In an article from Mashable featuring Trident Gum, showed this ad in USA Today on December 18th:
I find this ad amazing. It brings the community exposure. Who doesn’t want to see their name on a print ad in USA Today? The only call to action in this print ad is to follow them on Twitter.
Using testimonials to enhance the taste of their gum is exactly what any company would want to be doing with their gum, I’m glad Trident selected Twitter as their channel of communication. Its much more accessible than Facebook statuses (after their whack-o change in privacy policies)
It is interesting to see that they did it on a form of traditional media, where non/lesser savvy-twitter users may tend to flock. This brand of gum for sure has shown me their acceptance of social media as a form of communicating and by broadcasting their testimonials on a form of traditional media, makes me think that their intention is wanting to bring non-Twitter users on Twitter to make a change.
How Small Businesses Can Use Emerson College to Benefit
I attend Emerson College, I’m a senior in Marketing Communications and the first thing I should have done is analyze Emerson’s OWN marketing ability (specifically towards social media). So here are 3 things that Emerson is doing well and 3 they are doing poorly, and how you can use this to your advantage.
1. NO SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE
This is the front page of Emerson College’s website. Nowhere on the page does it have any links to Twitter/Facebook/Linked-In that students can find out crowdsourced content from students/teachers/faculty. (Read about my post on crowdsourcing and small businesses here)
At the bottom of their home page, they have a call to action to join them on the multiple sources of social media platforms that they are active in. An excellent way to connect and get more information on how they are interacting with the us.
For small businesses, having a bar/call to action on your homepage to multiple resources of social media platforms will be extremely useful to your content. It makes you more credible and reliable, because you will have a place for clients/prospective clients to see what others are organically saying about you.
Emerson is the only college in the country dedicated to communication and arts. It also sits in downtown Boston, and many of the crimes it is required to report occur at a nearby subway stations or in adjacent parks or nearby sidewalks, rather than on Emerson property itself. “Emerson College is an extremely safe campus with little or no crime on campus each year,” says Andrew Tiedemann. “Any crimes that happen on Boston Common and in the subway station show up in our report but do not involve our community. “ Still, its students are regularly on that subway, in that park, and they also live in apartments nearby. The school reported more than 80 robberies and 60 aggravated assaults, almost all near campus rather than on it, in 2007.
Given that they did offer a comment to the Globe, however it was brief and only offered an excuse to the ranking. Other reactions to the news was not documented in any accessible area. No mention of the bad news or reaction to it was ever shared to the Emerson Community either.
In any case, if it’s on the internet, everyone can see it. There is no filter or attempt to block information anymore, and its more credible to any company to just accept the negativity and turn it into a positive by either giving an in-depth reaction in a channel that we are all able to access, or reacting to the source outlet directly (commenting on the blog post)
3. No outreach to potential students cohesively
Their Twitter page tells the entire story. Emerson’s Facebook page only has content from their news feed (which can be found on the Emerson Website) there is no outreach to people interested. The Facebook page has no discussion board, and on top of that, comments are blocked.
In order to cohesive develop a brand, the brand must give content worthy enough. All Emerson’s content is completely recycled, and although they have a Twitter page, they do not have any sort of content or outreach. The way to gain loyalty, is by provoking organic content.
Although Emerson College does have many repercussions, there are some things that I do give it merit.
1. Good content
The broadcast method may be shotty, but what Emerson comes up with is quite good. Emerson MarComm has a large Twitter following which connects to their followers and their community.
2. Facebook presence
For Emerson’s Class of 2012 Facebook page, the class council is located as admin and used as a leading tool for other Emerson 2012 students to seek help/resources.
For any small business, it is important to divide any segment to discuss relevant topics, as Emerson has done with their years, discussing the updates and news of any specific company is important.
I am one of the managing editors for The Next Great Generation, led by Edward Boches, it is a blog written solely by 18-25 millenials from all over the world. Its targeted to Brand Managers, Marketers — basically older people who want to get in touch with us, the “lost generation”. We are here to jump and shout about what we believe in.
I am the Managing Editor for the brands section, where we talk about how brands affect us, what they are doing right/wrong and how we feel about them. The most current brand piece right now is by my friend Dylan Klymenko on Kraken Rum. Awesome piece on how a brand should be completely branded and unified.
Currently, i’m developing a piece with McKenzie Lawton about our immense love for Google (in all it’s magnificent glory: Google Docs, Mobile, Maps, and Reader). On top of that, we did it through Google Wave! (ask me if you want an invite, I have 14 left!)
You’ve just gone through the hardship of building early infrastructure and a quality team to lead the way to your future growth and profitabillity. In the process, you built a service you know your prospective customers would love. The only problem: they don’t know about it!
The cost of starting your company was likely significantly higher than what you initially expected (Who knew that licensing and permits would cost over $5000?). The advertising budget for your grand opening just went from a lavish full color ad in popular newspapers and magazines to a limited campaign on Google Adwords.
