Projectline Expands Community Involvement

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News

Projectline is happy to announce a recent expansion of its corporate philanthropy efforts. In addition to longstanding traditions of corporate volunteering and Kiva loans, Projectline has begun making monthly contributions to non-profit organizations whose needs are better served by monetary donations than volunteer support. Recipient organizations are nominated by Projectline employees, and thus far have included Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, the Urban Rest Stop, and Blank Canvas.

If you know of a Seattle-area registered non-profit that could use Projectline’s support, please drop us a line at extraordinary@projectlineinc.com.

Social Media Marketing Consultant

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Job Openings

Position Overview:

You must be outgoing and able to start, influence, and capture community feedback, execute on existing strategies via social media tools, stay on top of multiple business unit conversations, and report back to clients on your findings. You’ll assist in launching new products and helping improve campaigns through collecting and reporting on online customer engagement. Your dream job should be coming up with completely original ideas for reaching and engaging customers via social media, integrating this work into broader campaigns, and researching and finding new communities to influence online conversations.

You will need to make sense of it all by knowing what valuable data to collect and creating readable, informative, and illuminating reports. We are looking for someone who is rigorous enough to execute on social media strategies and flexible enough to adapt to changes in those strategies made with the information you provide in your findings. In addition, this position will be part of a larger marketing consulting team, responsible for seeking out new clients, scoping marketing projects, and proposing solutions to marketing challenges.
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Navigating the New Twitter

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Marketing Musings, Social Media

This post is by Eric Burgess. A grad student at the UW, he’s studying for his Masters of Communication in Digital Media. Eric is a Social Media geek and recovering skateboarder, having spent the last few years blogging and building up communities in the action sports industry. When he’s not blogging about being a fashionable dad, he can be found spending time with his family, shopping, and tweeting.

By now everyone has had the new Twitter rolled out to them. If not, you’ll get it really soon. Right away you probably noticed how different it looks and how much less real estate there is to show off you or your company’s brand. While this is true, Twitter actually just got way more functional. Let’s dissect it some more.

New Twitter: more functional but less background space for brand promotion

The search bar is on top. I always thought the old search bar needed to be more visible. Now it’s far more prevalent at the very top. If you’ve never used the search feature, I encourage you to do so. It’s a great tool and the search queries are fast.

It’s wider. Fundamentally it’s still divided the same way: in two columns. You have your timeline of those who you follow on the left and you have information on who is following you and who you follow on the right. The “What’s happening?” tweet bar is still right where it was at the top.

Left column. The left column still shows all of your follower’s tweets, but there are now tabs just below your tweet bar: Timeline, @Mentions, Retweets, Searches and Lists. Each of these is clickable and when clicked on, their respective function populates in the column below.

Right column. Your Twitter avatar, number of tweets, and numbers of those you are following and those following you are still in the upper right. The only difference, there are avatars which show at random under the following/followers section. Your “listed” total is there as well and it includes lists of people that you were recently added to. Trends and suggestions on other profiles to check out are further down the right column as well.

Hot new feature. The coolest thing about the new design is that it allows for profile browsing without leaving the Twitter timeline. Before, if you were browsing tweets and wanted to look at a profile, you’d click on the avatar and it would take you away from your dashboard and directly to that user’s profile. Now you can easily click on a user’s avatar in the timeline on the left and the profile will display on the right.

Old Twitter: plenty of background but more scrolling to see everything

Pros. It utilizes more space and allows you to multitask way more than before.

Cons. Background space to promote self or brand has all but disappeared. Read more here on how to redesign your background for the new Twitter.

In short? The new design rocks. I give it an 8 out of 10.

The trick to social media engagement: Click factors and response factors

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Marketing Musings, Social Media

In last week’s post, I talked about three different tactics to define keywords and audiences to target your social media engagement. (If you did last week’s assignment, you should have your primary and secondary keywords list established and ranked by their trends.)

With those in hand…let’s Engage! Engage! Engage!

Engagement strategies

Social media engagement is personal. You’ll need to have different strategies for different people and communities. Sending out messages with comments like, “Me too! I like to save energy as well, visit my website” or “Buy my device; it will help you save energy” is not going to cut it. To properly engage consumers you need to implement at least one of two things: a “click” factor or a “response” factor.

