When Sunday’s cloudy weather thwarted plans to hit the beaches of nearby Lake Calhoun with some friends (and we realized that summer is quickly coming to a close), we decided to make the best of the cloudy day (and the rest of the summer) and start a month-long photo scavenger hunt through the Cities. We searched the web and found a list of 506 scavenger-worthy activities, ranging from “entire team crab walking” to finding a “Wal-Mart item costing $5.63,” already assigned a point value based on its difficulty to complete. The mission: to complete and document as many activities as possible during the month of August. Not only will this scavenger hunt make the rest of the summer memorable, it will prevent wasting precious weekend hours asking, “what should we do?”

But a scavenger hunt is no fun unless you’re competing against others. So our team (The Sassy Shooters) posted the activity to Craigslist and created a Facebook event calling other groups to participate. We also created a Flickr account to document our adventures throughout the month. We’re photographed below rowing a canoe on dry land (worth 7 points).

Our activity is picking up steam—with 14 confirmed participants on Facebook and two queries from Craiglist. And while we hope to have many more teams navigating the Twin Cities looking for a canoe to row on dry land, we’ll be content if it’s only us that has an answer to the nagging question, “what should we do?”

-Whitney McIntosh

Community and relationships have been the buzzwords in marketing for the last few years.  As marketers we work to create an open community where ideas and information, while strategic, are free flowing. But it is only through sustained efforts that communities and relationships truly develop or take root. Organizations who do not realize this from the get-go end up with “dead” Facebook pages and Twitter, blog feeds and websites that go without update for months and fail to build community.  

Earlier this month, a coalition of downtown businesses organized the 9^th Street Experience, an event to promote an area of downtown Minneapolis and create a new downtown community.  This attempt to create an offline community got me thinking about what else—besides timely posts and updates—makes an online community successful and vibrant. 

1)       Target a tangible audience: The 9^th Street Experience was promoted by a coalition of businesses along 9^th Street in an effort to establish the area as a new downtown community where people can work, eat, sleep and play. The organizers of the Open House and Scavenger Hunt didn’t want to reach a broad audience of say, people who like to eat at restaurants. Instead they targeted (through a Facebook event and promotion on local entertainment blogs) a defined group of commuters, downtown workers and young professionals who like to explore new places. Because they knew exactly who they were broadcasting to, they were able to more clearly define their messages.

2)       Provide a unique experience: Over the course of an hour or two, I learned a lot about the local businesses along 9^th Street. For example, I learned about Haskell’s founder and learned that former President Bill Clinton ate at Manny’s restaurant.  I got information I wouldn’t have gotten elsewhere—key for marketers establishing content for unique online forums.

3)       Get people involved: The organizers behind the 9^th Street Experience planned a scavenger hunt so participants would be personally invested in the activity. Throughout the evening, we were able to ask questions, get answers and connect with actual people in our local community. Online communities, such as blogs, can act similarly and provide readers an opportunity to receive personal responses from business owners and corporations.

4)       Give people a reason to return: The 9^th Street Experience gave me a reason to return and explore this area of downtown Minneapolis. Besides walking down 9^th Street almost daily to get to work from my bus stop, I rarely explored the restaurants and local businesses along the way. Door prizes at each of the scavenger hunt locations (like coupons and vouchers for free drinks and discounted meals), give me a reason to come back for a happy hour or date night.

These ideas can be easily and creatively integrated into content posted to your online communities. The investment will result in a community not only with more personality, but more impact and can save your page from the digital graveyard haunted by the ghosts of disregarded blogs and Twitter accounts.

-Whitney McIntosh

As summer gears up, temperatures rise and people exchange the coziness of the skyway for fresh air and a lunchtime stroll in the sunshine, the city of Minneapolis answers our calls for outdoor activities with a favorite event for downtown workers—Tunes at Noon. Beginning on June 1, every weekday from 11:00 to 1:00, local and national acts take the stage in Peavey Plaza, a beautiful area nestled along Nicollet Mall next to Orchestra Hall.  This year, urban lunchtime picnickers can take a break from the hustle and bustle and enjoy songs from performers like Ben Connelly, Tim Mahoney and Courtney Yasmineh, to name a few.

