Category Archives: Twitter

Crystal Kostrivas

PR + Social Media Summit | Key Takeaways

Posted: by Filed under: Facebook, Social Media, Trends, Twitter

Last week, a group of Laughlin staff attended the daylong PR + Social Media Summit, which focused on the convergence of strategic communications and social media.

While I found the entire day to be insightful, a few of my favorite presentations included Chris Barger’s ‘From Planning to Execution, the Story Behind GM’s Social Media Success,’ Jess Berlin’s ‘From Cirque du Soleil to American Eagle Outfitters: A Social Media Comparison’ and Augie Ray’s Glimpse Into The Future of Social Media, which LC’s @SarahVanElzen wrote about here.

A few key takeaways:

  • Don’t feel like you have to come up with a really big idea. You often find that the simplest ideas take off + drive engagement. (via @AlKrueger)
  • Redefine “influence” – treat everyone as if they have thousands of followers on Twitter / friends on Facebook. You can have the most impact in the small communities. (via @CBarger)
  • Shift from “Big” to Local >> Less expensive, less national push, but more directly effective. (via @CBarger)
  • Listen more than you talk, answer more than you promote and above all provide value. (via @CBarger)
  • Make ALL your content searchable – but more importantly, shareable. (via @CBarger)
  • Unexpected happenings can become the best part of your social media campaign – leverage them. Example: American Eagle’s “Denim Song”  (via @JessBerlin)
  • GET TO KNOW THE PEOPLE THAT LOVE YOUR BRAND! *all caps is necessary (via @JessBerlin)
  • What can your brand offer that users didn’t already know? Offer your social communities exclusive content. (via @JessBerlin)
  • The sharing economy is about to explode. Old: they sell, you buy + own / New: they own, you rent / Future: you own + rent (via @AugieRay)
  • Be real. Advertising cannot save brands that are inauthentic. (via @AugieRay)

Want more? All of the speaker’s presentations are available on SlideShare. Check them out here.

Did you attend PRSMS last Tuesday? I’d love to hear your thoughts + key takeaways @ckostrivas

 

 

 

 

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Sarah Van Elzen

PRSMS Trending Topics and the Future of Social Media

Posted: by Filed under: Social Media, Trends, Twitter

If you were on Twitter this Tuesday, you likely saw at least one tweet with the hashtag #PRSMS. In fact, the hashtag, referring to the PR + Social Media Summit earned a local trending topic position for the day. According to Twitter, a trending topic identifies conversations that are immediately popular among multiple users.

Several @LaughlinOutLoud employees attended PRSMS, which brought together speakers, students and executives to discuss strategic communication and social media. Speakers included @GeorgeGSmithJr, @ThatPam, @CBarger, @The_SpinMD, @JessBerlin, @AlKrueger, @SaraMeaney and my favorite, @AugieRay.

While all the sessions were informative and thought provoking, Augie Ray’s discussion stood out. Not only did he throw out awesome stats, like people spend 1.3 million years on Facebook every month, but he also forecast the future of social media – a daring and intuitive characteristic I always admire. He refers to this prediction as “the sharing economy,” where your shopping, banking, medical and credit scores are transparent to the public. Ok, maybe not so far as banking information but the point is: as technology advances and consumption becomes more convenient, people will adapt. Just look to history (i.e., the first computer, cave drawings).

The examples he discussed referenced the Fast Company article about collaborative consumption, which suggests that access to goods and skills is more important than ownership. I’d say this is true since we already see several successful services with this characteristic: Craigslist, RelayRides, AirBnb. Now, here’s where the prediction comes in: the future of social media will be a convergence of social and mobile that caters to the ease of consumption.

Here’s how it works: picture yourself on a Sunday, meeting up with a friend for dinner. How do you decide where you go? Well, currently you can take out your phone, open up Yelp, AroundMe, UrbanSpoon, etc and find a place nearby. Augie suggests that this will continue to evolve. So now, picture this, it’s Sunday at 6PM, you take out your mobile device and it already knows that you haven’t eaten dinner. It will know who you are with, what kind of food they like and what restaurants in the vicinity can cater to both of your tastes.

Bam, collaborative consumption at your fingertips! Talk about convenience?! I’m ready for it world. Sign me up.

Feel free to check out more thoughts about the #PRSMS speakers here: @SarahVanElzen.

 

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Renee Haber

The Answer is YES. What’s the question?

Posted: by Filed under: Facebook, Social Media, Twitter

Can you successfully launch a new super premium vodka brand with virtually no paid advertising? If you’re Laughlin Constable, the answer is YES.

The YES Vodka launch is an example of how connecting with an individual, often just by engaging them with a simple question, can fill the gap when mass media vehicles are monetarily out of reach.  Laughlin Constable partnered with start-up spirits company Pure Spirits Worldwide to launch YES Vodka in 2010. Lacking the huge budgets of our key super-premium competitors (Grey Goose, Belvidere, Ketel One and Effen), we built a marketing program around sampling YES Vodka through events at bars, restaurants and liquor stores, and driving those who’ve participated in these tastings to Facebook and Twitter. With a name like YES, our one-on-one approach resembled a pick-up line: “The answer is YES. What’s the question?” and vodka drinkers responded in droves with answers that were shared on our social channels.

