Ready good interview by eMarketer’s Kimberly Maul of Kris Narayanan, vice president of digital marketing at Samsung. Narayanan oversees Samsung’s paid, earned and owned social media programs and had some interesting comments on how the consumer electronics giant uses social media, how social media ads have performed so far and what trends he sees in the marketplace.

eMarketer: What does Samsung focus on with the paid, owned and earned aspects of its social media program?

Kris Narayanan: For paid social media, the focus is roughly the same as is in regular media—it’s about driving effectiveness and it’s about enhancing our learning. For owned media, which extends well beyond social networks, it’s about driving the best content and news to our consumers and to our fans on a timely and relevant basis. And for earned media, it’s about conversations and listening.

eMarketer: When it comes to social media budgets, do you see an increase compared to last year?

Narayanan: The simple answer is yes. Over the past three years, we’ve seen consistent increases in our ad spend and overall marketing spend with regard to social media. I expect that to continue.

We have traditionally spent a lot of money on owned media trying to drive conversations and better listening. The paid side commenced this year, but we’ll be more aggressive in growing that next year. We’ve tried to grow our social base quite organically in the past couple of years and we’ll complement that with paid media in the next couple of years.

eMarketer: How well are the Facebook ads performing?

Narayanan: They’re performing well, but our ability to track and measure needs to improve. That’s really where the advances are happening, both in the tool sets that Facebook is making available and in the ability of companies like us and third parties that are acting as experts on Facebook advertising. Facebook built basic capabilities that are now getting more and more enhanced to be able to measure and target and segment and so on. That is going to drive ad performance a lot better in the coming months.

eMarketer: What are some social media best practices for consumer electronics companies?

Narayanan: One best practice is to leverage social media from a listening standpoint to drive the better products. For example, we learned from our social media that consumers were using our Blu-ray players as the hub for internet connections in their living rooms. That allowed us to amplify the messaging of that attribute of our Blu-ray players as well as enhance the lineup of Blu-ray players that have a connected feature.

Also, prelaunch marketing and launch time marketing are huge areas. Technology is such a buzzed-about category. Consumers are constantly asking, “What’s the latest? Should I buy this one now or wait for the next product?” Social media can be a huge engagement driver for people who are truly interested in the latest and greatest technologies and brands like Samsung that are constantly pushing the edge of technology.

eMarketer: Looking ahead to 2012, what trends are you seeing?

Narayanan: Google+ is truly exciting to me as a consumer. It offers the opportunity for me to manage my circles and my different social connections on a much more segmented basis.

As a brand, however, it’s not quite clear how Google+ will evolve. But we’re very excited because Google+ offers the possibility of combining the social graph and the interest graph. We can’t wait to get started.

Interesting stuff. How are you using Google +?

David Wilson

I have been in providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to clients for the last 8 years. I believe that SMO is where all the online services are going to converge over the next 18 months.

More Posts - Website

Good interview with Melissa Sowry, Content and Social Media Manager for Burt’s Bees recently on eMarketer, in which Melissa spoke about how Burt’s Bees uses social media to create buzz about its products, especially Facebook. Burt’s Bees have been able to grow their Facebook fan base from 98,000 to more than 370,000.

Here are some excerpts from that interview:

eMarketer: What drives online word-of-mouth for your brand?

Sowry: Beauty is a category where people take recommendations from their friends and talk about what’s new. They also look to experts for suggestions. For example, if we get a placement in Marie Claire or Lucky where they’re raving about the new tinted lip balm, we might share the link to the page.

We also find fans of the brand are recommending products to one another in this space. That’s the normal activity that takes place around beauty products. It’s mostly women talking to other women and finding out what works, but it’s taking place online in social media venues. For example, a mother might ask other moms about products that stop diaper rash: “What works for you?” These are important conversations and I think online social media is a place where people trust one another to get that information.

eMarketer: What is the brand’s approach to Facebook?

Sowry: Facebook is a channel for us to provide compelling content. When I came on board, we started doing simple things—posting content and behind-the-scenes images on a daily basis and discussing new products coming to market.

