Archive for the ‘Spring Creek Group’ Category
Social Media Marketing: Real Analytics, Real Results! Webinar Presented by SCG Principals
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Be sure to join tomorrow’s WOMMA webinar, Social Media Marketing: Real Analytics, Real Results! Spring Creek Group Principals Clay McDaniel and Xavier Jiminez will discuss how social media marketing has moved beyond measuring buzz to actually engaging consumers to buy. While social media marketing in 2009 centered on experimental campaigns to build brand engagement, amass fans and followers, and increase brand recognition, Clay and Xav will explain why 2010 will be the year of analytics and conversion measurement in social media marketing.
To read more visit: http://womma.org/events/january-20-webinar-social-media-marketing-real-analytics-real-results/
Register for the event here: http://www.certain.com/system/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x8643113df7
Spring Creek Group Makes MarketingProfs Stuff of 2009 List
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010Now into a new year we are able to reflect on the last, assess what we have learned and pinpoint particular highlights. MarketingProfs has done such in their recent article The Stuff of 2009: The Most-Read, Most Downloaded, Most Watched at MarketingProfs. We’re proud to share that SCG Principal Clay McDaniel’s article, 13 Essential Social Media ‘Listening’ Tools made the list by hitting on interesting and emerging trends in social media. Being one of the Top 10 MarketingProfs Today Newsletter Articles is not a bad way to start the New Year. With the bar now raised a little higher, we’re looking forward to what Clay and team will conjure up in 2010.
See Seattle Green Innovation in Full Bloom at Bloom! Seattle
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 
This Wednesday, October 28, you have the chance to be part of the fast-paced, idea-riddled green event of the year as Pravda plays host to Bloom! Seattle. The event is almost Ignite-styled in its quickness with a two hour session split up into a number of different talks.
We learned about the event through our friends at the newly-hatched EnergySavvy.com, a portal for homeowners that educates them on home energy topics. The site has a rage of information aimed at helping homeowners wrap their heads around their home energy consumption, including tax rebates for greening your home ad listings of area contractors who specialize in green building.
So, get out your planners, iPhones, Palm Pilots, or whatever it is you use to run your life and pencil this event in.
Event Info:
What: Bloom! Seattle
When: Wednesday October 28, 7:00 p.m.
Where: Pravda – 1406 10th Ave. Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98122 MAP
How much: $13 online here or $15 at the door
Facebook’s Legitimacy Problems: Are You Who We Thought You Were?
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
A recent post outlined steps Facebook is taking in requiring page owners to prove their connections with the brands they represent on the ever-growing social networking site. What does this mean for agencies? What are the short-term and long-term impacts? How will this affect your brand? Let’s take a look.
Prove It
Facebook essentially is providing page owners three ways to verify that they in fact have rights to develop and maintain a brand page and they can be found here:
- Add a badge or Fan Box widget to your Website – This is simple, really and can be done by sending a bit of code to whoever is code monkeying your site. It also provides a great focal point for driving traffic to your Fan Page.
- Add an official e-mail address to your personal Facebook account that can be used to verify your affiliation with the brand (this can also be that of an authorized outside entity like PR, marketing, advertising agency, etc.) – This is easy if you’re a recognized agency, but a little harder if your roles are mostly behind the scenes.
- Add another admin who has a legit e-mail address – This is probably the easiest thing to do. Simply add your client contact to the admins of the page, giving you instant legitimacy.
The Agency
For agencies that are building and maintaining Fan Pages for brands in the Facebook environment, this could be a bit of a sticking point as they have to work out, with their client, the level of visibility they want to have as to who is actually doing the legwork. However, in most cases, a client contact is already (or should be) and admin of the page so they can not only lend their legitimate e-mail address, but also their watchful eye to the account.
The Short Term
In the short term, proving the authenticity of these pages is going to create a bit of extra work, but the short-term rewards greatly outweigh the time needed to get your stamp of approval (is there actually a stamp of approval?). Like with Twitter, brands have always been able to make a case for deleting unauthorized accounts based on copyright law, but now Facebook is taking that a step further and actually making it easier to drive out those pages which might be representing brands in a less-than-authentic fashion.
By simply claiming your brand pages and legitimizing them, you’re essentially eliminating those other pages and, in some cases, Facebook may fold those pages’ fans into your fan base, giving them a legitimate source of interaction on Facebook— and you a broader fan base— in one fell swoop.
The Long Term
Long term, this seems like a strategy by Facebook to not only cut down on clutter and misinformation within the Facebook environment, but also a move toward offering brands added benefits for operating within Facebook. Don’t be surprised if these Facebook Fan Pages start developing multiple levels of functionality and complexity based on dollars spent on Facebook Advertising and direct buys. The team at Facebook is smart enough to make a move when they see an opportunity like this.
