easily use your influence to inspire some of your followers to donate their time and money.

I thought up a few quick and simple ideas on how any business can do some good through social media:

1) Run contests that encourage people to volunteer. (ex: We are giving away a Macbook Pro. The first person to volunteer 30 hours at the Denver Rescue Mission gets the prize.) Twitter contests are getting pretty popular. If your followers are willing to re-tweet a message or leave their house for a scavenger hunt, certainly you can get them to volunteer for a nice prize.

2) Get involved with sites like http://www.snapimpact.org or http://www.globalgiving.com and find something that inspires you. Encourage your online communities to go and check out their content and possibly donate to a cause.

3) Build relationships with local non profits in your area (only a google search away). You can help them by simply tweeting a link to their site every day, or giving them space on your wicked cool Twitter background.

Your followers are donating their time to read your updates, interact with you, and support your efforts. It is just as simple to donate some time to do some good in the world.