Social Media

Everyone loves the Superbowl commercials just as much as the game itself. Suddenly, everyone becomes a marketing expert and proclaims “I could have made that.” Well, you didn’t – that’s why you’re sitting at home eating three bean dip by the handful.

Unfortunately, this year it felt like social media may have ruined that experience. Most of the commercials played this year were already seen online; YouTube, Facebook & Mashable had Superbowl commercials available up to two weeks ago. Even if you didn’t seek them out – plenty of people shared them via email, status updates and blog posts. I even heard the audio track, from the Doritos commercial where the little boy slapped his Mom’s boyfriend, on the radio.

Rather than simply rush-release the commercials online, why not create an Internet “teaser” – or an intro commercial that concludes itself during the Superbowl airing? Online community interaction can be more effective than simply gaining extra online impressions, while potentially losing TV impressions, because the novelty has already passed. That extra layer of entertainment during the Superbowl is nearly lost when everyone leaves the room.

Pepsi made a strong move this year by completely skipping commercials and kicking off a massive social media campaign with their Pepsi Refresh Project. Much more effective ad spend while creating a strong social impact. The engagement factor alone is far greater with this creative concept – long after the other commercials have been forgotten.

What do you think? Was the commercial buzz lower this year?

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Managing your brand’s online reputation has been a hot topic for a while. Simple steps such as Google alerts and social media monitoring software quickly became best practices.

A different opportunity recently presented itself to me; something so simple and obvious – and unexpected: Your own personal network.

Here’s a simple recap of what happened. I received an email from Charles Broersma, a local friend whose relationship developed via our social media network. Being a part of this network and having similar best practice philosophies created an “unspoken awareness” for each of our businesses.

His email described the unhappy comments of a local customer from Auction Direct. Something I obviously don’t want to happen. The result? After a quick email exchange, I’m meeting with our customer to try our best to listen and resolve her situation. The key thing here is that Charles isn’t a customer. He simply made a nice gesture. Thanks Charles!

What a great opportunity for you as well. Leverage your relationships like this and you’re sure to improve two key items:

1. Create a new offline “lookout” channel for your brand’s online reputation.
2. Strengthen the relationships within your network.

Doing anything similar? Share your best practices…

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Here’s another must-have SEO – Social Media Optimization Wordpress plugin: Remind Me. It’s described as the ultimate deep linking plugin available to Wordpress users.

What’s a deep link? Its simply a link from one of your posts to another post within your website or blog.

Is it important? Yes…this lets you build authority on different posts you’ve already published. This creates the opportunity to have your articles rank higher in the search engine results by providing links to other valuable, related posts based. Related posts are based on your titles, content, tags and categories. This is also a great method of keeping your visitors on your site longer while improving the number pages viewed.

Is it easy to use? Yes…Christopher made it extremely easy to use:

1. Write your new post
2. Highlight the text you wish to link
3. In the Remind Me bucket, select the post by clicking “Add Link”

Search the WP plugin directory for Remind Me. Currently compatible up to versions 2.9.1.

Have you found anything similar, or any other great Wordpress plugins? If so, please share…

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