“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. Read the full story
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.
After you’re done LOL’ing at the thought that Myspace could actually make a comeback, you should check out the video below.
While I still don’t think they will reclaim their spot as the leading social network, I do have to commend them on their efforts. The interface is aesthetically pleasing and resembles a few mobile magazine, blog, and newspaper interfaces (Ex: Flipboard, Pulse).
You’ll notice at the beginning of the video that Myspace deliberately shows that it can be connected to Facebook and Twitter to find those same friends on Myspace. They’ve also channeled their inner Pinterest with a photo-heavy display. Staying true to themselves, they focus most of their features around music. I actually really like the idea of having a playlist alongside with the photo albums. It creates a sort of soundtrack to your life.
Check out the video below of the “new” Myspace and let us know what you think. Make it full-screen for the full effect.
We are thrilled to announce our new partnership with Merlo on Maple, an authentic Italian restaurant that serves up classic Bolognese cuisine. A quick Google search of Merlo reveals fantastic reviews across the board, with reviewers who cite an atmosphere that rivals the food as the reason for the praise.
At Demi & Cooper, we’ll be handling the construction of the new Merlo website and we’ll be building the restaurant’s social media presence. Look for a case study on the new website in the near future, but for now, here’s an excerpt describing what makes Merlo on Maple so special to those looking for authentic Italian food in Chicago.
“Her grandmother’s recipe book is the reason Chef Silvia was able to duplicate Bolognese Italian food in the city of Chicago. Her grandmother openly shared her recipes with other ladies in the Bologna, and they in turn shared theirs. This warm and collaborative process was passed down to Silvia, and it’s why she’s so happy to share her authentic Italian food with Chicago’s patrons.”
Hiroshi Mikitani is a self-made billionaire in the world of online retail (he is CEO of Rakuten, which is often termed the Amazon of Japan), and he recently was a part of a $100 million round of funding for Pinterest, the growing social media sharing site.
Forbes has an in-depth interview with Mikitani that is filled with his perspective on Pinterest and why it’s was so attractive to him. A portion is excerpted below, but I’d encourage you to read the whole Forbes interview when you have some free time. It’s quite Pinteresting.
“Pinterest is not that popular in Japan yet, but through my network, from the early stages I knew about Pinterest. I have been following them, I use it, and started to realize this is a totally different social media. It’s difficult to generalize social media. Pinterest and Facebook are very different.”
The 2012 Summer Olympics will be a bit different than in past years. Since the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the number of people that have access to the internet has increased by over 50%, from 1.5 to 2.3 billion according to the International Telecommunication Union. That’s a third of the global population.
Fittingly, the 2012 games in London have been dubbed the World’s First “Social Games.” Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube will be some of the biggest players in this social media trend, but also be on the lookout for content flooding Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, and Foursquare. With all the hype of the digitally focused games, here are we listed 7 places you can use to keep up with the chatter.
1. The Olympic Athlete’s Hub
This site will let you search for any athlete’s name, team, sport, discipline or event and find where to “follow” or “like” that result and has a news feed that compiles both Twitter and Facebook posts into one stream.
2. SportRightNow
You can find all the best Olympics news from the internet in one place organized by website sources, sports, and teams whether the news is from teams, journalists, media, fans or athletes. Also has the top hashtags being used on Twitter which is a bonus.
3. London 2012 Youtube Account
Not only will it be posting behind the scene footage from the games, exclusive interviews with athletes, and amazing replays, it also has links to the Official Website, Twitter and Facebook account of the 2012 Olympic Games.
4. Sociagility: The London 2012 Social Scoreboard
For the marketing buffs on the internet this site will be tracking the social media performance of the Olympics sponsors. The score is based on some highly complicated algorithms that look at brands popularity, engagement, receptiveness, reach, and trust.
5. London Join In App
This App for Apple and Android will help Olympic enthusiasts follow the travels of the torch and the location of events happening in London. It is made to help people in London, but also anyone who cannot make it to feel as close as possible to the games.
7. NBC Olympics Apps and Website
NBC will have full live screening of every Olympic event online but will also include two different Apps for people to enjoy. The first App is the NBC Olympics App where users will be able to do many of the same things as the London App’s but within a NBC-made App. The second App is the NBC Olympics “Live Extra” App where you can watch live video streams and full replays of every event.
The Olympics are always exciting, but with the recent growth of the internet and social media the competing nations will be closer together than ever before.
With mon.ki, a new Chrome web extension, you can stop sifting through Twitter and other social networks to see what people have to say. It serves as a “social compass,” allowing you to see what people on Twitter are saying about a website you’re on or article you’re reading, all in one browser.
