Sharing Print and Social Media

Have you ever come across a print ad that was very ‘loud’ in regards to spreading their social media seed? Yes, we’re fully aware of your widgets that let viewers know that your business is on every social media outlet known to man. In all honesty, what is the best way to promote your social media pages through your print work without looking desperate or downright over the top?

Soshable.com posted an article suggesting different ways to complement your print marketing with your social media marketing efficiently. If you know me, you know that often times I treat Soshable somewhat like my social media bible, but this time I had a little trouble believing exactly what the article states.   Even though this article was posted on January 4, the advice appears to be a little outdated…

Last time I checked, QR Codes were becoming more and more a thing of the past.  Am I right?  I uninstalled my QR Code app several months ago… I also have a love/hate relationship with contests. I want viewers to be intrigued by my business and the good work we provide, not by the opportunity to win free stuff. (Believe me, I love free stuff just as much as the next guy girl, but I more times than not I don’t end up using the business from which I won the free goods.)

Check out this article and decide for yourself whether or not it’s fully beneficial. The One-Two Punch: Print and Social Media Marketing found on Soshable.com. Don’t get me wrong, a great majority of the article is excellent but a small portion I disagree with. “To each his own.” Right?

What are your thoughts on QR Codes?

Have any of these suggestions really worked for you?

Social Media for Local Businesses

I love finding good articles regarding social media because they tend to make my blog writing much easier. Not that I’m inexperienced in writing my social media articles from scratch, but it’s definitely nice to get another point of view once in awhile.

I came across an article on soshable.com recently that discusses social media tips for local businesses.  Patterson Riegel Advertising certainly takes pride in being a local Fort Wayne business.  When my dad started this business 23 years ago he made it a point to only stay local to ensure he’d never have to travel with work and leave my family behind.  Anywho, I’m beginning to get off track… This article mainly gives local businesses tips on jumping in to the social media circuit. Most of these tips I agree with, others I don’t.  But then again, not all forms of social media are for every business.  What I’ve come to learn is social media is definitely not a “one size fits all” model.

Take a look at these tips and judge for yourself:

**Remember, this content is from here: http://soshable.com/10-social-media-tips-for-local-businesses/ **

Here are 10 tips so your local biz can reap the benefits of social media:

1. First make sure that people on Facebook can “check-in” to your business when they drop by. This is especially popular for eating establishments and bars. You want your check-in linked to a Facebook page.

2. Register your biz with Foursquare as well because they now give you access to the names of all of the people who checked in to your business so you can study their behavior as a customer and target them more directly.

3. Get ready for the all new Facebook graph search which allows people to find local businesses according to the likes of its fans. This feature is currently available a limited number of accounts, but it’s coming our way soon!

4. Give your business a voice by opening a Twitter account. Tweet about local events and about customers that drop by. Also ask (give incentive to do so) customers to tweet about you or post a status update about  you on Facebook, that way their friends become your audience too.

5. Enhance your LinkedIn presence- LinkedIn profiles rank highest in Google searches of all the social media, higher than FB even. So get your profile listed there if you haven’t already, especially if you are a professional who owns a local business. Keep your profile updated and join groups that deal with your industry and/or location.

6. YouTube is the 2^nd largest search engine so create and upload any type of compelling, hilarious, or smart tutorial videos, special event coverage, creative employee features, etc. Ask your customers to upload their videos to your YouTube channel and offer rewards.

7. List your business at Yelp, which combines local-based reviews with great social features. People go on Yelp to see what others are saying about stores, venues, public spaces, dentists and so much more. You need to keep track of the Yelp conversation about your business and make sure future customers like what they read.

8. Organize regular meetups, workshops and other informal local gatherings that are related to your business. Promote these events on Facebook, Eventbrite, Meetup.com, SkillShare and other platforms. People will be happy to attend if they feel like they get an added value – information, access, discounts or networking.

9. Image is everything! Attach photos wherever you can in your tweets, Facebook updates and blog posts. Take snapshots of everything that you associate with your brand and upload them to your sites. Snap photos of your customers/staff and post them on Instagram. Don’t forget to tag the people in the photo, so they have a good reason to share it too.

10. Blog weekly about your local business. Not about the business itself, but about the experiences and events, news and interesting information surrounding your niche. Focus on rich content and optimizing tags and titles in each post for search engines. Linking in and out of your blog builds both direct and indirect traffic to your business.

I guess the biggest ‘beef’ I have with this article is the first and second bullet.  Coming from an advertising agency, not many people find the desire to ‘check-in’ to our business.  Let me tell you, becoming the Mayor of Patterson Riegel will get you nothing but a pat on the back. However, if your business happens to be food or retail this Four-Square option is definitely a good suggestion.  People love FREE!

