Fresh ID » Advertising

The @CamryEffect: Toyota’s Twitter Spam Campaign for Superbowl Fans

Kristi — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:42:21 +0000

Today I witnessed something really annoying. I mean, it got under my skin particularly. My friend Scott Stratten, @unmarketing, posted on Facebook that it was pathetic that there were 10 Verified (by Twitter) accounts, all spamming people who were talking about the Superbowl:

https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect1
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect2
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect3
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect4
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect5
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect6
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect7
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect8
https://twitter.com/#!/CamryEffect9

You can try looking at the accounts, but within a few hours and lot of griping online about it by some of us, they seem to be unverified (no more logo next to the name) and they are now protected so you can’t see the tweets they’ve been sending. Note: protected, not taken offline, which is standard Twitter protocol in response to enough spam/block reports.

I believe these accounts and the verification were paid for and Twitter was aware of the campaign in advance. Why? Check this tweet out:

That’s one of the Directors of Sales for Twitter, praising how CamryEffect was going to be using Twitter, and then they had 10 accounts sending non-stop spam messages to people who mentioned Superbowl-related keywords (from what I could tell by clicking on lots of their tweets before they closed their accounts off.

So what’s the big fuss, anyway, you may be asking? I’ve had several conversations about this today. There is a fundamental difference in advertising, and partaking in events that result in ad delivery, such as a Google search, watching TV, going to a movie, using a free platform, listening to the radio or reading a magazine, vs. SPAM, which is a direct and personal solicitation to you, using an account of some type that you have (your phone, your social network account, your email.) There is also the concept of “cold” solicitation, which hovers somewhere between the two. If I say I need a dry cleaner (for example) and someone who doesn’t know me – a person, or a dry cleaner – says “Hey, we do that, if you want to check us out we are here” that is a little more appealing to me personally than spam, which is often the result of an automated delivery, and therefore impersonal and meaningless.

What Toyota’s CamryEffect campaign was doing was pure and total Twitter spam. Someone set up bots (someone on Facebook said this was done using http://localresponse.com/#brand which delivers advertising real-time. Their ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi LA has been tweeting repeatedly to watch the ad they created for the campaign, so we might assume they had something to do with this Twitter campaign also though we don’t know. There was a press release about an integrated marketing campaign using something called Shazam. So really, multiple culpable players were involved, at least Toyota who approved it, Twitter who helped enable it by making accounts look Verified and Official, and (maybe??) an ad and/or social media agency who boneheadly decided that what Superbowl football fans REALLY wanted tomorrow is a big old can of SPAM, otherwise known as the CamryEffect.

I feel sorry for the car. It really had nothing to do with this short-sighted money-grab and textbook worthy negative social media case study. And, as always, my concern is for the end users. One tweet about a car today, because you mention watching an event on Twitter, could well be 50 unwanted tweets about everything from zit cream to male impotence products based on watching The Mentalist. Or whatever it is you watch and people think you will buy.

And THAT is the single thing that really could be the death of Twitter. People will stay for ads, they’ll stay if you charge them… but if you suck them in and then sign them up against their wishes for canned SPAM, they’ll go elsewhere.

This didn’t happen when Ev and Biz were running the show. I knew something bad was going to happen when they left. If you care about this stuff, don’t just tweet or Facebook it. Put it in a blog post. Send it to Twitter. Say you don’t mind promotion but you expect them to promote responsibly. Yes, the site is free, but you create the content that keeps this crazy rat wheel turning. Don’t sell yourselves short as the end user. You DO matter! And maybe the Camry is even a good car, I have no idea. Ask your friends if they have one and if they’d recommend it. That’s a good way to find out.

Wake up companies and agencies. This is NOT your oyster. Our accounts are not your free-for-all. You’ll get it eventually because if you keep acting like this, you’ll have to come up with yet more ways to do push marketing because we’ll abandon in droves the sites where you abuse us.

Update 2/5:
As I published this last night, Toyota went and apologized on a blog post at TNW:
http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/02/04/toyota-takes-to-spamming-twitter-for-camry-super-bowl-promotion

We will be discussing this at the next #smbydesign chat, which is held every Thursday. Check out the times and information and please join us to talk about whether or not you think campaigns like this are a wave of the future we have to accept or we will be able to use our voices to stop Twitter and brands from heading down a wrong path by publicizing their mistakes.

