Every business has competitors with more Facebook followers. After having clients approach us for creative ways to outpace their competitors on Facebook, we decided to create an app that would help them stand out from the rest. We are excited to finally announce the release of an exciting new app, Hostile Takeover, that allows businesses to anonymously take over their competitor’s Facebook accounts, and ultimately drive business away from competitors and to their own pages.

Hostile Takeover allows a user, in just a few clicks, to become an admin on any business account Facebook page. Once you are an admin, posts are up to your discretion. The takeover is completely anonymous, and other admins on the account are automatically boxed out. This allows you to take over the account until the competitor alerts Facebook to the takeover. “Most Hostile Takeovers will last up to 24 hours before Facebook can get the account straightened back out, which has proven to be enough time to do the necessary damage,” says Falls, President of DC Interactive Group.

You can also fully delete the competitor’s account. This is a good option if you want to be in and out, with no mess. This option also takes the competitor longer to recover the account, if they are able to at all.

For a limited time, Hostile Takeover is free for the first Takeover. Then the cost is $100 per Competitor.

Here are a few reviews from recent Hostile Takeover Users:

“We are a community hospital with a larger competitor a few miles away. Our Hostile Takeover allowed us to convince their followers that they had an outbreak of a rare disease and were under quarantine. That day our patient volume grew by 40 percent!”

“As a new restaurant, we were having trouble garnering business, likely due to repeat customers at nearby restaurants. After our Hostile Takeover of a few of their Facebook accounts, where we changed their hours to show they were closed on Fridays, our Friday night business has been booming! And the best part is, most of them didn’t even notice, so they are still shown as closed on Friday!”

As for what’s next, we may have a Twitter Hostile Takeover in the works. “People have asked us about the recent Burger King Twitter hack. We aren’t going to take credit, “says Falls. “We’ll just say, ‘We know a guy.’”

Some have questioned the ethics of a Hostile Takeover. To that, Falls simply responds: April Fool’s! If you have gotten this far without realizing this was an April Fool’s joke, we’ll just say, “Come on, people!” In all seriousness, though, we have created some cool apps for our clients that aren’t in any way questionable. Check out our branded ICE App for hospitals here, or sign up for the launch of our new Gluten free restaurant review app.

“Social media is a great way to present consumer-friendly health topics endorsed by local physicians,” said Tonya Lucchetti-Hudson, Director of Marketing and Public Relations at Sherman Health. “Our Healthy Heart campaign used interactive social media tools to educate patients on the importance of heart disease prevention and screenings. I feel it was extremely effective, and we are taking this same approach with other diseases.”

Goal

In recognition of Heart Month, Sherman Health came to us wanting one measurable outcome when the month was done: more Healthy Heart CT Scan signups in February 2013 than they had in February 2012. Continue Reading

It’s been said that it takes 10,000 hours of working on something to become an expert. Given a 40-hour work week, that translates to 4.8 years to become an expert at something. 4.8 years of working on something, exclusively, from 9-5 and you can call yourself an expert.

Let’s look at the ages of the most popular social media marketing platforms for businesses:

• Facebook: 2005 (8 years ago), Facebook Pages: 2009 (4 years ago)
• Twitter: 2006 (7 years ago)
• YouTube: 2005 (8 years ago)
• Linked In: 2002 (13 years ago. Holy smokes, they are the oldest?!?!)

Given the newness of it all, on most of these sites, you would have to work half of your time (20 hours a week) from the start to be able to claim expertise. And Facebook Pages experts who work 40 hours a week can’t even exist until next year. Plus, given how often social media changes and how many new technology tools are released daily, to use it expertly requires focused attention on only social media, all the time.

Now let’s talk about who is working on your company’s social media marketing. No one can argue the fact that social media is vital to modern marketing (well, some can argue, but they would be wrong most of the time). A new study put together by Ragan and Nasdaq, “Structuring a Social Media Team“, takes a close look at how companies handle social media efforts. In the study, they were asked if anyone works exclusively on social media. You’ll see in the graphic that a whopping 65% are assigned to take care of social media, in addition to all other tasks required by their job.

We can only assume this leads to a lot of dabbling in social media. A post on Facebook and Twitter here, a video there. Likely a lackluster effort, with no great content, no help to a company’s brand, and certainly no time to measure results. In fact, in the survey, people were asked what kept them from measuring social media. You’ll see that most cite lack of time and manpower far ahead of a lack of money. Shortly after, people don’t know what tools to use or are overwhelmed.

Wouldn’t you be overwhelmed? You are being asked to take part in social media—to lead your company’s brand and converse with consumers in this new realm of marketing, but you are asked to do it on top of everything else you have been working on. And I would guess the roadblocks to measuring social media would closely match up with the roadblocks to participating in social media effectively. You don’t have time to do more than a few posts a day, you don’t have enough people who know what they are doing, and you are overwhelmed.

This is where outsourcing social media to the experts makes sense. You might worry about “sending it away.” Aren’t you giving up too much control and placing your brand—conversations, comments, your voice—in someone else’s hands? But I can speak from the side of someone who has taken on our client’s social marketing. We do not see ourselves as someone else. Once you entrust us as your social media partners, we become a part of your marketing team. We take great care understanding your brand, crafting your voice (with your help), and presenting you in the most professional way. We work with an approval level you are comfortable with, and most of the time our clients enjoy the freedom of giving us the reins once they see how much we understand and care about them.

