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Archive for the ‘socialmedia’ Category

Entercom Digital – Another Awesome Photo Contest Blog

Posted in Marketing, socialmedia, tagged , , on July 16, 2010 | 3 Comments »

We want to thank Entercom Digital for posting an amazing Artistic Hub photo contest testimonial and blog.

Read the original post here.

We had the opportunity to use Artistic Hub’s photo contesting software again for a Pet Pageant in market, and it was another runaway success. I thought I’d share the stats and the process again on our last day of submissions, in case anyone wants to check them out further.

We basically work directly with the provider, Artistic Hub, and I design on top of their contesting templates. They then slice up my design and place it on their software. We work out a contest timeline (submission deadline, winner date, etc.), fill out the auto-email copy, and then hit the ground running on our specified launch date. Easy, no hassle, and they are great to work with.

As of today the contest has a little shy of 90,000 pageviews for about a 2 week period, accounting for around 52% of our total site traffic for 98.5 KRZ. We have had 1,053 submissions with a total of 948 images in voting, and a total of 1.6 million votes!

We still have another week or so of voting, but this has really been a tried-and-true solution for us as far as rock solid photo contesting goes. Our sponsor for the contest, EasyPetStore.com, was a perfect fit. They offered free shipping on orders over $50 for all WKRZ listeners, and tossed up a grand prize of $500 to the winner.

Great sponsor, solid stats, phenomenal social media integration (Facebook referred back about 15% of our total traffic) and the best photo contesting software I’ve used, this is a definite win for us here. Check out the contest for yourself!

Happy Friday!

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14 SEO Tips We Learned from Business OnLine

Posted in Marketing, socialmedia, tagged , , , on February 25, 2010 | 2 Comments »

The past couple days I attended Online Marketing Summit in San Diego. The conferences was maxed out and especially excellent if you are interested in email and SEO.

The event was well organized, talks were top notch, and I met some great people, but the #1 thing I learned was some great SEO tips. I sat down for 15 minutes with Thomas Beatty a Sr. Analyst with Business OnLine for an SEO audit of our online contest software company Artistic Hub.

In 15 minutes I learned some basic but very valuable SEO best practices that we are implementing immediately. Since i believe in the power of Paying It Forward I wanted to share. We just created this summary so these aren’t implemented yet, but will be by next week.

14 SEO tips I learned from Business OnLine

1)    Make sure your title matches your keywords

  • Old: Online Contest Software | Photo Contest Applications | White-label Contest Platform | Artistic Hub
  • New: Contest Software | Photo Contest Software | Customizable Contest Software | Artistic Hub

2)    Modify your description to be accurate and keyword focused:

  • Old: “Artistic Hub is a white-label contest application company. Our contest platform can power photo contests, design contests, audio contests, or video contests.”
  • New: “Artistic Hub is the leading contest software company. Our contest software can be customized for photo contests, design contests, audio contests, or video contests.”

3)    Modified and consistent keywords:

  • We were using software, application, and platform inconsistently. We are combining all the terms to use software.

4)    Use keywords accurately in content:

  • The top two searches for us are “contest software” and “photo contest software”. Anytime we use these we should use text and we want to use the combination as much as possible without forcing it.

5)    Use text for navigation not images:

  • We are big on design and a lot of our links are images so we are modifying to be text.

6)    Modify top navigation to be text and keyword focused:

  • Our Applications -> Our Contest Software
  • How It Works -> How Our Contests Work
  • Features -> Contest Features

7)   Modify sub navigation text under features to be text and keyword focused

  • Branding and Integration -> Contest Branding and Integration
  • Management Center -> Contest Management
  • Distribution Strategy -> Contest Distribution
  • Re-read the content and change any references to applications or software to “contest software”. Should always be ….our contest software…

8)    Use descriptive alt tags on all our images. Here is an article for reference and here is what we are changing:

  • Add alt tag to our AH icon on top “ Artistic Hub Contest Software, Photo Contest Software, Online Contest Software”
  • Add alt tags to all of our “Our Application” hover over images

9)    Use top keywords if appropriate in our bottom navigation:

  • Change “our applications” to “Our Contest Software”
  • Add software to the end of each sub link ex: “photo contest software”

10)    Add a Custom 404 Page. Here is a 404 info reference

  • Anytime someone enters an extension on “http://artistichub.com/blahblah” it should show a custom 404 page with some text like “Sorry you didn’t find what you are looking for. Were you looking for one of these things. The page would then list our navigation links.

11)    Modify plain page anchors to use keywords

12)    Break out our website into pages with below the fold content.

  • We are using a one page website design and Thomas’ suggestion was to break out the website into pages. We are keen on design so he showed me an example of how the Venetian in Vegas uses flash with content below the fold. The home page looks awesome with great flash, but as you scroll down you will see a page of text so search spiders can index the content properly

13)   Have partners user “Keyword Anchor Text” to link to your site

  • Many people think that buying URLs is the best route for keyword ranking. The problem is there is no history. The key is to get existing sites with history to link to you the right way. For example having a site link to “Daily Deal Software” vs Deal Current is much more powerful. Deal Current is our website URL, but if a site tells Google that our website has Daily Deal Software on it we get more credit. So ask partners to hyperlink the keywords you want vs just your website. This will improve your ranking over time.