Some great insights on WHY this brilliant scheme may have been cooked up are at Marketing Handy, so read that quick post if you have a minute. I’d love to have him talk to our #smbydesign group about the “viral video” conundrum marketers have when they want to make video but for the specific purpose of having it “be viral.”

Should You Try Using Different Words to Tell Your Story?

Kristi — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:35:44 +0000

This simple, but poignant video might help you think of new things to try and do for your business if you’ll sit back and think about where you could say things another way, or give your customers the unexpected.

What words are you using to tell your story?

Thanks for sharing this with us, Jake! (Our client, owner of Pandolfi’s Deli.)

The best PR is often incidental

Kristi — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:43:27 +0000

A lot of our site visitors know about my love and admiration for CJ Sapong, rookie forward for Sporting Kansas City. I call him my #lilrookie on Twitter and love to make threats against those who threaten to injure him or even give him a bad time during a game. He did something completely unique and unexpected yesterday – with the women’s national team in town to play a game at LIVESTRONG Sporting Park, he decided to serenade Hope Solo, goalkeeper with a rap-style poem he had penned the night before. Watch the video and then let’s discuss the outcome…

You will see folks with cameras and video recorders there – there are always photographers at training sessions at Swope Park, where the team trains, so when one of our guys comes onto the field with a mission, headed toward a member of the women’s team, it’s going to get the attention of the area photogs and reporters. Plus someone may have had to arrange for Hope to hang around and meet him. Some of the guys on the right, Kevin Ellis, Michael Harrington, Korede Aiyegbusi, and Jon Kempin, are teammates of CJ’s so they’re snapping phone pics while he sings of his love for Miss Solo. Now, CJ gets some press in his own right, for his soccer-playing skills. He was recently named #15 out of 24 players under the age of 24 in all of MLS. He is likely a candidate for MLS Rookie of the Year, which I am personally hoping he’ll have earned when the season is over. But yesterday’s serenade resulted in wide press coverage, within hours, for many reasons:

It was spontaneous
It was heartfelt (genuine)
It was quirky and imperfect (he started over when he messed up his lines)
It was humorous (and wasn’t Hope a great sport, despite the blushing)
It resulted in a WIN, a hug and kiss from the one he admired
It was gutsy (I mean, seriously… how many guys could pull this off?)
We saw the real personalities of both CJ & Hope
The reactions from others there were genuine
It was precious – who doesn’t relate to being smitten?
It was a bit of fun in an otherwise routine day!

You just can’t buy or manufacture this kind of PR. I mean, a lot of people try, but it comes off as staged or processed or inauthentic (like those wretched non-real “reality” tv shows.) What’s interesting is in the aftermath, it’s been covered by (to name a few):

Yahoo Sports
Washington Post
Huffington Post
Kansas City Star (some interesting backstory here)
… plus dozens of Soccer-specific blogs around the country

YouTube statistics as of this morning show over 100,500 views – since yesterday afternoon. It’s the #42 most discussed, #5 favorited and #23 top rated video in the sports category as of this writing. I teased his publicist last night, Ari Washington of Double Coverage PR, who knew he was thinking about doing something but didn’t know if he would actually go through with it, about all the awesome coverage this is getting. I would imagine this is a publicist’s dream, but still… if they had planned this together and it didn’t come from CJ’s brain, personality and genuine interest, I doubt it would have been as well-received or as interesting. So how do we take any lessons from this for our businesses? I’m not quite sure. One thing I have observed is that many people prefer a loosened up approach. I talk a lot about various client activities or things we are doing, but when I am genuinely enthusiastic about it people don’t seem to mind, but if I promoted our activities like a lot of companies do I think the messages would just fall flat and be ignored. I ignore most obvious marketing messages myself… they’re boring. I think a lot of promotions, especially in the social media space, are contrived and so they feel contrived. They aren’t as likely to be shared or talked about if they are so obvious. That is really hard to get around – marketing is about putting awareness on something so that people might consider it for themselves, so campaigns are part of the reach/awareness factor. But this is why I SO want businesses to fully embrace socializing their business so that all employees are welcome to use social media in and out of the course of doing business, talking about their daily activities naturally with indirect self/company promotion. What CJ did here (whether he knew or not beforehand) was indirectly market himself. A lot of people who don’t know who he is, might be curious after seeing this video and take a course of action to find out more. They might follow him on Twitter, look for him on Facebook, look him up at the Sporting Kansas City site, Google him to see who he is, and read and learn about him when they knew nothing about him previously. He is on their radar now, and they will recognize the name when they hear it. So the moral of this story I guess is, you’ve got to be out there doing something, if you need awareness and reach. Hopefully what you’re doing is interesting and unique or memorable. Because push, push, pushing your marketing is not going to win the day, though it may be semi-effective. Show your delightful personalities (for people and brands), with all the quirks and flaws. That has long been my motto and continues to be for both myself, and for Fresh ID. We are a small, but growing business and far from perfect. But if we tell you we’re interested in helping your business grow, and here are the problems we see, and here are some ideas, we mean what we’re saying, be it right or wrong. We try things and discard them if they fail, and try something else. When we say something about a client in public, we mean it, we don’t fake babble just to score points or try to get people to do something. We would lose interest, not gain it, if we did, and I think people would know we were being fake. Good luck with your own promotion and PR efforts – it’s a jungle out there! When something fascinating and different like “the rookie serenading the rockstar goalie” comes along, it grabs our attention. Here’s hoping we all are so lucky someday to borrow a few minutes of the public awareness (if needed.) Have a great weekend!

