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  • State of the Internet

    Pat McCarthy 11:22 am on March 12, 2010 | 1 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags: ,

    screen-shot-2010-03-12-at-122339-pm

    Once a year, the President gives a State of the Union. Since there is no president of the internet, JESS3 handled the job of showing just how large these interwebs have become. You might ask “What part do I play?” How many emails did you write yesterday? 10? 20? 100? Those contributed to the 247 billion sent daily. Of those 200 billion were spam.

    1. Write a blog? You have something in common with 126 million people.
    2. Twitter savvy? There is no way you could keep up with the 27.3 million tweets posted every day.
    3. How many online videos do you watch per month? Americans average 182.

    Wanna know more stats? Watch the JESS3 State of the Union here

     
    • strangway 8:37 pm on March 12, 2010 Permalink

      Look on the bright side, that’s 47 billion letters not sent through the Postal Service.

  • What Now WOMMA? Wine & Webinars & Research

    Pat McCarthy 11:21 am on March 12, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags: , ,

    research1

    Social Marketing Compensation Study

    WOMMA released a study that shows in highly specific details of the current state of social marketing professional compensation. This study is a must for any brand or agency that needs to know the cost of social marketing professionals. Need a taste? Read a summary here: http://bit.ly/SalaryCompensationStudy

    Save $20 by using the coupon code ‘WOMMA’ here: http://bit.ly/BuyTheCompensationStudy

    Wine Wednesdays:

    WOMMA Wine Wednesdays are now Free

    Our members and fans are the backbone of WOMMA and the WOM marketing industry. Join us at one of our four upcoming Wine Wednesdays to build your career, your company, and our industry. You’ll find all the information you need in the links below.

    March 17 – San Francisco
    March 24 – New York
    March 24 – Boston
    March 24 – Grand Rapids

    Webinars:

    March 18 - Listening 2.0: Social CRM and the Future of Social Listening

    Presenter: Rob Key, CEO, Converseon
    Date: Wednesday, March 18, 2010
    Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM CST
    Who: For Everyone
    Register Here: http://bit.ly/Mar18Webinar

    March 24: Augmented Reality: What it is and What it Means for Brands and Marketers

    Presenter: John C. Havens, VP of Social Media, Porter Novelli
    Date: Wednesday, March 24, 2010
    Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM CST
    Who: For Everyone
    Register Here:  http://bit.ly/Mar24Webinar
    Full details here: http://bit.ly/d8DItN

    March 31: The News Engine that Powers all your Social Media

    Presenter: David Patton, Editor in Chief, Waggener Edstrom
    Date: Wednesday, March 31, 2010
    Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM CST
    Who: For Everyone
    Register Here: http://bit.ly/Mar31Webinar

     
  • All Roads Lead to Customer Service

    Pat McCarthy 11:16 am on March 12, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags: ,

    customer-service-our-priority

    When you think about the functions of the different departments in your company, what is their end game? Don’t get caught hiding behind clichés like maximizing profits or streamlining (insert task). Of course your business wants these things, but why? Smart companies know that all these departments exist to enhance customer satisfaction. Your profits won’t increase with unhappy customers. View your existing customers as volunteers. If you have ever worked at a non-profit that relies heavily on volunteers, you know that they need a reason to keep showing up or they will stop. Just because they aren’t paid doesn’t mean their time is free. Shifting your impression of your customers can shift their behavior. Don’t ask “Have I made the customer happy?” Ask “Have I given them a reason to sing my praises?” The answer should always be yes.

    Read the full article by Joseph Jaffe titled Customer Service is Key Strategy at AdWeek

     
  • Great Researchers Lead Here

    Pat McCarthy 11:11 am on March 12, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!

    WOMMA’s Research & Measurement Council needs you to provide powerful tools, guides and resources to help marketers better understand how to measure WOM and social media marketing. Volunteer if you’re with a WOMMA member company and are an experienced researcher familiar with communities, social media, mobile, generational demographics, ROI of the sale, and research education.

