Need a new ride? You could win a brand new car with Chevrolet’s Game Time app while watching the Super Bowl. When the game begins on February 5 at 6:30 p.m. ET, the app will assign users a personal “license” plate number. If your license plate matches the plate number on one of the 20 cars featured in the four Chevrolet Super Bowl spots, you’ll win the Chevy it’s on. The app also poses trivia questions throughout the game for chances to win other prizes. A free car is certainly an initiative to watch those Chevy ads closely!

While a study by BtoB Magazine conducted last year pegged 93% of all B2B marketers to be engaged in some form of social media marketing, I still see some B2B marketers shun a mufti-dimensional social media program. Sure, LinkedIn is okay but all the others?

Perhaps the name is the first barrier. The soft, squishy “Social Media” label belies the incredible influence that blogs, twitter, Facebook, Google+ can have on a business-to-business brand. But I like to think of “Social Media” more as visibility media – or search media. Jeffrey L. Cohen, Managing Editor of SocialMediaB2B.com agrees. He recently wrote that “prospects still find their way to your site and your content by search, and Google (Plus) is giving B2B marketers another tool to help with that.” That’s actually true for all the social media elements.

But just exactly, how does Social Media work to help your prospects find you? Let’s start by examining a company’s digital foot print.

In the graph above, the mighty Web Site is situated on the left with corporate and product messaging, and possibly e-commerce waiting patiently for visitors. Just four years ago, the quip “build it and they will come” held true for web sites. Some studies suggest that as much as 93% of internet visitors went directly to the Web Site as recently as 2008 – without the assistance from Google or another search engine.

However, today that relationship has completely reversed. Now 90% of visitors arrive at your site through search, represented in the graphic as the circle on the right. It is no longer enough to just build the site. Marketers must expand their presence on the internet to get closer or rather more visible to the search engines. And one of the most effective ways to do that is to use social media to expand the company’s digital footprint.

The most common social media vehicles are noted on the chart. However, the real key to maximizing the footprint is not so much which elements are selected but rather that these social media elements are integrated with each other – as well as refined to best appeal to certain segments of your prospects and customers. For example, a new product is usually launched with an announcement on the web site. A message is also posted on Facebook about the new product as a tweet directs readers to the blog on the microsite that explains in greater detail the product benefits. A video of someone using the product is posted on YouTube, and the blog feed is updated on the management team’s LinkedIn page. The next day, the twitter account takes up new tweets and retweets. Facebook has a couple of new posts. The next week the same integrated approach is applied to promote the next topic identified in the editorial calendar.

It is actually a fairly straight forward and efficient process but it takes a good plan and some discipline to keep all the pieces working together. There is one other important element to success – engaging relevant content that has been optimized for the search engines, but I’ll save that for my next blog. If you would like to explore further how to create or enhance a strategic approach for B2B Social Media, please contact me.

patriciah@scgpr.com
612-288-2403

-Pat Henning

Over the last few years, North Minneapolis has undergone some tremendous hardships, such as the devastation from the tornado that tore through North neighborhoods last summer and increasing youth violence. However, there is an upcoming event that offers some hope. The Miss Seventh Avenue Pageant will take place on March 31 at 7:00 p.m. at Wayman AME Church. The pageant supports young women in the area and gives them opportunities to achieve success.

Wayman AME Church embraces these young women with a sense of family and community. The church provides coaching and guidance for the contestants as they prepare for pageant night and reaches out to the neighborhood to expand community involvement. The pageant participants will be encouraged to focus on their strengths and their future as the leaders of tomorrow.

Local judges of the event include fashion designer Rosa Bogar, former model Roxanne Crossland and film producer Lee Jordan of “A Look Over Jordan Productions.”

All contestants will receive gift baskets from local businesses and are given complimentary gowns and beauty services from Minneapolis salons for pageant night. The crowned Miss Seventh Avenue will receive a scholarship.

The Miss Seventh Avenue Pageant is a great example of how a local church can support and encourage Minneapolis’s young women as well as the Northside.

-Carol Payne

The Perfect OCR app is a document scanner with high quality OCR (optical character recognition) capabilities. Simply scan a document or image with your smartphone’s camera and the app’s OCR applies a text layer over the image to enable editing. The app can be a very useful, as it gives you the ability to edit, save and share documents as PDFs away from your desk or copy room. A must have for people who edit work on the go!

I would consider myself an avid Do-It-Yourselfer. I love the challenge of learning new skills and the accomplishment of making broken things work. Recently, I have found myself having to fix a number of things myself. And thanks to the many how-to videos on the Internet, my DIY adventures have been successful.

• First, it was my flat screen HD TV that needed help. I had to replace 4 Capacitors, which I learned by watching a tutorial on YouTube.
• Then, I replaced the LCD screen on my MacBook, again with the help from a You Tube video by Smalldog Electronics.
• After that, I replaced the spark plugs on a VW Jetta with the help from a step-by-step tutorial on a VW forum.