The Urgency of Differentiation

Kristi — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 17:49:03 +0000

This is more of a “food for thought” post than one containing a solution… My hospitality expert and friend Jeffrey Summers tossed out a phrase the other day regarding the “urgency of differentiation” – he was going to be discussing that topic on his restaurant podcast. I noticed it because we have been discussing this for a while here in the office… Lisa is always pushing us on “what makes us different?” and after having it roll around in my head without a full articulation, I randomly spit out some things that make us different on a phone call with her one day:

We are not an “ad agency” because many of them are not strong in regard to social media culture (though they may be using social media push tactics) and they do traditional ad buys (we do not)
We are not a “PR firm” because many of them don’t understand the social space and they do traditional PR whereas we do online-focused releases in relation to a specific campaign or event – we like to work with PR specialists, ideally, for larger reach
We are not an “interactive agency” because they tend to do more motion-based design (we outsource what we can’t do in-house) and often don’t do marketing (which we do)
We are not a “usability firm” as we are not singularly focused on product/web design or information architecture, though it is what we do when working on various types of projects and we have usability testing and lab-building experience
We are not a product development company although we develop products – we would prefer to help design them, develop them ourselves or work with your in-house devs, create help systems, do user testing, PLUS work on the overall brand identity and marketing collateral in addition to helping lay a social foundation and do staff training on using social channels for customer service, and then do graphic design for presentations, tradeshows, etc. in a holistic, comprehensive effort to sell a new or redesigned product
We are not a “marketing firm” exactly as we do design and development in-house and lean toward product design or enhancing sites with features/functionality
We are definitely not a “social media agency” as we do design and development and have a long history of product and traditional marketing (and many social media agencies are brand, spanking new in this industry – in fact, frighteningly new)

We also have done business development, product line planning, visual merchandising, online events, ecommerce design and dev, research & analysis, copywriting, tech writing, user experience planning and testing, project management, tradeshow event design, speaking, and more as professional services since 1994. So today, we call ourselves as a “creative services” company for lack of a better short description. But clearly that doesn’t really explain what sets us apart. Now that we see what we are not, determining how to explain what we are in a way that includes the differentiator will be something we will actively work on over the next month or two, because we do feel it’s important to define, and it is a needed facet of our overall brand experience and positioning. How do you explain what makes your business different? And do you agree that there is an urgency of differentiation in today’s competitive, yet economically challenging climate?

How Not to do a Social Media Promotion

Kristi — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 16:01:42 +0000

I was excited, then disgusted last night, in fairly short order. I learned that there is something called SocialCam coming from Justin.tv, the video site. SocialCam is a mobile app that lets iPhone and Android users take some video, upload it, tag people in it and share it swiftly with their social pals. Sounds awesome, right? So I marched over to the little site and put in my email address for “early access” which I liken in my mind to be Beta testing, although I realize that may not be accurate – maybe they have already done Beta and this is a pure marketing play. If this is their beta testing process, it is WAY off base, so I will assume for the sake of argument it is not. I got this little gem of an email almost immediately: They can’t wait to get the new app into my hands, IF I pimp the ever-loving crap outta their unproven, unseen warez, is the stark reality of this “offer.” I don’t like it. I don’t like the approach. I don’t like the marketing philosophy that says this is okay. I don’t like the subtle extortion, I don’t like the encouragement to blast your social networks with this referral link – especially for a SIGHT UNSEEN product. Maybe this thing royally sucks! Maybe it’s hard to use, unstable and unreliable. Your social friends should be able to know you believe in what you’re sharing with them, and your mention of it is either:

