Chelsey has been hired as a digital communications specialist, where she will be responsible for executing on social media strategies and campaigns for clients. She will work in conjunction with Pyxl’s digital communication team to execute impactful social media marketing campaigns and content plans. She will also be responsible for reporting and analyzing social media engagement metrics, campaign results and researching/creating content for blog posts, social networks and digital content.

A few interesting quirks about Chelsey:

• She was born in South Dakota and headed out west at the ripe age of two. She considers herself a native, which are few and far between in Arizona!
• Chelsey is an avid soccer player and currently plays on two teams (just for fun, she’s not that good).
• She earned her degree from Arizona State University, where she studied marketing.
• Chelsey is a dog lover and the proud owner of a beagle, Lucas Martin Jr. (Luke, Schmooker, Nugget, etc.). She hopes to adopt more, but for now one beagle is plenty!

Chelsey is excited to be part of the Pyxl team and anticipates substantial growth in our Tempe office. She says it’s refreshing to work for a company that works hard but also has fun! If you would like to know more about Chelsey or giver her a thumbs up, follow her on Twitter.

Monday, May 14^th marked both the beginning of my summer graphic design internship at Pyxl and Knoxville’s 2^nd Annual Design Week. Five days of design related activities and events provided for an exciting first week, which I’m excited to recap for you here.

Monday

To start off the week, Kervie, Taylor and I attended Design Week’s Kick-off + Keynote event at Remedy Coffee. Deb Shmerler was awarded the 2012 AIGA Fellow Award for her committed involvement in the design profession as a practitioner, educator and AIGA leader. Her contributions were impressive and really seemed to make a difference in the community. After listening to the speakers, I participated in the DART Knoxville event. This involved throwing a dart at a map of Knoxville, and then taking a photograph of the street intersection you hit. After one unsuccessful shot, I landed at the intersection of Old Weisgarber and Dowell Springs.

Tuesday

During Tuesday’s 1:1 sessions, we had several students visit Pyxl throughout the day. It was fun to meet other students and discuss their interest in design as well as other topics. The students were given a full tour of the office and oversaw the projects Kervie, Franny and Taylor are currently working on. In the afternoon we took a stab at creating waffle typography. Our attempt to spell “I heart 1:1” was successful and very tasty. The day was recorded on the AIGA Knoxville Tumblr page.

Wednesday

On Wednesday I set out to take my photograph for DART Knoxville, which turned out to be quite an adventure. As luck would have it, the only thing at the intersection of Old Weisgarber and Dowell Springs (more of a turn-around than a intersection) was the FBI building. I snapped a photo of their sign from my car as the confused guard out front immediately shooed me away.  You can view my drive-by photo and all other submissions on Pinterest.

Thursday

Thursday afternoon, Pyxl opened its doors to the design community. We enjoyed refreshments, good conversation and painting a wall in the conference room. I think everyone had a great time unleashing their creativity on the wall, I know I did!

Friday

On Friday I got the opportunity to attend an Adobe CS6 & Creative Cloud workshop. As a new owner of Creative Suite 6, I was very excited to learn about the new improvements to the software. The presenter, Kevin Stohlmeyer, covered a wide variety of topics including the Adobe Touch Apps for tablets, the new Creative Cloud and several of the most used Creative Suite programs. I found the presentation completely engaging and I could not wait to get home and test out the new features for myself.

I don’t think I could have chosen a better week to start my summer internship at Pyxl. I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to participate in the Design Week events and get to know my co-workers and the Knoxville design community better. Many of the events were documented on the AIGA Tumblr page if you’d like to take a look.

As the latest addition to our design team, Taylor has been hired on as a junior graphic designer. In his new position, he will create graphic elements integral to campaigns and will work directly with all departments to integrate his designs with our web, social media, PR and marketing initiatives.

Here’s a little bit about our new friend, Taylor:

• He grew up in Grapevine, TX, where he mastered climbing trees and making forts (this has yet to be confirmed, but he will be put to the test).
• Taylor later moved to Franklin, TN, where (as he tells us) he was magically transformed into his nerd self.
• He studied graphic design at the University of Tennessee due to his love of problem solving.
• Taylor’s favorite color is Signal Flare Red found on 1965 Mustangs.
• He’s excited to work at Pyxl and be in an environment where everyone loves what they do (and boy do we ever!)