We use social media and Facebook in particular as relationship-building tools. We also create opportunities for consumer education around skin care, for example, and sampling offers. We ran successful sampling programs on Facebook for our relaunched body lotions and new tinted lip balm.

We talk about our products on Facebook but we also spend time talking about the culture at Burt’s Bees through our involvement with Habitat for Humanity, sustainability efforts, product ingredients and so forth.

eMarketer: How do you track the ROI from your social media activity and how do sampling efforts impact sales down the line?

Sowry: We monitor the traffic we have going from Facebook to Burtsbees.com. We’re constantly looking at ways that we can monitor traffic, fan growth and sentiment about the brand.

We’d like to be able to say that because we launched a Facebook sampling tab we’ve increased our fan count and increased sales by a certain percentage, but we’re not in that place yet to have those sorts of metrics. But we do know that we’re driving more traffic to our ecommerce site due to the activity on Facebook.

eMarketer: Burt’s Bees has a “Shop & Share” feature on Facebook where brand fans can ask their friends about a purchase. How successful has it been?

Sowry: That tab was designed as a first generation of us looking at shopping on Facebook. You can’t complete a transaction with the Shop & Share tab—the technology is not at that stage yet. When you click on a product, we can import a product feed. We could have all of our products up there if we want, but can only display 10 products per page. If you click on the “Shop” button on the tab, you go to Burtsbees.com, our ecommerce site, to complete the transaction and the order.

Shop & Share was sort of a test to see if it’s something that we should invest in. We’ll be looking at it in the next fiscal year since more brands are starting to offer the ability to complete transactions within Facebook. People want to stay within the Facebook environment.

eMarketer: What kind of content gets the most traction on your Facebook page?

Sowry: Everything from video, product recommendations, news about new products, ingredients, guidance in selecting the right products.

One thing that really engages people are questions. For example, we asked people on a Friday what they’re thankful for. We said we were thankful for honey. We did one around lip care: “What makes your lips like nobody else’s?” We had 106 comments on that post in a day.

David Wilson

I have been in providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to clients for the last 8 years. I believe that SMO is where all the online services are going to converge over the next 18 months.

More Posts - Website

The best marketers out there always know what’s around the corner. It takes more than keeping up on the trends of the particular marketed item or service; it involves integrating a grand comprehension of global activity into the individualized business strategy of a client. Often this is only possible when you have the cognitive skill to contemplate multiple socio-economic factors at once while also knowing what the wants and needs are on the consumer end of the chain. In the world of social media, where the technology is so unpredictably powerful it can take down tyrants, the ability to foresee the future of Facebook and other powerhouses of social media is a highly prized skill.

Not every internet marketer is created equal. Many fail to fully grasp the influence of world events on the long-term success or failure of an online marketing strategy, especially one that plans to use social media as a decisive tool. Online marketers worth their salt are paying close attention to the aforementioned Arab Spring for clues on the nature of social media. SMO is still an incredibly new marketing science, and the opportunity to measure its value in the political uprisings of the Middle East should not go to waste. It might sound a little over-analytical, but if you can see how effective Tweeting can be at turning a nation against its government, you can make reasonable projections about the power of social media that were previously just suppositions.

If you’re going to seek online marketing consultation, find someone who makes it a point to relate recent events to your business concerns in order to create a plan catered for the future. Marketing consultant Amish Shah is an example of an internet marketer who not only identifies himself as a futurist, but demonstrates a proven track record of helping even Fortune 500 companies take a step back and get a look at the bigger picture. Shah and others like him are not easily intimidated by the complexity of the countless factors that go into creating a feasible and long-lasting social media marketing strategy.

They won’t predict the future per se, or else they’d just bet on the right horses and cash out like any of us would, but they will give you a clear cut set of likely truths about the fate of your market. Not only that, savvy internet marketing consultants will know exactly which particular social media strategy will work for you when you start to integrate social media into your marketing tactics. Whether it’s viral video, other content creation, or simply good old fashioned networking, forward thinking consultants will tell you which stratagems will work best long term.

The future is not ours to see, but whatever will be doesn’t necessarily have to be if you have the right scope set on the future. The human brain is a machine designed to anticipate. While we can’t predict everything, especially in the ever-changing world of online marketing, we can narrow the path down to a size that is comfortable to cross. And if we can’t do it, a worthy consultant can.