news you find interesting or compelling or important (or know they will)
something that delights you so much you want to share it with others
something that offends you so much, you feel compelled to take a stand against it, and are therefore sharing it
something you have personal experience with, and you are sharing your honest opinion about
something noteworthy that people might be interested in (which I am sure Socialcam is counting on you thinking it is)

But at the end of the day, this is a play for free ole’ marketing, done by you, on behalf of them, for the “carrot” that is POSSIBLE inclusion on this wonderful early access list. Forced or coerced sharing in return for something you consider of value is NOT a good marketing practice. When it comes to social and the ever elusive Holy Grail of “Viral Marketing”, don’t be an ass. Stop thinking users with social network accounts are stupid. We don’t all buy Snookie’s book and sit around waiting to promote your company for free, for nothing. Be respectful of others, be intelligent, offer something of value, make a good product, have good support and any social media sharing, blog kudos or mentions will happen organically, naturally and deservedly. This should be your #1 “Social Media Best Practice” if you are USING it to market your company, products or services.

The Etsy-Twitter-Tumblr Triumvirate

Kristi — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 17:18:19 +0000

This post is primarily meant for Etsy sellers. (We are one now too!) There are currently 273,270 active Etsy sellers, people signing up as members at a rate of over 300,000 per month, and in November 2010 Etsy broke a sales record of over 2 million items sold in one month. So how can sellers expand their reach, have more fun selling and increase their sales potential? By adding some other social networks to their mix of daily activities! We are going to be making and selling themes and templates in support of Etsy sellers and have just begun stocking our store. The set Lulu & Fifi has only had 77 views since I put it up, so I just tweeted about it to let people know it’s there, using the handy “Share” button on my page. If I used Twitter simply to promote my Etsy wares, it wouldn’t work as well. It is because I am actually friends with people and do a lot of reciprocal sharing and communicating, that anyone will care to click on my link. In a few minutes time, my views have gone from 77 to 111, just while writing this paragraph. That’s the power of using Twitter in conjunction with Etsy (and why it’s important to build social networks with like-minded folks who you enjoy interacting with.) Another important use of Twitter is for customer service – it’s easy to chat back and forth via DM or using your public stream, with an interested prospect or buyer. Showing people you’re around and active during buying times, plus seeing your interactions with others is another way to demonstrate they can trust you to provide quality service and merchandise. Here’s the tweet I sent – note how the latest version of Twitter shows the full graphic if you look at the tweet by itself… awesome! If you don’t have a Twitter account you can get one here. Be sure to match your background and colors to your store for the greatest brand effectiveness.

