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.

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.

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.

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.

When my husband and I recently visited Galena, IL to attend a wedding, we decided to make a weekend of it. I had always wanted to go, and restaurants and shopping is our thing. On the way into town, we checked our reliable, go-to source for which restaurants to check out—Yelp. I am price-conscious, but on Yelp, I sort by ratings first. Armed with a top 3 list, we walked into town to find a place to eat. The reviews were right on—my husband got the best burger he’s ever had, and I downed a to-die-for peanut butter, chocolate, caramel malt.

The conclusion—Yelp works. A recent article in the Economic Journal claims that an extra half star rating on Yelp boosts business at peak times by 19%. And it doesn’t take much for a rating on Yelp to jump a half of a star. Because Yelp rounds up to the nearest half star, often as little as 5 additional positive reviews can improve the restaurants rating by a half of a star.

So what does this mean for businesses? It does not mean they should create five Yelp accounts to write 5-star reviews for their restaurant. Yelp has created a sophisticated filter to keep fake or biased reviews off of the site, making it a reliable and trusted source for patrons. And this filter will render any such attempts useless.

Yelp warns against such practices and I am witness that they mean what they say. It will not work. My auto asked their Facebook fans to review them on Yelp or Facebook, with the incentive to be entered into a drawing for a $100 Amazon Gift Card. They didn’t request positive reviews, but clearly if you followed them on Facebook you were a fan. I left a review, but I had to create a Yelp account to do so. I had been meaning to create an account anyway, and I meant every word of my positive review, but today I checked, and my review does not show up on Yelp. Their filter believes it is fake, likely because I have only written one  review, and because they jumped from having only 4 reviews on Yelp to around 10 the day of the Amazon gift card giveaway. They currently only have 5 reviews—Yelp is filtering out more than just mine.

Here are a few easy ways we recommend improving your Yelp listing to generate more authentic positive reviews (and possibly to bring more people into your business). Some are straight from Yelp’s own recommendations, and a few are our own thoughts:

1. Claim your business page. Unlock your business’s page here. That gives you the freedom to control some of your listing information, add photos, and track stats.
2. Put a link to your Yelp page on your website. Make it easy for people who are interested in you and familiar with Yelp to find your Yelp listing. Include a link to your Yelp listing on your website. This will help people who are already on Yelp to find you there, and it may make them more likely to leave a review. (Remember the issue Yelp had with my review of my auto shop—I only had one review, so they thought it was not sincere. Helping the people who know Yelp to find you there gives you more authentic reviews that are likely to stick.) See an example of two Yelp links on our client Merlo on Maple’s website. One is in the upper right next to the Facebook and Twitter icons, and the other is in the right sidebar.
3. Share your Yelp page with fans. In the same spirit as the above suggestion, share your Yelp on your Facebook and Twitter account occasionally. People who are active on social media are more likely to also be active on Yelp. Share quotes from positive reviews—this helps share positive experiences and expands the audience of great Yelp testimonials.
4. Share special offers on Yelp. Yelp occasionally sends emails to people based on their location. The emails include specials and offers, recommending businesses in the user’s area. This free services helps Yelp users find you—and makes them likely try you and—remember, they are Yelp users—so they are more likely to leave a review if they are brought in by a special offer.
5. Respond to negative reviews. If you can politely explain or respond to negative reviews, do so. Acknowledge what went wrong. Clarify anything that is incorrect. Thank them for their comment, and apologize when necessary. Invite negative reviewers to come back in and try you out again. A sincere, public response that is diplomatic will go a long way to mellowing a harsh review.
6. Focus on customer service—be helpful, nice, and friendly. According to a Mashable article, Yelp’s research shows that if a customer praises “customer service”, they are more than five times more likely to leave a 5 star review, rather than a 1 star review. And almost 70 percent who complain about customer service give a 1 star review. Yelp shares this word cloud of words from positive reviews.

For more social media tips, join our eList.

One of my favorite gifts that we’ve gotten for our almost 3 year old son since he was born is his Leaptop, a child-sized laptop that knows his name, spells it, and sings songs about it (W! chachachacha A! chachachacha L! chachachacha L! chachachacha Y! chachachacha, Wally!) He loves it too—he has a special dance that involves running in place and throwing his hands back and forth just for this song.

