Join us to hear David Murray discuss “De-Mystifying Social Media and How to Make Social Media work for Your Business.”
Date: Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Time: 7:30 AM — 9:00 AM
Ravinia Club
2 Ravinia Club Drive
Suite #100
Atlanta, GA 30346
David Murray (@DaveMurr) is the Social Web Communications Director for re:group (www.regroup.us), a fully integrated marketing and communications firm in Ann Arbor, MI and member of SEFF.
David has created fully integrated digital and social media campaigns in the health care, franchise, nonprofit, and both B2B and B2C sectors. David is a national speaker on digital communications and social media best practices. He is a published author on the subject.
Come, learn, and share your ideas with the group.
Bring your questions, too!
Register online today at
www.SoutheastFranchiseForum.com.
Advanced Reservations Are Required***
Deadline for Reservations is Friday, August 5th at 3 PM. Non-Members of SEFF and Guests Pay $15 per Breakfast Meeting.
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events,
franchising,
general,
marketing,
new media,
social media Tags:
events,
social media,
social web,
speaking
Surprise! SEO is changing!
All. Of. The. Time. Some trends won’t surprise you — social media, mobile. But there just may be one or two that will. That’s why we like to talk about Visibility Optimization, not just SEO. Search engines aren’t the only ones who see you — people do.
1. Social Media. Huge, huge huge. Did I mention huge? Everyone talks about the conversation, but so few are good at having one. You can’t just post a video and expect people to beat a path to your door. You have to find ways to get other people to get other people to you. Choosing the right options for doing that for your business is like putting puzzle pieces together. You may need some help.
2. Mobile. As thousands of people daily discover the convenience of accessing the web via mobile devices, optimization has to adapt. Keywords need to be shorter, mobile SEM can’t just be a clone of your online SEM, apps like QR readers must be taken into account — all are going to have an impact on how well your business does.
3. Branding. Didn’t expect that to show up, did you? Branding will be more important to getting your business found, not less. It works like this: Google has made personalized search the default option. So unless a HUGE portion of the population opts out, which they won’t, sites that are more well known and visited most often will enjoy better rankings. In fact, because search history is also taken into account, the same sites will keep popping up for people, search after search. Without a strong brand presence, you could get lost.
4. SEM. We all know that online marketing can help build your visibility. But the more relevant it is will influence just how much it helps. Is it showing up on the right content? Do the keywords match the content? What are the trends on sponsored vs. organic listing? While SEM helps optimization is just common sense, because trends change all the time, your marketing optimization strategy has to change, too.
5. The site itself. No-brainer! Just make sure you load it with keywords, write lots of blog posts and update your news section and you’re fine, right? Not entirely. You will also be judged by how quickly your site loads, whether it’s engaging once someone gets there, how long people spend. If your site is ugly, confusing, boring, slow or poorly constructed, no magical keywords or blog posts can save it. According to a study by Canadian researchers, people will form an opinion of your site in less than 1/20th of a second. If engines see that people click off in a second, you’re not so relevant.
All of this just means that unless you’re willing to spend a whole lot of time keeping up with the trends, you’re going to need someone to help out. If you want to talk, call us.
Posted in
advertising,
branding,
communication,
interactive,
new media Tags:
new media,
optimization,
SEO,
strategy,
visibility
People form opinions about the look of your website in 1/20th of a second – as little as 50 milliseconds -
according to Canadian researchers. In the blink of an eye, web surfers make nearly instantaneous judgments of a web site’s “visual appeal.” The judgments they form in that short amount of time color how they see your business, and you. Strong visual appeal can even draw attention away from usability issues.
Researchers led by Dr. Gitte Lindgaard at Carleton University in Ontario found that in that short time, people form an impression about credibility and usability which has an impact on continued use or purchase. In fact, they found that even though your site may have superior products, services, or usability, an initial negative impression from a poor or slow design can steer customers towards your competition.
“My colleagues believed it would be impossible to really see anything in less than 500 milliseconds,” Dr. Gitte Lindgaard told Nature, which reported the research Lindgaard published in Behaviour and Information Technology. Yet in as many as 50 ms, people formed judgments about the images they glimpsed. Not surprisingly, young people could glean more information in that time than older study participants.