I also have a Tumblr for my personal blog, which I dearly love because I follow a lot of cool, fun people who post interesting things, that I can “reblog” in a matter of seconds. Things I love, I reblog, so I can reference them later. So think about what’s on Etsy for a moment… TONS of adorably quirky, fun, neat things. Things that people on Tumblr who like to share and play, might find interesting enough to pass along to their friends. The moral of this point? Set up a Tumblr and make friends there! I would use it, if you have no other website, as the companion site or blog for my Etsy store. Seeing handmade stuff on Etsy is very cool, but sometimes hearing the backstory of how something creative came to be, is even cooler and draws people who are intrigued by it toward purchasing. Plus, blogging your thoughts and letting people know who you are as a person (the same goes for tweeting) breeds familiarity, and familiarity breeds trust, and trust is a cornerstone of selling. So there is benefit in being accessible and approachable as a businessperson, and not just the Wizard behind the curtain (the curtain being the graphic avatar of your store.) Another benefit of Tumblr is that with some custom coding, you can add the Etsy mini widgets to your sidebar or the top or bottom of your site. You can also put one on Facebook, like we did on our Fresh ID business page. I have not put the Etsy widgets on my Tumblr yet, because I’m trying to decide whether we’re going to create a new one for the Themes & Templates we are going to sell or not, but the graphic here shows how it might look. Selling on Etsy is obviously not our core business – we are a creative services and social media agency -but if it’s yours you shouldn’t hesitate to put that on your Tumblr so that everytime people visit it, they will see the latest stuff you’re offering in your store. You can also set it up so that when you Tumble something, it goes into your Twitter feed, and if you post something you’re offering on Etsy as a story on Tumblr, that will automatically get sent to Twitter. You can get a free Tumblr account here. You will need to find a Tumblr theme, buy one or have a custom theme made for your site, so try to get one that coordinates with your store branding. We do custom-designed themes with lots of social network-integrated coding that run around $1000. We are going to eventually offer a Tumblr theme just for Etsy sellers that will be much less (under $100), and will be built to quickly brand it like your store and insert your Etsy Mini listings. If you want to know more about that theme just contact us… it’s not out of production yet. We also intend to do some Tumblr themes that will match the shop templates in our Etsy store. Tumblr, just like Twitter, involves reciprocal friendship for maximum effectiveness. I use my Tumblr for a highly personal site (as opposed to this blog, for our business) so I can reblog, write down, and share anything that amuses, delights or annoys me. So it is a total mix of goofy pictures, designer-inspired home decor and illustrations, funny, raunchy things, thoughtful musings, tirades against injustice and self-promotional blather. In other words, it’s the sum of my parts. If you want to keep your Tumblr more business-like though, you will be in plenty of good company. Everyone from major publications like Newsweek to hugely popular web applications like Twitter and Foursquare are making use of Tumblr for their business. When I began writing this post I had 77 views of my Lulu & Fifi Shop Theme, and I now have 160 views, a retweet of the link and a question from someone about our shop sets. Not bad for taking the time to send a single tweet to let my friends know what I’m doing! Do you have any questions or success stories to share about using other social networks to promote your Etsy wares? Would love to hear them. Ebay is doing something kind of unique – they have a new “social media sellers” program they’re initiating. If there is enough interest from Etsy sellers on social media we can help set up a regular Twitter chat about this topic so we can all help each other. Happy selling! Kristi

Social Media Panel Discussion for Healthcare Professionals

freshid — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:19:41 +0000

We are very excited that Fresh ID’s CEO, Lisa Qualls, has been given an awesome opportunity to participate in a social media panel discussion hosted by Meers Advertising at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO on Thursday, June 24. The panel will discuss topics relating to social media strategy as it relates to not only healthcare, but business in general. Meers Advertising has put together a great panel of local industry leaders for the event including:

Ben Dillon (@benatgeo), eHealth Evangelist and Co-Owner at Geonetric, a web software solutions company out of Cedar Rapids, IA that focuses on healthcare
Lisa Qualls (@lqualls4444), CEO for Fresh ID, a Kansas City, MO company focused on experience design and helping businesses integrate technology to expand their brand and improve operational processes and customer communications
Mike Lundgren (@mglundgren), Partner and Director of Innovation Strategy at VML, a full-service digital marketing agency out of Kansas City, MO
Mike McCamon (@mccamon), Chief Community Officer at Water.org, a Kansas City, MO based nonprofit organization dedicated to providing access to safe water and sanitation for communities in Africa, South Asia and Latin America.

Sam Meers (@meerskc) is responsible for organizing the event and will also be participating in the panel discussion. Sam is President of Meers Advertising, a local Kansas City, MO agency dedicated to helping their clients grow and maintain competitiveness in the ever changing field of advertising. A strong proponent of advertising and Web strategy to build a brand, Sam has developed his marketing communications beliefs through experience. Founding Meers Advertising in 1993, he brings over 25 years of consumer and business-to-business experience to the company. Meers Advertising has worked with clients such as National Beef, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, Kansas and Oklahoma, Multi Service Corporation, Axcet HR Solutions, McCownGordon Construction, Human Factors International, Weight Loss Surgical Centers, WageWorks, Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics, TransforMED and Geonetric. The Meers agency was recently mentioned in Target Marketing Magazine for its work with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City. The event will also be available live, online using our own product, Twitterface. Those wishing to watch the discussion online can do so from twitterface.com/meersadv and join in the discussion!

