1. Chris Brogan: The Elvis of social media and the king of common sense, Chris Brogan is in a league of his own.
2. Social Media Explorer: Social media all-star Jason Falls provides a fresh and interesting take on all things social media.
3. Mashable: The world’s source for social media news, Mashable is the place to go for breaking stories.
4. Convince & Convert: Jay Baer provides rich content for businesses seeking to embrace social media.
5. Altitude: Amber Naslund offers a breath of fresh air with smart, inspiring and personal social media insight.
6. CopyBlogger: The king of engaging content, Brian Clark and his team help businesses persuade in a 2.0 world.
7. Brand Builder: For businesses looking to dive deep into social media discussion, check out Olivier Blanchard’s rich insights.
8. Diva Marketing: Toby Bloomberg’s blog provides a wide array of social media advice.
9. Kikolani: Looking for great “getting started” social media guidance?  Then frequent this blog.
10. Future Buzz: A nice mix of stories and reviews makes Adam Singer’s site one that should be on your radar.

We’re releasing a new social media service designed to capture the essence of “social” media and assist our clients in eventually running their own campaign.  Details below.

6 Week Social Media STARTER Package (Facebook and Twitter for Business Package)

Weeks 1 & 2 (Set-up)

1. Registration of social media accounts to a third party email provider (gmail)

2. Graphic design of an awesome Twitter background, Icon, and Facebook page picture

3. Programming of FBML (Facebook Markup Language) to create an interactive and unique “Welcome Tab” on Facebook page

4. Upload all existing and new content that you want to share with your followers

Weeks  3 & 4 (Strategic Targeting)

1. Begin sharing content relevant to your business on both Facebook and Twitter

2. Post web icons to your current website and design print media for you to give to customers/friends/associates to let them know you’re socializing online

3. Place your business on Twitter lists to increase exposure and searchability

Weeks 5 & 6 (Following and Handover)

1. Guarantee to reach at least 200 followers by end of week 5

2. Set aside a three (3) hour window to tutor your future administrator in best practices, shortcuts, helpful hints etc.

3. Leave you with an instructional package on how to wage a successful social media campaign

4. We’re always a phone call away if you need our assistance with anything

Reluctance to engage in social media usually revolves around the lack of privacy that social media websites provide to the users. Recently the Canadian government investigated Facebook after several complaints were filed against the social media juggernaut. “Canada’s privacy commissioner said she was satisfied with the site’s efforts in dealing with privacy complaints filed against Facebook two years ago”, but Today Facebook launched some new tools in an effort to increase privacy for their users.  The article can be read here.

The conflict between privacy and freedom of information will always exist, and Facebook is certainly not a private place to interact.  I think that users need to stop blaming Facebook (the facilitator) and start blaming themselves–if you don’t want something shared with the whole world, stop putting it online!

One of the companies we are working with is H.A.V.E. Cafe. From website: “H.A.V.E. Café is a social enterprise on the downtown eastside that is dedicated to developing job and life skills in its students. Students are selected based on need and put through an 8-week culinary training curriculum. For practical experience, students prepare the meals served to the customer at H.A.V.E. Café.”

The article posted below sheds some light on the H.A.V.E. initiative and showcases the hand-up methods used at the school. There are many success stories and zero2one will help H.A.V.E. Cafe share them with the world. The H.A.V.E Cafe social media campaign will be about raising awareness of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and growing the program to provide hope for Vancouver’s less fortunate.

Find H.A.V.E. Cafe on Facebook and Twitter

August 24, 2010 from zero2one Marketing Solutions on Vimeo.

Sample list of Key Performance Indicators:

• Sales
• Registrations
• Referrals
• Links
• Votes
• Reduction in costs/processes
• Decreases in customer complaints
• Lead Generation
• Conversion
• Reduced sales cycles
• Inbound activity

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Creating a large fan-base or following for a Facebook page is can often be a difficult task. You can fire an email out to an existing email list, give out print flyers saying “find us on Facebook” to your customers, direct traffic through your website, or pay for advertising space on the Facebook website. The following report by The Neilson Company (a media research group based out of New York, USA) articulates the difference between earned vs. paid media.

The great thing about Facebook is that when someone decides to “like” your business through a paid, their entire friend list sees that “Kelly likes zero2one” for example and they may decide to investigate further and like it themselves. Here lies the distinction between paid and earned media. Paid is Kelly clicking on the advertisement and liking the pages and earned is Jane, Kelly’s friend, choosing to click on the page and like it because Kelly did it first. Continue reading

Viral Marketing is a marketing technique that uses existing social networks to increase brand awareness or achieve other marketing goals by using a self-replicating viral process. It describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. It is usually word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.

This viral marketing campaign for the upcoming motion picture The Last Exorcism has successfully scared the pants off of hundreds of Chatroulette users last week.

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August 17, 2010 from zero2one Marketing Solutions on Vimeo.

Something that we have a strong affection for at zero2one is the notion of “permission marketing”.  The man who coined this term is Seth Godin and he is one of the most highly respected internet marketing experts on the planet.  This particular blog post of his is the fundamental reason why social media is such an effective way to build a brand and a direct inspiration to the zero2one business model.

From Seth’s blog post:
“Pay attention is a key phrase here, because permission marketers understand that when someone chooses to pay attention they are actually paying you with something precious. And there’s no way they can get their attention back if they change their mind. Attention becomes an important asset, something to be valued, not wasted.”

Stop pushing your message to people who ignore it and often feel bothered by it. Instead, pull your audience in by sharing your story, creating connections and responding to comments efficiently.

A blog is an excellent tool to showcase your industry expertise, promote products/services, share stories and reach out to people who want to hear what you have to say. When someone starts reading your blog they are paying you with something extremely valuable– their attention. So how do you make sure you don’t lose their attention? This article by Tom Johansmeyer at Technorati.com covers five reasons why corporate blogs fail. Let’s pick through them and explain how we can guarantee yours won’t fail if you outsource it to zero2one Marketing Solutions.

1. It’s hard work
To make a corporate blog successful, you have to spend some time with it. A 200-word post every week doesn’t give your target audience much reason to visit, let alone come back. You have to post regularly and say something interesting. Not every post has to long, detailed and insightful, but you should mix in a few longer analytical pieces.

“…you have to spend some time with it.” After working a full day running your business we understand that the last thing you want to do is blog about it. Your time is valuable, so let us do the writing and content creation for you. We won’t post anything that you don’t approve of, but set us in the right direction and we will create great blog posts that keep your audience coming back for more.

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