    What does this opportunity require of you?

    ·Council members are responsible for participating in at least two conference calls per month
    ·Drafting, reviewing, and vetting materials that meet the our goals of being a leader in WOM research
    ·Know the research needs of our industry
    ·Lead the conversation on what specific research topics will make WOMMA conferences and webinars the premier source of industry knowledge.

    Brands, academics and industry partners are welcome to participate. Total time commitment per month will be 3-5 hours. Our new volunteer call will be Thursday, March 18 at 2pm CT/3pm ET. Please email Tarah Remington at Tarah@WOMMA.org to RSVP for this call.

    Used to be on the R&M Council and want to get back into it? Please let Tarah know. We’ll hold a separate call for past members on Tuesday, March 16 at 2pm CT/3pm ET.

     
  • 10 Tips on User-Gen Video Contests

    Pat McCarthy 11:10 am on March 12, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags: ,

    top10

    WOMMA member Zooppa knows a thing or two about running a user-generated ad campaign. Having gained experience from nearly 100, they decided to compile a list of ten tips that you can use to get your user-generated campaign going.

    1. Define your Objective
    2. Select a Theme
    3. Craft a Smart Creative Brief
    4. Offer the right incentives

    Download the whitepaper with all ten tips with detailed explanations at Zooppa’s Blog

     
  • Five Minutes with Nichole Goodyear, CEO & Co-Founder of Brickfish

    Pat McCarthy 10:36 am on March 11, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags: Community Management,

    brickfish-new-small

    Role: As CEO/President and co-founder of Brickfish®, Nichole oversees all facets of the company.  Nichole has a proven executive management record, with over 20 years of experience successfully building technology companies.  Under her leadership, Brickfish has received the prestigious Red Herring Award as one of the Top 100 Global technology companies in the world, an OMMA Award for Best Viral Campaign and a Forrester Award for best social program.

    Background: Nichole is a serial entrepreneur, having helped build many emerging technology startup companies ranging from educational technology, business automation systems, multi-media video delivery software, Web-based Ecommerce sites, Internet based software products and a social media advertising platform.  A company co-founder, Brickfish represents Nichole’s seventh career startup. Since its inception four and a half years ago, Nichole has successfully taken Brickfish from an emerging social media company to an award winning Social Media SolutionTM , used by top agencies and brands around the world.

    As a member of the IAB’s Social Media Committee, Nichole was the Chair for the Social Media Buying Guide.  Nichole has spoken at numerous events including OMMA Social, Advertising Week, CES, Digital Hollywood, the Illinois Research Institute, Stanford University, Social Media Strategies for Brands, IAB Professional Development Workshops and many others. Nichole holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Computer Information Systems with a minor in Economics from the University of Montana.

    What lessons have you learned about building communities for brands?
    The community has to be authentic to the consumer. They will see right through any false sentiment. Giving them opportunities to participate with the brand through user-generated content really helps communities thrive through authenticity. In one of our recent campaigns, we created a space for people who eat Barilla pasta to post their dinnertime moments as a part of their Share the Table program. This works because Barilla is giving their community the opportunity to express themselves. In doing so, they remain authentic to their brand image as a company that values dinnertime. Communities thrive on that because they can so easily connect to it.

    Another social media campaign we did was for Coach. Coach looked to their consumers to create new tote designs that embodied a younger demographic. Over 3,200 unique totes were designed for this campaign for the chance at having Coach produce and sell the winning tote. Coach’s brand evangelists were given the opportunity to be brand designers. All other Coach consumers were given the opportunity to provide feedback in the form of reviews, sharing and voting about which tote they liked best and why. The word spread beyond the core group of brand evangelists, because once someone designed a bag, the designer could use the Brickfish viral sharing tools to easily share and track their designs through their social connections. This resulted in over 6.5 million consumer engagements around the topic of designing a tote for Coach in just a 6 week period. Both campaigns gave the community a chance to express themselves and participate with the brands via peer to peer interaction and sharing on the social Web.

