CDG Interactive Blog

Social media can seem like a hungry beast, one that demands more care and feeding with each passing  day.

First you had to figure out how to add time in your daily marketing schedule to devote to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

But just when you felt like you’d gotten the hang of hashtags and retweeting and growing your fan base, along comes the next shiny thing in social media, like Pinterest or Tumblr or Google+, and you hadn’t even figured out your LinkedIn strategy yet.

What’s a small organization to do?

That’s where the idea of social media discernment comes in. Discernment simply means evaluating the options and making specific choices. Just as in other marketing programs, not all channels or platforms are equally appropriate for your organization. It’s OK to pick and choose.

Here’s how:

• Know your goals. We say this every time we talk about social media strategy. Why are you using social media? What is the expected outcome? Each platform has different strengths and weaknesses; match the platform to the goal. (Need help differentiating? Use the Social Media Site Comparison tool at PowerUp Social).
• Know your audience. A second crucial factor to use when determining which social media platforms are best for you is to know what audience you’re trying to reach. Pinterest, for example, heavily skews female. LinkedIn’s audience is predominantly college educated. Choose the platform your audience uses.
• Look at your numbers. Past performance can also predict future success. If you need to make room in your schedule for a new platform, review your site analytics and evaluate the performance of the existing ones. If Twitter drives traffic but those visitors don’t convert, cut back 1 day a week and try Google+ on that day instead (or whichever new platform you’ve identified using steps 1 and 2 above).

Speaking of site analytics, you’ll want to keep a regular eye on them. Platform value can change over time. Are the existing accounts still performing? To what degree are the new ones succeeding or failing?

Based on the data, you can change the mix of your daily social media efforts.

Keep in mind, too, that you don’t have to spend the same amount of time everywhere. Again, based on performance data, you can weight some activities more heavily than others. (For a sample schedule of a social media “diet,” see the PowerUp Social Media Pyramid.)

Your Turn

• How do you decide which platforms to use and how much time to spend on them?
• How do you measure the success of your efforts?

Visit PowerUp Social to learn more about each social media platform and how to build them into your organization’s marketing plan. While you're there, sign up for the free 8-week course on social media marketing and strategy.

The weather's warming up, and it's time to start thinking about summer vacation, barbeques, and . . . the holiday shopping season.Yes, you read that right. It's not even June, but you should already be thinking about your end-of-the-year holiday strategy.

More than ever, that strategy needs to include a smart and efficient use of mobile platforms. Shopping in general is becoming more mobile-centric, and even more so during the holidays, when shoppers want to make the most efficient use of their time and dollars. If you (or anyone other decision-makers in your company) need convincing that mobile is a must this holiday season, consider these facts:

• Up to 65% of consumers confirm store hours and location, prices or product availability using their mobile phone before even heading to a store.
• 52% of US consumers use their mobile phones to search for information such as product reviews and competitive pricing while they are in the store.
• Mobile search will generate 27.8 billion more queries than desktop search by 2016. This trend has led Google to launch a new smartphone-specific crawler to return search results targeted for smartphone users.

If you don’t already have a mobile strategy in place, the time to begin planning and executing for mobile is now. Otherwise you’ll discover that it’s too late to be ready when the holiday shoppers should be lining up at your store (virtual or otherwise).

And of course, "mobile strategy" is not just a fancy way of saying "mobile website." Yes, a mobile-optimized website is a good start, but it comprises only part of a comprehensive mobile strategy. An effective mobile strategy will include a variety of tactics, such as:

• Optimizing your listings in review sites, Google Places, location-based social media (such as FourSquare)
• Testing new search strategies for the smartphone crawler as people search differently on their phones than on their desktop computers
• Creating mobile-specific PPC in addition to search optimization efforts
• Using mobile-specific functionality such as click-to-call and geo-targeting
• Incorporating QR Codes or short URLs in off-line channels to help customers find your mobile presence

If you need help getting "mobile-ized" for the holidays, contact CDG. We'll help you assess the behavior of your current mobile visitors, set goals, develop and optimize your mobile strategy and measure your success.

Photo Credit: Joe Buckingham on Flickr

With all of the sexy new upstarts in the social media space (ahem, Pinterest), it’s easy to forget about the stodgy older kids on the block—specifically, MySpace.

“MySpace? People are still on MySpace?” That was the reaction from one of the participants in CDG’s social media roundtable earlier this week. “That’s the most surprising thing I’ve heard in a while,” she said.

It’s true, MySpace is creaky and aging, and to be honest, its long-term prognosis just might be terminal. But it’s not dead yet. As recently as last November, MySpace attracted nearly 25 million unique visitors; that's more than Google+, Tumblr and Pinterest.

