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.

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.

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

As many of you know, we have worked to keep a very free and open culture here. One of the ways that manifests is in Room 214 being a flat organization. That means letting natural talent and leadership emerge without forcing programmatic job descriptions and titles. As James likes to say, "job titles are for your next job."

With respect to the success generated from these kinds of practices, sharing profits regularly with employees has been the intention since forming the company in 2004. Our decision to do this (every 90 days) is about three things: driving performance, recognizing the individuals' work that helps makes us profitable, and the act of giving.

So I'll get to it: Each of you who were eligible to receive profit sharing for Q2 should have seen it in your last check. Furthermore, your quarterly profit sharing for the 3^rd quarter is tied to the following actions:

1. Innovate: Your first objective is to pick any one of our current clients for the purpose of focusing on what we could be doing better for them within the next 75 days. Consider things like case studies, new applications, methodologies, best practices, creative concepts, etc.

2. Execute: Your second objective is to actually implement your idea(s). Keep in mind this is by no means a "team-me" effort. Expectations may include required buy-in from the client, in addition to coordinated brainstorming and review with your peers.

3. Share: Once you have implemented your idea, you will write a blog post about what you did. What was implemented? What were your thoughts around measuring success? Has it benefitted the client? If not yet, then when? What were the results? What was learned?

Potential Limitations:
a.) Some of your ideas may require additional budgeting from the client. File those for later - and determine what can be done with existing budgets. Proposed out-of-pocket expenses will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

b.) We are moving at the speed of social media here. That means it may not make sense to do a deep dive into application development. You know who to talk to on our team if you do... just keep in mind they should be busier than you, and October 15 is your deadline to do your blog post.

c.) Client confidentiality should be an obvious consideration. Feel free to check with me or James if you are hesitant about what can or can't be said in your blog post. If you choose to use the client's name in your post, save it as a draft to be reviewed prior to posting.

I know we didn't think of everything, so feel free to post your questions as comments to this post, and I will respond in the same. Thanks for your awesome contribution to the team, and good hunting!

I've been witnessing a dichotomy: Many marketing professionals are unaware social media agencies even exist, while at the same time, emerging hordes are on their way to creating them. Whether you're a social media "expert" looking to build an agency, or part of a company trying to understand why you might need one - this post should offer some insight.

At Room 214 we consider three areas of focus as seen in the diagram above: Analysts, Engineers and Creatives. Competency with respect to communications and the actual execution of work takes place in and across each of the three, ultimately enabling our value as a social media agency.

Each of the three focus areas have their own value propositions, and like a tri-pod, the whole operation is ineffective if one of the legs is too weak to support its part of the load.

1. Being Analysts: One of the beauties of Internet-based campaigns is the ability to track and measure what people do. With traditional web analytics meeting with new conversational analytics, the data can be overwhelming. Social media agencies have the expertise in sifting through the data to interpret insights leading to actions.

Due to the explosion of social media, there has been an emergence of social media monitoring and business intelligence tools for benchmarking, competitive analysis and gaining insights around certain topics that can be tracked in blogs, forums, Twitter posts and mainstream media.

The question becomes: Are the tools and data valuable? Yes. Do busy marketing or service support professionals have time to stay on top of them to the extent of actually impacting their business? Often not.

Top 5 Value Propositions from Social Media Analysts:

• Identification of trends, and insights into thought leadership
• Objective evaluations of tools, strategies and tactics
• Understanding and establishing best practices
• Research, benchmarking and measurement
• Filtering out the unwanted noise and capturing actionable data

2. Being Engineers: This is a key differentiator for our agency, in particular - even to the extent of adopting "social media engineers" as our tagline. Why? Because in our experience, a high level of expertise around technical platforms and infrastructure is a leading contributor to quickly making and keeping companies competitive.

Consider Facebook as a case and point: In the context of "engineering," there are three technology environments in Facebook that need consideration: Application development, Facebook Connect, and the functionality of general pages. Each of these areas has its own set of rules. The documentation is arguably limited, and as @DominicDiMarco put it - "the target seems to be constantly moving."

You may have great ideas - but the ability to execute and leverage relevant assets is often delayed and overly expensive due to a lack of technical (engineering) expertise.

Top 5 Value Propositions from Social Media Engineers:

• Knowledge of when to build vs. when to buy
• Ability to uniquely integrate, build and implement technology
• Insight to how solutions scale or how they are limited
• Innovation needed to improve upon accepted functionalities
• Customization of tools, applications and social platforms

3. Being Creatives: One thing I've noticed about "agency" vs. "contractor" status is the expectation around coming up with great ideas. Effectively implementing and supporting social media campaigns is critical to the success of any agency in this industry, but conceptualizing and communicating (internally or externally) great ideas requires a combination of skill and inspiration.

Expecting clients to conceptualize along with you without effective presentation aids, creative samples and proofs of concept can be an uphill battle. The ability to articulate, justify and demonstrate an idea from inception - then efficiently create the spaces by which it may grow and materialize is a practice in and of itself.

Top 5 Value Propositions from Social Media Creatives:

• Frameworks for brainstorming and conceptualization
• Development of visual samples or proofs of concept
• Collaborative processes to improve upon original concepts
• Holistic approaches to leveraging existing assets, advertising and PR
• Relevance around usability and effective models of engagement

It's easy to conclude that leading social media agencies must wear many hats - analysts, engineers and creatives. And being successful while maintaining a competitive edge requires a constant fitting of all three hats.

Where do you believe most agencies are strong or lacking? Are there aspects of the stated value propositions you would like to elaborate on from your own experience?

• If the source is representative of someone you might respond to?
• Within each classification of source, what is the predominant theme pertaining to the content?
  
• How will you track resolution?
  
• Assign resources?
  
• Implement Feedback?
  
• Demonstrate improvement and ROI as a result of the effort?
  
• Extend learning to other departments within your company?

As we pursue the ever-changing challenges and opportunities residing around these kinds of questions, it will be exciting to watch Qwest move forward in this space.

For us, each customer engagement opens a new realm of learning, sometime accompanied by unexpected surprises. Qwest has not fallen short in this - and one of the pleasant surprises for me personally relates to how well they have been able to do what has made our own organization successful over the last five years: "Get it done."

A special thanks to our friends (and clients) Ted and Jay for stopping in and hand delivering 24 frosty brews of appreciation for Room 214's hard work on an exciting new (still in super secret stealth mode) project.

Nathan - proof they carried out your wish.

There must be something in those personality profiles you guys did on us that gives away the fact that beer makes us happy. What else do you know about us?

Thanks guys.