Peavey Plaza in Downtown Minneapolis

Can’t make it to Peavey Plaza over your lunch hour? No problem, because Land O’ Lakes has teamed up with Peavey Plaza for the Alive After 5 Summer Concert Series. Starting at 5:00, live music fills the city air until 9:00. I made an effort to attend as often as possible last summer and had a blast dancing with friends, eating great food from vendors at the Plaza and soaking in long summer nights. This year, local legends The Honeydogs are performing as well as Cash’d Out, a Johnny Cash tribute band. Chances are you’ll see me hitting the dance floor at both performances.

My friends and I dancing along to one of last year's acts.

A full calendar of Peavey Plaza music events is available here. 

-Whitney McIntosh

Many people say you can’t measure happiness. It’s just one of those emotions that is often inexplicable and impossible to measure; it’s just a gut feeling. This was true until 1972 when the Kingdom of Bhutan, a small country in South Asia, began measuring their nation’s Gross National Happiness (You can read more about Bhutan’s GNH in The Geography of Bliss, a personal favorite).  The purpose was and remains to ensure that Bhutan resident’s have a fulfilling, healthy lifestyle. Essentially, Bhutan measures the seemingly immeasurable for the common good of their citizens.

So what does Bhutan’s GNH have to do with marketing? At SCG we clearly see the benefits of strategically incorporating social media forums like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, microsites and blogs into communication strategies. It’s a great way to allow free-flowing conversation with various audiences. However, critics of these communication tools focus on the unscientific methods of measuring the direct impact of blog posts, Twitter updates and Facebook notes. And for these critics, a marketer’s instinct won’t suffice. They want hard data indicating that social media forums are effectively working.

Taking that point, in the last few months Facebook has developed two new tools to better allow Facebook page administrators to track the progress (or assess what they can do to better connect with their core audience) of their social media strategies. The first of these tools is an extension of the Insights program administrators currently have access to on fan pages. The insights provided include basic demographics and graphs outlining interactions over a determined time period (daily, weekly, monthly). What’s missing is information regarding which posts had the largest impression on your audience. Yes, you could go through and count how many people “liked” or commented on each post. But that is time consuming and doesn’t account for how many people viewed the post but didn’t comment. Facebook’s post insights, which is currently rolling out throughout Facebook, easily shows administrators the number of impressions and percentage of feedback for each individual post.

The other great tool administrators of all Facebook fan pages is a weekly Page report.  Included in the report is the number of fans added, interactions (comments and likes) and visits in the past week.  It’s a great tool that gives administrators an easy way of tracking their page’s progress.

So kudos to Facebook for taking the initiative (like Bhutan did years ago) to measure the seemingly immeasurable for the greater good of social media marketing. It may finally allow us to quell critics with hard facts that complement our instincts and the bottom-line results—that social media marketing matters and more importantly, works.

-Whitney McIntosh

The Twitterverse was buzzing yesterday as web users learned about Twitter’s newest application, @anywhere. Twitter’s official blog post (read it here) offered details about this exciting expansion of Twitter from a micro blogging site into a global web presence.

So what is it? Anyone familiar with social media, and especially those who use Facebook and Twitter daily, knows how quickly news spread via social media platforms. With Twitter’s @anywhere, the dissemination of news is much faster because users can tweet about an article, YouTube video or great deal on Amazon without navigating back to their personal Twitter account. Another cool feature is the ability to follow your favorite journalists from the New York Times—just by clicking their byline. With @anywhere you can simply tweet information through “hovercards” (easily added to a site with JavaScript)—essentially you are remotely accessing your Twitter account on another page.

Sites are already using a similar technology from Twitter called API (application programming interface), but @anywhere is much more user and site developer friendly.

What does all of this mean?  With the open-source interface, @anywhere encourages users to connect with companies, brands and thought leaders and lets them do so much more easily. It ultimately brings Twitter outside of the Twitter.com network (where users can only post, follow and retweet after logging into their account) and allows users to use these Twitter functions from other web pages users frequent. The direct implications are still unknown because @anywhere hasn’t yet been launched (Twitter assures us it will happen “soon”). But with high profile partners like The Huffington Post, Salesforce.com, YouTube, The New York Times, Yahoo! and AdAge, the impact on online communications will likely be large and happen quickly. 

