The social media services company Vitrue recently released their list of the most social brands of 2008. Social brands were defined as those with the most mentions in social networking, blogging and microblogging sites. They used a “social media index” to track these mentions but did not differentiate between positive and negative conversations. The purpose of the index is to capture a brand’s share of voice on the web. The top 10 brands/branded products were the iPhone, CNN, Apple, Disney, Xbox, Starbucks, iPod, MTV, Sony and Dell. View the full list here.
There are three lessons associations can take from these big brands/products to help generate more mentions in social media venues for their groups:
And don’t forget to measure your success. Keep an eye on your analytics to see the effects of your efforts so you can constantly tweak your strategy. If you have questions about social media marketing or want to learn more about how Hammock can help you develop your online community, contact us .
According to The New York Times, it seems that the newspaper’s last typographical face-lift was in 2003, but it wasn’t until last night that I noticed that they use at least four different fonts on their front page. They cap some, but not others. Some run ragged while others are left-aligned. I’m not sure what made me notice it now, but I’ll never look at their front page the same way again. Perhaps this is an example of how when print design is truly successful, the reader doesn’t even notice. And maybe that’s the whole point.
I was very sad to hear the news yesterday from New York that Condé Nast was shutting the doors of their home décor and shopping magazine Domino. I’ve been a loyal subscriber to the magazine and my mailbox is going to be very lonely without it each month. Luckily, I’ve saved copies from the last two years, so I will treasure those.
Earlier this week, we launched a new Hammock email newsletter. Each month we will bring you insight into the latest custom media, social media marketing and community-building trends. In this issue we hit on topics including partnering with an outside media company, setting social media goals for the year, and 2009 magazine and media predictions.
We hope you are already on our distribution list, but if you aren’t, be sure to signup here.
We’ve shared with you five social media resolutions for this year, and now here are three follow-up questions every association executive should consider, whether your association is new to social media or you’re a Web 2.0 veteran:
1. How will you incorporate social media into association events?
Events provide associations a perfect opportunity to leverage the power and excitement of social media. There are so many ways an association can engage its members before, during and after an event with social media tools.
We recently received an award for the event work we did for our client the National Federation of Independent Business on their 2008 National Small Business Summit website. We used tools like Flickr, YouTube and Twitter to engage the Summit attendees and non-attendees through the creation of a dynamic site. We took unique advantage of social media and also provided a central place for all event-related content.
2. How will you measure the effectiveness of the association’s social media marketing efforts?
It’s great your association is experimenting with social media, but how will you know if your efforts are successful or what tweaks you need to make? Are members participating? Are there certain member groups that are more receptive to social media than others? Are you providing incentives? Are you connecting with potential member groups?
Just like your other marketing and communication campaign, an association’s social media efforts must be measureable. If you haven’t already established metrics, set some now. If you need help, contact us.
3. Should you partner with an outside media company to help meet your association’s social media goals for the year?
The economic environment we are in presents many associations with numerous challenges. Some of you are struggling with limited internal resources, tight budgets and employees without social media expertise. Meanwhile, your association has lofty communication and social media goals for the year. To solve these problems, many businesses and other associations are looking to partners like Hammock who can help you meet your goals for 2009.
At the end of last year, we used a Hammock tradition, our annual Hammock T-shirt, to celebrate our passions—and yours. What do T-shirts have to do with passions? The work we do for our clients helps them connect with the passions of their customers, members and others, and so we wanted to use our T-shirt project to show how personal passions create communities. We created a community for our clients and friends to share their passions: PassionCreatesCommunity.com. We invited them to send us a link, photo or video that would help encourage readers and viewers to learn more about their passion.
I love this design that was in the Sunday New York Times with the headline “The Oscar Season Takes Shape.” It’s such a clever way to use typeface as a design element.
Meet Steve Sullivan, Hammock’s newest employee. A native Nashvillian, Steve has spent his career helping small businesses grow. A graduate of the University of Georgia, Steve is an avid sports fan, especially for his alma mater Bulldogs and local Tennessee Titans. Steve lives with his wife, Debbie; two children, Jeannie and Stephen; and two dogs.
For the third year in a row, FOLIO asked Rex for his magazine and media predictions for the coming year. Here’s his list he shared with FOLIO:
We have several traditions here at Hammock and one of our favorites is our annual company T-shirt. For the past 17 years, we’ve shared an annual edition T-shirt with the friends we work with throughout the year. You can see a gallery of our past T-shirts here.
Each year we experiment with something new. Last year we encouraged all recipients to upload a photo of themselves wearing their T-shirt and from those, created a world map of all of the photos.