14)   Verify your site with Yahoo, Google, and Bing Webmasters tags

So this is what we learned and these are easy best practices that anyone can implement. If you are looking for bigger SEO projects I highly recommend Business OnLine.

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Best Social Media in Business Nomination

Posted in Marketing, socialmedia, tagged , , , , , on February 17, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I wanted to thank the San Diego community for nominating our blog for Best Social Media in Business.

Social Media and this blog have both paid a big part in our success. We have established credibility, grown our market, and attracted new customers.

Every business has experts in their company and a relevant corporate blog is the best way to express this expertise.

If you haven’t voted, please cast your vote here and check out some of the other great companies  in San Diego.

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2 Philosophies on Designing a Social Media Strategy

Posted in Marketing, socialmedia, tagged , , , , , on February 15, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Over the weekend I was brainstorming ideas for social media campaigns for a large consumer product. The company is super conservative and social media in their industry is almost non-existent. As a result, I wanted to make sure that I set the right frame for the client before I went into a laundry list of ideas. I developed this as an introduction titled “Social Media Philosophy”. I believe writing a good introduction with any proposal helps the client understand where you are coming from. Let me know what you think.

Social Media Philosophy

The goal with social media is to create something that people want to promote and share. Promotion and sharing, the goals of “social media”, can be accomplished in two completely different ways.

One option is being novel and fun. Burger King is a great brand example with their subservient chicken and unfriend Facebook campaign. This works great for brands that spend a ton of money on lots of short campaigns arnd are willing to push the envelope. The advantages of this strategy are quick viral marketing and huge word of mouth. The disadvantages are the campaigns tend to die just as quick and are really a fad/novelty.

The other option is to develop campaigns and strategies that are really useful, provide value to clients, and support the community of their customers. Mini Cooper’s car community, North American Motoring, is a great example.  They have created a simple forum for Mini Cooper owners to share issues, give feedback , and brag a little through photo galleries.This strategy works great for higher priced products, premium brands, conservative companies, and companies that already have large a customer base. The advantages of this strategy are providing value to owners, attracting new customers, and once established the strategies tend to grow and are easy to sustain. The disadvantages are there are no expectations of a big “pop” immediately and it takes some time to develop. These disadvantages though can be offset by companies with a large database of past customers.

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Angels and Airwaves New Album Love – Free Release

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, socialmedia, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I wanted to share the link  for the new release of Angel and Airwaves album Love and their short film fittingly with the same title Love.

Their new album Love is released on the timely Valentines Day weekend and I’m looking forward to listening.

Angels went the route of a free release with a tip/donation jar. I love this route and its been proven to work by bands like Radio Head in the past. I also believe this is the new route of music. Bands will work with a label for a few years, gain popularity, hone their skills, and then go independent. Its awesome.

You can download the album exclusively at Fuel.TV

The trailer for their short film Love can be seen at their community Modlife.

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Vans Style Photo Contest Launches on GrindTV.com

Posted in Marketing, socialmedia, tagged , , , on February 10, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

We are excited to launch a new campaign with Vans on GrindTV.com.

Vans Style Photo Contest Launched February 9, 2010

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Restaurants Should Use Foursquare for Marketing

Posted in Marketing, socialmedia, tagged , , , , on January 26, 2010 | 10 Comments »

Lately I’ve had mixed feelings about the Foursquare phenomenon. At first I didn’t see value in the application. Then once I started using it and talking to friends about it and I was on the fence. I had some friends who were female who were worried about their safety. On the other hand, I had friends competing to be the “Mayor” of a local wine bar Counter Point in San Diego. Other friends were micro-targeting each others desk to be the “Mayor” of each others domain as an office prank. This made me realize that part of the fun was the game and this is the ingredient to their success. The game aspect if leveraged by venues, especially restaurants, can be excellent marketing.

If restaurants embrace Foursquare, I believe they can leverage social  media to get massive marketing exposure. I came to this realization after spending time with part of my family who owns a restaurant group and discussing their social media questions.

They realized they need to leverage social media, but they are so busy with operational stuff their biggest concern was time. I made a few suggestions, but my #1 recommendation was leverage Foursquare.

The great thing about Foursquare is that it automatically updates Facebook and Twitter when someone checks-in via their mobile phone and the power is in the numbers.

The average Facebook user has 130 friends. If 10 people a day check-in on Foursquare, it will notify at least 1,300 people on Facebook. Customers who use Foursquare and mobile updates are more active users and probably have 2-300 friends reaching 2-3000 people per day. What other form of marketing can restaurants and venues use for free that can reach thousands of people a day?