BrandonLaughridge

More Posts - Website

Really good interview with Stephanie Leavitt of Carnival Cruise Lines over at eMarketer. In the interview, Stephanie spoke about Carnival’s social media campaign for its newest ship, the Magic, and the kinds of marketing that resonate with Carnival’s Facebook fans. Here are some of the highlights from the interview.

eMarketer: What is your social media strategy for 2011?

Stephanie Leavitt: Social media is now a big component of our overall marketing strategy. We try to embed a little bit of social media in pretty much everything that we do. Our goal is to help educate consumers on the value of cruising, and specifically, we’re trying to use social media to better connect with first-time cruisers—people who have never cruised before.

DW: I harp on this a lot, but social media is not a stand-alone marketing channel. It needs to be incorporated into everything you do.

eMarketer: What lessons have you learned so far from using Facebook?

Leavitt: Our biggest lesson learned is that social media changes at a pace that I think marketers are not really used to. It’s incredible. The Facebook platform changes, the policy changes, the way people use it changes all the time. We’re just trying to keep up with that and make sure that whatever we’re developing is easily adaptable. (Carnival’s Facebook fan base grew from 45,000 at the end of 2009 to 510,000 today.)

DW: That is a very impressive growth in Facebook fans in 12 months.

eMarketer: What has proven successful to get consumers to interact with your Facebook fan page?

Leavitt: I’ve found that the key to making a page successful is really good content and providing some sort of utility for Facebook users. While a game can be fun and cool the first few times you use it, if there’s an interesting conversation going on the page, it always brings you back. So we try to focus on user-generated content.

DW: I think this is an important point. Too often I see marketers overload pages with games to try and keep people coming back to the site, when instead if they focused just on great content, users will return over and over in order to be part of the conversation.

eMarketer: You introduced a tab of your Facebook page featuring content about the Carnival Magic ship, which debuts in Europe on May 1. What elements are part of this tab?

Leavitt: We used it to help consumers build part of the Magic. We have an Italian eatery, Cucina Del Capitano, aboard ship and we asked people to go on Facebook and submit names for a pasta dish. We selected a name, and it’s going to be printed on the menu. Right now, we’re running a contest for people to suggest names for a mini golf course. The Facebook tab also has behind-the-scenes videos and a meet-the-crew feature. Every month, we profile a different crew member. We’ve done the cruise director, the captain and some senior staff, so people can learn a little bit more about them.

eMarketer: What are the challenges with this campaign?

Leavitt: The biggest challenge, which I guess is a good challenge to have, is that we’ve had so many people participating that it’s hard to keep up—moderating contest entries, interacting with everybody, making sure that we get out there. We thank people for leaving comments, try to get crew members to answer people’s questions and post in a timely manner.

DW: This is not an uncommon problem for companies. Doing social media well takes resources and the companies that dedicate resources to it are the ones that are successful. If managing your corporate Facebook page is one of 20 responsibilities you have, what are you going to do when you get busy?

eMarketer: Overall, how has the cruise industry embraced social media, and Facebook in particular?

Leavitt: Cruising is a social thing. When you go on a cruise, you talk to people—there are people all around you on the ship. So social media just resonates with it.

But when you’re researching the cruise, your impression is really dependent on peer recommendations. With Facebook, you can go in and see your friends’ recommendations. It makes it that much more enticing and relevant when, instead of reading a regular review, you’re reading a review from one of your closest friends. It’s much more credible.

eMarketer: Do you use ratings and reviews from customers in your social media outreach?

Leavitt: Yes. Carnival’s own social network, Carnival Connections, had a review section and we’ve had some form of reviews available since 2006. Now they’re on Carnival.com. We take some of those reviews and we integrate them in some of our email marketing. We feature them on different sections of Carnival.com. And we’ve even tried doing video reviews. When we’re on the ship and we have a video producer there, he’ll interview people, and then we have video interviews on our Facebook page and in Carnival.com’s Funville community.

eMarketer: Is there anything else you are working on when it comes to social media?