Successful and FREE Press Release Sites

Kristi — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 02:24:02 +0000

We’ve been taking the time to create press releases meant for online publications about the recent live events we’ve done using our Twitterface tool, with some good results. Lisa began this practice while at LightThread using a variety of paid and free online PR channels and trackingresults. She experienced the best results from prlog.org, obtaining front page search results within 24 hours of release and months later continuing to get front page search results. Prlog also makes it easy to link on your Facebook profile in addition to bookmarking through Delicious. The benefits of doing this are:

Backlinks to your site helps SEO with search engines. You will get linked to from the press release sites and anyone who picks up the story and posts about it from their site.
People find you and your offer that might not have, otherwise… we’ve seen pretty significant results with this about the Chip Foose-John Deere event we did (they are a big brand after all so that helped) but with every release we’ve sent out, we’ve been surprised at the number of blogs and sites that have found it and posted the information or linked to the release or our site from theirs.
It formalizes your operations. Last week Lisa zipped off a list to our team of all we have accomplished in the last 8 weeks. It is surprising how far we have come in only the past 2 months since she came on board. These press releases help us see our progress over time and give us a list of “News” items we can refer back to each year to see some of the highlights of what we’ve done.
It’s free, save a little bit of time writing the release and posting it to the press release sites. Though we will do more formal and traditional paid announcements at various times, using this approach we’re only spending the time it takes to write and polish the release, and it’s well worth it.
It adds credibility to your small business. Let’s face it… times are tough. Capturing quotes from happy customers and tooting your own horn in a non-pushy way can only help your efforts to sell products or services in a buyer’s market. Every little bit of promotion helps add to the overall number of people who hear about what you’re doing!

In fairness, we have not tried prweb or prleap so do not have comparative results to share. Additional sites that produced front page results upon release were pressreleasepoint.com and prurgent.com. Keep in mind the free sites take a bit of time to set up your profile but once you use them the first time they are much easier to use again in the future. Please feel free to leave your favorite press release site in the comments section!

KC Businesses Make a Difference to Bottom Line by Getting Social

freshid — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:57:25 +0000

KCFreePress.com and contributing writer Katy Ryan released an article today highlighting some local KC businesses that are seeing a positive difference to their bottom line due to their online efforts. Our CEO Lisa had the pleasure of working withKaty to help prepare the social media and marketing strategy portion of the article. She was kind enough to include a quote from us so we wanted to return the favor by posting her article. In case you’re interested we added the full excerpt of Lisa’s interview with Katy following the conclusion of the article.

And Tweets to be Tweeted, of course.

Amid the day’s hustle and bustle, she composes several 140-character posts a day updating the company’s 400-plus Twitter followers about available donut and coffee flavors, as well as new product offerings: “What if we take chocolate, add chocolate to it & then top with a little chocolate? Wait WE ALREADY DID! Try our Triple Choc Muffin today! ”

Welcome to the new world of small business marketing. Benjamin is among a growing number of small business owners who find themselves spending a large part of their days dedicated to communicating with followers and friends on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

“It allows us to connect with our customers and members of the broader community in a real-time fashion and in an authentic way,” Benjamin said. “It lets us come out from behind traditional push advertising to simply talk and listen to the people we work, play and live with.”

Leroy Shatto of Shatto Milk Company has long prided himself on personally connecting with customers and local suppliers on a daily basis to ensure product satisfaction and to answer any questions. Now armed with a Facebook fan page, Shatto Milk Company reaches more than 8,000 fans who get updates about Shatto products, flavors, farm events and other company information, combined with an even greater level of transparency that allows customers to more easily contact the company.

Greg Morey, the Marketing Manager of Cafe Trio on the Plaza, said he spends a couple of hours a day maintaining the restaurant’s Facebook page, which currently reaches more than 1,500 fans. On the Facebook page, Morey frequently rewards fans with gift certificates and other give-aways. To enter one of the contests, fans have to guess a number in a specified range. It’s a dual strategy that rewards fans for their loyalty, and also ensures that the winners will tell others about Cafe Trio, thereby increasing their prospective customer base.

“These contests have helped expand our fan base exponentially,” he said. “The activity keeps us in the news feed and hence in an ever-growing stream of awareness. When I post a comment about a special cocktail, menu item, or event, fans may not post a comment, but a few might make that snap decision to drop by that day or within the next few days. It’s about keeping the brand near the top of the choice list.”