Patterson Riegel Advertising is a local full service advertising agency, specializing in all facets of advertising, including consumer-based retail, business-to–business marketing, public relations, promotional services, social media marketing and more.

Facebook Graph Search Tool

We all know that social media is ever changing, ever growing and ever addicting.   Due to the fast paced social media scene, it’s not unusual for a site to make changes or additions fairly frequently.  Facebook is the prime example of the ever changing social media site.  Finally after an entire year, I’ve stopped hearing rants about  the ridiculous Timeline feature. Now that those shenanigans have died down, it’s time for Facebook to bring about another ‘kookie’ addition. But relax my social media crazed friends, thankfully this new addition has nothing to do with your page format.  I repeat, your page will stay the same!

Now as if Facebook stalking couldn’t get any better worse, the Graph Search Tool was created. Basically it’s Facebook’s way of getting as close to Google as possible without creating an actual search engine…per se. With the Graph Search Tool, you can pretty much find out information regarding people, interests, locations, etc. (Again, much like searching Google or any other search engine site.)  Doesn’t sound too ‘stalkerish’ right?  Well that depends…the information collected for you happens to come from all your friends and pretty much everyone else using Facebook.  For example: if you’re looking for a fellow Underwater Basket Weaving enthusiast, Facebook can help narrow down all those in your area with the same (ahem) hobby. Again, not creepy at all?  I suppose if you use this search tool as just that, it actually could be quite beneficial. However, the downfall to this new search tool is that Facebook decided to choose Bing as its sister search engine. Who uses Bing, honestly?

 But before this new search tool makes it debut, what’s your verdict? Do you think you’ll stick with Google and leave Facebook for it’s original purpose? Or will you ‘kill two birds with one stone’ and use Facebook for the whole shebang?  Personally, I think I’ll stick with Google. Like i’ve always said, “When in doubt, Google out!”

Either way, more information is on its way before the release date. Perhaps i’ll search Google for some more information and add it to another post. (Ha! Ha!)

Giving Back To The Community-Patterson Riegel Advertising

The holiday season has come to an end and you’re either completely bummed out…or completely relieved! Here at Patterson Riegel we’re a little of both! (Glad the holidays are over, but not so glad about returning to full work weeks again!) This blog fails to mention much about advertising, but we felt it necessary to boast a little bit about the recent happenings around the office and the community. *A virtual pat on the back if you will.* 🙂

During the holiday season another local advertising company put together a contest to provide a local nonprofit organization with a $1,000 donation.  The contest in short: five nonprofit organizations were chosen and the business with the most votes cast on their website would win the charitable donation. It was a very close race between Big Brother’s Big Sister’s of Northeast Indiana and the Allen County SPCA.  During the final minutes, BBBS won the contest.  Matt Henry, owner of Patterson Riegel Advertising, felt that the hard work of the voters and pet adopting advocates shouldn’t go unnoticed. Matt decided to create a contest of his own, but only with the help of other generous donors. Patterson Riegel decided to match dollar for dollar (up to $1,001) every donation up until Christmas. This appeared to be a pretty optimistic goal due to the fact that Christmas was less than a week away!  Word spread like wildfire and the SPCA ended up raising over $3,000 in less than 24 hours!! $3,114.50 to be exact.

The following week we made the Community Support section of the Fort Wayne News Sentinel for our generosity! Check out the blurb below!

Donations matched

Patterson Riegel Advertising held a challenge to match donations made to the Allen County SPCA, up to $1,001 since the nonprofit lost a $1,000 prize in another advertising contest.Within 24 hours, the shelter received $2,114.50 in donations.

If you’re interested in adopting a dog or cat please visit the Allen County SPCA website: http://www.acspca.org. If it’s not the time to adopt, the center is always on the lookout for supplies that will help keep our dogs and cats healthy, safe and happy. From food to toys, they welcome a number of items that will give our fur friends a comfortable lifestyle. Check out the items most needed here: http://www.acspca.org/help.html

To conclude this blog, we at Patterson Riegel wanted to thank everyone involved in donating to such a wonderful cause! You truly made a difference!

Majoring in Social Media?

