By Peter Getman

If you haven’t yet, then “We’re starting TODAY” is the only right answer.

When was the last time you were compelled to modernize your brand’s marketing? When the World Wide Web was born? Remember your first website? Was it a KILLER website? Probably not … for most brands it took five generations of websites to meet expectations if they are even considered met today.

I remember when we built the first five websites for dozens of brands.

Each time, we got to do so because we identified new delivery mechanisms, mediums and digital practices that our client’s competitors had not yet discovered. If we hadn’t been ahead of the curve, their competitor’s agency would have been.

We’ve always been early. MicroArts Creative Agency purchased New Hampshire’s first Mac workstation for $14,000 in 1989. MicroArts.com must be one of the older URLs in New Hampshire having gone live in March of 1995. Our curiosity fuels our ability to consistently help our clients capitalize on the next big trend in brand marketing (hint).

So when did companies start getting websites right? It certainly wasn’t early. In the old days it was simply one-way communication from your brand to its target consumer cultures. The only way these consumers could find your site was if you specifically begged them visit as part of your advertising. Google wasn’t born yet and SEO was far from being an acronym anyone understood. It shouldn’t have been so hard to get it right. Right?

Heck, most eventually figured out how to work within the confines of enabling technologies. After a number of years we somehow pried the web site keys from the chief technology officer and chief information officer and turned them over to the chief marketing officer. This took place after an odd period when software programmers were forced to take on the role of website designers. And finally – following the stress of WAY too many go-live dates missed – the actual content on the website was properly funded and resources (plural) were allocated. Remember when the marketing director started writing the copy for a site, the week before the launch date? It was probably the most writing they had done since they completed English 101 as a college freshman.

You get the point. For most, it was a sh*t show that went on for WAY too long.

This wasn’t the time for technology, websites or marketing to evolve to meet business needs. It was the time when businesses needed to evolve to accommodate the new world of digital marketing. Websites had become the front door of their business. Open 24/7/365, it’s where the first stories were told and where customer purchasing decision were initiated.

CEOs hear me, WE’VE MOVED THE FRONT DOOR!

In fact … there are millions of them.
And many of these doors come with “opinions” built in them.

Your front door(s) is still where the first stories are told, but it now takes place on the social mediums where your consumers observe, learn, share, socialize, inspire, react, like, love and buy. It is your consumers who will be initiating most of the stories and leading the conversation. The consumers are influencing one another at an unprecedented rate and writing a new chapter in marketing history.

With all this change in our business, comes opportunity. So may the best brand win and I believe they will.

I think it’s awesome.

Modernizing can truly be at the core of your brand’s next differentiation strategy.

So start here:

1. Reallocate your 2011 budget significantly for 2012.
2. Start the agency review process next week.
3. Hire an agency that has the experience to guide the transformation of your business from the bottom-up to sync with escalating consumer expectations of your brand’s communications.

Which agency?

• If not the MicroArts team, hire the right agency. **
• Hire an agency out in front that has the experience to guide YOUR BUSINESS TO BE READY.
• Hire an agency with a reputation for teaching you. ***
• Hire an agency with a proven creative process disciplined by best practice principles for every modern marketing discipline they offer.
• Hire an agency to lead the integration of all marketing with a hub laced with social media amplification.
• Hire an agency with a team that wants to kick the living snot out of your competition.

Almost lastly, to my fortune 5000 friends and brand managers – you need to update your brand book right now. Your brand’s voice in social media (SoMe) is the new first three chapters of your brand book. Your brand will soon be “handled” by a 100 times more people than ever before and therefore the guide to do so must mature into a dynamic, living, breathing section of your brand book.

It’s the next generation brand book that guides your brand’s voice in social media with the protocol and methodology to scale with confidence to the demands of your modernized consumer.

Three years ago, I challenged myself with this vision and encourage you not to wait five generations to get it right.

PS: Hiring the college intern to do social media is a really stupid idea. It’s the voice of your brand and it’s VITAL that they are trained to communicate and amplify it.

** Our clients are growing fast, so we’ve grown to support them. At the moment, we only have room for one new client that is ready to modernize and thus position itself for fast growth.
*** If you only have your thumb on it, you need more thumbs. It won’t be long before your competitors have dozens of employees, trained and ready to seed, join and inspire conversations where your customers are making decisions today.

