Creative Concepts

Torrential downpours, power outages, floods. That’s what’s in the forecast for most of the east coast today, as businesses and municipalities scramble to brace against mother nature.  But inclement weather is more than just an inconvenience.  The delays they generate can also result in lost productivity and revenue.  When you can’t work (or can’t get to work), you can’t do work.

This highlights one of the undervalued upsides of social media: it’s asynchronous.

Social media happens on two fronts: the real-time conversations you’re having with your customers, commenters and colleagues, and the conversations you’ve seeded , which then flower without requiring your own direct attention.

For example, social media scheduling services like CoTweet and HootSuite allow you to schedule tweets, Facebook posts, LinkedIn updates and other public messages days, weeks or months in advance.  If you have a major project, press release or event worth promoting, you can spend one day scheduling a campaign’s worth of promotions, and then adjust the plan as needed based on performance and feedback, rather than making arbitrary changes on the fly.

If your blog is on a schedule, it’s smart to write ahead.  Bloggers don’t always have time to create new posts on the days they’re due, but if you write additional evergreen posts on your less-busy days, you can save them as drafts now and publish them on those hectic days when you have nothing new in the bullpen.  (Just make sure you double-check those “standby” entries before you post them, to ensure that your point of view — or the facts — haven’t changed since you first wrote it.)

And if you never have time to get ahead, have someone else do it for you.  Ask guest bloggers to write additional content for your site, which you can stockpile for rainy days.  Or hire a firm to create your content — like us at Creative Concepts.

Delays, accidents and catastrophes happen.  One bad day shouldn’t derail your business — or your profits.  By anticipating those “unknown unknowns” today, you can take steps to prepare yourself for any curveballs that nature, your personal life or your crashed computer will throw at you next.

Image by dcjohn via Flickr.

Are you connected with us on Facebook and Twitter!

As an industry that’s built entirely upon the exchange of opinions, the fashion world may seem like a field where social media would naturally take flight.  After all, aren’t terms like “word of mouth” and “viral buzz” the same keywords that signify success on both the catwalk and on Twitter?

But there’s a catch: the fashion world is actually built on a scarcity of opinions.  It relies on the reputations and influence of a select few tastemakers to tell the rest of the rabid audience what they’re supposed to like (and not like), and when.

So how did an industry that benefits from the existence of gatekeepers learn to embrace a new technology that essentially renders gatekeepers obsolete?

By turning their own world upside-down and offering everyone access.

In 2010, the vaunted New York Fashion Week — an event once so exclusive that access to it has been proffered as the grand prize on every season of Project Runway — went social in a big, big way.  Brands like American Express, Womens Wear Daily and Aveda helped sponsor a Twitterizing of Fashion Week, which spurred a wave of tech industry buzz.

Although the fashion world’s initial Twitter experiment was the source of much discussion, the model was reversed in 2011: instead of Twitter providing a top-down information hub, veteran (and aspiring) fashionistas seized the day and curated their own views of Fashion Week, resulting in a more vibrant variety of fashion coverage.  (Our clients Ouidad and Ecover even got into the mix!)

Today, the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week fan page on Facebook currently boasts more than 85,000 fans.  And while this year’s migration of fashion brands to Tumblr has had its share of ups and downs, the future implications of fashion’s affair with social media are clear: this once-insular industry is now actively seeking new ways to build buzz, generate awareness and connect with the general public.

As for fashion’s gatekeepers, they’re certainly not obsolete.  In fact, their expertise is actually even more valuable now, as a filter to help the public make sense of the flood of available fashion information that was once so highly restricted.

Who knew the industry that generates so much of the world’s art, imagery and gossip could get even bigger simply by opening their doors, pulling back their curtains and pressing the “share” button?

You should follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Photo from 2010 Fashion Week by j-No, via Flickr.

Ouidad, backstage with the curly models of NYC Fashion Week 2011

When your brand is well-known in your field, you have a story worth telling.  But how do you find new audiences to share that story with?

You find something everyone has in common.

For example, it’s no secret that the fashion world has invested heavily in the social media market.  Tools like Twitter and Facebook, which are built to fuel conversations, are a perfect match for an industry that thrives on opinion.  And while not every brand is necessarily fashion-forward, a forward-thinking brand can always find ways to bridge that gap.