Stop switching from page to page. Stop spending your time searching for relevant keywords and tweets. Optimize your time and let mon.ki do the work for you. It takes topics, names and other information from the web page you’re viewing, searches social networks and then provides you with relevant Twitter profiles, tweets, and keywords. Mon.ki is in private beta and currently only supports Twitter, but they plan to expand to Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, MeetUp and more.
As businesses expand and reach larger audiences marketers are beginning to worry they are losing their “small town” feel, becoming corporate giants that leave customers out of the loop.
Wal-Mart is launching local Facebook pages for each of their physical stores, hoping to achieve the community feeling and increase their interaction with Facebook users. Each of Wal-Mart’s social-local pages will be monitored by social media trained employees. These new pages will allow Wal-Mart to get involved in local communities, respond to feedback, post community events, and tailor each Wal-Mart’s Facebook to the needs of the customers in that area.
And although social-local pages require greater coordination, individualization, and attention, other corporations are following in Wal-Mart’s footsteps. Gyms and other retailers have hopped on board the social-local approach.
The advantages to social-local pages are valuable for increasing customer interaction within a localized area, and customers get the opportunity to interact with a big company while knowing the information is relevant and their voice is being heard.
Frustrated with Twitter? Join the ever-growing club. You’re pumping out great content day in and day out, and it’s just not getting noticed. What’s the deal? Well, instead of keeping your head down and plowing forward, stop and look around you. What do you see? First:
You’re too worried about clicks. Twitter is a place people go to ingest 140 characters of information quickly. Many users flat-out ignore links included in tweets. Why? Battery life, for one thing. Clicking a link in the Twitter app of a smartphone loads the landing page on your suddenly-operational web browser, further taxing that poor piece of mobile technology.
And don’t even get me started on attention spans. In the time it took me to write this sentence, I checked my fantasy baseball lineup for today, sent an email, and tried to get “Call Me Maybe” out of my head. That song is infuriating. The point is, 140 characters is more than enough to read for quite a few people in the Twitterverse.
So what to do? Focus on making those 140 characters the best they can be. Maybe a link is unnecessary from time to time. Be funny. Be honest. Be helpful. And to do that, you’ll have to realize something:
You’re not having conversations. How often do you reply to people? Chances are it’s not enough. How about retweets? Again, probably not enough. This is an easy pattern to fall into. As the task list piles up, neglecting Twitter is a natural response. And when you do remember the account, it’s all too simple to rush a tweet just to get something out there. Next time you’re about to fall into that pattern, take 5 minutes to get a conversation going. Just 5 minutes. Listeners are hugely valuable on Twitter. There aren’t many out there.
Let’s use healthcare as an example. Is one of the people you’re following complaining about a headache this morning? Give him this article. Did you just laugh out loud at a tweet? RT that noise. Did you just read a fascinating sentence and share it with a friend? Again, RT. Show some love. The Golden Rule applies in the Twitterverse, too. Once you loosen up a bit, you may find your account is heading in a great direction. But in order to loosen up, we should probably tell you:
You’re taking your account too seriously. Tweets scheduled months in advance. Great tweets ignored because they didn’t come from your brand. No conversation with the commoners.
If you’re not going to change these bad habits, you’re wasting your time with Twitter. It’s an organic, up-to-the-minute summation of our world, and there’s a place for anyone and any brand that’s willing to converse, help, and show a sense of humor. If you’re not up for that, your time and money are better spent elsewhere.
This may sound like an odd question, but you’ll understand after seeing this new campaign from O.B. Tampons. Admittedly, I am not in their target market, so my opinion matters little if at all. But I am very interested in knowing how women feel about the delivery of this message.
To be clear, the fact that O.B. Tampons has a “green” angle in their advertising is great. It’s unique. It’s beneficial to not only the buyer, but to all of us. Even a guy like me can appreciate that. But I think they’ve gone a little overboard here in an effort to go viral. They forgot that just because you can do or say something, doesn’t mean you should. And if you’re not sure or if you have any doubt, do it in a small way first to see the reaction. Well, O.B. either was sure and had no doubt, or they are closing their eyes and hoping for the best as they’ve gone all out — long form video, Facebook page, links to petitions, etc. We’ll probably see some print ads too.
This video starts out nicely, with a beautiful ocean shot that has us all going “ahhh”. Right when you start to feel like it’s heading toward a standard “save the world” pitch, it switches gears — completely. While I wouldn’t say I was uncomfortable watching this spot, I would say that I was close enough to uncomfortable to be distracted from the point. The main selling proposition was a minor player, an after thought. And that’s a shame, because a message like that deserves to be front and center.