It’s been a crazy couple years here at Pyxl, and we’re excited to welcome Taylor and bring him along for the ride! If you want to know a bit more about Taylor or to congratulate him, check him out on Twitter. And as always, stay tuned for more big news from us in the coming weeks!

Now, this isn’t going to be a traditional post of  “5 Things I Learned at Social Slam”, or “Overheard at Social Slam.” This is just a simple account of what all it took to put on a social media conference and the people who deserve to be patted on the back.

I was lucky enough to see the entire planning and implementation process from my very own desk at Pyxl. Not only did our very own Nicole Denton and Brenna DeLeo organize the event, Pyxl hosted the official Social Slam after party.

From hearing discussions of what speakers I could expect to see, having a box fort of all the swag around my desk, to seeing the phases of the banner designs, I was excited to see how it would all turn out. To say the least, I was impressed with my colleagues and how much effort, dedication and intelligence they had to make everything happen.

Social Slam was not put on by one person, but rather by a large group of individuals who spent countless hours making sure that this event ran smoothly and without a hitch.

The initial idea of what we now call Social Slam came about when a group of social media friends came together and wanted to share their insights about the industry. You may know these friends as many of the 2011 Social Slam speakers.

All from different states, there was of course some debate over where this exciting new social media conference would be. As a Knoxville native, Mark Schaefer (part of the group) approached Nicole and Brenna (founders of Social Media Club Knoxville) to see if they would be interested in building a national-scale conference around this get-together. They of course agreed and it was finally decided that Knoxville, due to is centrality and growing social scene, would be home to the conference.

For now two years in a row, Nicole, Brenna and the rest of the SMC Knoxville team pulled together to build an event around the great social media content Mark curated. If you were at Social Slam, you know that this is no easy feat!

So here’s to everyone who planned, volunteered, sponsored, spoke at or attended Social Slam 2012! Without each and every one of you, this event wouldn’t have been a success. I look forward to seeing what Social Slam 2013 will bring and seeing what improvements will be made next year!

If you’ve ever worked with us, you know one thing – it’s our goal to live and breathe our clients’ brands, so what better way to do that than to take a little health and wellness challenge of our own?

We started to get our feet wet these past couple weeks by visiting Provision Health & Wellness and beginning a little workout regime, but it doesn’t stop there. Everyone that’s a part of what we’re calling the “Live Well Challenge” will go through the same process every new member of Provision Health & Wellness goes through, starting with a 45-minute comprehensive exam to complete a biometric assessment, fitness testing and personal orientation.

From there, we’ll each get a one-hour personal training session and a one-hour session with a registered dietician, which will help us all get on the path to realizing our personal fitness and wellness goals. After about 12 weeks, we’ll each get a re-assessment to see how we’re doing. See what we mean when we said Provision Health & Wellness isn’t your normal workout facility?

The Pyxl team will be at Provision Health & Wellness on a weekly basis, so if you’re there, be sure to say hi! We’ll also be tweeting through the process, so be sure to follow the hashtag #LiveWellChallenge to see what we’re up to, and feel free to join in on the fun yourself!

To learn more about Provision Health & Wellness, visit www.LiveWellKnoxville.com, follow them on Twitter @LiveWellKnox or like them on Facebook!

According to eMarketer, worldwide social network spending reached almost $6 billion last year, which means there’s more pressure than ever to justify the investment in social media marketing. This is something that Pyxl does for our retainer clients on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. Brian presented on measuring social media for Carpathia at Social Slam, but I wanted to share a few key ways you too can measure your social media activity…

1. Track Impressions

Tracking the exact, true reach of your social media initiatives can be a difficult task. However, tracking impressions (the potential reach of your initiatives), is a great place to start and can really help you benchmark the growth of your organization’s online presence.

At Pyxl, we spend time each week tracking and reporting on impressions, which you can do in a variety of ways. At Pyxl, we use a host of tools such a Google Alerts, SocialMention (both free) and our own product Kyoo, in addition to a lot of good, old fashioned human insight. I’ve found that there’s no replacement for human insight. Even when you’re using a tool, it’s essential to put human eyes on the project.

To track impressions, monitor your brand’s activity and any external activity (i.e. other people talking about your brand) on a weekly basis, across all online places where your organization is being talked about. Essentially, the equation looks something like this:

Online Mentions x Reach = Impressions

For example, if @TwitterUserXYZ writes a tweet about your brand, and he/she has 1,000 followers, the message has potentially reached 1,000 people. Using this equation for all of the online conversations for your company will enable you to calculate the total impressions.

