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Archive for the ‘In The News’ Category

Stand Up With Dan Schawbel and WELD

Monday, May 10th, 2010 by Gretchen Stone
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindenbaum/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

I have a newfound love for @DanSchawbel, personal branding and Web marketing guru. He is to me what the Jonas Brothers are to President Obama’s daughters. Huge crush.

At some point during his keynote at the Generation WV Young Leaders Conference last week, he asked the audience to stand up. The exercise: He’d list social media sites, and anyone not signed up would sit down. He said Facebook, a few people sat down. Then Twitter, and a few more people sat down, and the same with LinkedIn and finally Google Buzz. Actually, a whole lot of people sat down on that last one.

OK, so I wasn’t the last woman standing as crickets chirped in the background, but there were far too few of us in the room still on our feet. The question wasn’t “Are you an active participant on these sites?” but instead “Are you on them?” Have you signed up? That simple.

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Are you a Multiplatformist?

Thursday, April 15th, 2010 by Mariah Hibarger
Today's professionals need to have a working knowledge of everything: Mac, PC/Windows, even Googel Apps if they expect to keep up.

Today's professionals need to have a working knowledge of everything: Mac, PC/Windows, even Google Apps if they expect to keep up.

Our clients depend on the WELD team to stay informed on all of the most recent platforms, technologies and software. It’s a pretty daunting task keeping track of what’s happening in digital-landia, and I often feel as if I’m being drawn and quartered by Google, Windows, Mac, Adobe, and any other technology corporation you can name; it’s a personal information technology identity crisis.

So I’d like to thank Jason Perlow for simultaneously providing two new words of the day (“Multiplatformism” and “Platform Schizophrenia”), and alleviating my information technology identity crisis. (more…)

HootSuite Users: Celebrate! Non-HootSuite Users: Convert!

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010 by Mariah Hibarger
HootSuite's arsenal of tools answers the call for Social Media Team Management.

HootSuite's arsenal of tools answers the call for Social Media Team Management.

Fact: Twitter is an incredibly powerful, free social media platform that allows you to promote yourself and your brand in 140 characters or less, as well as follow the stories that apply to you and your brand.

Fact: Twitter allows you to really be part of the conversations that matter to you, to contribute and to listen.

Fact: Twitter allows any and every Tom, Dick, Harry, or Sue to broadcast what is important to him/her and built personal brand authority.

Fact: Despite knowing the benefits and understanding the powerful reality of this platform, I have been a reluctant Twitter user at best for about a year.

Fact: HootSuite has totally changed my world, transforming me into a daily Tweeter who follows such SM/Twitter gurus as Guy Kawasaki (@GuyKawasaki or @AllTop) and Gary Vaynerchuk (@GaryVee), hanging on their every tweet. (more…)

So, Is It OK To Sell On Social Networks?

Thursday, November 19th, 2009 by Reid Williams

Razorfish Graphs On Social Network Brand EngagementThere’s an ongoing debate here at the WELD Global Headquarters about whether people who sign up for online social networks really want to receive sales messages. We know that social media users readily interact with businesses and brands just like their friends, but do they actually buy products and services as a result of that?

This is a pretty critical question — especially if you’re in a business like ours, recommending and executing digital marketing strategies such as, say, getting a client’s organization active on Facebook and Twitter.

So, on the one hand, there’s success to be found in marketing where the crowd gathers — but not if the crowd is explicitly gathering someplace where they expect to be free from marketing messages. That’s the concern on one side of the debate, anyway.

Fortunately, there are researchers attempting to resolve this debate. What concerns me, however, and what became the impetus for this post, is the possible hyperbole used in reporting the results of this research. Anything seem odd (or just plain wrong) about these charts shown here?

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Join Us For A Webinar

Monday, November 9th, 2009 by Reid Williams

How can West Virginia companies use social media to reach more customers? Can social media help Mountain State enterprises achieve their business objectives? Is all this Facebook-and-Twitter hubbub all that it’s cracked up to be?

If you’ve asked these questions of yourself or your marketing director, then we just might have some answers for you.

We’d like to cordially invite you to a Mountain State Marketers webinar, from noon to 1 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 16. This webinar will feature Beth Gill, marketing director for ACE Adventure Resort, and Mike Pinkerton of the Hatfield-McCoy Trail System — two of West Virginia’s largest outdoor enterprises. Both will speak and answer questions about how they have used social media as part of their marketing strategy.

We’ve got about half the seats left, as there is a good bit of interest in this topic. If you have questions or would like more information on the webinar, email jeff@mythologymarketing.com or brandon@weldtheweb.com.

Thanks, and look forward to meeting everyone there.

Looking Good Or Working Well? Which Means More For A Website?

Friday, November 6th, 2009 by Reid Williams
Image by Capture Queen (TM)/Flickr Creative Commons

Image by Capture Queen (TM)/Flickr Creative Commons

Have you ever found a website that upon first impression immediately struck you as, well, beautiful, but then when you started trying to actually use it or trying to find some information within those pretty pages, your impression of the website soured?

The results of a study at the Software Usability Research Laboratory at Witchita State University indicate that type of experience isn’t really that common, after all.

In fact, it seems pretty pages go a long way to determining a person’s positive perception of a website, whether the site works well or not.

“The visual appeal of an interface appears to play a role in the user’s rating on perceived usability,” say study authors Christine Phillips and Barbara S. Chaparro.

But if we’re going to believe them, we have to see how they define what’s usable, and how they determine a website is appealing.

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