The Leaptop also has “email” messages programmed into it from a few aunts and cousins, and he plays those over and over. “You have an email from, Cousin Grady!” Even though this is the same message that has been in the laptop for the 2 years that we’ve had it, he still shouts, “Cousin Grady!” every time he presses the button and gets the notification. I am now considering opening up a “Maily” account for him, so he can receive actual email messages to his own account from senders that I approve of.

It’s no secret that our kids are growing up in a new world, technology wise, compared to our generation. Imagine how old we will seem when we tell them that we were in elementary school when the first Nintendo came out. The World Wide Web was born 21 years ago this week (on August 6, 1991)—I was just about to start middle school. (This means those that are graduating college at the end of this schoolyear and entering the workforce never knew a world without the Web.) We were in high school and college when email started to become popular, and a cell phone was still considered a luxury during those years. We will be ancient in our kids’ eyes.

And now the world has changed. My son has a laptop. He spends an hour every morning playing learning games on his dad’s iPad. And I am considering buying this Fisher Price iPhone teether for my 4 month old daughter.

And while this world of technology might seem scary, and we might debate all sorts of things about “kids these days” and “when I was young,” some of what this technology-driven world offers turns out to be pretty cool. Thanks to a half hour every morning on this Elmo ABC app, my son, who is too impatient still to sit for any teaching moments, knows his ABCs. (As an added bonus, this gives my husband the chance to wake up, has his coffee, and enjoy his exercises whine and tantrum free.)

Because he was learning so much on the iPad, we have started to take advantage of MomsWithApps.com Free App Fridays, where tons of educational apps for toddlers are available at no cost. I am all for the iPad tutor, and I wish they had it when I was a todder. And 77% of parents would agree with me—in a recent study, 77% of parents believed that using tablets was beneficial for their children and the thought the gadgets helped develop creativity.

A NY Times column by David Pogue ruminates on whether its fair to say that all electronics are bad for kids, especially considering educational and creative apps like the ones I just talked about. He says in the TV debate, we make exceptions for Sesame Street and other such shows. Why not for tablet apps? I’d add that besides promoting education and creativity, tablets offer the unique benefit of helping toddlers and kids with their fine motor skills. This evidenced by the fact that my  occupational therapist sister-in-law is the one who told me about MomsWithApps. She regularly uses her iPad in her work with kids.

Yes, the Interwebs is all grown up, and our kids are the first generation who will be researched on the effect of too much or too little technology. I, for one, will stay on the “feel good about it” side of the fence. Especially after my son, who after countless Sesame Street episodes and books about numbers still doesn’t recognize a “5″ by sight, on a recent shopping trip, said, “K-O-H-L-S” when we pulled up to the store. I think it’s time for us to download a numbers app, so he can help me count to 21, and wish the World Wide Web a happy birthday! Thanks for getting us to the point where my son can have fun learning his letters. Here’s to more exciting tech developments in the future. Have a drink for me! Cheers!

As marketing continues to evolve from one platform to another it’s no surprise that companies’ budgets are also changing.  An online marketing presence is crucial these days, but with the giant increase in smartphones and mobile web browsing the importance of mobile marketing has even greater significance.

70% of marketers are planning to increase their mobile budgets for 2013, for mobile websites, search, advertisements, or apps.  This year’s mobile ad spending is estimated to be around 2.6 billion dollars.  According to Scott Forshay, mobile and emerging technology strategist, “Of that $2.6 billion spent, $2.5 [billion] of that was probably wasted.”

Scott is not implying that mobile marketing is a waste of money, but rather that there are smarter ways to allocate the funds.  Mobile marketing faces the challenge of an on-the-go audience that’s is looking for timely and contextually relevant information.

Although an increased budget is a good way to increase mobile presence, doing research and getting active can be a great way to increase your mobile marketing results.

Before your mobile budget gets increased here are a few simple tips to make your mobile marketing more effective and establish your mobile marketing needs!

1. Know your audience and where they are coming from. Is your audience search driven or are they coming from referral sites and page shares?
2. Why are people coming to your mobile site? Users ultimately have a goal or objective with every page they visit, whether it’s to research, purchase a product, chat about topics with fellow users, or fix a problem, there is a motive.  The more your mobile site can cater to the audience’s need, the more effective it will be.
3. Should your mobile site differ from your desktop version? Some websites offer the same site, scrunched to a 4” screen to serve the user’s purpose.  But knowing the user may be on-the-go and looking for a quick fix, does this change the information or features your site should have?
4. Is your mobile app necessary? Mobile budgets can go through the roof when app development and upkeep is involved.  Can the overall goal of your app be fulfilled in a mobile site?  Or on the other hand, is your site not offering enough and would an app be beneficial to your audience and brand?