During this year’s Fashion Week in New York City, two of our Creative Concepts clients learned just how exhilarating the fashion world can be.

Ouidad (the best friend a curly girl could ever have) was live-tweeting backstage from several Fashion Week shows and shoots, sharing photos and channeling buzz as the fashion magic was happening.  Why?  Because, as a hair care expert who’s focused on empowerment and education, Ouidad knows that surrounding yourself with beauty is a key building block in your lifelong quest to feel fabulous!

Another of our clients, the eco-cleaning innovators Ecover, were thrilled to support Study, a sustainable fashion brand from Tara St. James that proves the fashion world sees “green” as more than just a color.  And since Ecover and Study are each using social media to communicate their passion for a cleaner, greener world, Ecover’s sponsorship provided the perfect opportunity to give each brand a common talking point which they could share with their own audiences.

So, how can your brand find new ways to share its expertise and passion with a new audience that might be a step or two removed from your existing fanbase?

First, find common ground — or a common enemy.  Then, reach out.  Be valuable.  Be interesting.  Be supportive.  Be worth knowing.

(And if you can do it while looking amazing in Armani or Burberry, there’s nothing wrong with that either!)

You should follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the very first Ken doll, Mattel — the creators of Barbie, Ken and their vast plastic empire — launched a social media campaign to help Ken woo Barbie back.  If you didn’t know, the iconic couple broke up a few years back — presumably to see other plastic people — but Mattel decided today was the right time to reunite the star-crossed lovers.

The problem is, Mattel used social media to drive their Ken campaign.

Normally, this would be a good thing… if the campaign was producing content worth discussing, or if it were actually taking the public’s opinion seriously.

But, since a happy ending was most likely in the works all along, any pretense of “letting the public vote” on the ultimate outcome strikes us as a sham for at least three reasons:

1. Do you seriously think Mattel would spend millions of dollars just to announce that Barbie and Ken weren’t reuniting on Valentine’s Day — especially after they broke up on Valentine’s Day in 2004?
2. The web is alive with trolls, and the likelihood that those digital misanthropes would hijack the voting process to ensure that Barbie and Ken would remain apart is quite high.
3. Millions of people already saw Barbie and Ken come together on the big screen in Toy Story 3.  Creating an alternate, highly-commercialized “reunion” seems far less real — and less satisfying — than their Pixar rendezvous.

But maybe the largest problem of all with a social media campaign like this is…

Who cares?

Children and optimists will always vote for love.  Cold-hearted cynics will always vote against it.  And since cold-hearted cynics aren’t Barbie’s target audience, this entire campaign can be seen partly as “preaching to the choir” and partly as a public service reminder: “Hey, we’re still here.”

Ultimately, the entire campaign was really just a stunt meant to direct attention toward Ken’s 50th anniversary, in which the nearly 2 million Barbie fans on Facebook were used as leverage to catapult Ken into the mainstream news.  However, with Compete.com only registering 12,000 unique visitors to the barbieandken.com website in January, its traffic would need a sharp jump in February to match likely expectations.

Then again, today is the first day that Mattel will begin selling Barbie merchandise directly through Facebook, so it’s still possible (depending on sales) that the Ken campaign will eventually be seen as both a PR and a retail win for Mattel.

Which is nice.

But it isn’t social media.

Want to hear more? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Like all things in life, trust is cyclical.

Last year, in the shadow of the recession, public trust was amazingly (but predictably) low.

But now, according to the results of the annual Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in “people like us” is plummeting while trust in experts is on the rise.  Steve Rubel has a well-reasoned theory about why that might be happening, and he predicts a cyclical boom in the prominence of thought leaders and subject matter experts.

If people are once again in search of facts, figures and fountains of wisdom, what does that mean for your business?

Are You In the Business of Trust?

You don’t have to make a living in finance, health or politics to be a member of the trust economy.  Companies of all sizes, and in all industries, live and die as customers’ perceptions of business ethics and reliability shift.

In short, if your company…

• builds its brand image around claims of effectiveness
• is in competition for customer loyalty
• engages in philanthropy
• relies on donations
• solves a problem

… then you’re in the trust business.  And once you’ve established trust among your customers, that trust is always worth promoting — and defending.

When a 2010 UK report baselessly accused our client Ecover of “greenwashing,” the burden of proof was shifted to Ecover.  After all, the report had been issued by an “expert” in the ecological field and published in The Guardian.  The problem was, the report was wrong, and Ecover wouldn’t let that kind of misrepresentation stand.