As you can probably tell, this task definitely takes some time, so I would encourage you to calculate impressions on a weekly basis to break up the work. To put it into perspective, our client Carpathia Hosting had over 2 billion online impressions so far this year — that’s a lot of tracking!

2. Monitor Traffic

Having an analytics software installed on your website is key. At Pyxl, we use a combination of Google Analytics and AW Stats, which enable us to track how much traffic our web properties receive, where the traffic came from, etc.

It’s very easy to track incoming website traffic from social media outlets. To use Google Analytics as an example, the “Traffic Sources” dashboard will show you exactly where your traffic came from within the chosen date range.

It’s important to note that sometimes, when you use a link shortener on Twitter, Google Analytics tracks it as direct traffic. For that reason, it’s also a good idea to track clicks via Hootsuite (what we use) or Bit.ly if you’re using another Twitter client and combine the data for a more full picture.

3. Track Interaction

There’s a lot more that goes into measuring social media beyond how many fans/followers you have. A great way to take a deeper look is to track interaction — i.e. the number of people actually interacting with your brand online and how they’re doing it.

On Facebook, you might use Insights to look at how many post likes, comments and shares you receive and which specific posts get the most attention.

On Twitter, look at retweets, @ replies and DMs. It’s also a good idea to do a search for your company name (and all variations of it) to see who’s talking about your brand without actually @ing you.

4. Measure Sentiment

Another thing we look at, is the sentiment surrounding our clients. How many mentions are positive vs. negative? Or are most of them neutral? It’s great to collect the data and then make it visual with a stacked bar chart in Excel.

There are a lot of tools that will measure sentiment for you, but I would discourage you from using them unless you’re representing a company too big for manual sentiment attribution. Like I said before, when it comes to sentiment, there is no replacement for human insight–a computer can’t read sarcasm.

5. Calculate Network Size

Calculating network size is the main way a vast majority of people track social media, and I saved it for last because I think it’s important to track more than just network size. Really, all the data I’ve shown you, and how to collect it should work together to give you a full picture of how you’re doing with social…but back to my point :)

Calculating your network size (and the growth of that network) is a great basis for your social media measurement, and it’s incredibly simple to do. Simply calculate how big your network is — how many Facebook likes, Twitter followers, LinkedIn followers, etc. you have. Track it over time to determine your growth rate and to see if major milestones helped propel your online growth.

***

Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to social media. It’s definitely not a cookie-cutter service, and so measuring it isn’t either. After all, different organizations need different metrics so hopefully these ideas can help you get started in measuring your online presence.

With an office in the heart of Times Square, and portfolio companies such as the Professional Bull Riders, SkyMall and Carpathia Hosting, Spire needed a website to match its business focus while providing easy access to a variety of site visitors.

We took on the challenge and completely revamped the website. As the old site lacked flexibility and company specific design, we created a site that highlighted the company’s size, quality of its work, team members, and successes with current and past investments. In order to do that, we redesigned the website so that it could be easily managed within MODX content managements system (CMS).

We gave Spire a platform that enabled it to feature each client on a separate page complete with facts, information and the ability to connect with the companies via social media. With the new CMS, Spire is able to add new portfolio companies, create new funds and new team members all in one place. With the custom functionality, the site has lead generation capabilities and allows easier access so visitors can directly connect with the team for any investment inquiry.

Check out the new site here to see its impressive portfolio and stay up to date on the organization’s new ventures!

1. It vs. They

This is probably the most common mistake I see. When writing about a company or organization, the actual organization should always be referred to as an “it,” not a “they,” unless of course you’re talking about the actual people who work there. Simply put, people are “they,” and a thing is an “it.”

Here’s an example of what not to do:

Pyxl is headquartered in Knoxville. They provide digital marketing services.

Here’s what it should actually say:

Pyxl is a company headquartered in Knoxville. It provides digital marketing services.

If you want to instead talk about Pyxl’s employees and use the word “they,” it should look something like this:

Most of Pyxl’s team works in Knoxville. They provide digital marketing services.

See the difference? The caveat is if you’re talking about multiple companies. Then, you’ll have to call the group “they.”

2. Its vs. It’s

Here’s another very common one and rightfully so; the English language can be confusing when it comes to possessives, especially when it comes to the word “it.” To clarify, “it’s” is a contraction of “it is” or “it has,” while “its” is a possessive pronoun.

