A DIFFERENT TYPE OF AGENCY

As a collective, The Factory Interactive is fueled by a passion for developing enduring messages conceived through a marriage of design and technology. At the core, we are explorers of possibility and architects of memory. We create rich immersive experiences that increase message retention and reward the audience. Our mission: give personality to products, resulting in a stronger, more effective brand.

_{March 27, 2009}
Social media…it means business. _{By Ashley}

By now, I’m sure my enthusiasm for social media is beaming through your computer screen after all of the blog posts I have written of late. So you can imagine my excitement when I was sent a white paper this week titled, “Social Media Market Industry Report: How Marketers are Using Social Media to Grow Their Business” by Michael A. Stelzner.

The document was extremely enlightening and reinforced a lot of the talking points we have preached to our clients here at TFI. I just wanted to share some of the factual highlights from the report.

• Marketers are mostly new to social media: A significant 88% of marketers surveyed are using social media to market their businesses, BUT 72% have only been doing so for a few months or less.
• How much time are they using it?: 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week and 39% for 10 or more hours weekly.
• The top benefit of social media marketing: The number-one advantage is generating exposure for the business, indicated 81% of all marketers, followed by increasing traffic and building new business partnerships.
• The top social media tools: Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook were the top four social media tools used by marketers, in that order.
• Social media tools marketers most wanted to learn about: Social bookmarking sites were ranked of highest interest, followed closely by Twitter.
• Site Optimization: A rise in search engine rankings was reported by more than half of participants.
• Generated Qualified Leads: After only a few months and with as few as 6 hours a week, more than half of marketers have generated qualified leads with social media marketing.

This is just a snippet from the report but as you can see, Social Media is not just a tool to talk with long lost friends, or follow your favorite celebrities, anymore. If done correctly, it is a means to create new business relationships, optimize your site, and potentially gain new business.

Stay tuned for updates on my Twitter & Your Business: 101 Webinar.

Filed under: Marketing — Tags: blogs, facebook, linkedin, SEM, SEO, social media, twitter — @ 3:23 pm

_{March 24, 2009}
A Twitter Experiment _{By Ashley}

An opportunity arose yesterday for me to conduct my own mini Twitter experiment. Self-proclaimed Tweeter, Lance Armstrong, crashed on his bike. Here is how it all went down and news spread (A much condensed time line of events that happened over a 40 minute period):

I had live audio of the Milan-Sanremo race playing in the background (via a link I got off of Twitter) when I heard that there was a massive pile up; lo and behold, Lance Armstrong was at the center of it all. He wasn’t moving. Immediately, I hear my Tweetdeck a callin’.

::Tweet:: I check my Tweetdeck. Astana (the team Armstrong rides for) reports that Lance has crashed. This was then followed by every other major cycling team and cycling news sources (like VeloNews) reporting the same.

::Tweet:: A link to live video of Lance waiting for the ambulence.

::Tweet:: Several reports that Lance has broken his collarbone. (Keep in mind that the ambulence has not even arrived yet)

::Tweet:: Lance in ambulence.

::Tweet:: Lance at hospital. He has broken his collarbone and will be transported back to the U.S. for surgery. His Giro d’ Italia hopes are up in the air, but have no fear, he will be back for the Tour de France.

Another 20 minutes later…. my phone rings and it’s a fellow cyclist saying that they just interrupted their program with breaking news, Lance has crashed and still waiting for confirmation on what is wrong. My reply, “I’ve known for almost an hour.”

::Tweet:: It’s Lance! “I’m alive! Broken clavicle (right). Hurts like hell for now. Surgery in a couple of days. Thanks for all the well wishes.”

And this my friends, is the power of Twitter. News organizations were almost 40 minutes late. I literally got minute-by-minute updates via Twitter. Can’t beat instant gratification.

Filed under: Media News — Tags: lance armstrong, news, power, traditional media, tweet, twitter — @ 1:58 pm

_{March 23, 2009}
Newspapers want a bailout plan?? Say what??! _{By Ashley}

Ad Age reported today that the companies on Google’s Publishers Advisory Council — a fraternity that includes The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Inc. and Hearst, among others — are aggressively making the case that their content ought to be more prominently displayed in search results. In a sense, a bail out plan of their own to try to gain some relevance once again.

“You should not have a system,” one content executive said, “where those who are essentially parasites off the true producers of content benefit disproportionately.”

The Advisory Council is urging Google to revise their algorithms to add credibility and seniority to news organizations so their websites/reports show up higher in the search results. They claim that the bloggers “parasites” are stealing the news from their sites to begin with. But the publishers also said they’re not asking for a leg up over amateurs and link-happy bloggers. “This would in no way mean that only professional content publishers would get an advantage,” one said. “It really just says that the original source, and the source with real access, should somehow be recognized as the most important in the delivery of results.”

Here is my thought… maybe these big time media organizations need to invest in a better SEO/SEM program (cough cough, shameless plug…like http://seotrackonline.com). It seems to me that The New York times should organically rank higher than any Joe Shmo’s blog… if not, there may be some bigger issues at hand.

Filed under: Media News,SEO — Tags: content, Google, media, newspapers, publishers, Publishers Advisory Council, SEM, SEO, seotrackonline — @ 10:55 pm

TFI takes home GOLD at Caples Awards _{By Ashley}

The Factory Interactive’s ,“Germville: A Sick Place to Live”, has taken home the Gold for Integrated Campaign at the DM News John Caples International Awards in NYC this past week. Coverall Health Based Cleaning wanted to try something new to reach businesses that hire commercial cleaning services. When approached, we were tasked with the chore to create an “out-of-the-box” campaign to make the Commercial Cleaning business a little bit more exciting. And Germville was born…. The campaign included a multitouch direct mail campaign that combined four postcards and a three-piece dimensional mailer calling on recipients to visit Germville.com.

The Germville website is a video enabled rich media destination where germs are brought to life through characters such as Missy Coli and Mike Robe. The site is what we like to call “Edutainment” – an entertaining way to educate all while collecting information and generating leads for the Coverall Team.

Congrats to our talented team on a job well done!!

Filed under: Agency News — Tags: awards, caples, Direct Mail, Germville, gold, intergrated campaign, nyc, website — @ 4:31 pm

_{March 13, 2009}
Today’s Match-Up… Twitter vs. SEO _{By Ashley}

I’ve briefly mentioned it before in posts… how does SEO compare to Twitter? And will Twitter Search and Hashtags replace SEO?

There is ONE huge reason I say absolutely not. Here is the reason and my rationale:

Twitter gives you absolutely no control on whether or not your company name/product will show up on the top of the list. On Twitter, the most recent Tweet (whether it be good or bad) shows up at the top of the list and the reader has an immediate association between your company and the content they read. With SEO, you can work to make sure that when a search is performed, your name or product will show up on the first page, as well as what content shows up.

With Twitter, instead of working on the amount of times, or rankings, on a search results page, it is about maintaining brand continuity. Use Twitter to build relationships and brand loyalty.

The point here is this, make sure your strategy goes beyond “being found” and focuses on brand reputation and search results. When you have a brand that people trust and enjoy, you don’t have to fear real time Twitter searches as the rising trend in online searching. So the answer to the question, “Will Twitter replace SEO?” Absolutely not…You need to implement both strategies to have an effective online campaign.

Although, if Google perhaps buys Twitter some day, we can have this discussion again.

Filed under: Marketing,SEO — Tags: branding, Google, hashtags, loyalty, rankings, SEO, tweets, twitter — @ 11:49 am

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