Ecover knew that their customers trusted them as experts in a crowded and competitive market, and they defended their reputation with 30 years’ worth of documented expertise.

Could your company do the same?

• Do you have documented proof that verifies your claims and statements?
• Do you make it easy for people to find the information they need?
• Are your subject matter experts engaging the public?
• Are your ethics and values visibly on display?

In this hyper-connected world, trust will continue to rise and fall as the public reacts to varying levels of white noise in their lives.  But, in the end, everyone relies on information to make daily decisions they can feel good about.

Are you providing your customers with the information they need?

Are you giving people a reason to trust you?

For more media tips, follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

Image by Anna Borska.

Here at Creative Concepts, we regularly re-evaluate our social media strategies based on what our metrics tell us is (and isn’t) working.  You probably do, too.  And yet, if you’re anything like us, while you’re busy tackling the big picture and the day-to-day details, certain “little” items keep slipping further and further down your to-do list until they’re completely out of sight.

So why not take a few minutes this week for a mental spring cleaning of your social media workflow?

• Is your media contact list up-to-date?
• To whom do you owe a quick thank-you note?
• Can you articulate your own goals, and the goals of your clients?
• Which of your tasks are taking too much time? (Can anyone help?)
• Are your assets being cross-promoted across all of your social channels?
• Do your websites have broken links or outdated information?
• Are you happy with your hosting, email service, reports, accounting, etc.?
• Which new tools do you keep meaning to check out, “when I have time”?
• Does your company have a social media policy?

If you wait until spring to tie up all these loose ends, you’ll be too busy with new work to give them adequate time and they’ll just get delayed again… and again…

But if you make time for one or two of them this week, and two more next week, and so on, you’ll eventually be ahead of the curve.  And then you’ll be ready to implement all those brand new ideas that spring is sure to bring!

Need help evaluating your social media efforts? We can help!

(That’s not our office in the photo, but thanks to Robert Francis for sharing!)

What’s better than a lot of fans?

A lot of active fans.

When it comes to social media, a small-yet-active audience is often more valuable to a business than a large-yet-passive audience.

Why?

Because the incoming feedback, suggestions, color commentary and positive word of mouth that an active audience provides to a brand are useful indicators that they are passionate about (and loyal to) that brand.  And since you know they’re active, you can be sure that they’re out there… somewhere.

The trick is finding them.  (They’re active, so they move fast.)

One such example is the recent (and repeated) success of our client Bigelow Tea‘s Facebook sweepstakes.

These are giveaways that are awarded among fans of Bigelow Tea on Facebook and are promoted across Facebook, Twitter and email during the active duration of each particular sweepstakes offer — sometimes a week, sometimes a month, depending on the prize.

These sweepstakes have boosted Bigelow Tea’s Facebook page past the 10,000 fan mark, which is obviously great from a sheer numbers standpoint.  But it gets better.

It turns out that these newly-engaged fans have also stayed active on Bigelow Tea’s Facebook wall even after the sweepstakes have ended.  This has led to a more robust and interconnected community of tea drinkers than Bigelow had before their sweepstakes began, and it’s simultaneously providing the company with rich, colorful and valid feedback, which doubles as market research, inspiration for Bigelow Tea blog posts, and more.

All that for the price of a free gift of tea — and the opportunity to connect with a company that responds, listens, and provides a community where their fans can do the same.

Now that’s some impressive social media ROI.

To learn more, follow us on Twitter and Facebook!  (Or, hire us!)

If you’ve ever hit balls at a driving range, swung a tennis racket or attempted a free throw, you’ve already learned one of the most basic tenets of sports: always follow through.  A golf swing doesn’t end when you make contact with the ball; it ends when your body completes the action.  Stopping short not only decreases the impact of your efforts, but it’s bad for your body.

Social media works the same way.  Unfortunately, many social media practitioners don’t notice the resemblance.  They see individual actions (a tweet, a Facebook message, a video, a campaign), but they don’t acknowledge that each action or engagement point is all part of a larger process.

Your social media efforts don’t end the moment you tweet about a new sale or reach 1,000 fans on Facebook.  Like all marketing, the social side began before that tweet was sent, and it’ll continue long after that 1,000th fan has closed her browser and turned in for the night.