Here is an examples of how these two should be used:

Pyxl opened its second office in Arizona last year. It’s in Tempe.

When it doubt, say it out loud with “it’s” has either “it is” or “it has”. Does it make sense that way?

3. They’re, Their & There

This is a mistake I hate to see, mainly because I feel like it was something engrained in me during grade school, but alas, I still see it all the time in business writing, so I wanted to include it in this list. Here is what each actually means:

• “They’re” is the contraction for “they are.”
• “Their” indicates possession.
• “There” refers to a place or the existence of something.

Here are two example sentences that use all three correctly:

They’re sitting over there with their dogs.

There is their dog; they’re playing fetch with it.

For the record, I would never actually use either of those sentences, but I think they get the point across ;)

4. Using Semicolons

For this one, I usually tell people this: if you don’t know how to properly use a semicolon, just don’t use one. However, if you’re interested in learning how to use it, I’m here to help. The semicolon’s uses include:

• Linking two independent clauses that are closely related. Essentially, the semicolon is used in place of a period or a conjunction. Here’s an example:

Some people like to use semicolons; others do not.

• Linking lists where the list items contain commas to avoid confusion. Here’s an example:

Pyxl works with companies such as Carpathia, a provider of complex, compliant managed hosting services for government agencies and enterprises; Pilot Flying J, the largest travel center chain in the US; and the Consumer Electronics Association, the preeminent trade association promoting growth of the consumer electronics industry.

5. Assure vs. Insure vs. Ensure

While these three words definitely go hand-in-hand when it comes to meaning, the context in which you use them varies dramatically. Here’s a better explanation:

• Assure is something you do to a living thing (person or animal) to remove doubt or anxiety. For example:

I assure you that Pyxl will complete your project on time.

• Insure is something an insurance company does. For example:

State Farm insures my home.

• Ensure is what you do to guarantee something. For example:

We ensure quality for every project we do.

6. Then vs. Than

Then and than are two very often confused words in the English language. However, once you get the hang of how and when to use them, it’ll start to come naturally. Here’s the breakdown:

• Than is used for comparing things.
• Then is used to describe time.

Here’s are two example sentences:

First we create website wireframes, then our design team creates a design mock-up.

Wireframes take less time to create than full design mock-ups.

I hope that helps! What other common grammar mistakes do you see?

[Image by TonyHall on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons.]

In 2011, there were over 800 million active Facebook users, 490 million active YouTube accounts, 100 million active Twitter users and 25 million Google+ accounts.  With so many accounts, is it surprising that users have a hard time separating them all? Some many people say it’s a form of multiple personality disorder, but some consider this to be society’s norm. Are we becoming a multiple personality society?

During a SXSW Interactive panel, some of today’s top social media experts discussed this personality in our society. Thomas Marks (Tripit), Amy Parnell (LinkedIn), Elizabeth Sartin (Match.com), and Ben Smithee (Spych Market Analytics) agreed, multiple personalities are no longer considered a disorder: they are now considered ‘the norm.’

As social media users constantly strive to put their best foot forward, their profiles become increasingly different across platforms. Depending on the context of the site, users want to highlight different aspects of their personality. On LinkedIn, they display a more business savvy persona, while on Match.com they want to appear more fun and desirable. Users struggle over what to display on each site as they consider: What makes me datable? What makes me hireable?

LinkedIn is an easy platform for users to share publicly because it’s considered to be their ‘best face’; it’s professional, clean and honest. The connection with their colleagues (past and present) allows users to call each other out – ‘That’s not your title’ or ‘You didn’t work on that project’- and this social aspect forces users to be honest. LinkedIn users also focus more on the quality of their connections instead of the number of them.

On Match.com, users focus on anonymity and profile perfection. It’s important to users that they showcase only their most perfect photos and information and while it’s easy to bring in Facebook photos to Match profiles, most people don’t. The intimacy of the platform isn’t light and open, so people are very hesitant to bring in information from other sites. They focus on sharing their ‘perfect angles’ in order to create new contacts, instead of sharing information with old ones.

The challenge users now face, is how to designate a profile as being for business or pleasure and how or if they want to share it with their other platforms.

Cue a new intersection of the business and pleasure debate, now called ‘bleasure.’ Currently 77% of users are sharing their information with their family, but only 27% of users share the information with friends. As friend numbers continue to grow, intimate circles of people who need/want to know where you are, are also beginning to grow. This need is now forcing people to share their information globally.