For a website, good design is a combination of user-friendly architecture, interesting subject presentation and high visual appeal – not things you’ll find in sites that are slapped together hastily. It’s also important that your site seem unique to you, so using the same stock images or off-the-shelf template your competitors have used isn’t a good idea, either.
If your business is depending more and more on e-commerce or online marketing, excellent design and content are becoming increasingly important, not less so. Make sure you’re not selling yourself short.
Posted in
advertising,
communication,
general Tags:
web design,
website appeal
Franchise owners are, by definition, local business people. They pride themselves on having a local presence, on being locally owned and operated. But when it comes to appearing to be local, well, that’s a different story.
Even though we know that local marketing, local listings and social media play a huge role in bringing in franchisee business, corporate marketing departments are often slow to adopt social media programs. There seem to be so many barriers for them, like who will run it, who will “approve” the content, do we have enough staff to take this on, what guidelines need to be put in place in terms of content, what about legal issues, and so on. And so on.
There has long been an argument about who owns the brand and who is responsible for social and digital communications. Is it the franchisor or the franchisee? Should franchisors have full autonomy over messaging? Or should individual franchises be in charge of their communication as it relates to the communities they serve? This is a heated ongoing discussion, and it appears there isn’t a clear cut answer. One thing is for sure, though. When corporate marketing stops caring about what their franchisees have to say about their local markets, franchisees stop caring about compliance.
One way to keep both happy is to communicate a central brand message through multiple digital media, while allowing individual franchisees the latitude to build their own social networks. Through templates for local websites, facebook pages, blogs, twitter and other vehicles, zees can engage their customers on a local level, and truly appear local instead of corporate.
Of course, both corporate and system want these outlets to appear professional – that’s why it’s good to invest in some upfront training. Seminars or webinars on how best to use social media, what works best in the digitial marketplace and how to keep a handle on it. If done well, these training sessions provide a great way to increase visibility and connect with customers.
Posted in
advertising,
franchising,
marketing,
social media Tags:
franchise,
franchisee marketing,
franchisees,
social media
With the Super Bowl just days, we thought we’d look back at the glory days and find some of the more memorable Super Bowl commercials. What’s your favorite Super Bowl commercial?
1980 – Coca-Cola: Mean Joe Green
1984 – Apple’s Macintosh: Aka The Steve Jobs Vanity Project
1999 – Monster: When I Grow Up
2000 – EDS: Cat Herding
2000 – Budweiser: The original “Wass Up??!!”
Posted in
advertising Tags:
apple,
budweiser,
Coca-Cola,
comedy,
EDS,
foot ball,
humor,
macintosh,
monster,
sports,
steve jobs,
super bowl,
tv
It is that time of year.
Time when all our calendars fill up with holiday parties and gatherings. Tonight we are having our holiday party, and we thought it would be fun to jump online and find some holiday commercials that have infiltrated our TV sets.. or iPads.
You’ll probably remember this classic McDonalds Christmas commercial.
Or this classic jungle from Coca-Cola, revamped for the holidays.
Nothing says Happy Holidays like cigarettes.
This Europe Direct TV commercial featuring Darth Vader is pretty funny.
And who can forget this timeless classic?
Any holiday commercials you would add?
Posted in
advertising Tags:
advertising,
christmas,
classic,
Coca-Cola,
commercials,
geeks,
holiday,
McDonalds,
star wars,
television,
video,
youtube
I very seldom forward links or emails to people in my office. Something really has to make me sit up and take notice before I’ll inflict it on unwilling victims. But this morning, when I read Christopher Penn’s blog entry, “No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from”, I felt I had to share.
So many times when I’m reading online, the content and comments are so full of vitriol, it’s almost physically painful. Don’t you get tired of all the “nattering nabobs of negativism” yourself? If so, here’s my challenge: read Penn’s blog entry and take it to heart. Social and online media have so much power that they really can make a difference, in peoples’ lives and in the world. It’s a shame to give it over to the dark side.
