I had a photographer that I lost touch with.  I had another photographer who decided to step away from her business.  I needed a photographer to take pictures of my family….and of course it couldn’t be just any photographer. 

In true social/internet networking fashion, I found a site called SuzySaid.  It is all the rage in Fairfield.  Why?  Because they report on everything that is local and the content is top notch.  I liked them so much I signed up for their email blasts.  I began to trust their content and well Suzy whoever she is (I have heard that it is a bunch of very talented women behind the homepage :)).  Because I trust Suzy, I pushed a client their way to advertise (I don’t like advertising and rarely suggest this road but again, I trust and value SuzySaid).  They handled my client so well that I thought all advertisers on the website must be top notch.  Because of all of these experiences, I began to trust everyone and anyone associated with SuzySaid (did I tell you about the 2 amazing restaurants I went to because of SuzySaid restaurant reviews?).  Having said all of this, I saw regular advertisements for a photographer.  The combination of her great photos, she was a regular on SuzySaid, and she had a blog that was updated regularly made me hire her immediately via email, no quesitons asked.

Guess what?  I wasn’t wrong about her, Char from Wink Photography was professional and amazing at caputuring the essence of my family.  Guess what?  SuzySaid has done it again!

Ahhhh, the power of the internet!

For some great pictures of the family, go here.

Have I told you recently how much I love the interent and social media…it just makes sense to me.  Check this out, a social network filled with other people in the same boat (or car as you will see) along with expert advice and many service options to chose from based on your needs.  This is for every driver who needs to know a thing or two about their car.  Check out DriverSide…I love it!

We were recently meeting with a potential client who has a strong consumer base, a solid history and great products.  They approached us because we know how to guide corporate through the social media maze and we can help build community with their most valued present and future consumers.

They were excited to get going, they had already worked with an agency that said they could build up MySpace, Facebook and a blog but couldn’t and they seemed pretty savy about social media and their need to use these tools to help broaden their reach.

We got into the meeting, presented all that we could do and the value that social media brings to any company and suddenly and without warning the conversation turned to ROI.  Now I love ROI and believe in trying to track ROI and I appreciate the conversation.  We have amazing reports that we have built that can show the story of these online channels so the client can understand what is working and what isn’t.  Couple our reports with their website and sales stats and you have the whole picture. 

Somehow, the message was lost, though, and the fear set in that these efforts won’t help their bottom line numbers.  I hope and believe that despite their fears, they will take a chance and jump in (or fear more in the not so distant future that they will be left behind)! 

Social media is an amazing tool that every company can and should utilize.  Not every moment may be linked to a sale but the last phone call with your client where you asked them about their family may not be tracked either but it has great value! 

Mashable also talks about the ROI of social media for business here.

Jackie Peters over at heavyBlog makes the case here for changing the ”job description” of marketers who use social media as a tool to reach a clients’ conmmunity.  Many great points made.  The biggest point is that social media is way beyond marketing because it is about starting a two way conversation which means a solid message along with listenting vs. pushing out a message to people who you think want the product or service.  Brian Solis also contributes to this concept here.

We at Creative Concepts have also worked hard to define what we do and explain it to the client so they understand the difference between an ad campaign and what we do when we enter the social networks, produce a video or build a blog.  If I get a client old enough to remember the days of TQM (Total Quality Management) then I am good to go (my father was a big TQM guy pushing it out to any company who was interested on behalf of Corning Inc….he was also a Baldridge judge so I know this stuff like the back of my hand!) but if we have someone who is hearing about social media and wants to know more, we have to define it in a way that makes sense today.

I work at this messaging every day for Creative Concepts because I firmly believe that social media is important to the future of every company.  To find a tool that helps you define your business and helps to explain what you do in your own words, to share with all who are interested the goings on of how you do business which allows greater trust from your customer, to hear direclty and immediately from the customer, to respond to that customer immediately and to get help from the customer when it comes to developing new products and more is way beyond marketing.  It is doing business smartly and the ROI is customers that last a lifetime!

Well, I regretted not being able to go to Podcamp Boston this past weekend but because of the capabilities of social media, I got a feel for what went on.  Greg Verdino of Crayon and an Advisor to the Business Smart Tools conference can be watched here as he and the panel speak about smart social media marketing. 

And a note from Christopher Penn, one of the organizers, about the goals for Podcamp Boston:  With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility!  See more here…I agree that community is the foundation of great power.

One of my clients, my contact from Pitney Bowes, came back and was exhilerated by the passion of the speakers and attendees.  Social media does this. 

A few points to consider:  Greg’s panels says you have to give up some control with social media to be effective, but as I say to many present and potential clients, you actually control more by putting out your message in a clear and consise way on a platform where all people can reference forever what you have said (blog, video….).  Each client controls more through social media than they ever would through a press release where a few media types take what you have said and put their own spin on it!!  Social media also allows you to hear from clients immediately which allows you to repsond publicly which shows your consumer base that you care and can react quickly!

I also fully believe that by building community you are building up a foundation for your company which could last for generations.  Bigelow Tea is doing this with their blog, their myspace page, their facebook page and with all of their videos!  My team is about to head into a presentation with a potential client who understands that community is needed, they just don’t know how to make it happen and so we hopefully will have the chance to build something substantial for them.