Unanswered Questions
While this is still a new(ish) issue, Facebook needs to provide a bit more information around the topic of what this actually means for brands. Will verified pages show up higher in search results, regardless of fan base and searchability? What’s the lag time between reporting a brand page and action being taken to remove that page? What are the criteria for moving fans from a page that might not be verified to the verified Fan Page?
Hopefully we’ll have answers to those, as well as the mounting pile of questions that will undoubtedly come out of this shift.
SCG at Mashable.com: 18 Essential Tools for Word-of-Mouth Marketers
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009
SCG Principal Clay McDaniel is feeling a little listy (and not in a nautical sense) these days, which explains his latest post on Mashable.com, where he provides his list of 18 Essential Tools for Every Word-of-Mouth Marketer. It’s a handy guide, and we think that both gurus and beginners in the space alike will be able to find something of interest. Make sure you check it out.
The Half-Life of a Tweet
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009Spring Creek Group Principal Clay McDaniel’s recent article, “The Half-Life of a Tweet,” describes the message durability of different online channels, from those that span a few hours, to those that last several months, and even those that sometimes last years. The published article is now live on MediaPost: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=114829.
For those interested, below is the longer version of the white paper Clay wrote:
Wanted: SCG Viceroy of Analytics
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
Do you excel at Excel? Do numbers tremble at the mere mention of your name? Do you know what a viceroy is? (if you do, please tell us) Can you make data dance and graphs appear out of thin air? If your answers to these semi-rhetorical questions are a resounding “yes,” please read on.
Analytics Operations Lead
Spring Creek Group is looking for an Analytics Operations Lead. In this position you will be responsible delivering cutting edge web 2.0 analytical frameworks, social media measurement models and BI Technology solutions. As part of a high energy “Type A” Analytics team and you will focus on multiple Client engagements (B2B, B2C, US and international) and support all facets of the data-driven decision making platform (Paid Media Analysis, Earned Media Analysis, Community Management Analytics, Audience Research, Quantitative and Qualitative Brand Analytics).
The Analytics Operations Lead will:
- Support the analytic needs of the Client Services team by building scalable processes for collecting and analyzing social media data using licensed and free active Listening tools such as Visible Technologies TruVoice, Techrigy SM2, Radian6, Nielsen Buzz Metrics, etc.
- Use standard Business Intelligence tools, such as Business Objects, Micro Strategy, SQL, and Access/Excel to automate report production and deliver insights that relating to and drive business outcomes for both internal and external data clients.
- Create holistic dashboards by pulling data from different data sources, technology platforms and social media websites for presentations to senior management team.
- Collaborate with external partners such as Agencies to assist with data Analysis and Lead driving core insights from the data to suggest, create and execute Data learning experiments and facilitate inter-agency knowledge management.
- Exhibit a high level of expertise in driving the data strategy across multiple “listening posts” (websites, buzz monitoring tools, web analytics tools, CRM systems, market research etc).
Typical Deliverables:
- Weekly, monthly reports (excel, BI tools, click stream analytics)
- Lead ongoing development of client dashboards.
- Social Network behavior, LTV and customer experience analysis.
- Data consolidation and validation.
- Manage the production of effective and persuasive presentations (verbal and written) for project and business leads.
Knowledge / Background / Experience:
- Bachelor’s degree
- 5 years of business analysis experience in large size companies with multiple functions / business units preferred.
- 3 years of experience in advanced analytics methodologies such as direct response experimentation and testing, competitive analysis, predictive modeling and market research.
- 2 years experience working with one or more of the following standard Web Analytics tools: Omniture, WebTrends, and Google Analytics.
Please direct info requests and viceregal inquiries to xavier@springcreekgroup.com.
Building Campaigns That Work
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
Yes, social media is great. Yes, social media is the hot topic right now. Yes, social media is what we have a passion for and what we, here at Spring Creek Group, love to talk about. However, it’s not the end all.
The fact of the matter is, regardless of what’s hot and what area of communications and marketing we here at Spring Creek Group work in, we recognize the importance of fluid, cohesive campaigns— all aimed at similar goals.
We see ourselves here at SCG sitting basically in the middle of the marketing triangle, which is why we see the importance of putting together the right team around a campaign. That’s why we have team members from the PR world sitting next to those from the analytics world who sit across from people from the advertising world – it’s an amalgamation, not superiority in one part of the marketing mix that is driving brands today. By having team members with different backgrounds, it helps us work with partner agencies because we’ve been there and done that.
We’ve been the player. We’ve been the coach. Heck, we’ve even pulled the Pete Rose player/coach (but stayed away from the betting. We’re still hoping to get in the HOF).
Here are our tips to building your marketing dream team:
Zen and the Art of Social Media Studies
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski has been studying users of social media for years, and he recently shared some of his findings with the Harvard Business Journal. He also shared them with the Internet, which, these days, means he shared them with everyone.