 How do you think Twitter’s @anywhere will impact online communications?

-Whitney McIntosh

One of the best things about working downtown Minneapolis is the plethora of eating establishments available within a five minute walk. Of course, there are the go-to places for soup, coffee and sandwiches, but even those great places can lose their appeal after awhile. So when Cocoa & Fig opened their doors in Gaviidae Commons last month, I was intrigued. While the full-service catering company based in Shakopee offers delicious menus for everything from company breakfasts to engagement parties, their Twitter following is seemingly most impressed with their dessert offerings. 

After following them on Twitter (you can too! @cocoaaandfig) and exploring their online menu, I decided I needed to see for myself what the buzz was about. En route to the Central Library after work last week, I made a pit stop at their quaint shop downtown. My initial plan was to only purchase one of their famous French macaroons, but was immediately drawn to their cupcake selection. So, I left with two French macaroons and two cupcakes, eager to return my books, get home and start my evening with dessert.  The Twitterverse did not lie—the macaroons were amazing and the cupcakes were simple and perfect.

With spring nearly here, I will soon be braving the outdoors instead of navigating downtown through the skyways.  As luck would have it, Cocoa & Fig will have a weekly stand at the Nicollet Mall Farmer’s Market so I (and hopefully others) can continue to indulge.  

Have you visited a local find? What would you recommend?

-Whitney McIntosh

Over the weekend my boyfriend and I introduced our cat, Harry,  to a new member of our family, an eight-week-old kitten we named Tilly. We (well…I) thought it necessary to bring a kitten into our lives so that Harry would have a playmate, friend and partner in crime during our working hours. I searched far and wide—on websites, in newspaper ads and through Craigslist postings. Then I came across a local organization called Pet Project Rescue. 

 Based in Minneapolis, this organization rescues dogs and cats from high-kill shelters in the Twin Cities and even brings dogs from Mexico, where the adoption rate for stray dogs is a meager 1%. Animals taken into the care of Pet Project Rescue are given high-quality veterinary care and housed in foster homes until a sound permanent home is found for them. After submitting an in depth application (questions range from your workplace to your ability and willingness to exercise your new pet to describing a typical day in the life of your pet) you are able to meet your potential new family member. Because animals stay in foster homes, volunteers at Pet Project Rescue are able to provide deeper insight into the personality and needs of the individual animal, which is very helpful, especially when introducing a new animal to an already established pet. 

Only 5 days into our family, Tilly is adjusting very well. Harry on the other hand, well…I think he may need a few more days to adjust. She had her first round of vaccinations and came with certificates to get additional vaccinations, spayed and micro chipped, standard for all adoptions through Pet Project Rescue. Despite Harry’s uncertainties about our new kitten, I’m happy to have in her our family.  And I’m sure my colleagues will love hearing about their antics.

-Whitney McIntosh

We should all know by now that social media is no longer solely a means of communication for tweens and young adults.  This communication phenomenon has infiltrated all age groups, businesses large and small, and now our local and federal governments.  It makes sense this acceptance of new media is spreading through Washington.  To me, politicians embracing social media outlets like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter (and they are—nearly all members of Congress have a YouTube channel) is the essence of democracy. Isn’t the whole point of social media—and a differentiating point between SM and other communication outlets—that consumers (or constituents) and business (or government) can engage in two-way conversations about brands and products (or legislation and change)? These two-way conversations from which many citizens feel excluded are inherent in the success of democracy. Just ask our Founding Fathers…

 But uncertainties remain.  On a local level this change may come easier.  In San Francisco, city dwellers can report potholes, street lamp repairs and other municipal issues to city council members and the mayor’s office via an application that sends the GPS location of the problem along with an explanation.  Although not every issue can be addressed or changed in a short period of time, San Franciscans can feel like they play a direct role changing their city for the better, one pothole at a time.  Nationally, Congressmen and women will certainly have a more difficult time handling the number of tweets, comments and views regarding large-scale change, like healthcare reform.  Like international organizations, which initially had issues on social media accounts handling large numbers of customer service issues, the federal government will have to define the reasons they are integrating social media into their communications platforms and reinforce those reasons to their audience, while continuing to give their constituents a chance to openly voice concerns and opinions.  But however individual politicians utilize social media outlets, citizens should be excited about the possibilities to follow, friend and connect with their government.