If you’re measuring your success by your actions, rather than by your process, you’re only seeing part of the picture.

David Murdico recently shared some excellent tongue-in-cheek “advice” in MediaPost, in which he offered five tips guaranteed to make sure no one will ever see your great new video.  As amusing as his advice is, it’s frustrating to realize that hundreds of decision-makers could read that article tomorrow and pat themselves on the back because they’re already making these same mistakes every day.

• Do you promote your sales and news across ALL your social media channels?
• Do you use content from one channel to feed the others?
• Do you have a multi-stage outreach plan for each new media campaign?
• Are you tracking your efforts to see where you’re gaining traction?
• Do your social media, marketing and PR departments overlap?

If you’re not supporting your great ideas with a great process, your efforts are falling short.

Having a great idea is easy.

Having the follow-through to make sure that great idea becomes a great experience is what counts.

(Image by HaraldMM.)

Need help charting your course? Follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

Let’s say that, until now, you’ve had one small team (or even one single person) be responsible for your company’s entire social media presence.  And now that things are going well, you want to expand.  Maybe that means involving more people.  If so, consider this:

Your existing customers are used to what you’ve been doing.  If they wake up tomorrow and find themselves talking to someone completely new — and if they can tell — you risk a disconnect that might jeopardize your customers’ trust and emotional investment in your brand.

Here at Creative Concepts, we have a variety of writers, researchers, content creators and account managers juggling dozens of different tasks every day.  But no matter how many people are assisting our clients with their messaging, there’s one standard we must all adhere to:

We all have to be working from the same process, and toward the same goal.

That means we take steps to ensure that anyone who’s working on any aspect of a client’s communications is following the same rules, and staying apprised of the same topical developments, as everyone else.  This includes…

• Creating our own internal user manual for Twitter, with tips and suggestions for navigating various situations.
• Tracking industry-specific client-related news that might need to be addressed in the future.
• Assigning specific messaging tasks to the individuals best-suited for the nuances of each channel.
• Multiple layers of editing, so every message is reviewed by as many eyes as possible.
• Internal metric sharing, so each of us can analyze data and compare our individual conclusions.

etc.

Why do we do this?

Because it’s important that our clients be served by as many well-rounded service providers as possible.  But it’s equally important to us that our clients’ customers feel as though their Twitter, blog, Facebook, YouTube and other branded social media experiences are all built with the same building blocks, rather than feeling like disparate voices are being smashed together around a common topic.

Whether your social media messaging is being piloted by 2 people or 200, consistency is key.  No one trusts white noise.

How are you making sure the image of your brand is consistent in the minds of your customers?

Need some tips? You should follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

Image by mafleen.

Who’s looking at your website right now?

What are they looking for?

Why?

If you can’t tell, all your marketing is guesswork.

Social media usage may differ among age groups, but everyone from children to seniors has the ability to find and engage your brand online.  If your marketing or your social media messaging follows a one-size-fits-all approach, you may be ignoring (or alienating) various audience segments — and you can be sure that one of your competitors will find a way to engage the very users you’re overlooking.

But how do you know who’s finding you online?

One obvious way is to glance at your social media community.  Who’s following you on Twitter?  Who’s subscribing to your YouTube channel?  Who are your Facebook fans?  Users of social media channels are publicly volunteering the kind of information you’d normally have to pay a research group to track down for you.  In these cases, all you need is a little time and some demographic search tools.

Another way to learn who your customers really are?

Ask.

The web is full of general demographic surveys, but those are often broad snapshots of Internet or mobile usage as a whole.  And while traffic analysis tools like Google Analytics can tell you how many people are visiting your website, they still can’t tell you who those people really are.  (And if you’re in Germany, Google Analytics can get you in a whole different kind of trouble… but we digress.)

To better understand your audience and your customers, you need to ask them a little about themselves.  Online survey tools abound, or you can take the old-fashioned route and fire a few key questions at your email list.

Not everyone will respond to these requests, but the ones who do are the ones who are most likely to care about the quality of the information you’re providing to them.  They either want you to improve or they want you to succeed.  Either way, they’re providing you with extremely valuable information, so treat them well.

And then, once you have a better understanding of who you’re talking to online, you can craft better messages that deliver more relevant information to the people who need it most.

Image by c r i s.

You should follow us on Twitter and Facebook!