The latest buzz in social media is Four Square, a social networking site that is accessed as an application through your smartphone.  It  then works off of GPS, allowing the application to report where you are at any given time.  As you build your network, your approved friends can see your location real-time. The benefit? If you’re dining at a restaurant and have just sat down to order, a friend can post a recommendation of what to eat, mobile-to-mobile.  Out on the town?  Login to Four Square to find friends who may be in the same bar or club.

There are also perks from local businesses for dedicated Four Square users as Mashable reports:

Every popular venue has a mayor — the person who has visited the most in a given time period, and mayors are often entitled to perks like free coffee or sandwiches, depending on the place. At the very least, mayorship equals bragging rights, and many a Foursquare user has been unwittingly caught in an epic mayor battle.

I have to wonder if Four Square goes too far in terms of virtually eliminating your privacy.  On the flip side it bridges the gap between virtual relationships and the real, face-to-face ones that are fast becoming a thing of the past with the advent of Facebook and Twitter.

Foursquare is a social network that actually gets you out of your cave and into the real world with other living, breathing people. Once you nail a few basics down, it can add exponential value to your social life. Oh, and did I mention the free sandwiches?

Forsman & Bodenfors came up with another innovative digital campaign for Ikea by turning one of Facebook’s basic functions into a promotional tool, to promote the opening of the brand’s Malmo outpost, its most modern store to date. Armed with little media budget, the agency came up with an unconventional Facebook campaign that started with a profile of the store’s manager, Gordon Gustavsson. Gustavsson uploaded pictures of the store’s showrooms to his photo album and any “friends” who tagged the products with their names then won those items.

From Creativity Online

I just started watching Season 3 of the show Mad Men, which offers a glimpse into the life of an ad agency on Madison Avenue during the 1960′s. While the “Mad Men” of the show are quite interesting to watch as they smoke heavily, cheat on their wives, and drink throughout the day, I find the most compelling character to be the lead woman of the show.   She’s Peggy Olson, the Secretary turned Copywriter at the Agency, and she has a knack for understanding what it means to know your audience.   The agency is pitching a new product for Pepsi called Patio, a diet drink for women. Their campaign involves casting a sweet and sultry woman to sing Bye Bye Birdie while sexily sipping her diet drink…appealing to a man but that’s not their target audience.    Peggy Olson questions this approach in favor of something more relatable.  The “Mad Men” of the show insist that it’s the right way to go…women will buy the soda because they want to be just like the sexy woman in the commercial.

Celebrity endorsements and the idol approach are effective for large companies with big marketing budgets.  However small or medium sized businesses need a more cost effective approach which leads us to the grass roots movement that social media propels.  When we examine social networking, you are achieving something much more valuable than advertising. You are creating referrals, testimonials and endorsements, which gives you instant credibility and a level of trust that traditional advertising simply cannot achieve.  Social Media allows you to leverage your existing customer base and create real world champions of your brand.  While we may be entertained by a pretty woman singing Bye Bye Birdie while sipping her diet drink, we are more likely to purchase something based upon the positive experiences of our like-minded family and friends.

A recent article in Advertising Age, “Advertising Will Change Forever” suggests that companies will double their digital spending over the next 5 years, leaving ad budgets to at best remain the same and at worst  disappear entirely.

In this recession, marketers have learned that interactive marketing is more effective, and advertising less effective, per dollar spent. While budgets for online have decreased, they decreased less than other budgets. Six out of ten marketers we surveyed agreed with the statement “we will increase budget for interactive by shifting money away from traditional marketing.” Only 7% said “we have no plans to increase our marketing budget.”

And it means that social “media,” which will account for $716 million this year between social network campaigns and agency fees, will generate $3 billion in five years. And this doesn’t even count displays ads on social networks (which are in the display ads category.) Of all the parts of digital marketing, social network marketing one is poised for the most explosive growth.

How are you marketing your business?  Are your marketing dollars being used most effectively?  Is it time to change with the advertising times?  Get Started with your new interactive marketing and social media plan today!

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]]> http://www.kayneinteractive.com/2009/07/21/advertising-times-they-are-a-changin/feed/ 0 http://www.kayneinteractive.com/2009/05/13/freedom-of-social-speech/ http://www.kayneinteractive.com/2009/05/13/freedom-of-social-speech/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 14:57:58 +0000 Tela http://www.kayneinteractive.com/?p=452

Social Media is a wonderful tool for old friends to reconnect, colleagues and associates to network, and businesses to promote their services and products.  However with the recent Facebook controversy related to the Holocaust denial group being allowed to remain on Facebook, inevitable questions are raised as to where the line should be drawn when it comes to freedom of speech versus terms of use violations. 

Due to the power of social media, messages are broadcast to the world quickly and easily.  Personal opinion can be positioned as truth, propaganda can turn into news, and freedom of speech is sometimes used as an excuse for tolerating hateful agendas.  Due to the nature of social networking, the wrong “speech” could turn into broad scale hatemongering. 

We live in a country that provides us with great freedoms and people should be able to say whatever they choose even if it’s hurtful to others. However, it’s unfortunate that technology provides those with a hurtful intent a forum on which to spread offensive messages.  Which raises the question…are social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook responsible for keeping offensive content at bay?   To what extent do you feel they are responsible?  Facebook bans pornography…by allowing the Holocaust denial group to remain on their site, is Facebook sending the message that pornography is worse than hate speech? 

Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

Thanks to the Tweetie app on my iPhone, I’m able to follow news real time throughout the day as reported on Twitter. I’m following most of the major news networks as well as industry experts for my field and other interesting characters. The best part is Twitter gives me at-a-glance summary information from anywhere in the world.