There’s nothing really groundbreaking in any of his findings or conclusions, but to see them all laid out in front of us the way this article does is soothing, to say the least. He (and more importantly in this case, the writer of the article) has taken the sometimes overwhelming facts, findings, and figures flying willy-nilly around in the social media ecosystem and arranged them into a lovely little Zen garden of wonky social media serenity.
Adding to our general sense of tranquility is the simple fact that esteemed old-school establishments like the Harvard Business School are digging into the channels in the first place. When fair Harvard’s academic researchers (and not just its former students) start holding sway o’er old Facebook, it’s safe to assume that when it comes to social media, we’re no longer dealing with some kind of passing fad.
Some of the observations that stuck out:
People Don’t Like Reading: “People just love to look at pictures. . . that’s the killer app of all online social networks. Seventy percent of all actions are related to viewing pictures or viewing other people’s profiles.”
Gender Dynamics on Twitter: “According to the research, there are more women on Twitter than men, women tweet about the same rate as men, but men’s tweets are followed by both sexes much more than expected by chance.”
Well, It Makes Sense When You Think About It: A large chunk of MySpace users are typically from smaller communities in the south and central parts of the country.
“Alabama, Arkansas, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Florida. They aren’t in Dallas but they are in Fort Worth. Not in Miami but in Tampa. They’re in California, but in cities like Fresno. In other words, not anywhere near the media hubs (except Atlanta) and far away from those elite opinion-makers in coastal urban areas.”
Since online music and bands are MySpace’s bread and butter (link that proves this), the idea that people huddle online around music more when they live in places that are interested in music but have a relatively hard time being able to go see/hear it is a completely logical idea.
Here’s our favorite part, from the “social strategy” section:
“For one thing, findings show that people don’t click through on advertising on social networks. ‘A good analogy is to imagine sitting at a table with friends when a stranger pulls up a chair, sits down, and tries to sell you something while you are talking to your friends. You will not get far with a strategy like this. To be successful, you need to shift your mindset from social media to social strategy.’”
This paragraph, if nothing else, is what it all boils down to: social media, and the Internet as a whole, is not something meant to be reflexively observed. It’s not a book to be printed, read, and put back on the shelf when you’re done with it. It’s all part of a living, breathing organism, one that is born and bred for interaction and engagement. The days of simply buying an ad, then sitting back, doing nothing, and waiting for it to do its work are over.
Just understanding your audience isn’t enough- you need to know how to use that understanding in order to effectively interact with not only the environment, but the people in it. It’s all well and good to know your garden, but it’s how you get involved and interact– how well you rake the sand– that’s the real key.
Sometimes It’s Both: Writing for the Social Web
Monday, September 14th, 2009
You’ve heard that it’s not what you say, but how you say it that triggers that “buy” part of someone’s brain. In a world where everything you say is broadcast to your network and beyond, the importance of the actual words is shining through as those messages fall into the streams of those who might not know you and your style.
Sarcasm has been at war with the Web since the ICQ days. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve typed something that sounded perfect in my head, only to realize that the recipient wouldn’t get the point because I said it sarcastically. Here are five tips to writing well for the social Web that will help you avoid the sarcasm void and other missteps along the way:
Write Well – I usually lead with this tip when people ask about blogging, because I’m a journalist at heart. Writing well means using correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar – regardless of if it’s a tweet, blog post, or Facebook update. I cringe whenever I see a post from a C-level executive containing spelling errors. Yes, space can be limiting, but sacrifice filler before you sacrifice readability. When I write something that is too long, I take out all the fluff before I start abbreviating.
Avoid Hyperbole – The Web is one of the most skeptical environments you’ll find, other than walking into a skeptics convention wearing your “We Landed on the Moon” t-shirt. Being honest in your writing will go a long way in convincing the public of your message. Avoid things like “HUGE NEWS” and simply linking to your Facebook profile (if not for honesty’s sake, at least because UNNECESSARY CAPITALIZATION IS ANNOYING). Web users are savvy and will take the time to dig for the truth.
Use Your Inside Voice – While the Web can seem like a shouting match, it’s not always a place where the team with the bullhorn wins. Just like that crying baby on the plane from Seattle to San Francisco, eventually people learn to tune it out. Know your audience and speak to them, the others will come along.
Do Things by the (Style) Book – I’ve professed my love of all things Associated Press before, but if you’re looking to get your tweet, post, or any other sort of Web-based communication picked up by anyone with access to a teleprompter or major news network Website, you’re going to want to make it easy on them. By knowing little things like AP abbreviations for states , or which schools are actually in the Ivy League (challenge: see if you can name them), reporters and those holding the velvet rope back will be more inclined to let you and your message through.
Choose Your Words Carefully – Once your tweet, blog post, Facebook update, or any number of other forms of communication hit the Web, they’re out there. At that point you can only wait and see if the words you crafted are received and interpreted as you intended. So choose your words carefully– not only because you’re dealing with limited time and space, but also because you only get one chance to write and share a piece.
Have any other tips for writing for the social Web? Let us know.