-Whitney McIntosh

When LinkedIn debuted in May of 2003, (a year before the launch of Facebook) not many people took notice, but over the past two years (and especially in the past year), people from across the globe have connected to the growing network of over 50 million professionals from 200 countries.  Despite the popularity and usefulness of the networking site, the blogosphere—the harsh world that it can be—often rains on LinkedIn’s parade.  Critics use the words “boring” and “simple” when describing the site. And to a point, I can agree.  Once you join the site, make your profile, select an appropriate picture and begin making connections and recommendations, it’s hard to know what the next step should be. But does a site like LinkedIn, that offers professionals easy access to background information about other professionals, need the hyper activity of other social media to be a valuable tool? In other social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, those next engagements are almost intuitive. Their success is built on enticing multiple interactions with the site per day – or per hour for some! With Facebook, you “friend” someone, tag pictures of them, send a message, join groups and fan pages on which you continually interact.  Twitter is constantly updated as news stories break, interesting articles are uncovered and events in your personal life or professional perspective unfold. 

 Nonetheless, it seems as though LinkedIn has listened to its critics, responding with a redesigned profile.  Users are now greeted by a sleeker, more user-friendly interface that more effectively shows the activity of your connections and groups.  The new look will be available in phases to users, so be on the look out next time you log on. In addition to previously available applications like SlideShare and Word Press for blogs, LinkedIn has recently introduced new partnerships with Twitter and Microsoft Outlook and added new applications like My Travel and Amazon Reading List. This shows just how far LinkedIn has come in such a short amount of time (when LinkedIn first started, there were about 5 applications available.) These new relationships and expanded applications highlight the importance of social media integration and provide users new and exciting ways to utilize LinkedIn to enhance individual and corporation’s relationships with their LinkedIn connections.

 Will LinkedIn’s new functionality make a difference in how you use it?

 -Whitney McIntosh

Thanksgiving is upon us! It’s time to pile our plates high with turkey, yams and pumpkin pie.  But before we do, we asked ourselves, “What are you thankful for this year?”  Here’s how we replied…

Steph is thankful for her clarity and sanity.

Whitney is thankful for her family. “They can always make me laugh and have given me such unwavering support throughout this year.”

Trevor is most thankful for “my beautiful, healthy baby girl Luella. I am also thankful for how stinkin’ happy she is all the time!”

Joy is thankful that, “even though my family lives in three different states, we will all be together for Thanksgiving!”

Patricia is thankful for the trust our clients have placed in us during this challenging 2009.

Patrick is thankful that our agency was able to withstand the economic downturn and that our clients have generally weathered the storm very well.

Carol is so thankful for Makarei, her little granddaughter. “We get up at 4:30 in the morning to get ready for work and school.  On Saturdays she has piano lessons and choir practice.  She goes with me to Lay Organization and Missionary Society meetings and stays in a separate room dancing and singing.  Makarei is the joy of my life and I am so happy to have her in my life.”

Chad is thankful for his family.

Randy is thankful that his cousin Trent returned safely from Djibouti, Africa, after spending a 7-month tour of duty in the Marines.

Jenny is thankful for the small group she joined recently through her church. “We meet each Sunday night for a time of faith, fun and fellowship. It has already been such a gift and a wonderful way to start a new week. And our host is truly Rachael Ray Jr. so I leave each week with lunch for Monday!”

Jeron is thankful the economy has reminded him (and certainly many others) how much more valuable family, health and friendships are than material items.

Jane is very thankful to have a wonderful, big family that surrounds her with love and support. “I am also thankful that both Dan and I are employed and that our family is healthy and happy. And I am thankful to have been fortunate to have adopted such an amazing, loving dog to add to our family…we are so blessed to be able to share every moment of Lily’s life.”

What are you most thankful for this year?

We hope you enjoy your holiday with family, friends and those closest to you. Happy Thanksgiving from all of your friends at SCG!