    How do you leverage an established community to keep it growing?
    Communities on the social Web have multiple touch points. I like to think of it as Social CRM. Brands have their owned channels such as email, company site, Facebook Fan Page, Twitter Profile, Company blogs and the like. Each of these channels is a micro community within the brands overall Social CRM system. It is important to first realize that we have entered an era where distribution of the brands community is a reality and we can no longer focus on just the number of email names a brand has in their CRM. It is also important to recognize that consumer sharing about a brand experience has a far greater effect than just a brand sharing direct with a consumer. At Brickfish, we have developed a cross social platform that will allow a brand to leverage and interact with all of their social CRM touch points and harness the power between peer to peer sharing throughout each consumers’ social graph. We help brands identify their key brand evangelists across all social CRM touch points. That core is the group that will best move your message out. Growing your community through them is very authentic and effective. According to a recent Nielsen survey 90% of consumers trust WOM advertising from someone they know. An astounding 70% of consumers trust product reviews and opinion from strangers. This makes taping in to the core brand evangelists a critical part of building and keeping a community thriving.

    Editor note: 5 minute interviews are a WOMMA Governing Member benefit. If you would like to do one, please contact Pat@WOMMA.org.

     
  • WOMMA Members in the Spotlight

    Pat McCarthy 10:33 am on March 11, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags:

    Amway as the 2nd best Online Retailer based on conversion rates on Marketing Charts. See the full top ten list here.

    Member Webinars:

    Lithium webinar: Tap Into the SEO Goldmine – The Customer Network

    Date: Wed., March 17, 2010
    Time: 2:00 PM ET
    Register Here: http://bit.ly/c6Kr6l

    Get Satisfaction Webinar: Get Satisfaction Social Engagement Hub for Facebook

    Join Scott Hirsch of Get Satisfaction and Tyler Willis of Involver for this free webcast introducing the Get Satisfaction Social Engagement Hub, a powerful new app designed specifically to help brands deepen consumer engagement and get more value their Facebook fan pages.

    Date: Tues., March 16, 2010
    Time: 2:00 PM ET
    Register Here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/177273473

    Facebook recognized WOMMA members Context Optional, theKbuzz, and Brand Networks as preferred consultants. See the full list here.

    DEI Worldwide hired veteran marketing executive Chad Alger as their Vice President of Strategy for their Chicago Office. With more than 15 years of experience on both the agency and brand side, Alger will be instrumental in developing social media strategies for DEI’s current roster of clients, including Chicago-based Kraft Foods, in addition to expanding new business efforts in the U.S. and abroad. Read more about Chad and DEI Worldwide here.

    Ant’s Eye View has expanded once again, this time building a new anthill in Silicon Valley. That makes two expansions in as many quarters. Congratulations! Read all the details here.

    Zooppa has just released a free white paper “10 Tips for Running a Video Contest for Your Advertising”.  Zooppa is the world’s largest source of user-generated advertising and share their experience from nearly 100 campaigns for clients like Google, Nike, Hershey’s, Mini Cooper and Microsoft in their latest white paper. Download it today!

     
  • What Now WOMMA? Wine & Webinars

    Pat McCarthy 10:28 am on March 11, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags: ,

    Wine Wednedays:

    WOMMA Wine Wednesdays are now Free
    Our members and fans are the backbone of WOMMA and the WOM marketing industry. Join us at one of our four upcoming Wine Wednesdays to build your career, your company, and our industry. You’ll find all the information you need in the links below.

