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Cracking the Social Media Marketing CodeOn March 30th, 2009, Harry Gold of Overdrive Interactive participated in a podcast hosted by the American Marketing Association. This podcast titled "Cracking the Social Media Marketing Code" was an opportunity for Harry to discuss Overdrive's dynamic social media approach to social media marketing with host David Kinard. "The more that you get people to express themselves, the more content you push out there", stated Harry Gold. To listen to this MarketingPower podcast and others from the AMA, visit the MarketingPower website. Labels: AMA, Podcasts, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Strategy Social Media Integration Tips from SES NYAt Search Engine Strategies NY last week, I had the pleasure of speaking on ClickZ's social media panel and attending other conference sessions. This event reinforced the trend that the lines between search marketing and online media are blurring and the explosive popularity of social media puts that reality into super-high gear. Although this was a search marketing conference, social media (Twitter, in particular) was on the tip of everyone's tongue including keynote speaker Guy Kawasaki. What's clear: everything we do online is getting integrated and intermeshed into a unified platform that can drive traffic, generate leads and sales, and encourage high-value brand interactions. Of special interest to me: hearing about tips and best practices for integrating all the elements of search, social, online media, and Web site technology to create more value, connection, and engagement. That includes things that help turn media investments into long-term connections with consumers e.g., Facebook fan pages, Twitter followers, social-sharing chiclets -- get consumers to spread the word about your brand. Here are a few tips and tricks that have the potential to add a high level of social octane to any online campaign. Some are straight from me and some are from SES and other places. Please forgive me for not sourcing the ideas but to be honest they are all living in my head. Labels: ClickZ, Social Media Facebook Leak: Users Can Become Fans of Facebook Pages With a Text MessageFacebook will soon be allowing you to promote your Business (Fan) Page by using text messaging to allow users to Fan your Facebook Page - all by asking people to text the name of your page (www.facebook.com/xxxxxxxxxxxx) to 32665 (which spells 'FBOOK' on your phone) to become fans.  At this time, the feature is still in a beta mode, and has not yet been enabled for every Page admin yet. And another hitch in the process for Fans to successfully 'join' your Page, is that users need to have setup their mobile phone to receive texts from Facebook, which can be done on the settings page in your account. Mobile Fan-ing Even though this is not public at the moment, and is still in a beta mode, the possibilities could be endless for brands to better connect to future fans. Imagine being at a rally, concert event, a boardroom, a ballpark, and you ask people to take their phones out and send a simple message through texting via a mobile device. Exactly. Take that scenario inside your marketing department for a moment, and you include a prompt in brochures, commercials, websites, print ads, etc. Opening up this 'quick' engagement possibility for users could create a massive influx in growing your Fan count on your Page. Going one step further, once a user is engaged with a brand through the mobile platform, users will receive a brand's status updates via text message to their phone. After receiving the update through the phone, you can then respond and comment directly through text messaging. This process is entirely conducted by phone, without touching a computer. As this feature's publicity grows, you can imagine what level of engagement you are able to produce! Even though this has not gone live for everyone just yet, it will have a huge impact on the Facebook community once it does. We'll keep you up-to-date as information becomes readily available. Labels: Brand Awareness, Facebook, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Boston Online Marketing Firm Wins Best Of Show at 2009 Internet Advertising Competition (IAC) Awards for Innovative Email Marketing CampaignBoston online marketing agency Overdrive Interactive has won the “Best of Show Email Message Campaign Award” at the 2009 Interactive Advertising Competition. The prestigious honor is awarded by the Web Marketing Association to honor excellence in online advertising, recognize the individuals and organizations responsible and showcase the award winning Internet advertising. The company won for its work for the email marketing campaign developed for Symmetricom and its Next Generation Network telecommunications services. For details and to view the award winning work, click here. The award was based on the judging criteria of “creativity, innovation, impact, design, copywriting, and use of the medium.” Fellow winners in other categories read like a virtual Who’s Who in interactive advertising and online marketing, including: Digitas, Atmosphere BBDO, Ogilvy San Francisco, Agency.com, AvatarLabs and Publicis Modem. “This award recognizes our online marketing expertise alongside some of the best known and largest interactive agencies in the country,” said Overdrive Interactive