In October 2010, YES Vodka had just a few hundred Facebook “likes.”  Within six months, we had acquired over 16,000 “likes” with a regionally distributed product. Today (May 5), we have nearly 18,000 fans, more than the internationally distributed Effen, Van Gogh Blue and Ketel One.

Does a “like” have value? Well, the answer is yes, because “liking” or “following” is really an interactive relationship with the brand, both online and on-premise, that actively supports trial and engagement.

  1. We keep our Facebook fans engaged – and growing – by actively entertaining them. We run multiple posts each day from informative to provocative to flat-out funny. We celebrate our fans’ participation with the brand. We surprise them with timely content, like our “Salute To The Oscars” posters and provocative videos. We also offer contests and keep fans informed of local events.
  2. We delight fans and retailers alike with exciting packaging around holidays that aren’t typically associated with spirits gift packs, such as Valentine’s Day. Witness our all-red Say YES gift pack complete with four special edition Y-E-S shot glasses.
  3. We actively communicate with the gatekeepers to our success, the Distributors and Bartenders. We keep them informed about our leading-edge consumer marketing program which will continue to drive more and more demand for the product. We actively engage bartenders through our social channels as well.

Despite an extremely modest marketing budget, we have created YES Vodka materials for all the most critical consumer and distributor one-on-one touchpoints:

So if the questions are “Can brand development be fast-tracked?” or “Is social media a legitimate a marketing tool?” or “Can you effectively launch a brand with a start-ups budget?” the answers are all – you guessed it – YES.

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Crystal Kostrivas

Twitter Follower Clean-up. Social Media Needs Spring-Cleaning Love Too

Posted: by Filed under: How To, Social Media, Twitter

In order to keep Twitter as useful as possible, it’s necessary to get rid of Twitter spam and clean up your followers. While spring-cleaning is already on our minds, what better time? There are an overwhelming number of Twitter follower clean-up tools to choose from, so I tried out a few and gave a quick recap on each below.

Free Twitter Follower Clean-up Tools

  1. TwitCleaner – The report is sent out via direct message a few minutes after connecting TwitCleaner to your Twitter account. The first line of the report I received read “256 of the 658 Tweeps you’re following are potentially garbage.” The report proceeded to break down users by Potentially Dodgy Behavior, No Activity in Over a Month, Not Much Interaction, All Talk All The Time and Little Original Content. Within each category are subcategories that break down users even further.
  2. Friend or Follow – Simply type in your Twitter username and click “submit” and you’ll be taken to the report. The dashboard shows following, fans and friends. Within each category, you’re able to sort by username, name, location, followers, following, last tweet, and account age.  It even allows you to export the results in CSV, and is my favorite dashboard from an interface standpoint.
  3. Tweepi – After connecting the application to your Twitter account, you’re given the option to flush, reciprocate and clean up. You are then taken to a dashboard where you have the ability to unfollow, safelist, add to list, view additional information or respond to the particular user. You’re shown the number of followers and tweets, the user’s Klout score, and time of their last tweet. I felt as though this was the most comprehensive free Twitter cleaner tool.

Looking for additional free Twitter cleaner tools? Check out TwitBlock, The Grim Tweeper, Tweeter Karma and Just Unfollow.

Paid Twitter Follower Clean-up Tools

  1. Refollow – After allowing access, you’ll be taken to a dashboard with countless sorting capabilities such as previously followed, never followed, and with or without picture. You can even run keyword searches. You’re provided with a free trial, and then required to upgrade to a paid account which runs anywhere from $5/month to $100+/month depending on your needs.
  2. UnTweeps – This Twitter cleaner provides the ability to generate a list of Tweeps you’re following who have not updated their status in a particular number of days. You can create a white list in order to add the Twitter users you’d like to keep regardless. If you use UnTweeps more than three times per month you’ll need to purchase an account, which is about $5/month.

If you don’t already, I’d also recommend taking advantage of Twitter Lists. It helps organize the tweets from users you’re following. You’re able to create both public and private lists, or just follow lists that others have already set up. Listorious is a great place to start if you want to search existing lists.

Do you know of any Twitter cleaners that weren’t mentioned above? I’d love to hear from you. Tweet me @ckostrivas

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Casey Flanagan

Time-shifted TV May Have Met It’s Match – How Bad Can Be Good and The Future of Broadcasting

Posted: by Filed under: Ideas, Social Media, Twitter

I didn’t see one second of The Oscars. But I hear they were bad. A waste of time! Boring! A travesty! And I heard it all live, via Twitter.

Experiencing a major live event without watching it is an interesting experience. Because for all of the jokes and complaints about the show I saw come across my TweetDeck, I thought people seemed to really be enjoying themselves… in no small part because they got to crack jokes and complain mercilessly.