I am currently researching how to replace the water lines to my upstairs bathroom, which brings me to this blog’s topic. While researching processes and replacement materials, I found a great video that easily explained everything related to this particular project. This video was made by the B2B pipe fitting manufacturer WATTS. The video not only introduced me to its new innovative pipe fittings, but also showed me how the fittings work and why they are the best solution for me, the consumer. There were links to additional videos explaining how to use these fittings and install them with various materials. Finding the how-to videos introduced me to this manufacturer’s product which then informed me and sold me.

Loaded with information and confidence, I went to my local Menards and specifically ask for the Watts Quick-Connect fittings. The plumbing experts at Menards also showed me another fitting product comparable to the Watts brand, but already feeling familiar to the Quick-Connect, I stayed loyal and bought those.

With information overflowing on the Internet, Do-It-Yourselfers—and consumers in general—are feeling more empowered than ever. This is a great opportunity for B2B companies to share knowledge and show off products. Just because a company is B2B and doesn’t sell directly to end-users doesn’t mean it shouldn’t speak to them. Using industry expertise reinforces product brand strength, and how-to videos featuring product lines are a great way to illustrate that a brand is anticipating the needs and wants of end-users. Utilizing YouTube videos and channels allows organizations to be the first to reach end-users so they will demand your product in the marketplace.

And, if you’re curious about my current DIY project, this is how I’m going to replace my bad galvanized pipes with PEX and connect it to the existing copper pipes.

-Trevor Nolte

Recently I had a new addition built onto to my house. Instead of regular construction, we ended up going with an all glass solarium. The building of the solarium took about one and a half months to complete. I was really amazed as to how much work went into erecting a glass solarium. Construction wrapped up a few weeks ago, and we have been enjoying our solarium. I actually need my sunglasses during peak sun hours!

Like many who live in northern climates, my husband suffers a bit from Seasonal Affective Disorder during the long winter months when sun is scarce. As we head into the rest of the winter, we are hoping that spending time in the solarium during the peak sun hours will help lift our moods and make the winter feel shorter. I am currently trying to fill the room with tropical plants and bright colors to create a Florida-like ambiance. It has been difficult, to say the least, to find a real palm tree to purchase here in Minnesota… but I am persistent and will hopefully find just the right one.

While we are especially excited to enjoy our new room this winter, the type of solarium we had built can be enjoyed year round. It will be our  tropical escape in the winter, and in the summer I can imagine opening all the windows for a nice breeze, viewing the stars through the glass ceiling at night or reading during a rain shower all while staying dry. We can now bring the outdoors inside and stay warm, dry and bug free all year round. We are very excited to experience all the seasons in our new solarium.

-Jane Tomassetti

If you love web analytics like many of us here at SCG do, you may be interested in the benefits of the Ego app. Ego gives you one convenient location and simple interface to check and manage web statistics. With support for Ember, Feedburner, Google Analytics, Mint, Squarespace, Tumblr, Twitter and Vimeo, you can easily view all of your websites’ stats without logging in and out of multiple analytics sites. The app tracks daily, hourly and monthly views, feed subscription totals and changes and more.

As the boundaries between TV viewing and online viewing continue to blur, YouTube’s new venture will gray the lines even further. 2012 will see YouTube jump off computer screens and onto TV’s by bringing premium channels and original content to our homes.

In case you haven’t heard, YouTube has recruited producers, directors and performers from traditional media to create at least a hundred YouTube TV channels (YouTV, if you will), which we can expect to begin viewing in the next six months.

These channels will have a lot in common with more traditional TV programs, as YouTube will act similarly to a small TV station, but content will be streamed and delivered over the Internet. YouTube requires that each channel produces a certain number of hours of content per week but other than that, creators will have the freedom to program their channels as they see fit.

According to Forrester Research, by 2016 50% of all households will have Wi-Fi-enabled devices on their televisions, which will bring all those new YouTV channels into the living room, tempting people to cancel their pricey cable subscriptions. The only way for the networks and the cable companies to grow will be to buy Web-based channels.

“People went from broad to narrow,” YouTube’s Global Head of Content Robert Kyncl said, “and we think they will continue to go that way—spend more and more time in the niches—because now the distribution landscape allows for more narrowness.”

We’ve already seen how cable allowed TV channels to create more narrowed programming. Kyncl believes that audiences want even “nichier” content and that YouTube’s original channels will be the driving force that will deliver it right to our digital doors.

It’s like free cable TV? I’m on board!

With YouTV (in theory), the niches will become more focused, and the audiences will get smaller and more segmented, meaning they will be more quantifiable which is great news for marketers. Channels and advertisers will know precisely who its viewers are—not our names but info regarding our viewing histories, searches, purchases, our rough location and our online social connections. This will let advertisers produce more relevant ads for very specific audiences.

So it’s free, but will it be any good?

