As I see it…

Do you know a business owner or CEO in Dallas, San Diego or Atlanta that needs some social media training?

Splash Media, an Emmy-winning Dallas-based digital/social media marketing firm, is excited to announce Social Media Boot Camps for CEOs and business leaders to hear about successful case studies, discover proven strategies, learn tested techniques, and generate new customers. Splash Media principal and co-founder, Paul Slack, also a 20-year veteran of Internet marketing, leads the Boot Camps.

“These Boot Camps are excellent opportunities for companies to take a sneak peek into award winning social media marketing strategies to compound customers and sales,” said Paul Slack, Social Media Trainer. “Learn what Fortune 500 companies know and how to implement that into your own marketing strategy.”

Boot Camps are 90 minutes in length. Sessions will be held throughout the months of March, April, and May in 9 different major cities. Boot camps are open to CEOs, owners, presidents, and senior marketing executives.

MARCH 9: DALLAS, TX
The Westin Galleria Dallas 9:00am or 1:00pm

MARCH 10: DALLAS, TX
The Westin Galleria Dallas 9:00am or 1:00pm

MARCH 22: SAN DIEGO, CA
Hard Rock Hotel San Diego 9:00am or 1:00pm

MARCH 23: SAN DIEGO, CA
Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines 9:00am or 1:00pm

MARCH 24: SAN DIEGO, CA
La Costa Resort and Spa 9:00am or 1:00pm

MARCH 30 & 31: ATLANTA, GA
9:00am or 1:00pm

Source: Splash Media

Friday is upon us, and with it comes the (hopefully) slower pace of the weekend and more time to catch up on those stories that passed you by during the week. If you’re looking for reading material that deals with the impact of social media on business marketing – best practices, success stories, cautionary tales – please consider the following:

Facebook Adds Features To Comments

If social media is all about encouraging direct engagement with customers, than Facebook’s latest tweaks to the way people can leave comments on Pages – adding the ability to moderate comments, syncing with blogs – should have positive impact for businesses. But Kipp Bodnar of the HubSpot Blog examines all sides of the new features and whether there are any trade-offs in terms of user data and access.

KFC’s Extra-Crispy Tweets

Louisville-based Kentucky Fried Chicken may be one of the oldest fast-food chains in the country, but corporate executives are extending their tradition into new media via Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. The company talks about its social media strategy – which includes reacquainting younger audiences with the memory of company icon Colonel Sanders – to Doris Nhan and Linsey Isaacs with Smart Blogs on Restaurants.

Social Media and Insurance Companies

Financial analyst Gloria Vogel poses the question in Seeking Alpha for those in the insurance industry: can social media transform their business? Should it? Vogel balances possible rewards – more economic marketing tactics, real-time responses – with risks such as privacy leaks and reputation management.

We’d love to hear from you regarding these latest developments in social media and marketing: is your business considering adopting Facebook’s new Comments features? Can social media change the game for insurance companies? Please share your thoughts in our own comments section, and enjoy your weekend!

Source: Splash Media

Social media has added a little spice to the lives of foodies – those who live for great meals (preparation and consumption) and then love to write about them on food blogs. Dallas-Fort Worth has an active, vibrant food blog population, best represented by Daniel Vaughn, a.k.a. The BBQ Snob, who chronicles his Texas-sized search for the best barbecue on his Full Custom Gospel BBQ blog.

In this SplashCast, Vaughn talks about his passion for the perfect brisket, tensions between food bloggers vs. traditional media food critics, being quoted by the New York Times and how DFW cuisine represented itself to the nation during Super Bowl week.

For more videos on social media marketing and Splash Media in Addison, TX, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Source: Splash Media

Social media and digital technologies are changing the game in the business world, but you still have to have rules and best practices. Marketing strategist David Meerman Scott helped set the 21st-century guidelines for the use of online media in marketing with his bestselling 2007 book, appropriately titled “The New Rules for Marketing and PR.” Now in its second edition, “The New Rules” has been translated in 26 languages.

Scott’s latest book, “Real-Time Marketing and PR” zeroes in on the need for speed, and how important it is for businesses to recognize that information travels much faster thanks to Twitter, viral YouTube videos, Facebook and blogs. Journalists and certain Middle Eastern countries aren’t the only ones currently struggling with the impact of social networks and web technologies. Large and small companies can get left behind in the dust – or they can jump on the Social Media Express and use it to their advantage. The impact of harnessing that speed is all in “Real-Time Marketing’s” mouthful of a subtitle: “How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect With Customers and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now.”