Partner and Director of Client Services, Ty Velde. “It also gives credence to our belief that online marketing must not only be creative within the medium, it must deliver bottom line results for our clients.” As the architect behind online marketing programs for such business leaders as Harley-Davidson, John Hancock, LoJack, Princeton Review Boston.com and EMC, Overdrive is no stranger to the big stage. The company has enjoyed much national recognition, garnering awards from organizations such as MITX, W3, NEDMA, MarketingSherpa and The Webby’s. The Internet Advertising Competition (IAC) Awards are produced by the Web Marketing Association to honor excellence in online advertising, recognize the individuals and organizations responsible, and showcase the award winning Internet advertising. This is one of the only competitions to recognize only online categories of advertising. For more information, visit www.iacaward.org/iac/. About Overdrive InteractiveOverdrive Interactive is a full-service online marketing agency based in Boston that helps clients grow their business with engaging and measurable online media, social media and search engine marketing campaigns and services. The agency specializes in creating genuine consumer connections that help companies build their brands, generate leads and drive revenue. Overdrive serves organizations that are seeking a high level of accountability from their marketing firms and advertising investments. For more information, please visit www.OverdriveInteractive.com. Labels: Awards, Email Marketing, Overdrive News Twitter Dips into Advertising/Sponsorships?Yesterday, Twitter launched ExecTweets, a cross between a Twitter app and a sponsored site. A joint effort by Twitter and Federated Media, ExecTweets is still in beta but is basically a Microsoft-sponsored page that aggregates the tweets of various executives. Although this is not exactly the traditional advertising revenue-model, the launch of ExecTweets opens up more branding and sponsorship opportunities. Because now, we can look at Microsoft as the pioneer "advertiser" - and who know what other brands will follow soon? Some interesting soundbites - According to the Federated Media blog, "Federated Media, Twitter and Microsoft have created ExecTweets, a real-time tool that helps you to find, follow and engage with the world’s most prolific and successful business executives on Twitter... ExecTweets cuts through the clutter and provides only the most relevant and insightful business-focused conversations - all curated and aggregated into industry verticals..." And according to the Twitter blog, "Twitter is contacted regularly by brands interested in sponsoring innovative experiences based on topics of interest.... So if you're a major brand and you want to sponsor a topic-focused social media experience with Twitter, we suggest Federated Media—they'll fix you up right." (good job promoting partners!)  Well, whatever it is, it is definitely something new that could become an avenue for future advertising opportunities! Besides, if you scroll down the bottom of ExecTweets, what do you see? A Microsoft leaderboard... Exciting news, and I can't wait to see what the future of (advertising on) Twitter holds! Labels: Advertising, Industry, POV, Social Media, Twitter New Facebook Redesign Creates a Brilliant Marketing Platform for BrandsFacebook made a bit of noise last week when they introduced the new Business Pages layout. Then, several days later, made changes to the Home page of all user profiles, and integrated a 'Twitter' like wall stream - Facebook's strategy in building out a more real-time conversation tool. As usual, when Facebook decides to make changes, your entire office, your close friends and other random people you might see throughout the day - they all have something to say, and I am sure you've heard the complaints already. However, I am here to bring calm to the storm...rest assured, Facebook is making a very intelligent change in status here. And most importantly, businesses will be able to flourish greatly from this move. When it comes to the new business pages - it will now look and function much like personal profiles, offering stronger brand connections via the wall stream, which now takes center stage. When a fan comes to your page now, the very first page they look at is the 'wall stream'. On this page, businesses that create content often, will thrive in this new environment. As a brand, the wall stream page will gather content and post information about the page and posts by the page itself. Also, content shared by you, links, photos, videos and short text updates via the status updates, and posts by your fans left for you - all now show up in the wall. In this update, which is really the holy grail here, the wall updates you post will publish to your Fans' news feeds, and posts by your Fans will go to their friends' news feeds as well. So, think about this a second - the more content you are able to place and create in your channel, the more you engage with your fans, in turn, the more people you will be able to reach constantly. A single status update of your business profile seeds through Facebook into your fan's news streams. Now, all their friend's see this, and can 'like' or 'comment' on the update, and possibly go one step further and become a Fan of the page. The wall stream will be a large key in driving attention to your page - use it wisely! You are familiar with how Twitter works, Facebook is integrating the same concept using this wall stream - homepage stream. The more frequency of status updates on your page, the more chance you have to stand out with your fans in the Facebook stream.  