How to make social networking work for businesses

Businesses’ growing use of these services to communicate directly with customers has spawned an industry of social media marketing consultants, like Overland Park-based Evans Media Group. President and CMO Paul Evans said the company became an early adopter of social media about three years ago when it started advising clients to get on Facebook, FriendFeed and others.

As use of the sites has grown, Evans and Sara Paxton, the company’s managing partner and CTO, have developed increased expertise on how businesses can turn social networking into increased revenue. They say that engaging in and maintaining a conversation is one of the most important parts of social media for a company, regardless of the service or platform — but that it can’t be all about the business.

“Imagine dating someone self-involved who talks about him- or herself the entire time,” she says. “You don’t want to put up with that.”

And that’s why Paxton and Evans suggest the following formula for social networking success: businesses should make 90 percent of their posts about the business or links to content, and the other 10 percent should be fun posts on other topics to help give the business a personality.

Paxton and Evans said that by using social networks properly, companies can raise awareness and increase engagement of customers.

“That’s the huge piece,” Paxton said. “The people who interact become brand evangelists so quickly. Others will say good things about you, and that’s the value of social media and what you can’t easily quantify or turn into an ROI.”

Yet for those unexperienced at social media, the opposite can happen as account operators send needless or irrelevant information into cyberspace.

“This is supposed to be an interactive, engaging session,” Paxton said. “Social media isn’t just an extension of an ad or web site, and that’s the one mistake we see small business owners make.”

And although social media may be more appealing than traditional advertising channels (based in large part on the fact that most social media services are free), Fresh ID CEO and Social Media Club of Kansas City President Lisa Qualls thinks a combined approach is still a company’s best weapon for success.

“All forms of promotion—traditional, experimential and digital—are all needed,” she said. “It’s just that companies now have more avenues available for budgets of all sizes, and the benefit of many free-to-use tools that allow them to both promote and communicate with fans and brand enthusiasts. It can be more fulfilling to do a Facebook campaign, or post an ad on YouTube, and get an immediate response and sense of enthusiasm, than to put an ad in a newspaper and see if anyone walks into the store or picks up the phone because of it.”

In a larger sense, the inherent appeal of social media is that through the Internet, the world becomes a smaller, more manageable sphere throughout which interaction is possible regardless of physical location.

“The whole point of the Internet is that it levels the playing field,” Paxton said. “It doesn’t matter if you have an NYC office or you’re in Manhattan, Kan. If all of these outlets online are consistent, no one really knows the difference.”

By Katy Ryan, February 10, 2010 – As president of Verona Key LLC, the family-owned operator of Kansas City’s sole Dunkin’ Donuts franchise, Jennifer Benjamin has a full schedule. There are logistics to be sorted. A staff to be managed. Deliveries to be scheduled.

And Tweets to be Tweeted, of course.

How to make social networking work for businesses

Paxton and Evans said that by using social networks properly, companies can raise awareness and increase engagement of customers. “That’s the huge piece,” Paxton said. “The people who interact become brand evangelists so quickly. Others will say good things about you, and that’s the value of social media and what you can’t easily quantify or turn into an ROI.”

Yet for those unexperienced at social media, the opposite can happen as account operators send needless or irrelevant information into cyberspace. “This is supposed to be an interactive, engaging session,” Paxton said. “Social media isn’t just an extension of an ad or web site, and that’s the one mistake we see small business owners make.”

Here is the full excerpt of the email interview Lisa had with Katy:

1. What prompted you to become involved in social media?

I began participating in social media back in 2004 when I joined LinkedIn as a way to network professionally with colleagues outside my local area. I have always been one to enjoy connecting with others so participating in online communities was a no brainer for me. I love to learn from others, talk with others and share my opinion and social media enables me to do all three…sometimes at the same time! I’m a wife, mother and business owner so finding time to “read the world” and “engage” during normal hours is almost impossible. Social media is a 24X7 world letting me participate when it’s convenient for me. I also love the global aspect…it isn’t uncommon on Twitter to get in to conversations with people from Australia, England, or India to name just a few. To have the ability to see the world through their eyes and from their perspective is pretty powerful.

2. What role does an organization like SMCKC play in cultivating the local social media landscape, and how does it help individuals and businesses learn the social media tools they need to succeed?