Entrepreneurs like yourself are in need of costless forms of promotion that are still effective at attracting your target audiences. Social media is seemingly the key to providing effective communication for little to no money.
The first two social media networks that pop into mind would be Facebook and Twitter. Since the websites draw in around 124 million and 23 million respectively - the amount of outreach for any successful marketing campaign would be monumental.
So keeping potential clients and friends updated to your company’s news comes differently with each of the social networks. Danah Boyd, on her blog, writes about the differences between Facebook status updates and Twitter updates.
Here are 3 reasons to use Facebook statuses and Twitter Updates to better promote your company:
Facebook:
1. Establish Personal Connections
2 way connection accept/deny: Facebook is about having a connection with a “friend”, not a “follower”. Boyd writes that Facebook “is about people at a similar level of status interacting”. When @replying a person, you are featured both on your own wall and their wall. You have gone through a selection process of whether or not you want to be their friend.
In this situation, my Status update was on both Max Luster’s and my wall.
This allows for you to mention a person on your Facebook Page. Thank them for writing a good review about your product, for coming to your event, for writing a blog post about your company etc. The mention will be broadcasted to both the people that are Fans on your Facebook Page and also on the user’s wall.
2. Make Your Fans Feel Exclusive
Offering fans exclusive information about your products/services gives them an incentive to stay. Pizza Hut’s Facebook Page isthe perfect example of exclusivity.
Their “Order App” Tab on their Facebook Page allow for Facebook users to order pizza off of Facebook. Offering your customers/fans the ability to do something solely on Facebook also establishes loyalty for your company.
3. Develop Community Around Your Product/Service
The option of keeping comments out in the open allows for open dialogue between not only yourself, but also your fans. Likeminded people are able to connect with each other, and at the same time, you have feedback that you are able to gain from your product/service.
Motorola builds community by allowing their Facebook fans to comment on each other’s wall posts. Getting organic comment from fans is a good way to develop community. Posts should not only be coming from you.
Twitter:
1. Join In On Existing Conversations
By using twitter tracking services like Tweet Beep your organization will be able to conveniently monitor what people are saying about your product, and your competitors products. By monitoring what general audiences are saying, you’ll be able to write status updates that smartly respond to consumer sentiment. This can create excellent opportunities to offer insight, and establish credibility as a thought leader in your space.
2. Drive Traffic
One of the simplest, but arguably the most important function of twitter is to promote content that you’ve created and hosted on your website. Letting your customers know that you just added a of content to your page will be a great way to drive traffic to that content.
3. Crisis Management
Since updates are limited to 140 characters on twitter, information spreads fast. What happens if your traffic spikes and your server crashes? Without twitter, getting message out as to why issues have occured would travel a lot slower. In crisis situations like that, often times consumers are simply looking for a reason why the content they requested is unavailable - but without that simple status update on Twitter, they may never find out - or find out too late.
For the older-than-13 crowd out there, hopefully, Nintendo64 was a part of your childhood. The intense rotation of your thumb-bone as your struggled to wind-up the Shy Guy in Mario Party, the repeated “Tap A and B Together” as you ran up and down the halls trying to rescue your princess in Super Mario 64, Tapping Z and R twice to do a barrell roll in Star Fox 64, and of course, the A+Z combo to do a jump pound attack in almost any Mario game. These motions from this console all bring back the 90s in its shoulder-padded glory.
Named Nintendo 64 (N64) for its 64-bit CPU, the bulky gray console game with 4 controller plugs, an On/Off switch, and a reset button. The game cartridges require a strong huff of air in the bottom of the cartridge before slamming it down into the receiver. When the on button was pushed upwards, the glowing red light on the console would signify the N64’s breathing, living, life.
Gameplay was so realistic, I must bring in a snapshot of the love:
N64 was definitely the highlight of my childhood. I remember when my brother (4 years younger than me) got an N64 for Christmas, he was crying of joy. Reminding me quite similar to the viral video you can see here (warning, turn down speakers).
What if the N64 had been released during the influx of social media? What tactics would Nintendo have used to create buzz? I will now discuss tw
o recommendations for Nintendo to infiltrate the video gamer’s market:
1. Total Annihilation of Product
Nintendo needs to completely annihilate the N64 on camera. Invite a couple of bloggers/press members and we have ourselves a press event.
Similarly, this 300,000+ viewed youtube clip of IceT completely demolishing his Apple MacBook Pro in his yard also got around the internet.
I think you know where I am getting at.
Blendtec’s brilliant campaign of “Will it Blend?” is the best example of destroying technology. Tom Dickson, CEO of BlendTec, uses hilarious ways of blending random articles (from iPhones, silly putty, skiis, toilet flushers — to so, so much more) with his Blendtec blender and shares it on YouTube.
In this video, Tom blends the entire multimedia Olympus line of cameras (point and shoot and video cameras) to show that BlendTec really can blend anything:
So after 6 million views on their first Youtube video, a 500% increase in sales, and a case for many social media enthusiasts to look after, we can say that destroying/blending technology will create some, if not a lot, of press.