Scott offers vivid examples of companies that are still partying like it’s 1999; United Airlines baggage handlers break a musician’s guitar; he writes a song about the airlines’ lame response, produces a YouTube video, it goes viral and suddenly he’s on CNN while United is backpedaling in damage-control mode. Even scarier: Scott sent emails to every company in the Fortune 100, asking how they’ve made changes that recognize the speed of the new media. Only 28 sent him a response.

“Real-Time Marketing and PR” is written for the business executive who knows that change is underway, but is unsure how to keep from getting swamped by the technological tides. The key takeaways, according to Scott:

• Speed and transparency are vital; move fast when faced with an opportunity or crisis or suffer the consequences.
• Social media platforms are important, but they’re only as good as the people behind them.
• Don’t make the 21st-century media wait on you; work on their schedule.
• Don’t be afraid to let your employees connect with customers; just make sure they’re educated on what to say and how to say it.
• Recognize and understand the potential in mobile technologies.
• Make sure your customers know you’re listening!

“Real-Time Marketing and PR” can help business leaders navigate the new media landscape, and can help their companies reset their internal clocks – and their attitudes about successful marketing. Stay in the know and follow David on Twitter.

Source: Splash Media

This week’s news roundup offers further proof that it’s a Google world and why businesses should care, words of wisdom for businesses just starting their journey down the social media path, and another example of Facebook marketing figuring into a promotional campaign.

Google Tweaks Search Technology
Businesses hope to rank high on Google search results pages, but they want to do it in the right way without relying on spam or other so-called “black hat” optimization tricks. Google announced this week that it would be adjusting its search algorithms to push lower-quality content down in its rankings. The search giant also tweaked the ways that businesses can rank on mobile search queries done on iPhones and Android devices, acknowledging the growing use of smartphones in the marketplace.

Photo Sharing for Fun and (Marketing) Profit
ClickZ’s Alex Matjanec offers a concise history lesson on photo-sharing applications and details how business can develop new strategies for blending user-generated pictures, smarthphone and their marketing goals.

Business-to-Business Social Media Audits
The word “audit” isn’t very popular around tax season, but it should be welcomed when it comes to B-to-B companies considering the social media plunge. Christopher Hosford of BtoB Magazine lists the reasons why companies should take a hard look at their goals, the competition and their opportunities.

NBC, Chipotle Restaurants and Facebook
Can free burritos and Facebook videos make the difference in television ratings? The social network figures prominently in a new campaign promoting a new show on the Peacock Network.

Did we miss anything this week? Please share with us your top stories dealing with social media marketing and small businesses, and we’ll see you back here bright and early Monday morning!

Source: Splash Media

How are businesses handling the advent of social media? Are they simply setting up Facebook and Twitter accounts, or are they incorporating the potential that social networks bring to customer service into their company’s DNA?

Chris Bucholtz, blogger and reporter for CRM Buyer and Forecasting Clouds, says the rise of social media gives small and medium-sized businesses an opportunity to throw out decades-old customer relationship management models. He gives examples of large and small companies who truly “get” the social media revolution during an interview with SplashCast host Renay San Miguel.

Source: Splash Media

Social Media Marketing can be challenging because the industry constantly changing and business owners are looking for social media guides to help establish social media priorities. We’ve seen some amazing successes for our clients and also understand the proper mindset for approaching social media marketing.

Overnight is not the norm.
Viral videos and blog posts are given a lot of extra media attention, and becoming an instant internet sensation is a marketing dream, but the reality is that this is not the norm.  Most videos do not gain much attention at all unless they have a well-planned social media marketing campaign or video SEO to back them up.

Have a clear definition of “success.”
While having thousands of fans on your Facebook fan page would be great, making that your definition of success could be aiming in the wrong direction.  The truth is that about 45% of Facebook fan pages have less than 100 fans.  You don’t have to have a ton of fans to have success – even the pages with relatively few fans still manage to reach their niche market and benefit from this type of marketing.

Prepare for a marathon, not a sprint.
Relationships take time to build, and social media is all about relationships.  With time and consistent effort, you will be able to use social media in marketing to build a solid lasting relationship with your customer base.

Don’t try to do it alone.
To make the most out of a social media campaign, it is important to work with experts or seasoned social media guides to set realistic achievable goals.  There’s a lot to learn about how to maximize the potential of this platform, and there are experts that can easily help you with this.