More convergence is already happening on primary social media platforms. Facebook and Twitter can be linked so posts appear on both sites and users can allow Facebook and LinkedIn to access their information and post from a wide variety of news, gossip and other sites. Tripit users have a trip history and they know what their connections prefer to do because of convergence integration and data collection.  Companies need to recognize that when they make convergence beneficial for people, it becomes a game changer. Users want to know what’s in it for them, and providing them with a benefit makes it easier for the individual to accept it.

Social media users live in a converged world, but there is a difference when comparing the social and digital worlds. In the real world, there is a potential for work and social lives to converge, but online it is almost impossible to separate the two.

Tell us, how do you share information across all of your platforms? Is it hard for you to manage work and social life separation?

Pages are essentially the go-to place on Facebook for businesses to build connections with people and facilitate the B2C communication that’s incredibly essential. Pages are also the place where companies create unique brand content that can become ads and sponsored stories. According to Facebook, “it’s the core place for businesses to manage their posting and advertising content.”

Pages allow you to:

• Express identity
• Reach and engage with your target audience
• Respond to customers in a quick, personal way

After playing around with the new features on our own Page, we wanted to share what you have to look forward to and what adjustments you’ll have to make before the official March 30 deadline.

The Design

Like it or not, at the end of the month, all Facebook Pages will get the new timeline design. But for the time being, page admins can jump between the timeline preview and the old design until they get the perfect cover photo and figure out the new features.

Speaking of the cover, brands will need to pay extra attention when creating this focal piece. The cover will be the first thing that visitors see, so it should symbolize what your organization is all about. Try picking a visually stimulating, high-res image that will make visitors want to explore more of the page. As for the standard profile picture, stick to the company logo, as this will be used in ads, sponsored stories and the news feed.

The Friend Activity

It’s generally understood that people trust the opinions of their friends and peers over anything else. With the new friend activity, people will see stories about how their friends are interacting with your Page through the Page timeline. Here, they can see how many of their friends like your Page and what their friends are saying about your brand in general.

The Page Apps

Unlike the old layout where apps were located on the left sidebar, the new Page apps are displayed below the cover. They appear as thumbnail photos instead of text links, which may be a bit confusing for users not familiar with the new layout.

Previously, Pages could set a default landing tab where non-fans would land instead of the Wall. With timeline, all users land in the same place and have to actively click through to customs apps such as promotions, contests, games, media, coupons, etc. One major problem is that these apps may receive much less engagement from users who happen upon the brand’s Page. Along with this, users don’t necessarily have to “like” a page in order to view its full content since the “like us” page won’t be the first thing they see when they land on the page. Therefore, engage with users on the Wall and share important messages through the highlight and star features.

The New Posts

You can select to “pin” one of your most popular posts (new or old) to the top left spot of the Timeline feed for seven days at a time. This way, users immediately know what your brand is all about and it continues to draw them in to explore more of the Page.

More features include the ability to highlight and star important stories, and hide or delete stories that aren’t as engaging or relevant with the pencil icon. As visitors scroll through your Page, these highlighted posts will take up the full width of the page, so they’ll jump out to users and potentially gain more clicks.

The Admin Panel

One of the best additions is the new and improved admin panel. Admins now have the ability to hide or expand the panel on command, which means that they don’t have to navigate to separate pages to make changes. The admin panel also includes notifications of activity on your Page and chart-based performance data. It offers a quick snapshot of who you should respond to, and gives you access to Page and post performance.

Facebook also announced that it will soon give page owners an option to assign different privileges to admins. During last week’s Facebook Marketing Conference, the company stated that Pages will soon offer five levels of admin access. The only three levels revealed however, were full access, publishing-only access and insights access.

The Messaging

After switching to timeline, Pages will include a message button that lets users send private messages to the Page instead of writing on the Wall. This would be great for large organizations with sales or customer service reps to see and respond to these messages, without the ability to make posts on behalf of the company or view page insights. This however does not mean that Pages can arbitrarily send messages. Admins can only respond to users that have already contacted the Page.

Like Twitter, if you have a user that has a public complaint on the Wall, simply ask them to message the Page instead and respond to their problems in a more private setting.

So now that you know a bit more about the new features, play around with your Page and let us know, what’s your favorite feature?