Be sure to check out Part II of this post here:
24 Reasons Social Trends Are Driving Leading Brands to Modernize

There are some new numbers on mobile out from Google that are pretty compelling from a marketing perspective. 1 in 3 cellphone carrying Americans are smart phone owners. That’s nearly 70 million people (up 13% from last quarter). But what are those 70 million doing on their phones and what is the marketing potential for that group?

A recent study by Google reveals that in 2011 the opportunities marketing is high on mobile, take a look at their video that tells the tale:

Some highlights:

• 81% browse the Internet, 77% search, 68% use an app, and 48% watch videos on their smartphone.
• 90% of smartphone searches results in an action (purchasing, visiting a business, etc.)
• 79% of smartphone consumers use their phones to help with shopping, from comparing prices, finding more product info to locating a retailer

That’s tens of millions of people who are taking valuable actions related to brands because of their smartphones. Is your brand up to speed on the mobile internet? With these kind of numbers it better be, because consumers are seeing it on mobile every day, whether you’re ready or not.

If you’re already up to speed then Google has more good news for you – mobile advertising is effective, very effective:

• 82% notice mobile ads, especially mobile display ads and a third notice mobile search ads
• Half of those who see a mobile ad take action (with 49% of that group making a purchase and 35% visiting a website)

Those kinds of rates are incredible, especially when compared to the numbers associated with display ads (where for example, click-through rates are just 0.2% on average).

Is your brand taking advantage of these numbers? It’s time you go mobile and get results. MicroArts can help, drop us a line if you’d like to learn more.

[Opening paragraph data source: comScore]

It’s been a year since the initial launch of the iPad and a month since the launch of the iPad 2. The tablet revolution is here and it’s here to stay.

If your website uses Flash (for video, messaging, eye candy) then I hope you’ve thought about what your iPad users are seeing in lieu of Flash. Steve Jobs does not mince his words when he tells us that Adobe’s Flash application will not be integrated with iPad.

Do you care about iPad users?
Who are tablet users? Techies, moms, college kids, toddlers in the back seat? In my opinion, tablet users are a passive audience who are casually observing the web. They are most likely: watching videos on YouTube; checking in on Facebook; reading the day’s news.

Who is the audience for your website? What are the chances that they are dialing up your site from a tablet? If you think even 10% of your site’s audience is coming to your site from a tablet, you should be seriously thinking about WHAT they see when they get there!

Does your site need Flash?
What purpose does Flash serve on your site?

• Eye candy for animated billboards
  MicroArts is a big proponent of using “billboards” to convey a brand’s messaging. Why not use jQuery to achieve a similar effect.
• Video
  Adobe claims that 75% of video on the web is in Flash. If you can, why not embed a YouTube player?
• Really cool sh*t
  When MicroArts is challenged to develop cutting edge technology, sometimes Flash is the only answer. However, be sure to google around for some jQuery techniques that may do the trick!

I often tell people that one of the best parts of my job is that it is constantly evolving. New technologies bring new challenges. Make sure that your brand evolves, too!

If you haven’t yet tuned into FOX on Tuesday nights you’re missing out. Whether you’re a tween, grandparent, or neurosurgeon, Glee has made quite the name for itself. It’s not just because of the talented young stars, their seriously booming voices and totally cool choreography. It’s because Glee combines both traditional media with social media. Actually making people want to tune-in at showtime, rather than letting the DVR pick up, yet another series you’ll forget to watch.

Maybe I’m biased since social media is kind of my thing. But let’s think about this? You have a show that isn’t sure to be hit (a sitcom musical!?) and week after week you find the ratings flying off the chart. It’s on FOX, not HBO or some other premium channel. It has typical commercials and is an average hour length show. So why does Glee work? What makes it so special?

The answer is … it’s social television.

What Glee has done better than anyone is combine two worlds: the online world and the traditional media world. Although clearly a TV show, Glee took itself to the next level by making its social channels just as important as it’s weekly time slot on FOX. Glee has a karaoke app, a Twitter account, the actor’s Twitter accounts (live tweeti ng during the show!), a Facebook page, Gleek of the Week contest, The Glee Project, songs and episodes on iTunes, and much more.

In an interview with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo he stated, “people feel like they have to watch the show while it’s going on because the community is tweeting about the show and the characters are tweeting as the show’s happening so [they have to] watch it in real time.”