This is what Creative Concepts does…we quite simply build communities for our clients.  We don’t do viral one time campaigns (because we don’t believe one time efforts will have a profound long standing effect) and we don’t create banner ads and throw them across millions of websites that have nothing to do with the client (banner ads must have very targeted placement to work at all!).  We enter the communities and we listen and share information.  We build online channels where the customer can get top notch expert content in addition to being entertained and we help the client address each comment no matter what the tone or subject matter….this is what social media is about for the corporate sector and for eveyone really, listening, responding, and contributing!

Nothing better than a well done interview! 

Nothing better than a well done interview featuring our client (Bigelow Tea)! 

Nothing better than a well done interview featuring our client who talks about having a ball with social media (where we at Creative Concepts support all of their efforts!)!

Interview here.

Have a great weekend!

As a citizen in the town of Fairfield, CT., and as a female, mother, wife and daughter, I have a favorite website called SuzySaid. SuzySaid is the essense of where the big web guys (google, yahoo….) and the internet as a whole would like to go. It is geared for women and focused on the town where we live. I believe that SuzySaid started in Fairfield, my town, and has now branched out to other towns nearby and gone as far as Texas.

Content is local. Content is constantly updated. Content updates are shared daily with opt in email blasts. Content is geared for the local woman. Content is created by local women. Advertisers love it!

And you don’t need to be local to use it…what if I want to travel to Austin, Texas? Wouldn’t it be smart to consult SuzySaid?

As a woman living in Fairfield, this is my favorite website. As a business person advising smaller local businesses (and soon larger businesses), I say this is the way to go.

Hats off to SuzySaid!

Five years ago, I knew that I wanted to run my own company and do PR, Marketing and Events….and so I did it. Four years ago, I had a feeling about blogs, knew nothing, went to a seminar, knew a tad more, and worked until I understood the blog world and how business could fit in. With the fun and the effectiveness of blogs, I knew we needed to expand into social networking (myspace, facebook and others) and online videos…and so we did it and have helped our clients increase sales and win awards.

This is a great story but the question to ask today is, with all that Creative Concepts offers, can we withstand a recession…more importantly can we help our clients through a period of flat or declining sales. The first answer is we are in great shape and the second answer is yes, we can help our clients not only muster through a possible recession but we can help them come out on top by using PR and social media as a way to reach new customers.

Taking the recession element away for the moment, there have been many studies that say advertising is not as effective as it once was. ZenithOptmedia says that ad spend growth is predicted to be up by 2.5% only for 2008 compared to 3.3% in 2007. Traditional PR still works but based on who you are trying to reach, you need to hit many channels before you get a customer’s attention. Channels would include print, radio and TV, events, and the word of mouth (WOM) sectors. WOM spending which includes social networks, blogs, videos and more is expected to increase 30.4% annually through 2011 to $3.70 billion as noted by Keller Fay Group which means that the corporate world has recognized that working the internet is an effective and successful way to reach your present and new customers.

Now putting the possibility of a recession back into the mix, the next question is where do you, a business, put your money so you get the biggest bang for the buck? Well I can give you the answer but you probably have already figured it out. Talking and sharing information within the online social networks or creating a new community for your customer is easier on the budget than paying for a TV spot or a glossy ad in a magazine!

Common sense will guide you (and so will Forrester Research as reported by Mark Walsh here) to wise spending for future PR and Marketing campaigns…a recession may just force the hand sooner rather than later.

Hey is anyone out there listening to AM Radio anymore? Hope so because we were just featured on Greg Skidmore’s radio show and blog Business Catalyst on WGCH in Greenwich, CT. Here the podcast here.

Enjoy!

I have been waiting for this week to arrive for about 2-3 years. Over 3 years ago, I went to a blogging conference where I learned, for the first time what a blog was (Robert Scoble, among others, was speaking…had no idea who he was).

About 6 months later I had a vision of how business could use blogs and how we could provide a service guiding clients through the blogging process. Soon after I learned about other cool things like podcasts and videos and began to pitch my clients who gave me the stare of death….the “what are you talking” about look with the thought of “why would I want to play around with blogs and podcasts when I am so busy.”

Frustrated, I decided to put together a conference where the innovators, including us, of social media came together in one room to teach the business community that new media is about to become the necessary media. That was 2 1/2 years ago.

This week it seems the vision of using social media as a business tool has bloomed into a full blown all out cry for joy or help by business people worldwide and we are answering the call and/or celebrating.

We sent out a search engine optimized press release for a travel client which drove visitors to their blog (which we created) and website, met with a client to go over the stats of their blog and their myspace and facebook pages, launched a very cool video on 7 different channels with a teaser on YES Network along with a live-linked flash banner ad below it which drives visitors back to the main website, we met with a new start up/client that uses social networking to reach out to her community and needs help with PR and general promotion (how will we do that? through myspace and facebook of course), helped a client with their wine blog that we helped them create and made sure their pictures were formatted properly, had lunch with a associate where I met another contact who is a top notch branding consultant whose only link missing in her services is the social media factor which she wants to learn more about from Creative Concepts, talked with one of my staff who loves working for Creative Concepts because she can do all of her online work when her kids are in bed (she said she loves what she does so much she would do it for free…should I take her up on it?), and finally, I heard from one of the judges (from a Fortune 500 company) from the Business Smart Tools Angel Award, he wanted to connect to one of my contacts on Linkedin and wants to hear more about our long string of online services.

Now, are we living the social media dream? The vision from over 3 years ago?

Happily, the answer is yes!