When it comes to the layout of the page, Facebook rid themselves of the long 'leaderboard' layout, and moved to a tabbed layout - exactly how your user profile pages now function. And now, when a fan goes to your business page, they are defaulted to the Wall tab, so that fans can see the most recent added content to the page. And for non-Fans that visit your page, you can set a default landing page within your business profile page.  With the ability to send new potential fans to your business page, you can highlight a specific default tab to send them to that might have the most appealing or interactive elements within your page. This will allow users to better promote different portions of their page by driving ad traffic or new fans to certain sections of your profile. By driving potential fans to landing pages within Facebook, you can dramatically grow your fans and leads that ultimately improve conversion rates. If you are running a specific campaign, or have a new application, event, or interactive element on your page you want new users to connect with - now you can easily create that conversion path for the user. Some interesting analytics were also integrated into new business pages. Facebook now allows you to track video views, comments posted, news feed posts viewed, and this is all in addition to page views and unique views. And even better, all this data is exportable via CSV sheets. New Design Makes Advertising on Facebook Irresistible Facebook is clearly trying to drive more advertisers to use the platform, and it makes a lot of sense now with Facebook allowing you to drive non-fans to specific pages inside your business profile. This is going to add value and interest for users who will make their way to your Facebook page. Brands should embrace this tactic and give Facebook advertising a shot - you won't be disappointed this time around. People in the past have been reluctant to spend money on advertising within social networks. The real fact is, social network members are co-creators of content, and in turn, feel they have a sense of ownership within the site. Advertising needs to be more about participating in relevant conversation with consumers rather than simply pushing ads onto a social network user. Advertising should focus on being part of the conversation, not invading the social space. Advertising needs to be about adding value to a user's experience, as social networks are built around members adding value to each other's lives through interaction. This is why fan sites and sponsored groups are truly one of the most successful strategies when marketing within the platforms. This act touches on the principles of interactivity, and adds value to a user's experience via offers, previews, and the ability for user's to help create content. The true challenge though in creating a perfect marriage between social network advertising - marketing and that network's user, is time. There is no quick-fix in social network marketing, sure there can be exceptions, but those are few and far between. Much like a friendship, social media marketing requires effort, time and a continual investment in the platform to build and foster relationships. Remember, your messaging needs to be authentic and humble, and built on two-way conversation, not a push (one-way) model - in the end, this will add value to the consumer's decision. For more information on social media marketing, please review our services, and contact us or myself if you have any questions. Labels: Advertising, Blog Outreach, Brand Awareness, Facebook, online marketing, Online Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter Common Tracking Issues and How to Address ThemQuestions and issues over tracking and reporting online ads have persisted among agencies, media vendors, ad servers, Webmasters, and clients since I started my career. Terms and procedures around tracking have not been standardized, resulting in lots of confusion. Last time, I listed five common tracking and reporting issues and offered sensible approaches to deal with the first two. In this column, let's examine ways to address the latter three tracking issues. The five most common tracking and reporting issues are:
Read more... Labels: Advertising, ClickZ, Online Media Overdrive Interactive's Harry Gold to Join Experts to Present 'Social Media Marketing for Brand Building' at SES 2009In this tough economic climate, more and more companies are turning to social media marketing to take advantage of free resources and sharing potential available to companies in today’s web environment. To help educate marketing professionals on the latest online techniques, Harry Gold of Boston-based online marketing agency, Overdrive Interactive, will join other online marketing experts to speak at Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York 2009. Gold, the architect behind the online marketing programs for clients that include Harley-Davidson, John Hancock, LoJack and more, will be featured in the March 25th session “Social Media Marketing for Brand Building”. “Though social media marketing has gained