As viewing habits change, there has been much prognostication about the future of television. One thing that’s clear, we’re becoming media multi-taskers – 42% of Americans report “being online while watching TV.

But as a culture, we still need to process culture. And time-shifted TV may have met it’s match – social media. Brandchannel reports that the 83rd Academy Awards garnered over 1.2 million tweets (some of those tweets, it’s worth noting, from its host). The Super Bowl generated an estimated 4.5 million.

So while the social viewer’s experience is influenced directly by the program they are watching, it’s not limited to the program. It includes the “broadcasts” of everyone else they follow who is also watching that show. So, it could be argued the social viewer’s Oscar experience at the very least wasn’t worse because of the quality of the show. If for nothing else than the Celine Dion jokes, it may have even been better.

Big events will continue to bring us together. For the most part, we’ll want to be fans. But it’s worth thinking about, can there be a model of success that allows us all to play the other roles we love – the roles of amateur comedian and professional critic? Taking that one step further, can bad be good… for the bottom line?

Interested in more stuff I find interesting? Follow me @casey_flanagan on Twitter.

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Casey Flanagan

A Planner’s Guide To Reading. Or, What I’m Reading Isn’t What I Used To Read.

Posted: by Filed under: How To, Planning / Research, Trends, Twitter

Russell Davies wrote a seminal post (for me, at least) a few years ago on How To Be Interesting. One of piece of advice he shared was “Every week, read a magazine you’ve never read before.” It’s good advice. For planners. For marketers. For people. I took it to heart.

Looking back through today’s lens, I wonder if he’d give the same advice. 2006 was a long time ago. And, even though he was writing a blog at the time, magazines were still the go-to source. Things have changed. Now, it’s worth noting that I do subscribe to multiple magazines: The Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly, Fast Company and Wired, for starters. But that list in itself is pretty telling about where I go (and don’t go) for news, insight and inspiration.

I did a little self-evalutation after last week’s post. We’re all constantly evolving. Myself included. In doing so, I became aware of three meaningful shifts in my own appetite for media.

Shift One: I err on the side of more. Understatement of the year: I like Twitter. I’ve written about it before. It’s a great source of information, insight and inspiration. I’m betting that my ability to connect new and interesting things will outweigh an attention span that’s measurable in minutes. So far, so good.

Shift Two: I don’t read much about advertising. Ten years ago, I read AdAge, Adweek, and Brandweek. Now I read publications like The New York Times and the aforementioned subscriptions. I follow Twitter feeds like @forrester, @the99percent and @pewresearch (and, in keeping in the spirit of Interesting, I try to find a new one every week.) The new voice of the marketer is rarely in the old sources.

Shift Three: I appreciate all sides of the issues. In a real – not cable news – way. This week, for instance, I read an entire Fast Company article (a magazine I subscribe to) without reading Fast Company. Rather than go to the source for its profile of Alex Bogusky, I read his Posterous blog where he had inserted his comments and context where he deemed it appropriate. As I was doing so, I felt like it was a watershed moment in media.

A professor once asked me about what books I would recommend to her students to read. I gave her a list of blogs. I love the quote from last year’s Planningness conference, “Modern branding isn’t being taught in books, it’s being created in the marketplace.” Knowing where to find the teaching is essential.

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Casey Flanagan

The Continued Miscasting of Twitter

Posted: by Filed under: Ideas, Planning / Research, Twitter

Twitter walks like a duck. Quacks like a duck. But calling it a duck doesn’t do it justice – and may actually do it harm.

For some reason, Twitter acts as a lightening rod for the irrational vitriol usually reserved for rival political parties / sports teams. Just check out this article (especially the comments section) from CNN Money.

Just because Facebook and Twitter are both called “social networks” doesn’t mean they have to work in the same way. In fact, logic would reason they shouldn’t.

Twitter is in need of some recasting. In that spirit, here are two possibilities for the post- “It’s just another social network / self-broadcasting mechanism” age.

Twitter is your personal news crawler. You know those things at the bottom of cable news networks? Now you own one. And you are the editor-in-chief. This is how I describe it, at least. Mine is made up (mostly) of friends, peers, news sources and musicians. And I learn so much more from this source than any other. Twitter is evidence that media is changing. The role of reporter has been recast. Channels are democratized.

Twitter is a source of inspiration. This simple point was illuminated by @edwardboches (who provides inspiration to me on a weekly, if not daily, basis) in a presentation to the United Adworkers 208 this week. He said, “Twitter is a place to find ideas.” Yes. Exactly. You have brilliant people sharing smart, funny, amazing things. Their repayment? Other brilliant people sharing smart, funny, amazing things. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of that?

On one hand, I want to keep Twitter to myself. As a toy. A tool. A competitive advantage. But I think that’s missing the point. The more people sharing and inspiring, the better the news crawler / source of inspiration will become.

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