Glee has removed itself from typical sitcom syndrome and actually turned each week’s episode into a live event. To me, they have created a truly integrated and social show experience. If you miss a show, you’re missing out on the conversation both online and offline.

For example. When the MTV Video Music Awards happen – do you DVR it and then watch it a week later? No. If you care, you watch it the moment it happens so you can participate in both the online and offline conversations. Same goes for sporting events. You would never not watch the SuperBowl just to watch it days later and hope that you could have the same type of social conversations. It just wouldn’t happen.

Glee has taken traditional media and married it flawlessly with social media, in a way that it actually feels like the show could not exist without the other. So I ask you, why haven’t more shows adopted this strategy?

By: Geoff Cunningham, Content Specialist

“Did so well at ninja school the instructor didn’t recognize me when I graduated.”

Can you guess what brand is rolling out this type of content on Facebook?

No?

Here’s another taste …

“I’m straight ballin’ – just got rims for my horse-drawn carriage!”

While the above statements sound like the musings of an over-caffeinated 13-year-old, it’s actually some of the messaging being pumped out on a Skittles® Facebook page that’s as much or more of a guilty pleasure to the brand’s fans as the candy itself.

The messaging is random, lacking direction and walks a razor-thin rainbow wire over a bottomless pit of insanity. And it’s perfect.

Talk of ninjas, unicorns, a chainsaw boom-box (what the hell is that?) is clearly resonating with Skittles’ 15.6 million “Rainbros” – the perfectly ridiculous term they use to refer to their target market (i.e. fans).

The bottom is Skittles® have people eating up their copy, which is helping to spread excitement and conversation about a brand that’s taken a unique approach to content. The above posts alone received more than 30,000 “likes”, which is only more amazing when you realize that such gems are regularly receiving 1,000 comments from fans.

Translation: People like what Skittles® has to say and they want to talk about it.

This is compared to brands like Snickers®, which has a FB following of roughly 1.5 million and whose content focuses on things like the celebration of “National Peanut Butter Lover’s Day.” Mountain Dew® has 4.5 million Facbook fans with M & M’s® drawing about 2 million fans.

When it comes to writing impactful copy for a website or social media medium, the key is making sure you first understand who it is your speaking to and actually communicating WITH them. You undoubtedly think your product is great, but selling this notion to your target audience means starting a conversation where existing and potential fans feel engaged with the brand.

Speaking to fans and potential customers in a language they can understand is crucial.

Capturing the vernacular they would use in their every-day conversations can be content gold.

Skittles® proves your content doesn’t need to be abyssopelagic (that means “super-deep” by the way) to be successful in engaging an audience. The suit and tie-wearing executives for the brand might not fully understand a single FB post the brand pushes out, but I’m sure they like the momentum their content is generating for their new “Blenders” flavor.

Skittles-speak most certainly wouldn’t work for everyone, but it shows the type of engagement that’s possible when you establish a brand’s voice that sounds a hell of lot like those likely to use your product.

Taste the Rainbow® or as Skittles puts in on their own website: “Lace the train slow.” Wow.

Those in the know, have often heard that “email is the most cost-effective marketing tool.” That can be true, but only if you know how to effectively leverage email marketing.

Your email campaign is only as strong as your database
Who are you sending to? How did you get their information?
Email marketing stats are directly tied to how your database receives your email. Can you depend on them to open your email? Better yet, are you willing to bet that they won’t consider it spam?
Make sure that your database WANTS to hear from you. When a user fills out a form on your website and “opts in” to receive more information, send them an email thanking them for signing up and remind them to look for more correspondence from you in the future. Provide clear expectations as to how often you will be connecting with your contacts.
Finally, provide a clear way for your contacts to unsubscribe. Respect their privacy. If a contact no longer wants to hear your messaging, make saying good-bye painless. Don’t waste time and money broadcasting your message to people who “just aren’t that into you.”

Reporting is the key to success
Set goals, meet the goals, repeat.
Make sure you set a benchmark for open rates, click-through rates and conversions. Use tools like A/B Testing to ensure that you eke out the best return on your marketing investment.

Which type of message gets better open rates?
Which button design (graphic or ASCCI) gets clicked the most?
Which message gets forwarded the most?
Which type of message gets the most opt-outs?