And here’s where the big benefit comes in—we are experts. We do this every day, and on top of our expertise that comes from doing, we spend a good deal of time each week researching the latest tech tools to stay ahead of the game and meeting to brainstorm new and inventive things we can do for our clients.

According to the report, 22% of companies plan to hire people to help with social media in 2013 (with 78% responding no). It is great to see more companies putting budget toward social media. But hiring an entry level social media strategist does have its issues. Candidates likely won’t come with our expertise, our power of team-thinking, and our guarantee to be around after a year without moving on to another position.

Who handles your social media? Could you use some help? Ask us more about how we can become a part of your team.

We love to talk about our ICE App. Partly because we created it, but mostly because of how successful it has been. Our app has the potential to save every downloader’s life. Just how many people have downloaded our In Case of Emergency app? Check out the case study on our DC Interactive Group website.

http://www.dcinteractivegroup.com/category/case-studies/

No business likes to see a bad review about its products or services posted online.  Some go so far as to attempt to hire us to “fix it”.  When we tell the business owner that we cannot remove the post, but that we can help the business generate the needed “good” reviews to outweigh the bad one, the response is often confusion.

“What good will that do?  The nasty comment is still there for everyone to see” said one potential client who, rather than opting for our approach, instead sought the services of lawyers a few days later. Six months and about $10,000 later (not to mention the stress he endured), the post still lives.  Ah, if only he would have seen the negative comment as a forced opportunity.

My last comment before he left my office that day was simple.  I told him that you cannot remove negative comments, but you can make negative comments work for you.  All you have to do is show future customers how much you care for every customer, even those who complain, by engaging in the conversation and offering practical solutions.  This works in every situation, except one:  when the negative poster is looking more for revenge than a solution.  In that case, you show future customers how insane the writer is by professionally and sincerely offering every solution you can think of, while allowing the negative poster to either ignore your help (which looks bad for the other person) or complain repeatedly while ignoring your solutions (usually with bad spelling and grammar).

Now our strategy has the court’s backing.  Several months ago, a Contractor succeeded in getting a lower court to issue an order to remove a negative post about his work and his company, claiming that the writer’s accusation that someone from his company stole jewelry was defamatory and harmful to his business.  But in a decision handed down today in Virginia, their Supreme Court ruled that negative Yelp and Angie’s List reviews about the Contractor’s work must be allowed to stay online while the Contractor’s defamation suit goes through the legal system.   According to the defense attorney, Paul Alan Levy, the decision means “members of the public will be able to review Jane Perez’s criticism and Dietz’s responses, and make up their own minds.”

Mr. Levy’s comment isn’t exactly true, since this whole argument has reached so many people that Yelp had to curb it.  But it’s also not one-sided anymore.  The Contractor, Christopher Dietz, has a Yelp page now with a few good reviews and two bad ones.  There are 65 reviews that have been blocked by Yelp, with most coming from far away states.  I’m sure these people weren’t customers.  Instead they were looking to bash a man who put his company (and likely his ego) ahead of his customers.  Nobody likes that — especially when it shows up in the social media world.

The point?  You cannot remove negative posts, and it’s not even worth trying.  They may hurt, but we all know some people are crazy, and extremely hard to please.  Instead, play the game fairly.  Answer the negative posts, professionally, knowing that those who are reading it are thinking about being your customer.  See it as an opportunity to show the general public (who is, for the most part, very fair) that you are fair.  Get your satisfied customers to write their own glowing, honest, reviews.

All of this will help your business in the face of negativity.  And it will certainly soothe your ego.

If you’re in marketing, or if your idea of a good time is following privacy issues beyond just those associated with Facebook and Instagram, you’ve certainly heard the phrase “remarketing” in 2012.  From a marketing perspective, remarketing is a dream.  It’s the web world’s automated equivalent of a salesperson getting the phone number of a prospect who visited the “store” in order to contact the person at a later date — except remarketing does not know anything about the person to whom the sales messages will be delivered, other than that the person had visited a coded website, and remarketing simply feeds ads to the prospects as they peruse various websites fed by Google ads.

In a nutshell, once someone visits your site, a code from your site is placed on the person’s browser that allows Google to feed your remarketing ads to the person at a schedule you create.  These can be pay-per-click ads, so it only cost you money if the person clicks on the ad.  Even better is that if, while on your site, the person does what you want him to do (ie purchases, signs up for a class, fills in a contact form, etc.), the remarketing code can be removed automatically.  The thought is, why spend money marketing to someone who just bought?  Then again, your remarketing dollars to that person can be spent on getting a testimonial from the buyer.  Pretty cool, huh?

Here’s Google’s webinar on remarketing.  It’s one hour long, but worth it if you want to understand how it works.

With the power of online search engines such as Google and Yahoo/Bing, it’s not uncommon for consumers to browse for a product or service without leaving the comfort of their home. While PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising is a great tool to help increase traffic to your website, what happens when visitors leave your site without signing up for the e-list, making an appointment, or answering another call to action?