Think of a click factor as an incentive for the user to click on your link. This could be a link to an article, product, or discussion board that will provide value or solve the person’s problem (e.g. “I noticed you were trying to save money, so here’s an article with some tips to reduce your energy costs”) Do not always point directly back to your site unless it will actually help solve the person’s problem. Think of this as a conversation starter—usually, if the link does add value the person will respond with “thanks” or “do you have any other suggestions?” which gives you the opportunity to start talking about your company. Again, remember, don’t sell! Add value to the person you’re talking to.

A response factor is an incentive for the user to respond and engage in dialog. This strategy is perfect for putting a personal touch on a brand. One of the easiest ways that you can add a response factor is to ask a question. “How are you currently trying to cut your energy consumption?” Utilizing the response factor is perfect branding, but it can require more time and engagement on your part, because the goal is having a valuable conversation.

Tip: Research the conversations around your keywords before engaging. Write down the top 20 questions and build a resource page with links, videos, articles, and specialists to refer people to in those areas. This will help you respond quickly in dynamic conversations.

When implementing your next outreach marketing campaign in social media, try to define your keywords and engagement strategies first. The time spent before jumping in the conversation will save you tons of headaches (and time and money) in the long run.

Assignment: When engaging with response factors try to at least get two people to engage with you via email to have deeper discussions.

Share your experiences with me and if you have any questions on tools to use for engagement, just leave a comment.

Marketing Metrics matter (but they don’t need to take over your vision)

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Business Analytics, Customer Reference, Marketing Musings

A few weeks ago, I ran the Warrior Dash, a demanding obstacle race. After months of anticipation leading up to the event, I came and conquered…well, not really conquered, but the event exceeded my thrill-seeking expectations.

The one thing that I had not expected was a weekend full of discussions with my friends about the event’s numbers. With close to 90,000 fans on Facebook, Warrior Dash has sold out ten events across the country. The Dash I attended drew almost 10,000 participants in one weekend, at sixteen heats per day and 350 people per heat, and I started to wonder: How do they keep track of their success? How do they measure repeat attendees? How do they keep their unique event vision creative and still mind the numbers?

In my working life, I often think of numbers in terms of success measures. Especially now, with tightened purse strings, metrics are essential for validating customer engagement programs. Often executives ask questions like: How many references are in the program? How often do they participate in requests? What opportunity dollars are associated with the reference activity? Are there gaps in the available reference pool? And it’s up to you to supply the answers and validate your program.

As proven by the Warrior Dash, metrics don’t have to stifle your creative, thoughtful vision. Use the metrics to your benefit. While parameters should be defined, metrics shouldn’t be restrictive in the creative sense. When thinking about metrics for your organization:

  • First, consider what makes your program stand out among other reference programs. By knowing the unique identifiers for your program, you can keep the program integrity intact and align your metrics to your distinctive program.
  • Second, ask yourself what metrics really matter and focus your energy on achieving the relevant numbers without compromising the program vision. For instance, if your program vision is get dynamic customer references across all verticals, assign a goal for each vertical and then report on how you’re tracking against that goal.
  • Third, consider automation. By automating the reporting functionality of your efforts, you can spend more time on the program itself. Having the extra time to keep current program participants engaged and enlist new references will not only help you achieve your goals, but also give you time to carry out your program vision.

When you think about success measures as a tool for protecting your program creativity, you can not only meet your program mission, you can also achieve measurable results.

To find out more about how to maintain your true program spirit and creativity and obtain the metrics you need to support your vision, visit our page on reference marketing.

Using keywords to get started with social media engagement

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Marketing Musings, Social Media

Engage! Engage! Engage!

You’ve probably heard this term sputtered by every social media consultant or guru in the market. However, few give much insight on how to find audiences that want to engage with you, and even fewer explain what method of engagement you should use. Essentially, these two questions need to be answered before you start. Otherwise, you’re throwing darts with a blindfold on.
So before starting your next outreach marketing campaign through social media, take a look at how SEO experts have been identifying their target audiences over the years. They’ve learned many tricks and tips that help them pinpointed their keyword searches and identify audiences on the internet.