Use all of the tools at your disposal
The tools are there, just learn how to use them!
Test a subject line on 5% of your database, then choose the subject line that garners the best open rate to your remaining 95%. Companies like Blue Sky Factory are at the cutting edge of email marketing strategies like this.

Another no-brainer? Include social media links (post this on Facebook, tweet this on Twitter) within your email campaign. Let your audience become your evangelists.

Email marketing is not dead – it is just evolving. Make sure that your brand has not given up on email marketing.

To all Facebook page owners and admins—I ask, what do your fans really “like”? And no, your brand’s page can’t be your answer! Feel like wiping the dust off dated market research and over-priced assumptions? Please don’t! Instead, go-ahead and write down 5 pages you think your fans like other than yours. Ok, now read on to see if you were even close to being right.

First—If you have been following along with Facebook news and updates you have probably heard about all the new page upgrades and changes. If not, we recommend checking out the official announcement and checking out some of these informative resources via Facebook Live. While there are dozens of exciting and well-documented changes, we will be focusing on an insightful but easily be overlooked feature called ‘Recommended Pages’.

Second—Assuming you are logged in, (our assumption is only based on the fact there are over 500 million active users of which half login daily) go to your account tab in the upper right of the page. Scroll down and click “Use Facebook as Page”. Then click “switch” next to the page with the highest fan count that you admin (trust me, it’s more fun with bigger fan counts).

Third—This is the easiest part! Once you hit “switch” you should be brought to the main wall for the selected page. Now glance down to the lower right corner—do you see something called “Recommended Pages”? Here’s exactly what it should look like:

So, are you scratching your head and thinking “ok, what’s the big deal about this?” Well, let’s look a little closer. The recommended pages you are viewing are actually based on the other pages your fans “like”. Check out the screenshot to the left—this is a recommended pages output for one of our clients that make an all-natural cat litter. It is pretty safe to say that these fans like cats and pet, people and planet-friendly products. But would you of guessed that over 8% “Like” The Breast Cancer Site? If yes, please leave a comment on this post explaining how!

Still not understanding the impact and opportunities to know your fans better? Go ahead and hit F5 or refresh your page. You should see a fresh list of recommended pages based on your fans. Ok now follow these tips…

• Look for trends and high-level associations—if you’re a baking company and a high-percentage of your fans like natural products maybe you should introduce an all-natural treat or product.
• Visit top “liked” pages by your fans—study their overall strategy to engage and garner new fans. Any lessons you can learn?
• Content guidance—based on top “liked” pages by your fans there might be opportunities to share themed content on your page. For example, in the output to the left it appears fans are into humorous content as indicated by South Park and the Onion. As a page owner, I would ask myself “when’s the last time we shared something funny?”
• Outliers—any pages your fans like that shock you? Take note of them and maybe they will help spawn up your next big idea or creative piece.

Well, I hope this proves to be a valuable tip and please share any further insight if you would like. If you have any questions or would love to come in and chat we “recommend” accessing our contact page.

The idea of brand ubiquity evolved from a fascination with brands and the place they reside in our brains.

Every day, we are surrounded by brands that elicit an immediate and visceral response in our heads—and sometimes not always in a good way. But the most successful brands carve out a niche in our zeitgeist. 

They become a part of our universal culture and thus become ubiquitous in our minds (if not in our media).When brand ubiquity occurs, people search and find brands even when they aren’t looking. The brand’s reputation precedes its presence. It garners evangelists online and off. That’s more than marketing gold. That’s marketing Californium-252!

But what were the single decisions that create and extend ubiquity in a market?Can we identify a brand’s Big Bang moments?

Can we trace the strategy back to find where the brand crawled out of the primordial soup of obscurity and developed the legs that carried it toward ubiquity? Can we see when brands evolved?

That’s is what is truly fascinating. 

We wanted to create a single place where we can share proven and yet-to-be-proven successes—slam dunks, trending campaigns and total flyers alike.  Some of the brands discussed here will be as familiar to you as your family. Some may seem distant cousins. And others, no doubt, may come across as long-lost crazy uncles, who may either redeem or doom themselves over time.

But all have a common trait—a conviction in an initiative, decision or moment that became the foundation for their brand position … and a generous predisposition to share that strategy with all of us. 