When you entered college did you find yourself having a hard time choosing a major?  Did you find yourself stressing about which life path to choose? Truthfully, I didn’t envision myself working for an advertising agency like Patterson Riegel.  I graduated with my degree in education…slightly off the advertising path. For those of you struggling to find the right life path, you’re in luck! There’s a new major in town and it’s called ‘Social Media.’  Yes, you can now go to college to become an expert everything social media. Hold on, before you wear your best sweats to class anticipating surfing Facebook all day, take a look at the article below. (Believe me, it’s not as easy as one may think.) Soshable.com has recently posted an article introducing Social Media as the up and coming college major.  Granted, this particular major has only reached one college thus far, but with social media knowledge becoming a demand for many businesses more colleges may be adopting this major sooner rather than later. This may or may not be the best news since being a ‘gym teacher’ became an option for college majors…but how long will this craze last? Could you see yourself working with social media until retirement?

Do you think creating a major in social media will be beneficial in the long run?

Read the Soshable article here: There’s a New Type of College Major in the Making, We Call it Social Media. Tell me your thoughts on this new college craze!

NEW Digital Media Department!

I’m happy to announce that Patterson Riegel Advertising is now expanding the digital media department! Before, we only specialized in the social media aspect of this media outlet, but now we’re taking on a bigger focus in regards to paid placement ads. PRA will now be placing ads for businesses on not only social media sites, but also on the major search engines.

As director of the social media department here at PRA…I’ve now taking on the role of head of the entire digital media department.  I’ll be taking on quite a workload but as a business we’ve come to realize that the social media sites have gotten wise and are now making it more difficult to advertise for ‘free’ on their websites.

Now instead of the majority of your business page ‘fans’ seeing all your updates on their news feed they barely see any. This only changes if fans go to the trouble of subscribing to each page they’ve ‘liked.’ (This takes far too much time and it’s just too confusing for most to find.) Thank-you (cough)Facebook(cough). Social media sites now stress that businesses should pay for advertisements…as if these sites need to expand their bazillion dollar empires. But business is business, I suppose.

Even though this is a fairly new option for our clients, I’m confident that I have a sturdy grasp on what it takes to provide each business with the most beneficial keywords and payments plans to ensure growth on the digital media end. We’re also opening up this option to other businesses that are interested in digital media and increasing their SEO. The web has been around for decades now, it simply cannot be ignored by businesses any longer.

What are your takes on digital media?

Do you think that budgeting for paid advertising online is just as wise as on television?

Social Media: How Important Is A Big Fan Base?

About a week or so ago I conducted an experiment at Patterson Riegel Advertising, bear with my folks!  I decided I was going to cut back on vocally speaking for the day and only communicate via social media and other forms of communication such as text message and e-mail.  Shockingly, I spoke five words the entire day.  Some were probably relieved at my lack of vocab for the day while others probably didn’t give a rats patootie. This zany experiment helped to reiterate that fact that vocally speaking is purely going out of style.

Hmmm. Does this mean that by the time I decide to procreate that my child will be learning to Facebook post ‘momma’ before actually speaking the word?  Well now that’s a fairly frightening concept!

Back on subject, with social media slowly taking the world  by storm…or typhoon, or hurricane, or tornado (the word ‘storm’ just wasn’t cuttin’ it) businesses are quickly jumping on the bandwagon.  (If this were a version of Oregon Trail, businesses would be choosing the Big Daddy of wagons, hands down!)

As social media marketer at PRA, I’ve always struggled with the stress of trying to gain more and more fans for my clients. Obviously, more fans equals more business….right? Our survey says, WRO…eh, not necessarily.  Research shows that really only 6% of your ‘fans’ actually interact with your page.  If you need help with the math–1,000 fans is only equivalent to 60 fans actually paying attention to your page. Kudos!

**By the way, do they still make Kudos bars? They look delicious!**

Now, I don’t mean for this post to be negative but more or less to be like a spinoff of the Tortoise and the Hare. The bigger companies may have more fans, but that doesn’t mean they provide better service. Mom and Pop Shops need love too! A super-sized fan load may be even harder to build when it comes to your line of work as well. An ice delivery service may be a lot harder to promote in a small town compared to a big city.  For example, Fort Wayne has two known ice delivery companies whereas New York City has over 40. It’s all about supply and demand, blah blah blah.

But how do those smaller businesses measure up to the big dogs? It’s simple, put the stress of building a larger fan base on the back burner and focus more on keeping those faithful customer’s. (The ‘Groupies’ if you will.) These followers are the ones that are going to recommend your business to others, compared to those who has never used your services before.

The social media based website, Sochable, is probably better at explaining this concept than I am…Plus they’ve even cleverly named it. Take a peak at the article here.

The Best Way To Increase Your SEO Fort Wayne, IN

If you’re a business owner, you should be no stranger to the acronym, “SEO.” Some might boast at the sight of their business holding the top spot on the organic listing, whereas others might cringe when they find their business has yet to make the first page. As a social media marketer, those three letters pretty much determine whether or not I get paid. Thankfully I’m still getting a paycheck, but my job does not come as easy as some may think.