Leavitt: We just launched our cruise shopper tab, which lets people book cruises directly on Facebook. We had a cruise finder tab up for three months before that, and we saw a lot of people using it to search for cruises and share information with their friends on Facebook, so we took it a step further.

It’s really just a test for now. We don’t envision this changing the way people book cruises online. It was more, “Let’s test the waters.” The full booking engine has been up for less than a month. No one’s bold enough to come out and say, “We’re going to make a million dollars on this.” But it’s definitely something worth trying.

DW: A little disappointing that Carnival has not put some expected ROI numbers around their social media efforts. Why settle for just testing the waters?

David Wilson

I have been in providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to clients for the last 8 years. I believe that SMO is where all the online services are going to converge over the next 18 months.

More Posts - Website

Earlier this month I, along with Joel Davis of agency:2, was interviewed by Mike Filsaime of Marketingdotcom.com about social media marketing. Below are my answers to Mike’s questions.

1) What should an online marketer’s primary goal be when utilizing social media?

In establishing a primary goal for social media, marketers first need to define what they are trying to accomplish via social media marketing; e.g. increase the number of Twitter followers, increase the number of Facebook fans, or drive traffic to a webpage.

One of the advantages of using social media as a marketing tool is that it can be used for a variety of marketing initiatives, such as: brand awareness, brand reputation management, new business generation, customer support, specific product/service launch campaigns, and improving SEO.

2) What, in your opinion, is the most effective way for online marketers to use social media?

Social media marketing is, at its heart, a way for companies to communicate with their audience, listen to what they are saying, and engage with them based on their comments. It is not simply a one way marketing channel like TV, where you blast your message and don’t engage in a two-way conversation.

It’s also important to understand that social media marketing is not a stand-alone marketing tactic. It is not something that can happen in a vacuum. For example, a company cannot open a Twitter account and expect people to automatically start following it if they never advertise the fact. Social media needs to be woven into the fabric of everything a company does.

When you visit a website there should be link to the company’s Twitter and Facebook pages. Print and display advertising should also include links to the company’s social media pages.

3) Facebook and Twitter are often cited as the two primary social media sites that online marketers should use. What other social media sites are also worthy of attention?

The other two big general social media sites are YouTube and LinkedIn. There are also a lot of niche social media sites that marketers are not taking advantage of. For example, ActiveRain bills itself as the world’s largest network for real estate professionals. If your company’s target market is real estate agents, then ActiveRain is the sort of social media site that you should be on. There is a lot less competition (noise) on ActiveRain than there is on Facebook.

Active Rain is just one example of hundreds of niche social media sites. There are these types of social media sites in every market.

4) What tools and software would you recommend for assisting with social media management?

We use Google Alerts to monitor what is being written about our company, brand, industry, and competitors. This is a free service from Google and we get an email every day with any relevant results based on our request. It’s a great way to quickly and easily keep on top of what is being said about you.

6) What new social media opportunities can we expect to see over the next 12 months?

As Facebook grows and becomes even more mainstream, I expect to see a substantial increase in the number of people using niche social media sites like ActiveRain.

I also expect to see more situations like that recently experienced by Cooks Source Magazine. If companies fail to understand the power of two-way communication their reputation can be destroyed very quickly online. I expect to see people offering reputation management services as a result.

David Wilson

I have been in providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to clients for the last 8 years. I believe that SMO is where all the online services are going to converge over the next 18 months.

More Posts - Website

This month Ian Bardorf steps into the interview chair as part of our ongoing series of interviewing people who are doing interesting things in the social media marketing space.

Ian runs a search marketing company called Bardorf Marketing. What I find interesting about Ian is thta he is having success using social media marketing sites like YouTube to help attorneys generate new clients.

Ian, you run a search marketing company Bardorf Legal Marketing. Can you tell me about your company?

Bardorf Legal marketing is a full-service online marketing agency that helps attorneys and law firms succeed in a changing world. My team is dedicated to implementing the best approach for an attorney’s specific area of expertise and location. We believe the most effective Internet marketing is local and we design campaigns that are targeted to a particular region and practice area to give maximum visibility.

Your company focuses on the legal market. Can you tell me what you are doing to help Attorneys?