a lot of buzz in the past two years, very few companies have truly integrated social media into their online marketing programs in a way that drives ROI,” said Gold. “In this session, online marketers will learn how to use the social media platform to capture the attention of prospects in a way that starts a mutually beneficial conversation, and ultimately builds lasting customer connections to improved bottom lines.” For the past 10 years, SES has been the leading global conference & expo series in educating delegates on search engine marketing (SEM), including optimization (SEO) and advertising strategies, tactics and best practices. In his second year speaking at this prestigious conference, Gold will be joined by Dave Evans, VP, of Digital Voodoo and Hollis Thomases, Founder of WebAdvantage.net. ClickZ, an online news and advice resource will host the session for interactive marketers, for which Gold is an expert columnist. Erin Brenner, Associate Editor, ClickZ, will moderate the session. "When we were planning this social media panel, one of the first people who came to mind was Harry,” says Brenner. “His company has experience with social media campaigns for clients and been successful at it. In his ClickZ column, he writes frequently about the topic in a way that's accessible to marketers new to the area. We were thrilled that Harry agreed to sit on our panel." SES New York 2009 will be held at the New York Hilton from March 23-27, 2009. To learn more about SES New York and how you can register, please visit http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/newyork/ About Overdrive Interactive Overdrive Interactive is a full-service online marketing agency based in Boston that helps clients grow their business with engaging and measurable online media, social media and search engine marketing campaigns and services. The agency specializes in creating genuine consumer connections that help companies build their brands, generate leads and drive revenue. Overdrive serves organizations that are seeking a high level of accountability from their marketing firms and advertising investments. For more information, please visit http://www.OverdriveInteractive.com/. About Search Engine Strategies (SES) Since 1999 Search Engine Strategies (SES) has been the leading international conference series for webmasters, digital agencies, online marketers and corporate decision makers. Over the years SES has guided search marketers of all skill levels through the fast changing and complex world of search — the single fastest growing marketing sector. Labels: Events, Overdrive News, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Can Social Media Save the Art Industry?The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, The Louvre, the Musee D'Orsay, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Art Institute of Chicago, the list just keeps going...but what's wrong with this sequence? With a recession raining down upon us, not many individuals have the time or money to invest in a $20 museum ticket. Cultural past times, such as museums and art centers have taken a massive blow to their internal egos. Around the world, state and government municipalities have sliced budgets, cut staff, and some museums could soon be closing because of a lack of money, interest and more importantly, visitors. In an effort to revive itself, the arts industry, and most notably, museums, are turning to social media to help boost their fundraising & increase revenue. Most recently, The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, launched a new website that completely reconstructs how you take part in art online. The site now offers a variety of social media tools, such as MoMA communities on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, iTunes U, and Flickr. The MoMA is even allowing people to upload their photos they have taken to the MoMA’s Flickr group, which is then featured in a special section on the MoMA.org website, with your name attached to it! All of these community-sharing ideas allow users to take part in the art experience with their friends and more importantly, share it online.  And one of the most notable social features on the new website allows visitors to setup an account online and save or share favorite works of art with others; from paintings, exhibitions, films, and other pieces of the museum. This 'social bar', which now rests at the bottom of the page, when clicked, expands to show images and other information that users can ‘collect’ and share. A user then can take those photos and send them to their friends. The museum never had an ongoing blog, but by using this new approach to the information age by discovering ways to attract and share information with art lovers who may never get to enter the doors of the MoMA – it represents a key tactic in reviving the arts industry. Artful Thinking... In a time where social media has become more than just a second thought in many CMO's plans, social networking, blogs, photo sharing, social bookmarking, videos, and more have allowed online communities to become a much more integral part in a museum’s marketing plan. Places like the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Brooklyn Museum, all artfully utilize social media in effective and engaging ways. When it comes to representing a community online, Facebook presents a company with an opportunity