So here are my restaurant recommendations:

  1. Put up a badge on the restaurant website stating either “Find us on Foursquare” or “Be our Mayor on Foursquare” or make a custom widget here http://www.placewidget.com/
  2. If the restaurant has table top promotions, add similar messaging to the promo cards or table tents
  3. Have a Foursquare happy hour once a week. Every customer who shows their server a Foursquare check-in gets their first drink or appetizer half-off
  4. Create a window sticker “Be our Mayor on Foursquare”
  5. Promote Foursquare in email newsletters

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Entrepreneurs can change the world

Posted in Entrepreneurship, socialmedia, tagged , , , , , on January 18, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I just saw this video on the blog of Tristan Walker who handles biz dev for Foursquare.

I was researching my Monday blog, but once I saw this I thought it was perfect.

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Social Media Breakfast and Web Leaders Collective

Posted in Entrepreneurship, socialmedia, tagged , , , , on January 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I have been to two great events this past week that I highly recommend to entrepreneurs in San Diego. I usually try to keep a balance by working, exercising, and relaxing so I typically don’t make it to a lot of groups, but these two were worth the time.

The first is the Social Media Breakfast held monthly. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised. The group meets monthly at Milano’s coffee in Mission Valley. The structure consisted of a meet and greet, opening discussions about social media news, then a local business spoke about their use of social media, and then to close out the group opened up so people could share challenges they had with social media.

The speaker today was the founders of Carbonita Detailing. The two guys who founded this green car detailing company launched two months ago gave a great speech about their use of Twitter. They have gone from door knocking landing 3 jobs to using Twitter to land 100 jobs so far in the month of January. Great work by two guys who had never used Twitter before. They also have a great story and are passionate about what they are doing.

A couple cool things I liked about Carbonita is they only use one pint of water per detailing and they drive around in a smart car. So they are doing a great job and being ec0-friendly. Carbonita is already planning on franchising the company and I expect great things from the founders.

The second group/meet-up I attended this week was Web Leaders Collective. This is a group that has been going for about a year now and is comprised of founders and executives in technology or that run start-ups in San Diego. The group was founded by Chuck Longanecker from Digital Telepathy and is now being led by Lisa Tran.

The first meeting of the year was a poker game with about 16 local entrepreneurs and executives and hosted by Steven Cox at the Takelessons office. It was a  a lot of fun and nice to relax with some entrepreneurs, but don’t be fooled the side conversations were top notch with some very smart people. There were discussions of start-ups doing well, new start-up concepts, investment intros, technology debates, life science topics, and overall a balance of fun and intellect.

If you are running a start-up and looking for a great environment to brain storm with peers I highly recommend attending.

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Contest Ideas for Pro Athletes

Posted in Marketing, socialmedia, Sports Marketing, tagged , , , , , , , on January 5, 2010 | 3 Comments »

Over the past year sports has been hands down one of our biggest markets. Its easy to understand. Clients have great traffic and sports teams and organizations have some of the most fanatical fans. These two factors drive some of the best campaigns.

We have run successful campaigns for the Oakland Raiders, Ihoops.com, Eteamz.com, and Sports Illustrated Kids. The Raiders best fan photo contest was a great success with 1.2 million votes and 1600 submissions in 8 weeks.

As we look at the new year and how the sports market can benefit from our services,  I believe one of the biggest overlooked opportunity is for pro athletes to leverage contests to communicate with their fans.

This morning I was watching Chad Johnson now Ocho Cinco live stream talking to his fans and I thought it was awesome. Reggie Bush I also think has a great site and I know has a social media consultant helping him communicate with his fans more effectively. Social Media is allowing athletes to communicate with their fans on their own time so they don’t feel overwhelmed when they are focused on playing.

I think the next step that some of the more proactive athletes could take would be running interactive contests with their fans. Athletes are like brands and they have loving fans. Why not embrace this?

Here are some ideas we have and we are open to any other ideas from agents or sports consultants:

  • Fan Poster or Apparel Design Contest : Fans would love to design a cool shirt or poster for an athlete and the athlete benefits by getting some rocking fan inspired art.
  • Fan Voted Photo Contest for a new sports card: A player could upload a bunch of action photos and let fans decide which picture will be on their next sports card. The athlete or card company could run this.
  • Fan Logo Design Contest: Reggie Bush has a cool logo with his initials. How cool would it be to have tons of fans designing logos for Reggie and have one win. I love Roger Federer’s logo. It would be awesome if a fan had designed it.
  • Fan Art Contest: We have been running contests with SIKids.com for the last year and some of the art from these kids is amazing. It would be awesome to pick an athlete each month and let fans submit their best drawing. Kids would love it and it is such great PR for an athlete.

The cool thing is prizes don’t have to be big cash prizes like brands use. Prizes could be a personal note and some personalized signed gear. Those are the things fans live for and will mount on their wall and pass to their kids.

Here are some examples of amazing art we have received in the last year work with Sports Illustrated Kids. Athletes with great fan relationships are the ones that are remembered forever.

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