Kyncl ensures that quality programming is the ultimate goal. YouTV has attracted names like Disney, Jay-Z, Madonna and Amy Poehler, who have already begun creating their own channels. With the array of channels it will offer, it’s up to the audience what to watch, not the TV executive.

YouTV has already been likened to the upheaval led by cable companies in the 1980s broadcast industry. Will we see similar results? What are your thoughts?

-Jodi Osmond

I did two things on January 1, 2012: ran a half-marathon and dedicated part of my day to sharpening my computer programming skills. Enter Codecademy, a start-up geared at interactively and easily teaching with its CodeYear program, a weekly lesson plan that steeps the user in code, starting with the basics and moving up from there. The thought of getting back into a year-long computer science course was slightly more intimidating than the 13.1 miles. Fast forward to January 9^th and my first CodeYear lesson. I dug right in and got through the lesson relatively quickly. 

Figure 1: Codecademy’s Hyper-intuitive Interface. Hey, I got a robot badge that I am going to tweet about!

After completing my first lesson, I found that Codecademy is incredibly accessible (you can walk through the first lesson before you even create a user account) and is very user-friendly with features like simple lesson explanations and an editor that provides real-time proof that you are coding properly.

Users also receive points and badges for exercises completed and reaching certain goals (think Foursquare but the incentive is a stronger understanding of computer code and how computers work). This is the big selling point of Codecademy and CodeYear: they utilize the aspects of countless social networks out there, apply it to an audience that wants to understand more about the tools that are at their disposal, and provides an easy way to start using them.

­

I had a really positive experience with Codecademy and CodeYear, and I plan on following through the entire program (I now have a Foursquare-like addiction to getting achievements and badges ).  I would recommend it to anyone trying to gain more insight into programming and would like a little help in their effort to easily communicate across fields.

Figure 2: The start of a big year

What other resources do you use to strengthen and reinforce your technical skill set?

-Robby Cecil

Marketeer err…Mouseketeer Ears at the Smithsonian.

As a longtime interactive professional (or “overly seasoned web nerd” if you want to get technical), I’m as guilty as the next person for inadvertently spewing forth a barrage of acronyms and vernacular the non-nerd has never heard before or may not fully understand. This, of course, is no problem when I’m in the company of other geeks, but I wanted to put together a cheat sheet of sorts for those that deal with my folk every day.

Say What?

• HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language):  HTML (and/or XHTML) is the foundational coding language used to create web pages and websites. Right click in your browser and View Source and you can see it for yourself!
• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets):  CSS is a coding language that tells HTML what to look like. If someone’s talking about CSS, they’re definitely talking about the colors, fonts, links, buttons and overall look and feel of a website or web page.
• CMS (Content Management System):  Anything on the Internet that’s built on a CMS is done so in order for a non-technical person to be able to easily update its content. Most sites nowadays are built on one of the thousands of CMS systems available and usually fall into one of three categories:
  • Open Source:  Freely available and modifiable under an open public licensing such as the GNU General Public License (GPL)
  • Proprietary:  Often referred to as a SaaS (Software as a Service). Proprietary systems are closed source and users are usually charged recurring licensing fees
  • “In-House” or “Home Grown” CMS:  Usually a proprietary CMS by nature and in my opinion, very rarely a cost-effective solution for most projects
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization):  Can be coupled with SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and is the process of improving the rankings or “visibility” of a website and its pages in search engines. For more on SEO, check out some other posts we’ve shared here on 41 Stories.
• PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor):  PHP is the most widely used server-side scripting language with the only major competitor being Microsoft’s .NET (formerly ASP). PHP is free to use while .NET is a paid solution. Here’s a little fun fact:  Facebook is largely written in PHP. Another fun fact: this acronym is what’s called a recursive acronym and it’s confusing. For some fun reading on recursive acronyms check out this Wikipedia entry.
• XML (Extensible Markup Language):  I can keep this one super easy. It’s a regular text file and it holds data.
• RSS (Real Simple Syndication):  A standardized XML file that allows publishers to syndicate, share and distribute content. I’m sure you’ve seen the orange icon a few times. And if you use Google Reader, that’s what’s called an RSS aggregator.
• URL (Uniform Resource Locator):  I can keep this one simple too. For all practical purposes it’s a link. URL is sometimes confused with domain. A domain is the address where a website lives while URLs point to pages and/or files on a website’s domain. Clear as mud? If not, here’s a domain:  www.google.com and here’s a URL www.google.com/about.
• FTP (File Transfer Protocol):  This is the network protocol used to transfer files over the Internet and from personal computers to websites. If someone’s talking about an “FTP site” then they’re probably talking about a means to transfer files (often large ones), and if they mention “FTP access” then they’re probably talking about getting access to update the actual files that make up a website.

Still awake? If so I could most certainly continue with OVDA (Other Various Dork Acronyms) but I’ll stop short here and allow for any inquiring minds to ask their questions in the comments below.

-Brian Larson