As the business world looks for answers to their questions about social media, it’s important to remember to view it correctly. Remember that this takes time, and some expert guidance to accomplish, but if you’re willing to put forth the effort, the payoff can be many loyal customers in the long run.

Source: Splash Media

With over 500 million users and 30 billion pieces of content shared each month, Facebook has surpassed Google as the most visited site on the web.  And now, Facebook is offering businesses a new way to approach their social media marketing with their new fan page design. Below are a few of the feature changes and how they will Facebook marketers.

Posting as the Brand
Change: Administrators can click on a button located on the right side of their admin page that says, “Use Facebook as a Page” and Facebook switches to a page focused site where page administrators can now post comments to other pages as their brand.

Impact: This enables businesses to interact with other companies and potential customers as their brand, increasing visibility throughout Facebook with influencers.

Using Facebook as a Brand
Change: When admins are using Facebook as their page, they will receive notifications anytime a new user “likes” their page, posts on their page, or comments on their page. The notifications show up in the upper-left corner of the site, just like they do with a normal Facebook account. Admins can also choose to receive e-mail notifications to let them know about new page activity.

Impact: This will enable admins not using a third party tool to keep track of activity to be more up to date on activity and take your responsiveness to the next level.

Facebook Brand News Feed

Change: You can now like pages as a brand as well as comment on their pages as your brand. Normally your news feed is populated with pages that you have liked as an individual. Now when you switch to using Facebook as a brand, the pages that you have liked as the brand will populate your news feed.

Impact: Networking just became as easy as pursuing your news feed for influential brands and commenting on the content that they are posting. Sharing as the brand is also available.

Marketing in today’s world is all about creating conversation.  With the new features on Facebook pages, businesses can engage their communities and potential customers in worthwhile conversations, increasing their visibility on the most popular website in the world.

Source: Splash Media

Take heart: the weekend is almost here. But before the rest and relaxation really begins, consider these headlines from the past week regarding do’s and don’t’s, case studies and can’t-miss-examples of social media marketing:

10 Laws of Social Media Marketing

Susan Gunelius, CEO of marketing communications firm KeySplash Creative, writes a great primer on what fundamentals to keep in mind when businesses start dipping their toes into the social media waters. “10 Laws of Social Media Marketing” is a must-read for companies on how they can boost their business by using these tools to help them connect to customers – and help them listen.

Google Vs. JC Penney

The tech blogosphere lit up following Sunday’s New York Times investigation into JC Penney and “black hat” search engine optimization tricks that ranked the retailer inordinately high on Google’s results pages for search terms on dozens of products like “dresses” and “bedding.” The company JC Penney hired to help it with SEO had successfully staged an end-run around Google’s search algorithms before being exposed by the newspaper and an internal Google link-spam team. For its part, JC Penney issued a response denying any knowledge of the tricks.

Nordstrom Buys HauteLook

Flash sale websites give consumers the chance to save big on high-end, A-list merchandise, but only for very brief periods of time and with very little warning. Seattle-based retailer Nordstrom – famous for customer service and a seemingly endless supply of women’s shoes – decided to expand its digital footprint by acquiring HauteLook, one of the top members-only flash sale companies, for $270 million.

Tasti D-Lite Serves Up Social Media Goodness

Many New Yorkers have a sweet tooth for Tasti D-Lite, the frozen dessert maker that started offering up franchises in 2008. A company executive took to the stage at a recent franchising convention to highlight how Tasti D-Lite is adding flavor to its connections with customers via Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and FourSquare.

Any opinions on these stories from the past week? How much damage did JC Penney sustain in its SEO controversy? Do you think Nordstrom can successfully transfer its reputation for customer service to its fledgling digital and social media efforts? Are there other examples of companies using social media platforms to narrow the distance between them and their customers? Feel free to share in our comments section, and have a great weekend!

Source: Splash Media

The internet has already empowered consumers when it comes to searching for deals, discounts and bargain. But what about the rise of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blog posts – how is social media adding fuel to the hunt for money-saving information? And how should businesses respond to this new development?

SplashCast host Renay San Miguel asks those questions of Rachel Belkin, mommyblogger and proprietor of the Cha Ching Queen blog, which passes along the latest deals for all kinds of consumer products and services.

For more social media videos, subscribe to our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/SplashMediaLP.

Source: Splash Media