It’s also worth noting that those 25 million people are disproportionately young and diverse and less affluent than the general population. According to a recently released Pew Internet study on teens and social media, MySpace—along with Twitter—is one of the most racially diverse social media networks. It’s most popular among Latino teens: 35% of Latino teens who are active on social media have a MySpace account, compared with 22% of Caucasian teens. Also, MySpace accounts are more prevalent among social-media-using teens whose parents did not attend college.  Thirty-two percent of those teens have a MySpace account, compared with just 18% of teens whose parents have at least some college experience.

These statistics are worth considering not because MySpace’s influence is likely to increase. Truthfully, unless there’s a drastic shift in the social media universe, MySpace will never again touch the dominance of a Facebook or a Twitter. But in 2012, ignoring MySpace altogether can work against you—particularly if you are trying to reach a niche audience that still has a significant presence there; for example, Latino kids between the ages of 13 and 18.

The larger moral of the story? Although things change at lightning speed, be sure to keep your eyes on the entire social media landscape and not just what’s emerging on the horizon.

For more guidance on social media channels and tactics, check out PowerUpSocial.com, CDG’s new resource about social media for business.

This past weekend I spoke on a panel at the DC Science Writers conference about measuring return on investment for social media. It’s definitely a hot topic. With all of the time and resources organizations are pouring into in social media, they’re naturally asking—how do we know if it’s all worth it?

There’s no shortcut to getting an accurate picture of your ROI. It takes planning, consistency, and ongoing engagement. But don’t get too worried, here are 4 steps to help you start assessing your social media ROI.

Continue reading "Assessing Your Social Media ROI in 4 Steps" »

CDG is proud to announce the debut of our third iAd campaign for car insurance giant GEICO. To follow up on the success of our Wheel of Wisdom and Secret Savings Society iAds, we developed The Taste of Savings, a whimsical and lighthearted spin on the idea of “car insurance as delicious beverage.”

“The Taste of Savings” ties into the company’s new television/Internet ad campaign, in which people on-the-street are asked to take a Car Insurance Taste Test.

In the iAd, we expand on the taste test idea by inviting users to create their own Taste of Savings. Once they launch the GEICO iAd, users go through a four-step process to create their delicious blend. These engaging, game-like interfaces allow users to to collect the Value Berries, blend them up in the Sav-o-matic, fill up bottles of GEICO on an assembly line, and finally, create their own personalized label.

The iAd also provides a multitude of ways for users to further interact with GEICO—by watching the Taste Test ads, downloading ringtones and Taste of Savings wallpapers, or getting a quote at geico.com.

“The success of our previous iAds set the bar very high,” says Matthew Snyder, CDG’s creative director, “We worked hard to create an engaging and fun concept that embraces the interactivity available through the iAd platform. We couldn’t be happier with the results.”

The iAd began running earlier this week. You can see The Taste of Savings, and all other GEICO iAds by downloading the iAd Gallery App and searching for GEICO. Have Fun!

If you need a mobile advertising solution for your company, contact CDG.

Apparently there's a newish and troubling trend of employers asking job candidates to share their Facebook passwords. Savvy job hunters (and smart online citizens) are diligent about setting their privacy settings and controlling what information is public, and which stays private.  Some employers want to see what they are missing. Here's why it's an incredibly bad idea to open this particular can of digital worms.

Why Employers Shouldn’t Ask

First of all, it’s a violation of Facebook’s terms of service to collect other users’ information without Facebook’s permission (which they have already explicitly stated that you don’t have). 

More important, if a job seeker has done his or her due diligence about keeping certain information private, they've probably done it for a reason—if only because they don't want to share their wedding photos or weekend plans with the masses.

If you, as a prospective employer pry into that secured space, then you might inadvertently discover that a candidate is a member of a protected class (based on religion, sexual orientation, race, disability, etc.). Any hiring decision you make based on that information can make you liable to legal action. And even if you know that information had no bearing in your decision, the job candidate might not believe you and take action anyway.

Why Candidates Shouldn’t Tell

Technically, it’s a violation of Facebook’s terms of service to share your password, but we all know that's not the real issue.

If employers ask for your social media login once, they're implicity telling you that they don't trust your "public" self and feel that they should have intimate knowledge of your private affairs. In very specialized cases, say, if you are seeking security clearance from the government, then that level of scrutiny is appropriate and necessary. But in most cases, you should be awfully troubled by an employer who needs that level of access to your private life.

If you think about it, a company that expects you to share your Facebook password is likely not the kind of company you'd want to work with. Do yourself a favor and politely end the interview after the question has been asked.

Why CDG Will Never Ask (and will be really disappointed if you did tell)

At CDG, we will never ask for your private passwords. And sharing them shows an appalling lack of understanding of password security. (Frankly, we’d wonder what other information you’d be comfortable sharing with others.)  Are we going to check your public social media profiles? You bet we are. Because we would much rather see you demonstrate a good understanding of privacy settings—and good judgement about what kind of information to share publically—than ask for your personal information.