You can certainly tell how much technology has changed now Search Engine Optimization no longer is soley determined by the mere visits to your website, but now is based in large part on your social media prescience.  I recently came across an article on the social media based website, Soshable, that discussed how important social media is on your Search Engine Optimization.  Shockingly, the article’s titled, Social Media Is Now The #1 Most Important Factor In SEO.  I suppose I don’t need to go into much detail regarding the article, but there was a very interesting blurb that I found almost necessary to share with you all:

“What does this mean for the industry? Businesses that have been ignoring social media are going to find themselves slipping in the ranks, if they haven’t already slipped. This study makes it clear that links ARE NOT ENOUGH. To remain competitive in today’s market, you MUST become heavily involved in social media.

This trend will ultimately make the internet a better place. With social media shares ruling the roost, you’ll see far less spammy content and pages of useless links. Wikimotive has long upheld that content is king, and this has never been more true. To succeed in SEO today, you need to succeed in social media, and to succeed in social media, you need to produce quality content that engages your audience so that your shares (and likes, favorites, Tweets, reTweets, etc.) organically grow.”

“Oh what a tangled web we weave…”

Improve Your Facebook Business Page Fort Wayne, Indiana

It’s National School Lunch Week, so slice up a piece of rectangular pizza to celebrate!

Being an avid internet user, and self proclaimed social media extraordinaire (emphasis on self proclaimed) I recently found an article on Social Media Examiner that I felt necessary to pass on to my clients.  Although I’m the one who updates the social media sites for the Patterson Riegel clients, I feel as though it’s important to keep them in the loop when it comes to what’s new in social media.  Or maybe it’s just a way to convince them that I’m doing my best to ensure their social media budget is money well spent. Either way, I try to make an emphasis on all the good happening in the social media world, not so much the bad. By the way, did you hear that Facebook stock has reached an all time low of $20 per share? Read that train wreck (Oops!) article here. Back to the topic at hand, the title of the article I came across, 5 Ways to Improve Your Facebook Engagement says it all! In short, the article discusses five new ways to improve the engagement on your Facebook business page.

The five ways include:

• Keep your updates short
• Don’t use URL shorteners
• Post at Times Ideal for your Fans
• Use the Right Words for Higher Engagement
• Ask Questions

All five of these ideas are spot on when it comes to increasing the population of Facebook posts (and Twitter, and Google+, etc). Check out the article here for a more in-depth description of the five ways listed above, you won’t be disappointed!

Facebook vs. Webpage Fort Wayne, Indiana

Do you ever give yourself a quick pat on the back when you read an article that helps to reassure you that your business is headed in the right direction?

As much as I love the sequin suspenders, I’m really hoping you pat yourself on the back while fully clothed.

In my case, the advertising agency I work for has been headed in the right direction for the past 25 years…but the new branch of the business that I’m currently spearheading (social media marketing) for Patterson Riegel Advertising seems to be slowly following in the right footsteps. Or at least I’m not drowning, so that seems promising!

To help feel better about my job prove my case I came across an article on mashable.com a few short weeks ago that provided me with one of those pat on the back moments.  Now, if you’ve yet to discover mashable.com you must stop reading this blog and open up this webpage pronto.  It not only keeps you abreast with all that is social media, but it also keeps you informed and up to date with several business and technology related topics. (If anything, it will help you sound smarter at parties. SCORE!)

Anywho, back to the blog.  The article I came across a couple weeks ago (in short) states that many people are now choosing to forgo visiting your webpage and are headed straight to your Facebook business page. Oh you aren’t surprised? Well we aren’t either, but that’s not to say you should go out and delete your webpage. Believe it or not, there are more people on the planet than just the 900 million using Facebook.  But the big reason that 50% of consumers prefer Facebook over webpages is merely for the money saving advantages. In other words, “Coups baby, coups!”

** This video contains adult language. Please watch at your own risk.**

Consumers save money through Facebook coupons and giveaways! I’ll admit it, I was on Facebook yesterday and saw the opportunity to sign up for a free Target cosmetic bag giveaway…I jumped on that bandwagon faster than you can say “Tarjay.”  Oh you’re not familiar with the term, check out the urban dictionary. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tarjay

Find the cosmetic bag giveaway here: Free Stuff From Target!  I feel that it’s okay that I posted this giveaway, I used to be a Target employee oh so many years ago. “I know you only purchased a pack of gum, but you be interested in saving 10% today by applying for a Target Red Card?”

Last but certainly not least readers, check out this mashable.com article.  If not for the information, for the really stellar picture display.

50% of Consumers Value a Brand’s Facebook Page More Than Website