SMC brings together people who are intensely and actively immersed in various aspects of social media for marketing, customer care, promotion, fundraising, employee communications and virtual networking, so that they can learn from each other and band together to achieve business goals. With over 1,000 members, SMCKC serves as a great resource for members, the community and local businesses alike to hear about the quickly changing landscape we call the internet and embrace new practices and tools to enhance and extend their brand. We have members who are respected as industry leaders and often speak at local, regional and national events sharing with others how best to adopt social media in to their day-to-day business operations.

3. What, in your opinion, are the benefits of a business using social media over more traditional forms of advertising?

It’s not an either/or… really, all forms of promotion – traditional, experiential and digital – are all needed. It’s just that companies now have more avenues available for budgets of all sizes, and the benefit of many free-to-use tools that allow them to both promote and communicate with fans and brand enthusiasts. It can be more fulfilling to do a Facebook campaign, or post an ad on YouTube, and get immediate response and sense of enthusiasm, than to put an ad in a newspaper and wait to see if anyone walks into the store or picks up the phone because of it. Organizations have to be prepared, though… the more passive traditional marketing and advertising methods don’t have the consequence of many people talking about them (both positively and negatively) and some companies handle this new realm of promotion better than others.

4. Are there any KC businesses that you think do an exemplary job of using social media?

I think what is most exciting is how Kansas City isn’t just doing a great job using social media but is well regarded as a strong leader in the industry. We have companies like H&R Block, Garmin and Sprint who are well-known and have been recognized for their social media efforts. What I think is even more telling is how our small businesses are benefiting from expanding their reach through social media. I love to use Grass Pad as a great example of how small businesses can leverage Facebook to connect with a bigger audience… they are a local small business with over 1,500 fans on their facebook page. You will see their Facebook Wall is buzzing with activity including questions, comments and an overall appreciation for how the company is helping their customers. What I think is great about social media is the numerous benefits it offers to businesses when they actively participate within the various communities, forums, and networks. Social Media is more than just a new form of marketing, it can truly serve as the catalyst to knock down the silos’ and help a business take better care of their customers during the entire lifecycle..from lead generation, service delivery, to customer care.

5. What’s on the horizon for SMCKC in 2010-11?

We have many things on our plate for 2010…in fact we just announced our annual membership plan at our breakfast this past Friday. We just recently put in place an Executive Board at the end of 2009 so this was a great exercise in thinking about our foundational elements. Our plan was built with three primary pillars in mind…our membership, our community and our businesses. We identified four goals; Establishment, Contribution, Outreach and Fun. We think developing our efforts in these key areas will help us mature as an organization (we are less than 2 years old) while holding true to our fun grass roots philosophy that we believe has been the primary factor in our fast paced growth.

6. Anything else?

Thank you for the opportunity to share a little bit about SMCKC and the world of social media in general. You can learn more by visiting http://socialmediakc.com

Excited by Domino's Pizza… huh, what??!

Kristi — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:35:30 +0000

I can’t believe I’m writing about Domino’s #newpizza, because I haven’t even thought about Domino’s Pizza in years, but last night I caught a commercial on television that piqued my interest. In the commercial, Domino’s executives and employees talk about how they have listened to complaints from customers for years, and they took them to heart and have made changes. Not just lip-service changes, but actual changes to the recipe of their core offering, their pizza. On one hand, that’s great! What a tribute to customer service and interest in staying in business for the long-haul. On the other hand, it’s a little risky – what if existing customers don’t like the changes? What if they result in a price increase? What if people don’t believe it and still don’t give Domino’s a fresh try? Here’s the documentary that tells the marketing tale of this new chapter for Domino’s. So many lessons to be gleaned from just this video approach… you can visit the mini-site and see their social media tools and approach also, at http://www.pizzaturnaround.com. Social Media B2B has a post on this campaign, and asked a great question:

Does your company care enough about its customers to rebuild a bad product from scratch?

For small businesses, I know how tough this is – these projects, ventures and products are our BABIES, often the result of the hard work of one or only a few people. For large companies, such as Domino’s, the attachment might not be as great (maybe the original creators of a product are no longer even there) but the processes and support systems and inventory and suppliers that all go into making something as simple as a pizza can be tremendous. Changing things at this level is not something to be done lightly, and typically involves a significant cash investment. I applaud Domino’s for spending the time to research, listen, and take steps to doing something they’ve done for years, a different way. I have to admit, I want to try their new pizza. I hope it’s as good as the promo for it sounds like it could be. What do you think of this new campaign, and if not a Domino’s customer, would this entice you to try it?