If you are launching or recently launched a big idea, we’d love to hear about it.  Maybe it belongs in this book.   

By Benjamin Ruofff
Copywriting and Social Media Marketing Intern

The other night 28 year old Amarndo Galarraga threw the 21st perfect game in the history of Major League Baseball. Well, almost. In what appeared to be the final out of the game and the conclusion of one of the rarest phenomena in sports, umpire Jim Joyce declared the runner, Jason Donald, safe.

If you haven’t seen or heard about the incident, the runner was out by a baseball mile. But what does that mean for everyone? For baseball fans it means missing out on glory, perfection and the ultimate post game for celebration.  Our takeaway for marketers and brands is that playing a perfect social media marketing game should never be a last minute judgment call, or worse yet not showing up to play at all.

With social technologies being produced at an alarming speed, it is a shock that there are still people out there refusing to accept what is certainly the future. Whether it is baseball missing the instant replay cue from both the NFL and NBA or the thousands of businesses unwilling to unlock the potential of using social networking sites, the unwillingness to move forward and accept these changes may be career ending.

Jim Joyce, the umpire solely responsible for putting an end to Galarraga’s quest for perfection, will go down in history as the umpire who blew that call. It has happened before with different umpires and refs, but it all could have been avoided. In trying to remain true to themselves as America’s past time, baseball has become stuck in the past. A simple rule change allowing a manager to challenge a questionable call during the course of the game would have allowed Joyce to review his mistake, which he later recognized.

Unfortunately in business, there is no replay to call upon when a company is called out, but there are ways to make sure you aren’t missing all the signs to garner perfection. Don’t miss the opportunity to gain perfection. Keep reading this blog or contact MicroArts today to learn more about unlocking the potential of social media marketing for your company today!

This month we had an interesting date on the calendar – 4/16. With 16 being the square of 4, a certain “bright-eyed” marketer realized that 4/16 could be Foursquare Day. His idea was to make 4/16 a day to celebrate and promote Foursquare- the mobile location sharing application that’s sweeping the globe. Foursquare is a mobile application that lets you know where your friends are and let your friends know where you are too. Users earn points and “badges” for using the service, making it into a game. Businesses benefit from being promoted through Foursquare location sharing and from the data Foursquare provides on service usage. The story of Foursquare’s involvement in Foursquare Day illustrates 3 important takeaways for businesses.

1. Listen: Foursquare Day wasn’t created by Foursquare, but was actually the idea of a fan who posted the concept to Foursquare’s support forums. Another fan replied a week later with another great idea – that Foursquare create a special Foursquare Day badge. That idea became the rallying point for fans to start lobbying Foursquare to officially endorse the day. Two weeks later a fan’s Tweet to Foursquare’s Twitter account resulted in Foursquare choosing to engage the community and recognize the day. By listening to what people were saying and monitoring conversations, Foursquare was able to discover a new opportunity.

2. Engage: After that fan’s tweet was posted, Foursquare engaged their fans with another Tweet, officially recognizing Foursquare Day. This single tweet ignited a firestorm around Foursquare Day and as a result, a firestorm around Foursquare. In the three weeks that followed leading up to Foursquare Day, major news organizations from CNN to The Christian Science Monitor ran stories about Foursquare Day. Foursquare continued to stoke the fire of this opportunity leading up to Foursquare Day through further communication. By engaging, Foursquare was able to help realize the full value of an opportunity that was discovered by simply listening.

3. Measure: Throughout the whole process, Foursquare and the Foursquare Day team leveraged systems that enabled them to record changes in important analytics and metrics over time. The Foursquare Day website tracked the number of participating cities and businesses. Foursquare tracked the number of people signing up for the service as Foursquare Day approached. By measuring changes in metrics over time as they engaged, Foursquare was able to discover whether or not their communications produced measurable results.

Ultimately 290 cities in 35 different countries participated and 20,000 people signed up for Foursquare in the days leading up to Foursquare day. Press coverage literally spanned the globe. Just after Foursquare Day registered users reached the one million users mark. Imagine what listening, engaging and measuring can do for you! We’d love to talk with you about it and help you power the growth of your business. Drop us a line, we’re listening.

PS: We’re very proud to say that Portsmouth, NH was the #1 city for businesses participation on Foursquare Day. Check us out on the news: