The Bootcamp was a learning experience for all involved.

Utah Business Magazine brought together 90 businesses at The Leonardo Museum on Wednesday, October 24 to help these businesses with their social media campaigns or to get them started on campaigns.  The local companies that attended ranged from small law firms to major corporations.  Everyone needs social media these days!

Social Media is the new buzz word in the business world with everyone Tweeting, Googling and Facebooking there is no wonder why businesses want to be involved with social media.  Speakers from top social media companies in Utah spoke to over two hundred attendees.

Presentations

• Josh Aston, Director of Online Marketing, Progrexion

Josh presented on the basics of Facebook for business.  You ask, “How is Facebook relevant to business?”  Well there are almost 1 billion Facebook users worldwide.  That means there are few people on it and you should probably make your business visible there.

• Chad Warren, Senior Manager of Product Marketing and Social Media, Adobe

Yes Adobe is involved with social media now.  The company that is most well known for .pdf documents is on the cutting edge of business analytics when it comes to social media.

• Evin Catlett, Social Media Director, Richter7

A skier by nature, Evin gave an impassioned presentation on how she gets more people to ski Park City Mountain Resort through engaging social media campaigns.  She posts a bunch of pictures of bottomless powder and 90-foot ski jumps.  That is what the people want to see!

• Craig Aramaki, Public Relations, Richter7

After managing damage control communications and national publicity efforts in Los Angeles Tim has decided his time is better spent in Salt Lake City.  Being a public relations guru Tim is well prepared to relate publicly to people through social media.

• Travis Ashby, Co-Owner and CEO, SoappBox and Oozle Media

Travis is not just a social media all-star; he is a social media superstar.  Running social media companies since 2007, he has been at the forefront of campaigning for companies nationwide about their products and services.  As driven as he is, sometimes he’s riddled with ADD, but his Facebook page will still have more fans than yours.

Twitter is not just for Chad Ochocinco to tweet “Child Please!” to 3.7 million people, it can also be used for the more useful things in life.  Ask any one of the above people and they will tell you social media marketing is a real advertising medium which yields real bottom line results.

Social Media Gives Your Business a Personality

Why would a small law firm have a YouTube account?  To give those uptight lawyer people a personality.  Social Media is a different professional medium than a commercial or a magazine print advertisement.  Social Media works because people enjoy using it.  They enjoy it because it relates to them and they can be a unique person with their own likes, dislikes, pictures, what they post, everything is about them.

Your business should utilize social media in the same way as the presenters lectured to the crowd.  Making a fun, relatable personality for your business can show a more personal side of who the people really are or what your company actually does on a daily basis.

Social Media offers a platform to show customers the lighter side of your business.  The office antics that go on at a law firm may be some of the best prank ideas to ever hit YouTube, lawyers should be able to think up some pretty good ones since they were college students twice as long as everyone else.

A Necessity to Your Business

The Social Media Bootcamp provided businesses with an informative give and take platform to become social media literate.  The implications of social media for the future are real in the business world with consumers talking about products and services and companies they liked, didn’t like.  The conversation about your business might be going on right now and you are not even aware of it.

By utilizing social media you are able to promote, talk about and show a lighter side of your business.  Show to your customers that your company has real people who are really good at what they do.  How else can you accomplish that than through social media?

How Do I Get In On This Goodness?

Utah Business Magazine is conducting the Socially Fit Challenge for any business in Utah.  It is a great way to either start a fan base for your business on social media or build brand awareness with even more fans.  Utah Business Magazine has already set up $10,000 worth of prizes for consumer participants too.  Get involved here.

Of women surveyed, 90 percent of them believed marketing companies simply did not understand them. Because women make the vast majority of purchase decisions, they are one of the best audiences to reach out to. Don’t let your company fall into the 90 percent, be a company that understands women so everyone benefits.

First, you need to know how women spend their time online. Here are the top six interests that women check out on the internet:

1. Apparel
2. Health
3. Family parenting
4. Food
5. Beauty/Fashion
6. Kids

By understanding what women are interested in, you can better appeal to them and attract attention to your product or service. Even if your company doesn’t directly deal with one of these categories, there are indirect ways to reach out to women by way of these channels.

Appealing to Women

Now that you know women’s interests, you can market to them. Say that you own a car company and you want more women to take notice to it online. You can offer free spa treatments with a purchase of a car or $100 gift cards to grocery or clothing stores. Or, alternatively, you can emphasize the quality of your cars in a blog especially dedicated to keeping children safe. Find a way to incorporate women’s online interests in your outreach.

Women and Social Networking

Between emails, Twitter, Facebook, and smartphones, you have innumerable places to reach out to your customers, especially the women, given that 56 percent of social media users are women. Here are some ways to market to women through the marketing gold mine of social media.

These are only a few of suggestions for methods of reaching out to the women who purchase your products and services. There are also email-marketing strategies that work as well.

Reach Out to the Vocal Public

Thousands of new blog posts are created each day, and currently there are more than 3.9 million women with children who have blogs. Reach out to the women who speak out about your companies services. Don’t get left in the internet marketing dust! Be proactive about including women in your advertising audience.

For all your internet marketing questions and needs, contact Oozle Media, the marketing experts!

-Kassandra Konecny

Listen, there’s no reason to keep shouting at your employees for their “incompetence” or “lack of passion.”

They’re not to blame for your business setbacks, especially if you aren’t monitoring what’s being said about your company in the social media arena.

You know, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (aka a free and global sounding board system for over 1 billion subscribers combined). Ever heard of them?

The infamous Domino’s Pizza scandal:

A prime example of why social media monitoring is crucial for companies is the 2009 Domino’s Pizza scandal.  Here’s a quick recap:

• What happened? Two Domino’s employees recorded themselves engaging in really gross health department violations while on the clock.  The cringe-worthy acts were posted on YouTube and were quickly viewed by millions of concerned consumers.  
• Domino’s response: Not wanting to flame a rapidly burning fire, Domino’s ignored the situation for several days.  However, without any damage control the buzz continued to escalate. Eventually, Domino’s started a Twitter account and published an apology video on YouTube.  But, by then it was too late.
• What was the result? Domino’s lost 10% of its value in one week costing shareholders millions of dollars.  Oh, and the two employees faced criminal charges.  The follow up investigations revealed that the store owner was a sex offender.  This revelation dragged the story out even further, causing even more loss of credibility to the Domino’s brand.

Oozle Media Case Study: Andrew Clark vs. Del Monte’s Very Cherry Fruit Cocktail

The Domino’s Pizza scandal is unfortunate, but it didn’t have to get as nasty as it did. If you take one thing from this blog post let it be this: the key to successful social media monitoring is to respond immediately. By doing this you can turn a complaint into an opportunity, instead of a setback.  Here’s a perfect example:

What happened? On April 12^th, Oozle’s Project Manager, Andrew Clark, decided to deviate from his usual routine and try Del Monte’s Very Cherry fruit cocktail (as opposed to their regular fruit cocktail).  He was hoping for a noticeable cherry influx, but was disappointed when he found only 7 cherries in his 14.5 oz. can. In his mind, 7 cherries did not constitute a “Very Cherry” experience. So, Andrew decided to tweet about it:

Less than two hours later, Del Monte replied:

What was the result? Andrew called Brett and was given an apology on behalf of Del Monte for the dissatisfaction, and then was offered a handful of coupons in order to rectify the situation.  No, Del Monte didn’t promise to begin adding more cherries to their Very Cherry product, but this wasn’t necessary in order to maintain customer satisfaction.

5 important social media monitoring tools:

I’m sure you get the point by now business owners, so I won’t reiterate it.  You can simply begin by monitoring all social media networks with any of the following tools: Bit.ly, SocialMention, Addict-o-matic, TweetReach or TweetStats. These tools work differently, but all will provide a way to identify whenever your brand is mentioned in various social media networks.

Don’t Be a Stubborn Mule When It Comes to Social Media

(We refrained from swearing here because we know how sensitive some of you are and we didn’t want to get red flagged by Google.)  We are your Utah social media experts.  GET OOZLED TODAY!

Well, as wonderful as free advertising sounds attempting a successful Social Media campaign for your business can be tricky, and an enormous waste of time without an effective strategy in mind.  So what do you do?

Follow these useful tips and you’ll be able to establish an effective social media campaign in no time:

1. Be aware that fans follow a brand online for four main reasons:  special offers, the chance to voice their opinion, entertainment, and latest news.
2. Offering discounts and contests opportunities are two GREAT ways to build a loyal and excited fan base.
3. The majority of online fans are generated at the recommendation of other fans.
4. The most successful Facebook pages have a high percentage of owner-generated content which includes images, text, video, and external links.
5. Use feedback from consumers to inspire new ideas.
6. The most important part of social media content is the Call to Action.  However, enticing consumers to try out your products/services should never be the main topic of your tweets/updates. The Call to Action should be creative and strategic, and keep in mind that the soft sale approach is always more effective.
7. Have your fans fill out polls that ask them to answer fun and informative questions. This will inspire interaction and allow your fans the opportunity to voice themselves.  They will love you for this!
8. Don’t post too often or too little. Experts say that businesses should tweet/update 2-3 times a day. Publishing too often is one of the main reasons fans unsubscribe.
9. Important: ensure your Social Media content is viewable on mobile devices. This is because a wide range of social media users access their accounts via their cell phone.
10. The most popular Facebook pages (with more than 1 million fans) have 60 times more fan-generated content than the average Facebook page.
11. Boring content has NEVER generated fans and NEVER will.
12. Maintain a consistent look for your website and social media pages in both content and design. This will ensure your brand is easily identifiable.
13. Respond to a few comments every day in order to let your consumers know you’re paying attention to them.
14. Posts should always provide useful information and resources, and inspire conversation.
15. Since social media is constantly evolving you will constantly want to evaluate your performance and your strategy in order to establish true ROI.

It’s all about ROI (return on investment).

No matter what type of advertising you’re into it’s all about establishing true ROI.  At Oozle Media, we are your ROI and Utah Social Media experts. It’s time to eliminate your random ‘shooting from the hip’ marketing habits and GET OOZLED TODAY!