The Internet is quickly replacing yellow pages, television, and radio as the preferred source for people in need of a lawyer, yet many attorneys simply don’t have the time or the expertise to reach new clients online. We help them effectively present their experience and credentials using all the tools available online to gain new clients and grow their business so that they can get back to practicing law.

Is there a difference between what small firms and larger firms are doing online?

There’s no difference between what small and large firms can do online. Technology levels the playing field and enables bigger and smaller players to compete online in ways they can’t offline. It’s not like if you spend more money online you’ll get different results. It’s just doing the right things.

The difference lies between the firms that understand the value of online marketing and those that don’t — some firms of all sizes “get it.” The only difference is that large firms might have an in-house marketing team focused on it. But smaller firms can easily hire someone to help them produce a video, get blog content, create a Facebook page, etc. You don’t need a dedicated team in-house to be successful, you just have to be in the game.

Are you seeing attorneys embrace the Internet, and specifically social media marketing?

Within the last few years more attorneys are embracing the Internet and the ones that do are receiving the early benefits of being trailblazers. The yellow pages are dinosaurs; TV commercials are expensive and may not reach their geographic target audience. Internet marketing is more cost-effective and connects attorneys with prospects who are actively searching for a solution.

The challenge is how to use the Internet effectively and how to get results sooner rather than later. The other issue attorneys face is weeding through the noise to determine what’s a good marketing investment and what’s not. There is a lot of misinformation out there. Some marketing firms claim they can guarantee an attorney will appear on the first page of the search engine results. Some charge $200 to $400 a month to set up a service that’s actually free on Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

Blogs and social media are marketing channels that cannot be ignored in today’s competitive marketplace. Attorneys realize this is where they need to be and they also acknowledge that it can be very overwhelming to get there. In general they are smart, highly educated and savvy individuals who are now getting up to speed in a new arena.

Part 2: How Bardorf Legal Marketing clients are using social media tactics

One of your social media tactics has been the use video. Why did you decide to focus on that tactic?

Online video is one of the most effective and efficient ways to communicate your marketing message to your audience. This visual and dynamic format gives clients another way to interact with a firm and is a great opportunity for attorneys to introduce themselves to a new audience. The right campaign can quickly generate referrals, friends, fans, and followers. With little or no media expense, depending on where it’s posted, video can drive action, generating qualified leads with a lower cost for client acquisition and higher ROI.

The specific benefits for attorneys are that when someone has a legal issue and is searching for representation it can be intimidating to pick up the phone when you don’t know the lawyer or may not even know exactly what your issue is. It’s much easier to watch a short clip and develop a good feeling about that attorney before calling. A 20 to 30 second introduction can make a positive impression. My clients tell me people say, “I saw your video and I thought you were the right person to call.”

I see that you created a YouTube channel. How important is that for companies to do?

Just over five years old, YouTube now has approximately 2 million searches daily, and it is a great place for marketers in all areas to reach their target market by using video assets to increase awareness.

I post all the video I shoot of my clients on my YouTube channel for two reasons. First, by having YouTube host and serve the videos there is less resource drain on my clients’ servers and sites. It’s also designed to allow easy sharing, which means the video can be embedded in all sorts of online properties without having to host it.

The second reason is for search engine optimization. By creating an optimal channel for attorneys in all different geographic and practice areas I’m generating traffic and quality links back to their sites.

In addition to YouTube, what other video sites do your videos appear on?

I also post to the video hosting sites Yahoo video, Metacafe and Vimeo. There are several legal directories that also allow video like Avvo and Justia.

What are some of your key learnings in developing video for your clients?

I’ve learned that there is a very positive response to video from potential clients – both my clients and the attorneys’ clients. Video makes a site more engaging. It’s an affordable way to get the attorney in front of a qualified prospect.

Additionally, as search engines continue to advance in their ability to serve all types of media in search results, video is key to building the digital arsenal, advancing beyond text and web pages, which will keep my clients competitive.

Another lesson is to keep the message simple. Good lighting and good sound will take you a long way but you don’t need high end production. When people see high production values they think of commercial TV and it can make the attorney seem too expensive and out of reach. We’re trying to reach a local audience and the more authentic our video, the better our chances of making a connection. I’ve found that our target audience is more inclined to relate to this type of video than an expensive, high production video.