2. Offer a tour!
Because N64 does not offer any sort of online play or any outward interaction except for 3 other friends at home, the only way to promote a gaining of knowledge for this product is to look inside the product itself.
Create an interactive world, where players/people interested can log online and explore the workings of a Nintendo 64. Why is it 64 bit? What makes that different? How does the console look inside? What are the workings of the cartriges?
Toyota creates their own “Toyota Metapolis” in which it is an interactive city-like map that is designed for people who are seeking more information about the company to look inside the map to check out their different department. Almost like an alternate reality, Toyota creates an area where each individual Letter and Number on the map has a little blurb about the departments that they do. It is an excellent tool into providing information-seekers more guidance in their product.
For this week, I am going to profile Valeria Maltoni - writer of Conversation Agent.
The blog is featured currently as #29 on Age Age’s Top 50 (as of 10/15):
Valeria also writes for Fast Company, The Blog Herald, Marketing Profs on top of maintaining her blog. Conversation Agent is a blog that connects people to ideas through different forms of communication. She’s extremely interested in learning, in her interview with Ad Age under a Power Profile — she focuses a lot of her content on conversation and the intricacies of it. Also she likes to eat edamame when she blogs (yum)
She has mastered the compilation of lists! Her two most well-known is the “W-List”, and the “100 PR People Worth Following on Twitter”. The former sparked what Valeria said “unleashed such a controversial debate all over the blogosphere” by suggesting a top 20 women in PR list. The latter includes, as described, the 100 people worth following. (Our SHIFT Principal Todd Defren is included + Account Director Doug Haslam too - whom I wrote about here! Cool!)
I asked Valeria about the usage of technology in communication, whether or not it changes the content of what we communicate, and this was her response:
“The big thought is that you don’t have to tell all to be transparent, you can still be that in spirit and attitude. Which is what creates conversation. Technology just enables it, amplifies it, makes it faster, more available. It’s the altering of attitude that will change things.”
She emphasizes that it should be the intention of the conversation that makes things transparent. Maybe the more open-minded and embracing one is about technology also affects the content in which they speak/write/tweet.
SHIFT Communications - A Company Profile With Social Media
Since September 14, 2009, I’ve been a part-time intern at SHIFT Communications. A PR Firm in Brighton housing impressive clients like Yelp, Johnson+Johnson, Virgin Mobile. I have heard of this company previously through Twitter and before interning, I have been reading Doug Haslam’s (Emerson grad!) blog.
SHIFT integrates social media deep into the roots of the company. Our signatures in e-mails look like this:
We have our twitter handles, the name of the company blog, and the option to subscribe to the blog.
Also, SHIFT has a community Facebook page, where the interns help out posting content to.
Recently (as in a couple hours ago) we just finished editing a little segment on SHIFT office life. View our video:
It’s very interesting to see the integration of social media into a company, when I am also aware of so many that are afraid of it. It’s strange looking for bloggers and their twitter handles when I am compiling a media list and then stumbling upon an article discussing how ESPN athletes are forbidden to use Twitter during and up to 90 minutes before the game. Of course there are many sensitive subjects to talk about in sporting arenas that should not be instantly shared, but don’t you think that’s also true for PR firms? Advertising Agencies? Any company actually.
Anyways, SHIFT has a company blog, PR-Squared, which is also Todd Defren’s personal blog. It’s rates #17 on AdAge’s Power 150 and has a primary focus on Social Media. Of course the firm does so much more than just that, but PR-Squared instigates conversation.
Another SHIFT writer is Doug Haslam. I was able to sit down with him and ask a couple of questions:
Do you feel like you have any specific “brand image” that you hold for yourself? SHIFT? How do you differentiate that?
To paraphrase, Doug thinks that when writing anything on any outlet, it should be a reflection of both your personal brand and what company you represent. People remember that you work for a specific company, so there are always specific things you wouldn’t do or talk about.
I also asked Doug what were his favorite blogs/bloggers. He recommends reading Annarchy - a personal blog about work, culture, and snippets of daily life. Ann Handley is a writer for MarketingProfs and Huffington post, but her personal blogs focus more on her life.
Doug subscribes to around 116 blogs (before deleting a couple of unneeded ones during our conversation). They range from marketing and PR blogs, news feeds, and to sports blogs like Keys To The Game.
Social media at SHIFT is a lifestyle. There are firms out there that believe that traditional media is the most reliable, and therefore the only focus of their PR efforts. Having working at SHIFT for even just a couple weeks has shown me that this is definitely not the case. This company has integrated social media in their practices, clients, and lifestyles.
Doug’s blog focuses on social media. It’s safe to say, that with a blog, a twitter, a vimeo, a flickr, etc — he is passionate about social media. The unity of a company, it’s policies and its practices, can only be started by its employees.
