Monday, May 17, 2010

Seven Things Your Organization Must Do Because Of Social Media

According to Augie Ray, a blogger for Interactive Marketing Professionals, there are seven things your organization must do because of social media. The first of these is you must be proactive. The key to being proactive is to identify the issues within your company that could be a problem in the future and finding a way to deal with these issues by interacting with a wide range of customers and by changing consumer perception when you can, and change your company when you can’t. The second of the seven is to improve customer support. The way customer support is handled can have great success for your company’s brand perception. The third of these is to listen. Most people are more opt to voicing their opinions on line. If your organization is on social media, there is a better chance of answering to those complaints and opinions if needed. The fourth thing your organization must do because of social media is to participate. No matter what, people are going to use facebook, twitter and youtube to complain or give their own opinions about your product or services. You should be participating because if you do people will be more welcome into their social media and your answers will be heard. The fifth of seven is to respond. Before the days of social media, people had to write letters or make a phone call to complain. These were all ignored because responding would only cause more media attention. It was easy to ignore a letter, but you can't ignore what is written on social media. You have to respond and show people you care. The sixth thing is to move faster. When responding to social media, it is important to respond quickly. Everyone on social media is watching right now. Even if you respond in a few days, which is quick in the business world, it isn't quick on social media. The last of the seven things your organization must do because of social media is you must realize every employee is a marketer. Every employee should participate in social media and be watched with what they say about your company and the brand image. All of these are interesting and very true when it comes to social media, protecting your company and the brand image of your company.

For more information visit http://blogs.forrester.com/augie_ray/10-05-11-seven_things_your_organization_must_do_because_social_media

Ray, Augie. (2010, May 11). Seven Things Your Organization Must do Because of Social Media. Retrieved from http://blogs.forrester.com/augie_ray/10-05-11-seven_things_your_organization_must_do_because_social_media

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Roger Waters Guerrilla Marketing Gone Wrong


Rogers Waters, a former member of Pink Floyd, has an upcoming tour named The Wall Live Tour. As PR professionals we are now told the best way to market is in guerrilla style, a way to get the attention of our audience because they are already seeing so many advertisements in a day. To get the attention of his audience, Waters paid street artists to go around LA and New York City and place a pacifist quote by Dwight “WTF” Eisenhower in several locations around the areas that are more hip. One of the places a street artist decided to place this guerrilla style quote for Waters was on a Elliot Smith's Memorial Mural. This offended and upset a lot of people. After the incident, Roger Waters apologized himself for the accident to LA Times.

For more information, visit http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/art-of-music/roger-waters-elliott-smith-mur/

Ellen Vs. Apple


Ellen Degeneres pokes fun at Apple by making a fake iPhone commercial and showing it on television. It was just a joke, but Apple and Steve Jobs didn't think it was so funny. Ellen ended up apologizing on her talk show, and stating that she never meant to send a message that Apple's product, the iPhone was hard to use. She owns an iPhone and made it clear on her show that it was just meant to be a joke.

To watch the fake commercial and apology on air, visit http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/04/ellen-pokes-fun-at-apple-and-then-apologizes/

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Using Twitter to support your political campaign

By John Fisher

Twitter can be a valuable grassroots tool to get people involved and talking about a political campaign.  "A quick Twitter lets your supporters know the truth so they can spread it through the coffee shops and their circle of friends." (Winning the Tough Ones,http://www.victorystore.com/wordpress/?p=8)

Twitter works when campaign workers and supporters re-tweet the campaign Twitter messages. Re-tweeting (RT) is the key to success in getting the candidate's name out and involved in "conversations."

Here is an illustration of how powerful re-tweeting can be.  The candidate may only have 100 workers or supporters following on Twitter.  However, when each of those workers and supporters re-tweets soon the message is sent to 100 X 100 followers.  That's 10,000 people who potentially could see the message.

As a worker or supporter, the process of joining Twitter and building followers is an easy one.

To signup with Twitter go to https://twitter.com/signup.

Invite your friends and contacts on your email account and Facebook to follow you on Twitter (even if they don't have a Twitter account). Connect your Twitter account to your Facebook, so that when you tweet your messages also go to your Facebook.

After you start generating your own tweets, unknown people will want to follow you. Let them follow you, but block obvious spammers and porn sites.

Do searches for people you will want to follow.  Look for people with common interests, graduates from your college, and from your region and community. You can also go through other people's followers and see which ones may have common interests.  Some of these people will follow you.

Establish your own credibility by building a profile that has a picture and tells about your interests.  You also need a dozen tweets so people see what you are interested in and that you are a serious tweeter.

When you get a message that is interesting (and from your political candidate), re-tweet it.  You will see this helps to build your following as well and re-tweets are greatly appreciated.

Use the @ symbol before the user name of people you refer to in your messages, like @fisherhouse.  If you want to send a message to only one person put the symbol D before the user name, like Dfisherhouse.

The hash mark (#) before a word in a post allows you to tag that post for that word. However, in order to get tracked via a hash tag, you need to opt-in and follow http://twitter.com/hashtags.

Use http://bit.ly/ to shorten the web addresses you link to.  You only have 140 characters per message.  You only want to use 120 characters so that your message can be re-tweeted.  (RT is the symbol for re-tweet.)

Good tweeting is not about you.  Don't send out messages about every little thing you are doing.  Most people don't care.

You can use www.twitter.com to send out your messages.  However, I use www.hootsuite.com because it allows me better access to my twitter accounts.

I don't read every tweet I get so it is important messages provide valuable and interesting information for readers.

According to "Winning the Tough Ones", some kinds of things that can be written in a Twitter include:

1. Thoughts on issues of the day. Responding to an article in the newspaper where it clearly provides you an advantage can be a quick, inexpensive way to get a message out.

2. Tweets related to events happening in the campaign have the potential to increase your turnout and potentially increase your fundraising success.

3. Tweets related to your opponent may also play a role. This could be responding to something he or she has said attacking you, or a polite way to contrast yourself with something your opponent has done.

If you want me to follow you, follow me at http://twitter.com/fisherhouse.

Good tweeting! And good luck on that political campaign.