One of the things that seems to stump people who want to do video is the technical piece – how do I shoot, edit it, etc. What do you advise?

Keep it simple. Do short (30 second) clips. Use good lighting. I’ve invested in good lights and a tripod that I use at every shoot. One of my clients got a great Logitech HD desktop camera and shoots directly from his desk. The video has great resolution and good audio. He’ll do a two-minute discussion of an issue and post it to his site from his YouTube channel. It looks and sounds great. It’s authentic.

Poor video quality, audio, lighting, and delivery can hurt you. If you choose to do video, it’s worth the time to explore, test, and do it correctly. Remember, once your video is on the web, it’s out there for all to see.

Attorneys are really knowledgeable about their subject matter. How do you plan out the content so that the layperson can understand the topic on the video?

The purpose of a video is not to answer people’s questions in their entirety, to resolve an issue or solve a complex problem. The purpose is to establish credibility. The attorney needs to let people know they are knowledgeable, that they’ve handled this sort of case before, and invite the prospect to call with questions.

Prior to shooting video I send each attorney an email with a list of questions to prepare them. For example, if we’re talking about divorce in a two-minute piece I recommend that they start off with a grabber like, “If you’re contemplating divorce in Massachusetts, here are three things you need to know.”

I help them script the video. I also closely direct during the shoot. If an attorney gets into the technical jargon or starts to wander I pull them in and we reshoot.

What are some of the opportunities in video that marketers are not taking advantage of?

I advise marketers to look for ways to repurpose their video assets. Don’t just use your video in one place, one time. There are lots of opportunities to leverage it in different areas. For example, on a Google places account. In the legal community there are sites like Avvo and Justia. Don’t just let it sit on your site waiting — proactively look for ways to make the most of it.

David Wilson

I have been in providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to clients for the last 8 years. I believe that SMO is where all the online services are going to converge over the next 18 months.

More Posts - Website

While most of the social media attention is on Facebook and Twitter, some companies are having a lot of success using other social media channels like YouTube.

One of the companies is VitaVie Financial Planning which is run by Kristin Harad, a Certified Financial Planner in San Francisco. I recently had a chance to learn more about Kristin’s business and how she is using video to grow her business.

Q: Kristin, you run a Financial Planning company VitaVie Financial Planning. Can you tell me a little bit about your company?

A: VitaVie Financial Planning is a fee-only financial planning firm focused on new parents and growing families in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Q: Are you seeing a lot of Financial Planners embrace the Internet, and specifically social media marketing?

While nearly every financial planner has a Web presence, there is unfortunately little creativity in our industry. Many Web sites are uninformative brochure-ware, without much to say.

Social media is a hot topic in our industry. A few planners are quite innovative, but the majority is sitting on the sidelines. Parts of our industry are regulated, and our primary regulator, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has been slow in issuing clear cut social media guidelines. As a result, many planners avoid absolutely all social media out of fear of running afoul of their compliance department. While there are still some issues to be resolved, I think this is an ultra-conservative stance, but sometimes we are an ultra-conservative industry.

Part 2: How VitaVie Financial is using social media tactics

Q: One of your social media tactics has been the use of  video. Why did you decide to focus on that tactic?

We are in a highly personal business. In the very first meeting with new clients, I learn every facet of their financial picture as well as their life goals and anxieties. Financial planning is about much more than just numbers and I think that giving a peek at my philosophies and personality via video enables prospects to get a much better picture of what it is like to work with me (as well as our other planners, who each have their own videos too).

Q: In addition to YouTube, what other video sites do your videos appear on?

We embed the YouTube videos in a number of places, including our own Web site and our profiles on Linked In (via Google Docs).

Q: Financial Planning is a topic that many people are undereducated on. How do you plan out the content so that the lay person can understand the topic on the video?

Many people don’t understand where financial planners fit in the world of financial advisors. We provide clients with a comprehensive view of their finances, helping them use their finances to achieve their goals. We’re also a fee-only firm, which means we charge for our advice but don’t sell any products like securities or insurance. This can get confusing, so our videos are an effective way to illustrate the services – and value – that we provide.