One word: Remarketing. Your visibility doesn’t have to end when visitors leave your website. It will not only help you stay engaged with your target audience, but it will keep your product or service top of mind when they’re ready to buy.

Highland Woods, a Crown Community in Elgin, IL, is one of the best selling communities in Chicago’s northwest suburbs. In an effort to help Highland Woods remain a best selling community, we took their online visibility a step further with remarketing.

Click over to dcinteractivegroup.com to read the full case study.

Okay, here’s what happened. An eblast was sent for our client, Sherman Health. One of the stories in the weekly newsletter teased a great gluten free recipe for chocolate puddle cookies. Sounds freaking nummers, right? It is. You should bake these cookies and I will eat them for you.

Anyway, here’s what the eblast teaser looked like.

The eblast was written, reviewed, and sent in a swift and effective manner. Only one problem this time: the link to the story pointed people to an old article for a pumpkin butter recipe.

Curses!

Now, when a mistake like this is found, most people would correct it and send a recall eblast. But because we had the mistake link under our control, we were able to come to a different solution. Here’s what we added to the incorrect landing page.

In a nutshell, eblast mistakes (or any internet marketing mistakes) hurt and are panic-inducing. But if you can find a way to correct the issue honestly and have fun while doing it, it just might be even more effective than it would have been had you gotten everything right in the first place.

The testimonial, when done right, can work. People love a great personal story told by someone who will be universally loved. And what’s more lovable than a sweet, witty, honest 90-year-old who saved up to go skydiving? Add to it a clever story-telling method—cute kids lip syncing the story (oh goodness, those kids!), acting it out as she tells it, and you have a formula for success.

Hear Marian Barnett’s story below. I’ll be darned if you don’t love her by the end of it, and even start considering how you can save up to end up just like her.

This is a testimonial we love.

We have worked with every type of client. This includes those that like to have a tight grip on everything that is distributed, and prefer to be involved in the creation of every piece of marketing that is published—approving and editing piece after piece of content, requesting to have final approval of each blog post, banner ad, and tweet. And we have also worked with clients who give us the general idea and then hand over the reigns and say, “Have at it.”

We like to work with every client at their comfort level for control, since we understand that our work reflects not only the brand that we are creating social media content for, but also the individuals within each business who are responsible for working with us. If we do a good job, these individuals look good. We like when that happens.

When we start working as social media partners with a client who prefers a lot of control over what content is posted, we have noticed that often, after a while, they will let go of their tight grip a bit. We will get a good feel for the brand’s appropriate voice and topics of conversation, and the client will trust our judgement and knowledge of what will work for them. This not only frees up the time of the individuals responsible for us so they can work on other important responsibilities, but it often allows for more creative social media content and conversations. In other words, when the web marketing team is allowed to be creative and spontaneous, beautiful things can happen.

As an example of our work, take Sherman Hospital’s Movember and Stache Yourself campaign. In 2011, for Prostate Cancer Awareness month in November, we ran a mustache contest on Facebook, asking men to grow mustaches, take a picture, and then pictures were voted on by Facebook fans. This was all in honor of men’s health, and all related content (including blog posts about famous TV mustaches, etc.), reminded men to get their prostate checked. This year, because the client is the type to allow freedom and creativity, we have added a “Stache Yourself” campaign, where people can send in a picture of themselves and we will give them a custom photo-shopped mustache to use as a profile picture on social networking sites. This sort of fun marketing likely wouldn’t make it through the filter if it had to be approved by layers of authority, and even if it did, the lead time approvals required wouldn’t have allowed this addition to the campaign to happen.

Consider this example: @Oreo, who has 57,000 Twitter followers, tweeted “Ever bring your own Oreo cookies to the move theater?” and Shane Adams, the social media manager of @AMCTheatres, could have ignored this post. Or if he had to report to his superiors for approval, he may not even have given the post thought. Or if he had to report to legal, a response would have taken too long. Instead, in 8 minutes, he crafted one of the best RTs by a brand ever and let it fly:

Within a day, this 3 word reply had over 1,000 RTs. Their Twitter feed has grown by 13,000 followers since the reply and now has 149,000 followers. Oreo responded again with, Fair enough, @AMCTheatres, but don’t hate the player, hate the game. To which @AMCTheatres crafted another silly response:

The lesson? Have fun with your brand’s social media where it makes sense. But the larger lesson comes from Shane Adams’s blog regarding how he was able to come up with this brilliant piece of marketing:

“…Successes like this are not purely the result of being clever. Being given the latitude to react and respond is critical for a social media group within a brand. Trust matters. The trust that we have been given is an invaluable asset in instances like this. And I will continue to live up to that trust…why wouldn’t I? I am a representative of the brand (a brand that I am proud of), so why would I do anything that would harm the brand?”

And the same is true of us, when we’re acting as your marketing agency. We care about creating good work and a good image for you, because we know everything we put out reflects on us as well. If you let us, we will take good care of you and your brand. So have as much control as you would like, but also keep in mind that great trust can equal great creativity.