Marketing Virgin

Merry Christmas! This is a great time of the year to catch up on a little reading. Feel free to look around on my blog, or visit other great sites like MarketingSherpa, MarketingProfs, or Mashable.

Check out how web trends and social media have evolved in this series of pictures. This is worth checking out! http://bit.ly/5gh8EH

Courtesy of the Huffington Post.

After it was announced that my company was being acquired, we knew we had to come up with a way to show the world that we were excited about this new venture, while staying true to our lighthearted culture. With only 8 days before the deal was set to close, we met to discuss ways to make this happen. After throwing around several ideas, we came up with an image of a bride and groom, driving away from their ceremony, with the words “Just Acquired” across the back.

Naturally, we didn’t want to release just a single image, so we decided to produce an entire ceremony. Just four short days later, we had the script, camera, decorations, and cast. The images we captured that day were made into a video.

We uploaded the video to our corporate blog on the day of our acquisition and watched as it was shared across social media outlets including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Our entire cost for the video was $98. Not bad.

Want to see the video? Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGSviXSLKsI 

I’m currently evaluating Unisfair for virtual events. It’s a really great platform. It’s amazing how far this technology has come.

This was written by a blogger named Shane, and it’s really funny. Visit his blog by clicking here. 

The 46 stages of Twitter: 

1. Hear the word Twitter.  Scoff.
2. Hear it again from someone else.  Scoff again.
3. Hear about famous celebrity who is apparently “On Twitter.”  Scoff, but make mental note to check it out.
4. Log into Facebook to comfort self.
5. Sign up for Twitter.
6. Give up because it seems dumb.
7. Loudly criticize others on Twitter.
8. Follow @johncmayer, @aplusk, @rainnwilson, @wilw, @mrskutcher, @oprah, and one other person you actually know.
9. Post tweet that is a variant of: “Trying out this Twitter thing.”
10. Attempt to dig a little deeper into Twitter.
11. Notice rampant usage of words: “Tweet,” “Twitter,” “Twitterverse,” “Tweetie,” “Tweetdeck,” and something called “RT.”
12. Scoff again, this time in confusion.
13. Tell friends you “tried that Twitter thing, but didn’t get it and it’s stupid anyway.”
14. Log into Facebook because that site at least makes sense.
15. Read story about Twitter somewhere.

Read the rest of this entry »

Although I receive bad emails on a weekly basis, I haven’t posted one recently. A special “thank you” goes to my co-worker who forwarded this gem to me. 

Do you see what’s wrong with this email? If you speak proper English, you will.

I recently completed a project that I had been working on since January. My friend Emily and I were asked to Co-Chair an event that would raise money for a local organization that provides scholarships for deserving young women in college.

This was a new challenge for me. I have experience running events for a company, but not for a non-profit. With a budget of $500, how was I going to sell 250 $25 tickets to a charity Fashion Show?

Here are a few of the things that we did to accomplish this goal:
>Facebook: We created a “Facebook Event” and we asked all of our members to pass it around. We advertised the event on our organization’s Facebook Fan page.
>Twitter: We tweeted about the event, and asked all of our members to RT our messages.
>Email: We sent monthly emails to all 375 members and asked them to share the Fashion Show information with their friends.
>PR: We found the best bloggers and online “local news” websites and asked them to share our event with their subscribers. We also found some of the top local “tweeters” on Twitter and asked them to give away a few tickets to the Fashion Show. Their Twitter followers were required to RT their message, for a chance to be selected as a ticket winner.
>Community Calendars: We went to everyone online newspaper and added ourselves to the community calendar section. Some websites will allow you to “vote up” or “vote down” events. We asked our members to vote our event up, which caused it to appear first on each webpage.
>Direct marketing: We printed promotional business cards and posters and then asked each boutique that we were planning to feature in the Fashion Show to keep them by the register, and in their store windows. We also asked each company that either donated money or a product to promote the event on their website.
>Do a Preview: We held a “Fashion Show Launch Happy Hour” one month before the actual event. We encouraged people to come out and purchase their tickets early. In doing so, attendees received a special VIP pass to the Fashion Show. The happy hour generated a lot of buzz and excitement for the show.

Follow the link to see the results, and to view more pictures. Read the rest of this entry »

Not long ago, many believed that people only used social media to communicate with their family and friends. eMarketer recently published survey results that how people use social media to interact with a brand, something we all hope to achieve as marketers.

I ran across a good article today that gives a few tips for improving your search engine results for your Facebook fan page.

 The article is titled “Learn Facebook Page SEO Mastery in 7 Easy Steps.”

1. Get a good URL
2. Configure your default tab
3. Generate links to your page
4. Link to other relevant pages
5. Use Facebook for inbound links to your company website
6. Select a good name for your Facebook page
7. Post keyword rich content in the About box

Learn more about these tips at AllFacebook.

Follow me on Twitter! @MarketingVirgin

Have you been tasked with creating a Twitter account for your company? You may be a sceptic now, but soon you will realize the true value Twitter can provide in terms of both brand management and building relationships with potential customers.

Here are a few tips to get you started:
1. Use your company name, not a variation of it.
This will make it easy for people to find you in the Search feature.
2. In order to be followed, you must follow others first.
Start following other Twitter accounts in your space. Analysts, industry publications, press, subject matter experts, etc. Out of courtesy, they may decide to follow you as well.
3. Re-tweet.
Get the attention of others by re-tweeting messages posted by the people you follow. This is another way to get them to follow you back. Always put an “@” in front of the username of the person whose message you are re-tweeting.
4. Add hash tags.
Hash tags is a way for Twitter to trend the hottest topics of the day. They appear in the right-hand side of the screen, and have a # in front of them. For example, #marketingvirgin.
5. Add pictures.
Use www.twitpic.com to add photos to your Tweets.
6. Add links.
Use www.tinyurl.com to shorten long URL’s that you want to reference in your Tweets.
7. Don’t just talk about yourself, engage others.
Ask a question. Encourage participation. You could even have a contest.
8. Add yourself to WeFollow.com.