Many people can be intimidated by financial professionals, as they feel that money is an area that they shouldn’t need to get outside help with. So not only to our videos paint a clear picture of what we do, they also answer key questions that some prospects are reluctant to ask.

Q: One of the things that seems to stump people who want to do video is the technical piece – how do I shoot, edit it, etc. What do you advise?

This was a big hurdle for us, too, so we finally decided to just jump in and learn as we go. We have a $200 Kodak Zi8 camera, a $25 microphone and a tripod and edit everything on iMovie, which is free Mac software. Our video quality could certainly be better, but I think they look professional and are very well received. We recently started outsourcing our editing to a $20/hour editor, as that is a very time consuming process. My main advice is to just get started – don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough!

Q: What are some of your key learning’s in developing video?

1. We now try to avoid using scripts whenever possible. Making a good video with a script is very challenging. Now, we mostly just film conversations or ask questions of the person featured in the video and then edit them together to make a nice presentation.
2. We use video much more often. For example, we host monthly events and now create video invitations for each of them, which has substantially boosted conversion rates.
3. We invested in a $25 lavaliere microphone. The built-in microphones on most video cameras deliver really poor sound quality, and it is incredible what a difference this has made!

Q: Have you seen any direct link from your video’s in generating new clients?

I don’t know that video has brought in new clients on its own, but we have countless prospects that tell us how much our videos help them decide that they’d like to meet with us for a consultation.

We also have a very easy time getting our videos to rank well in the search engines. For example, we were able to earn a sustainable top Google ranking for a video profile of our Marin financial planner just two days after posting the video!

Q: What other social media tactics are you having success with?

We are active on Twitter (@vitavie) and have developed some very solid relationships there. We frequently provide guest blog posts to a number of blogs, and then use social media to help promote them. Our personal Linked In pages is a steady source of traffic to our Web site.

David Wilson

I have been in providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to clients for the last 8 years. I believe that SMO is where all the online services are going to converge over the next 18 months.

More Posts - Website

KIAH-TV in Houston had a story recently on the town of Baytown Texas and how they are using social media to bring tourists to their town.

Baytown is located near Houston and Patti Jett, a public affairs coordinator with the city of Baytown, said social media sites like Facebook have been instrumental in attracting tourists from all over.

“Our target audience being teenagers, young families with children – the kind of people that would come to a water park; people that would use a water park – social media is one of their primary ways of getting information,” Jett said. “We just opened the water park in June of 2010, and already we have over 12,000 friends on Facebook. We posted the commercial on You Tube, and the You Tube commercials already had about 13,000 hits on it.”

The YouTube video is below:

As with any social media campaign the question is did it provide an ROI. Patti Jet is confident that it did.

“If you figure that we had 70,000 people in our first inaugural season at Pirates Bay, that really tells you something for how well our [social media] marketing is working for us.”

David Wilson

I have been in providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to clients for the last 8 years. I believe that SMO is where all the online services are going to converge over the next 18 months.

More Posts - Website

I came across a great interview on Memeburn yesterday where Memeburn Editor Jeremy Daniel interviewed Jessica Berlin. Jessica is the social media manager for Cirque du Soleil. Who knew that Cirque du Soleil had a social media manager??

Here are some of the highlights from the interview. You can find the whole interview here.

Memeburn: What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of Twitter?
JB: For us, Twitter is a great way to spread information quickly, it’s probably the best channel we have to distribute last-minute information and ticket discounts. Of course, this also refers to the weakness of Twitter. Information is moving so quickly that even though you have a large number of followers, in reality you are only reaching a small percentage of them with each tweet.

That’s why it’s critical to produce relevant content and participate in your followers conversations, so that they in turn trust you enough to re-tweet your posts.

MB: Facebook?
JB: We love how easy Facebook makes it to share all types of content. For us, the targeting and tracking available is key. Since our shows tour and we put on special events in particular cities, we regularly target our updates based on where people live. The best part – it’s free!

One of the current weaknesses with Facebook is the constant changes to pages. It’s hard for businesses to continually adopt and adjust their creative, particularly for anything they have had specially designed for a Facebook page.