Remember, all you Peter (and Peggy) Parkers out there: with great power comes great responsibility. Use yours wisely. (And forgive me for mixing my sci-fi references.)
Posted in
advertising,
branding,
general,
interactive,
media,
social media Tags:
online media,
social media
We have spent the last year acquiring staff and technical resources to provide our clients with new media and marketing resources in the area of digital as well as social web expertise.
Social Media Marketing
The reality is that in business you can no longer ignore social media. Whether you choose to engage or not, you will be a part of the social media community. And, for most marketers, developing a strategy is now a part of an integrated media presence in this rapidly changing environment. Within a comprehensive consulting package, we can provide you the following Social Media Marketing services:
Brand and Reputation Monitoring
Listening and monitoring of your customers’ behavior and brand engagement online. This extends into providing documentation of their behavior and provides a solid plan of attack for any social media campaign or customer engagement.
Campaign Development and Execution
Suggested strategies focus on an overall social media marketing strategy as it relates to your business. It then expands into the appropriate communication channels and applications, available to your customers and stakeholders.
Implementation of Social Media Marketing Strategies
We can assist you in implementing social marketing campaigns within current marketing and advertising initiatives. We believe an integrated marketing approach of both traditional and social media is essential.
Content and Communication Strategy
This includes overall strategy, creation, and management of all content initiatives. This would also include content optimization and determining successful communication channels where your customers engage.
Campaign Management
We can oversee and report on any social media campaign. This would include online socially-driven campaigns, contests, mobile app campaigns, email marketing and even offline events.
Continual Client Education
The social web is organic and is in constant change. We continuously keep abreast of the latest trends. The strategies we suggest are built on our knowledge of these trends and current consumer behaviors.
We would love to share our expertise with you, or just update you on emerging trends. For more information, contact Carey Jernigan at 734.327.6630 or carey.jernigan@regroup.us
Posted in
advertising,
general,
new media,
social media Tags:
email marketing,
mobile media,
social marketing,
social media,
social media strategies
In agency searches some obsess about agency size. But I believe our agency is the perfect size.
When you’re our size you are selective about your clients – the expectation is a long-term relationship. We want to work with clients whose business we can be successful in building. We have not ever resigned a client to attain a larger competitor.
When you’re our size you can tailor the working relationship for each client. We don’t force our clients to use a proforma process, rather we tailor our working relationship to meet our clients’ operational needs.
When you’re our size you can adapt to changing needs more easily. We’re not a tanker, slow to turn around. We’re a speedboat. So, if your needs change, we can do what is needed quickly.
From an agency our size, you get strategic thinking and lots of resources for execution. But, you only pay for the resources you need.
When you’re our size you don’t spend a lot of time managing “staff.” Instead we spend our time to find experienced, versatile and curious people who can add value to your business. At re:group we are all accountable to our team, there is no place to hide, so a bad hire is gone in weeks not months.
At our size, we still can all fit in one large conference room. In fact, we all have lunch there every Monday and talk about our business. It is a part of our culture and it keeps us all on the same page. So if our client has a problem, our entire team is thinking about its resolution.
And, when you’re our size and are privately held, shareholder expectations do not dictate our expectations. We do. Our expectations are that we will engage in your business, use our professional skills to help you achieve your goals, be paid fairly for our efforts and have a good time doing it.
Posted in
advertising,
general Tags:
agency,
search
Don’t be afraid, go ahead and launch that new site now.
This is just a moment in time, and while you pick at and perfect it, time is marching by and so are your prospects. No matter how long you take, or when you launch, it won’t be long before it needs to change. A good website constantly changes as its environment evolves. Staff changes, new products/services come on stream, features change, visitors have new needs and the list goes on. Today’s websites are not those tightly structured and packaged ones created in the 90’s. Rather, they are sleek and agile frameworks designed for future change.
Just think, it was not very long ago sites added blogs, Facebook and Twitter links, RSS Feed features, so who knows what’s next? Even if you think your own web information will cease to change (and I doubt it), you can be certain that the world around you will. So go ahead, step off the ledge and launch that new site today – and you might want to update that content management system while you’re at it!
Posted in
advertising,
search,
social media Tags:
blog,
search,
Web,
website