    March 17 – San Francisco
    March 24 – New York
    March 24 – Boston
    March 24 – Grand Rapids

    Webinars:

    March 18 - Listening 2.0: Social CRM and the Future of Social Listening

    Presenter: Rob Key, CEO, Converseon
    Date: Wednesday, March 18, 2010
    Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM CST
    Who: For Everyone
    Register Here: http://bit.ly/Mar18Webinar

    March 24: Augmented Reality: What it is and What it Means for Brands and Marketers

    Presenter: John C. Havens, VP of Social Media, Porter Novelli
    Date: Wednesday, March 24, 2010
    Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM CST
    Who: For Everyone
    Register Here:  http://bit.ly/Mar24Webinar
    Full details here: http://bit.ly/d8DItN

    March 31: The News Engine that Powers all your Social Media

    Presenter: David Patton, Editor in Chief, Waggener Edstrom
    Date:
    Wednesday, March 31, 2010
    Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM CST
    Who: For Everyone
    Register Here: http://bit.ly/Mar31Webinar

     
  • 5 Minutes with Nichole Goodyear, Co-Founder/CEO, Brickfish Part 2

    Pat McCarthy 10:22 am on March 11, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
    Tags: , ,

    As I looked through your social media campaigns, I noticed the Viral Map® created for each entry. Could you tell me a little bit about how this helps content spread?

    The advantage of the Viral Map® is that it shows where the Branded UGC in a campaign is shared everywhere on the social Web. Each creator has his or her own viral map and anytime anyone anywhere in the world engages with that content in any way his or her viral map displays and tracks this data. The GeoView portion of the Viral Map illustrates geographically where the content is being shared all around the world. Unlike a viral video on YouTube, you can see in real-time where the content is being spread. This can be really helpful for brands to see. They know X number of people saw the content in Y city or that one Web site drove a lot of the traffic. The brands see a viral map of all aggregated activity for the entire social program. This allows the brands to identify their brand influencers and also get feedback on how other consumers feel about the content and the brand. In terms of measurement and future campaigns, this information is very valuable.

    Our industry moves fast. What do you think everyone will be talking about in 6 months?
    Everyone is still very numbers based. Just looking at how many followers or fans you have is very rudimentary. There are a lot of people who love a brand but won’t become a fan. I think we will see brands moving away from this and embracing more meaningful metrics, such as engagement. By having consumers engage with a brand, they are becoming immersed in the brand message and actually spending quality time with the brand.  This metric will grow in popularity, because it is more compelling than just a number of fans.

    Also, many brands are still just listening. I think you will see brands start embracing more offensive tactics where they are driving the conversation instead of just responding. For instance, take the Coach campaign; since Coach is a large international brand, there was always chatter about its products. By inviting consumers to participate in an online campaign to design totes for them, we were able to help drive 6.5 million consumer engagements and conversations about what their next tote should look like in just a 6 week period. This becomes really powerful on moving the needle and helping brands shape the nature of conversations that are being measured on the social Web vs. just responding defensively to what consumers may or may not be saying.

    Brickfish®, The Social Media SolutionTM, successfully creates ongoing engagement and conversations with consumers using Social Media. It provides a brand safe platform that energizes peer-to-peer sharing among consumers via the social Web.  Using the Brickfish platform, brands can run social media programs including branded viral programs, brand focused UGC programs, social promoters programs, contests, sweepstakes and more.  All engagements are tracked with patent-pending Viral Map® and Geo View technologies which provide detailed data on reach, engagement, and viral activity across the Web.  Brickfish has launched successful campaigns for Microsoft, Nike, Victoria’s Secret, Coach, Givenchy, The North Face®, Qualcomm, and more.

     
  • WOMMA Releases Social Marketing Compensation Study

    Pat McCarthy 11:50 am on March 10, 2010 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!

    comp-study-word

    Today WOMMA released the Social Marketing Compensation Study that we collected data from members and non-members last December. It was an elaboration on two earlier reports on WOM industry compensation. The study which drew data from 224 responses found some interesting numbers:

    1.     Less than a third of the respondents, 31% (69), indicated that they received a salary increase in the past 12 months, and 19% (42) said they had actually taken a decrease in salary within the last year.

    2.     Respondents aged 51 – 59 were the second highest salary earners, with an average salary of $109.5k.

    3.     The overall average annual salary for all participants was $80.7k.

    Read more about the findings at Online Community Report
    Get your own copy here
    Save $20 by using the coupon code: WOMMA