Defining keywords & audiences

No matter what kind of social media monitoring tool you use for your marketing efforts, choosing the right keywords is a vital step. Social media monitoring tools help sift through the noise of the social web to identify conversations that you want to engage with; choosing your keywords and targeting the correct audience go hand in hand. Personally, I like to break my keywords into two different sets: primary and secondary keywords.

Primary Keywords are the terms directly related to the industry that you’re looking to engage with. For example, if you’re searching for energy saving devices you would select “energy devices” as a primary keyword.

To help identify your primary key words, use a tool that shows you most searched terms. Simple changes in your primary keywords can make a dramatic difference in the volume of conversation that you pull. I highly suggest using Google AdWord’s Keyword Tool to help identify the most popular terms in the industry that you’re searching.

Here you can search terms and competitor websites, and the tool even gives suggestions by industry if you have no idea where to start.

As you can see above, when I search for “energy devices,” it shows me the total global and local searches on this term. In addition it will bring up other suggestions for that industry and that keyword that might be better to use that what you originally thought. Some examples from my search were “energy saving devices,” “energy saving products,” and “energy saving solutions.” All of these can be added to the primary keyword list.

When selecting your primary keywords, try not to use your specific brand name. True engagement is aimed at finding individuals who have never heard of your company before. Primary keywords are used to find the broadest audience. However, if your keywords are too ambiguous, you may need to refine your keywords with secondary keywords.

Secondary keywords are still related but may not include the exact descriptions. For example: using “energy devices” as a start, you might want to refine this keyword to “energy saving tips,” “energy saving tools,” or “home electricity monitoring.” Plug these terms into Google’s AdWord’s Keyword tool to help you refine your secondary keywords.

For those looking to take this a little further, Google Trends is a powerful tool to help you understand the variance of the search volume of a specific keyword. Understanding keyword trends is as important as defining your primary and secondary keywords.
Using Google Trends, you can create content/conversation topics for niche groups of people on the social web. If the content is engaging and unique, it’s more than likely you’ll be able to increase the volume of conversation in an upward trending keyword segment and drive traffic to your site. More importantly, being the first to present unique content in a niche group that’s trending up will spur others in the community to create links back to you that will pay dividends over time.

TIP: After you’ve created your primary and secondary keyword lists, rank them by whether they’re trending. The search volume in Google’s Adword Keyword tool doesn’t show the trend status of the keyword. The highest search term that you find in the Adwords tool might be hitting the roof or it might be declining. Using the trends tool, you’ll be able to adjust your priorities to the conversations that are increasing, helping you target and make a mark not only in established conversation but in new hot topics as well.

An assignment: Use the tactics that I’ve covered above for your company or personal projects. Work through your primary and secondary keyword groups and then rank each of those groups on their trending ranking. Let us know how it goes!

Next week I’ll go over the different engagement strategies that you can apply to keyword sets to create conversations and drive traffic to your site or blog.

Projectline Tweeters

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Marketing Musings, Social Media

In addition to our eponymous Twitter account (@Projectline), we’ve got some wonderful consultants and social media pros Tweeting. Looking for great links about customer references, project management, or customer communities? Follow these folks for great conversation and content:

Karin Zabel on Twitter

@kazab Customer marketing consultant & networking guru in Seattle interested in social media, PSAMA, networking, non-profits & anything going on in Belltown.

Marc Policani on Twitter

@Policani Native Seattleite. Business Planner and Process Engineer by day. Daddy, gadget aficionado & armchair cosmologist by night.

Stacy Olson on Twitter

@StacyOlson Passionately curious with a mind like a sponge. For maintenance use daily: Research.Strategy.Design.Marketing.Measure. (Repeat as necessary)

Eric Burgess on Twitter

@EricBurgess Father, Husband, UW Digital Media Grad Student, technology enthusiast & fashion aficionado.

Elliott Lemenager on Twitter

@elemenager Social Media Strategist @Projectline. Action sport enthusiast, videographer, music lover, ranked 2x’s in top 50 community managers on twitter.

Melissa Tindall on Twitter

@MelissaTindall Midwest 2 Northwest girl with a passion 4 Technology + Marketing + Food & Wine + CU Buffs! Marketing Consultant @Projectline.

Anika Lehde on Twitter

@AnikaMarketer Co-owner of Projectline Services. Interested in customer-centric marketing, good communications, volunteering, live and digital socializing, music, vegan food!