to package an idea, and quickly disseminate it among the community for multiple reactions. Creating social channels within the museum’s online environment offers a new means to communicate interactively with an audience and build membership and visitors to a museum. The Museum of Modern Art's Fan Page on Facebook has over 60,000 members, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Fan Page has over 56,000 loyalists – the evidence exists. Museums can utilize their networks through email, wall posts, news feeds, and other interactive elements within the platform - in turn, allowing visitors to respond via comments and wall posts. Facebook has done the unimaginable, and broken geographical boundaries, creating relationships for people who might have not have met otherwise. The same can be said for businesses that push forth and also take part in the online phenomenon. Some even say it has come to the point where not being on Facebook is similar to being phone-less. For an artist or even a culture center, such as a museum, creating a social platform enables this connection to exist between artists, museums, critics, and fans so that they can communicate with each other directly, and increase the engagement level between the museum and the fan. Simply said, creating and marketing this platform properly could create the lasting connection the arts industry is looking to enable, and not only lead to increased engagement digitally, but also lead to something more important – another $20 in the door. Labels: Brand Awareness, online marketing, Social Media Marketing Facebook Roll-Out of New PagesYesterday, Facebook rolled out the newly redesigned Pages - business pages now look like user profile pages, with tabs and more functionality to customize and engage with fans. (Actually, the Pages are actually now called "profiles for public figures and organizations). See excerpt from the official Facebook blog: "Starting today, we are announcing new profiles for public figures and organizations. Once called Pages, these new profiles will now begin looking and functioning just like user profiles. Just as you connect with friends on Facebook, you can now connect and communicate with celebrities, musicians, politicians and organizations. These folks will now be able to share status updates, videos, photos or anything else they want, in the same way your friends can already. You'll be able to keep up with all of their activity in your News Feed. This means that you can find out that Oprah is reading a book backstage before a show, CNN posted a breaking story or U2 is working on a new song, just as you would see that your friend uploaded new photos from her trip to Europe." The title of that blog post by Mark Zuckerberg was "Improving Your Ability to Share and Connect" and it nicely sums up what the new Facebook changes are all about: Facebook is not only giving businesses more opportunities to interact with fans, but it is making brands and marketers more accountable for their profiles and online activities. Now, all content uploads and changes to the Pages (er, Profiles) are streamed in and more visible to the fans. Tabs are customizable, giving the brands valuable space for content and application development. And fan interaction and social activity integration must now be part of daily management/strategy. The change will woo marketers as we are given more opportunities to be engaging and relevant. By basically mirroring individual user profiles (see Red Bull profile below), brands are literally becoming "one of us":  It also further proves that social media is integral to marketing strategies, and that it's not just about setting up profiles and leaving it like that; instead social media is about socializing!More changes on Facebook coming soon (regarding the homepage, how it is becoming more like Twitter, etc) so we'll be writing more blog posts about it and keep you all updated. Stay tuned!! Labels: Facebook, Industry, Social Media View-Through Conversions Are Not ConversionsJust in the last couple of months, we have dealt with some tracking questions and issues. Throughout my career, these types of issues have persisted among agencies, media vendors, ad servers, Webmasters, and clients. One thing's clear: the terms and procedures around tracking have not been standardized. As a result, there's lots of confusion in the marketplace around tracking and analytics. This two-part column will examine five common tracking and reporting issues and offer sensible approaches and explanations to deal with them. The tracking issues are:
In this column, I will dig deep into the first two items and follow up next time with the other three. Labels: Advertising, ClickZ Time for a Celebration!On the last day of each month, Overdrive hosts a party for its employees to celebrate success! In February, we celebrated four employee birthdays, several new client wins and the release of our first internal Newsletter. Our Newsletter acknowledges all the employees who were recognized by their peers for going above and beyond during the month - Extra, Extra, Read All About It!  Cheers!  The party planners!  If we were on Facebook, this picture would represent Shane 'liking' the conversation... Some of the guys chilling out after a long week of work. Same with the ladies...say 'cheese'! Labels: Campus Life |
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