It’s been recently reported by Mashable, that the Swine Flu Outbreak is recording 10,000 tweets per hour on Twitter. This number boggles my mind. It’s amazing the viral reach that Twitter can measure (no pun intended!). However I can’t help but wonder if the power of social media could potentially inspire mass panic during a situation that is merely watch and wait? How do we filter the information coming from thousands of Twitterers to determine what is truly legitimate information? And if you are one of the truly legitimate organizations, how do you separate yourself from a pack of impassioned Twits who merely want more followers and do not have any valuable information to share? I’m confident that these questions will be answered as Twitter evolves. In the meantime, I believe, as in life, those who have hidden agendas will eventually be revealed and the truth will prevail. In order to be the ultimate champion and succeed within the world of social media, you must stay true to your customers and provide them with real value.

Not long ago, I read an article published in USA Today about a cake decorator whose business increased by 15-20% as a direct result of her Twitter presence.  Today I’m reading an article published in AdAge about an unnamed company who saw a 28% return on their $1 million investment in a social media contest campaign that ran last year on MySpace.  According to that article the positive results can be seen in all scales of implementation:

Particularly by package-goods standards, that $1 million digital outlay with one site was large. But Dunnhumby has run similar studies with smaller digital campaigns.“Just about every one has seen some positive results,” Mr. LaRocca said. “And the ones that have had negative results … just had a poor message or poor targeting.”

Success stories related to social media and how it has a direct correlation to increased revenue are becoming more and more common .  And the return on investment is usually high, considering that social media has little to no hard costs associated with it, and is more of an investment in time and strategy.  Even for those companies who opt to have a third party manage their social media on their behalf, the ROI is still high as compared to traditional advertising methods.

That leads me to the point of this post.  What’s your social media success story?  Please respond with a comment if you’ve had any improvement to your business as a result of using social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter.   Whether it be a single new customer, an increase in revenue, improvement in your customer service, positive testimonial or all of the above, please share your story!

You can also share your story in the discussion section of the Kayne Interactive Facebook Page, so your friends can see and pass along the good news to their network!

Call me old-fashioned but a part of me still believes that nothing can replace a smile and a hand shake when doing business.  In today’s fast paced world, many companies and organizations struggle to leave an impression.  People are inundated with information, advertising, and media coming from various sources.  As a consumer, it can be difficult to sift through the propaganda and find the truth behind the message.  As such, business owners are faced with an interesting dilemma; How do you reach out to the masses yet still provide highly  personalized service?

While it may not seem old-fashioned at face value, technology through the use of social media allows you to do both if used correctly.  Social media is an online marketing tool that can reach a mass audience in a targeted manner.  It helps your customer to understand the core of your business values.  Social media is a unique marketing platform in that it also provides you insight into what your customer wants and allows you to respond to your customers immediately and in a personalized manner.

It’s important to understand that when harnessing the power of social media you must be real.  No PR spins.  No one-sided positioning.  No in your face, buy-it-now messaging.  Instead, share your story.  Encourage feedback (good and bad) and respond in a manner that tells your customer that you are listening and that they are valued.  While you may not be able to physically reach out and shake a hand, your customer will still feel as if they know you personally, will be left with a positive impression about your business and will likely refer their friends.

Are you ready to tell the story of your business?

Two years ago when the building industry began its economic downturn, even the companies most hard hit looked at how they could cut costs and increase productivity through an investment in technology. A recent study by The World Economic Form reports that the countries most likely to thrive following the world wide economic slowdown are those countries that have made the biggest investments in technology. These countries, simply put, have created a competitive advantage by lowering overhead and thus improving efficiency and productivity.

One area in which we have already seen exponential growth is social media and blogging. As unemployment rises, the number of subscriber sign ups on business networking sites such as LinkedIn has grown by as much as 25% in a single month, reflecting nearly 28 Million users (September 2008). Businesses and organizations are running to join the social media movement, allowing them to reach broad audiences of like-minded people at virtually no cost. Frequently this is in lieu of using traditional media or even formerly inexpensive online tactics such as SEM. While Google is cutting anywhere from 200 employees to 1% of their workforce, depending on what you believe in the media, it’s reflective of a movement away from SEM toward the strategic use of social media and tactical blogging. This strategy may prove to be equally or perhaps even more effective for substantially less cost.

It’s time to overcome the misconception that businesses don’t spend money during an economic downturn and embrace the fact that the American entreprenurial spirit fights for survival by spending money prudently. Every organization and company must improve their ability to communicate with more relevance and frequency to their defined target.

Social media provides the opportunity to leverage brand, build loyalty, maintain relevance, and reach new customers by leveraging relationships with existing customers.

While it’s a microcosm of the movement to create efficiency through the use of technology, social media has seen more growth during this economic challenge than any other business sector. There is substance behind it. If your organization has not investigated how to more efficiently communicate with new and existing customers, I strongly suggest you do your due diligence.

Read the Report: Global Information Technology Report: 2009

As the music portion of this year’s SXSW festival in Austin wraps up, a recent article in Wired explores the use of social networking by many of the participating rock bands.  

“I’m not sure it [social networking] hurts bands that don’t do it, but there’s no question it can help the ones who do,” said TopSpin CEO Ian Rogers. And some networks (Facebook, Friendfeed, Twitter, etc.) reach not only interested fans, but also their potentially interested friends. “The connection to fans … turns a casual listener into a fanatic,” added Rogers. “It makes them marketers of your art, in many cases, since those fans are plugged into not just you but networks of other similarly-minded individuals.”

If social networking can turn a musician into a rock star, imagine what it can do for your business.  Expand your “listener” base, build your fan club – Get Started today!