Are you in need of a mobile site? We’re ready to build yours! Check out some of our past work here.

We’re sure this has happened to you—you are browsing a retail site and considering making a purchase. For example’s sake, let’s say you are looking for a new hat. You have found one you think you like at Hats R Us, but you want to wait until tomorrow to make your final decision so you leave the site. Then, you move on to check the news on your favorite news site. And behold—a Hats R Us ad shows up on the front page. The same thing happens later in the day when you visit a completely different site to check the weather. Is this a sign that you and the hat are meant to be? Or is this just smart marketing?

And this can even work more specifically. Let’s say in the above example, you were looking for a cowboy hat for that square dance you were planning to attend. You spent a lot of time on Hats R Us in the Western section—and so all the ads that show up are specifically cowboy themed. The Hats R Us truly has your number, and after seeing the ads multiple times, you are more likely to remember and revisit their site when it comes time to make your purchase.

We call this an orchestrated fate for you and the hat. And whether you are a retail vendor, looking to increase appointments or registrations, building an eList, or simply branding, this gentle nudging of people who have visited your site is something we can help you accomplish.

Let’s say you are a hospital, and you have a lot of visitors to the cardiology section of your website. Visitors come, browse for information, but don’t always fill out eList sign up forms, make appointments, or take an action. You don’t have to end your visibility with them when they leave your site. We can help you program your site pages so that if a visitor has been to those pages, when they are browsing other sites your ads recognize that this person has been to your site, and are more likely to display. When it comes time to make an appointment, you are more likely to come to mind—or it’s possible that seeing your ad will push them to revisit and take a next step.

If you want to get into the nitty gritty of how we accomplish this, here are the basics: within your website, we tag pages with a special code. Then we program your ads to recognize that code even after you leave the site. We can tag your entire site, or specific pages within your site to make the ads more targeted (like in the cowboy hat and cardiology examples above).

This benefits you, since your relationship with the consumer doesn’t have to end when they leave your site. And your consumers are happy, since they know you know what they want. And when their cowboy hat arrives, they can be pleased that fate brought them together.

Google likes to have a dog in every fight and the music player competition is no different. There is currently a Google Music Beta which allows you to upload 20,000 songs from your personal collection. They’ve also implemented a lot of features to make sure your music is available to you everywhere. There rumored music download service is also on the verge of being released.

Stiff competition from powerhouses like iTunes, Pandora, and Amazon will make it hard for Google Music to make their mark. Google also must compete with the up-and-comer Spotify, which has integrated itself well with Facebook and has quickly become a Demi & Cooper favorite.

The video below explains what Google Music is all about.

I’ve heard a lot of people talking about the massive impact Steve Jobs has had on the computing world since the news spread over Twitter and Facebook about his passing. I haven’t heard many talk about the quantum impact he’s had on our world as a whole. I’ll explain.

Steve Jobs is a rare individual — rare on a Jeffersonian scale. His push to make computers simpler, cleaner and more efficient began with a design that included a monitor and CPU all-in-one. The stout little original Macintosh Classic, with it’s unique graphical user interface (GUI), was a completely different way of looking at how we interacted with computers and how they fit into our lives. I learned design on a Mac Classic before there was anyone who could teach me about it.

Of course Jobs has had an impact on how computers function. I believe his impact extends beyond that into how we function. He’s impacted how we interact with each other. How we access information. How we learn. And that’s where his impact begins to compound on itself and grow exponentially — in a word, his impact becomes quantum.

Jobs heads up Apple, a company which creates tools that creative people use to create other things. Most creatives design, build, educate and inspire others from the the drawing table that is our Apple computers. From writers to designers to architects to chemists — so many of us start on a common platform which for so long seemed a little rogue — like an outsider’s alternative choice and even a physical identity (are you a Mac or a PC?).

It may sounds obvious, but to me it’s quite profound. For a creative, a computer is like a violin. It can be an object of beauty by itself, but in the right hands becomes a tool to create something amazing. A feeling. A desire. Something that can last a moment (like a website) or something that can last forever (a concept that takes hold of our collective imagination).

Many of us are remembering Steve Jobs today. For me, the best way I can remember Steve Jobs is to keep creating and inspiring others. That’s quantum.