MB: Blogging?
JB: There are so many great benefits of blogging, particularly SEO, brand building and the low cost. Most importantly, blogging is a wonderful way for us to tell a story in a longer-form. The best part of blogging for a brand is that you can empower other employees as “guest bloggers” to help tell the company’s story from a different perspective.

When you remain authentic, I don’t think there is any weakness to blogging.

MB: What other social media tools do you use for campaigns?
For online contests we use Wildfire, which is a great application to integrate a branded campaign with the viral features of Facebook. We just launched our new “Seven Worlds” campaign which utilises Facebook Connect to integrate a user’s information with a Cirque du Soleil experience.

MB: How do you respond when the chatter around a show of yours starts to get negative? Can you give us an example?
I am so lucky to work for a brand that people not only like but have an emotional connection to. When we do get negative comments about a show, fans or followers will actually respond to it before we even do and defend the show or recommend another show to that person. Other comments aren’t specific to a show and are more customer service based. No matter what the comment is, we always respond.

MB: What is it about social media that makes it such an effective tool of communication for CDS?
JB: By participating in social media, we want customers to recognise that we’re an approachable brand, we also want to reach a new audience that may not be that familiar with our shows. And obviously, we hope by engaging online we can eventually translate that to ticket sales.

Really interesting answers from Jessica. I  liked the explanation of how CDS uses Facebook, Twitter and Blogging and the pro’s and con’s to each. While all three are social media tactics they are very different tactics and I liked her explanation of how CDS uses all three channels.

The “how do you respond to negative comments” answer was very interesting. When your brand is so strong, that your customers will evangelize your brand, then you have something very special going on.

David Wilson

I have been in providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to clients for the last 8 years. I believe that SMO is where all the online services are going to converge over the next 18 months.

More Posts - Website

Last week I had the opportunity to beta test a cool new product from Flowtown. By entering in someone’s email address into the Flowtown system you can find out who a person is: their name, age, gender, occupation, and location.

The cool feature is that Flowtown also lets you know the social media profiles that are attached to that email addres. So you canfind out whether a prospect/customer is on Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, etc and so can tailor a campaign specific to them.

Last week I spoke with Ethan Bloch, co-founder of Flowtown to learn more about their company and product and this is part of that conversation

Can you tell me a little more about the Company and why you developed this product?
We’re in the businesses of helping businesses do better business. Specifically Dan Martell (the other cofonder) and I are both passionate about helping small businesses move the needle and do more with less. We developed this product because the technology was ripe. So many people are now on social networks, you can get an accurate picture of who someone is and where they are based on information they’ve made available to the world at large. The difficulty lies in sifting through it all and finding the gems, and that’s where Flowtown excels.

What makes Flowtown.com different from its competitors?
Our core focus is on ‘social’ – other marketing or CRM platforms expect you to manually collect information on your customers and contacts. Well when they’ve already share everything you need to know on the internet, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. We aggregate all of this into rich customer profiles which you can they use for email marketing, customer service, call centers, outreach etc…

After using your demo, this seems like a great tool for a hiring manager or HR person. Can you talk a little more about the benefits they would have using your site?
Sure. Starting with just an email address Flowtown can tell you the persons is: Name, Age, Gender, Occupation, Location and what Social Networks they’re on. You no longer have to Google someone and spend 45 minutes find all their social profiles. Within 60 second we do all this starting with just an email address.

Other than HR, who is your target audience and why should they use Flowtown.com?
Our target audience is small businesses. They should use Flowtown because we help them ‘care at scale’. Delivering world class service to every prospect and customer is how you’ll win in the decades to come and Flowtown is set on making this easier and more lucrative then ever.

Can you give me an example of how a company is using your site.
Feed Projects is using Flowtown to build stronger relationships with their community and donors nationwide. Just last week they we’re throwing a New York only event and wanted to send a personal invitation to those only in NY. Because Flowtown know’s who’s in NY they were able to do this and begin their email along the lines of ‘Being that you’re in New York…’

David Wilson

I have been in providing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to clients for the last 8 years. I believe that SMO is where all the online services are going to converge over the next 18 months.

More Posts - Website