When to post: the science of timing

Posted on March 30, 2011 in Social Media in Wichita Kansas by JuggleMedia

email marketing, Facebook, Twitter

When to post your social media in Wichita

What’s Twitter?

Posted on March 17, 2011 in Social Media in Wichita Kansas by JuggleMedia

Twitter

Twitter’s kinda like texting…Sorta

Many business owners that we at JuggleMedia meet with around Wichita want to know more and more about social media. Stuff like “What’s Twitter” is a fundamental need for people to simply understand. It’s kinda like text messaging, just on a world-wide platform and it’s free!
Watch this video and leave comments or questions if you have any.

Twitter Explosion & Wichita?!?

Posted on March 15, 2011 in Social Media in Wichita Kansas by JuggleMedia

Twitter

Twitter will be celebrating it’s 5th birthday here in a few days and while the tremendous growth worldwide is important to consider, what do businesses around Wichita need to consider when it comes to this rising giant?

Consider these:

• Twitter will soon be celebrating the fifth anniversary of the first tweet, and the company Monday released a set of stats showing how huge the service has become.
• It took three years, two months and one day to get to the billionth tweet. Now there are a billion tweets a week.
• A year ago, people sent 50 million tweets a day. On March 11, 2011, the tally was 177 million.
• There were 456 tweets per second after Michael Jackson died in 2009. That record was broken on New Year’s Day this year with 6,939 tweets after midnight in Japan on New Year’s morning there.
• There were 572,000 new accounts created on March 12, 2011; there were 460,000 new accounts created daily, on average, in the past month.
• Mobile users increased 182% in the past year.
• Twitter has 400 employees today, compared to eight in January 2008.

So what can that mean for a business in Wichita? Are we experiencing the same growth here?

The short answer, in my opinion is no. Twitter’s growth, along with other powerful social media technologies, are slow adopters in a mid-sized, conservative town. Sure, there’s the early adopters that have been tweeting for 3 years, but the masses aren’t signing up…yet.

Twitter’s Wichita growth is coming. More and more people are interested in the network as more and more national seminars, campaigns and social media consultants promote the 140-character network. At JuggleMedia, we are working with more and more local Wichita businesses to understand the technology; what it means, how it works and most important, what’s in it for my business.

If you have a hard time understanding Twitter, maybe this video will help. Click here. We compare Twitter, in simplest forms to text messaging and mobile devices. We believe it kinda helps.

Reach out if you need more Twitter training. Shoot us an email via the form on the right or call us at 747.9266.

Click here to read more about Twitter’s Growth. Click here to follow our Tweets.

[LINK] Super Bowl ads mix old and new media. You can too!

Posted on February 4, 2011 in Social Media in Wichita Kansas by JuggleMedia

Doritos, Facebook, Social Media in Wichita Kansas, Social Media Strategy, Super Bowl, Twitter, Wichita

At JuggleMedia, we help you tame the social circus by bringing you tips on how to localize your marketing based off of what the big brands are doing. If there’s a few things we can learn from Budweiser spending $3 million for :30 seconds on Sunday, it’s that they are maximizing their time online to boost the outreach of this traditional marketing channel. You can too!

USA Today posted this article today about how the Super Bowl ads will mix old and new media together. Pushing people from the $3 million :30 second commercial to places like Facebook, Twitter, iPads, smart phones and custom websites.

How can you benefit from these social media and online marketing tactics here in Wichita Kansas? Creating a Facebook Page may be a step, but as these brands are leading, it’s not enough to build a Doritos page and hope people show up.

To get the most locally out our social media, here are three tips to consider.

1. Create strong, meaningful, content-rich and brand-appropriate social media channels.

You and I can both tell which local company had a professional set-up their Facebook Page and which one’s didn’t. Sure, we both know that you can get going on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube yourself, but what apps are you going to use? How are you going to transition people that visit the page to fans? How are you going to maximize what little attention you grab from your potential customers? Creating a strong, meaningful, content-rich and brand-appropriate channel requires a tremendous amount of thought that can’t be achieved by an intern on a Friday afternoon. Places like Doritos spend hundreds of thousands of dollars setting up their Facebook page and developing a specific app. Now, you don’t need to go quite that far, but we do encourage you to take it serious.

2. Integrate your old and new media marketing.

Integrating your old and new media marketing is not accomplished by putting a Facebook and Twitter logo on your newspaper ad. Sorry. Integrating is about connecting the dots and making the conversation last over all of your channels and not just one. Use your Facebook page as a place to connect to people and tell them when to catch, call, connect in person. Set-up Twitter relationships with influential people that can help you when it’s time to promote your next golf tournament. Realize, as that USA Today article states, that the new water cooler isn’t in the break room, but online, in your hand, on your iPad, in the coffee shop, on YouTube.

3. Know WHY you are doing it!

How many times do you see an ad in a local paper, magazine or even television commercial that says “Find us on Facebook”? Um, WHY? What’s in it for me?!? I don’t know you!

You see, social channels like Facebook are personal. Your business is trying to connect with me in my personal space. Intermixed with my friends, family and that creepy old high school “friend” is your business trying to connect. You simply must know why you are there and WHAT you are offering. It’s not enough to simple say connect. Creating a plan is a vital first step to connecting properly across even one channel, much less multiple. The guys at Sketchers have spent an entire year and millions of dollars to get Kim Kardashian ‘s private gym rocking, and for what? :30 seconds of fame? Nope, much more with her current twitter follower count of 6,148,629 followers. Sure the :30 second Super Bowl commercial may pull an audience of 100 Million, but its the added bonus of Kim tweeting before, during and after the big game that Sketchers is counting on (and has contractually signed. If not already in the sending que.)

At JuggleMedia, we help Wichita businesses make sense of this crazy social media circus to create actionable plans and campaigns designed to make businesses connect more effectively online. We with with your business to create, integrate and socialize your brands products and services. To contact us, drop us an email off to the right or call us at 316.747.9266 and we’ll help you Tame the social circus.

Use HootSuite to manage, well, everything (ish)

Posted on January 19, 2011 in Social Media in Wichita Kansas by JuggleMedia

blogs, Facebook, HootSuite, social media management tools, Twitter, Wordpress

When you first get underway managing social media accounts, many people get overwhelmed at the sheer amount of information they have to look through. Post on Twitter, Facebook, WordPress Comments, and a whole bunch of other stuff can be pretty nuts! Enter HootSuite.

Full disclosure, JuggleMedia is an affiliate of HootSuite only as a reseller of the program. Feel free to click the link to the left and sign-up under us. Same price, only we get a kick-back. Nice transparency huh!?!

HootSuite, all affiliation aside, is the best program that we have found at JuggleMedia to manage your local social media activities around Wichita. It’s a robust (and extremely inexpensive $5.99 per month) program that monitors keywords, tweets, Facebook Posts, Foursquare check-ins as well as the capibility to, er, dare-I-say schedule (GASP) messages. Shh, don’t tell anybody.

When it comes to scheduling messages, I’m going to give you a short speech and then it’s up to you. In a perfect world, I’d never recommend you scheduling messages as social media channels are real-time and important to monitor constantly. NOW, with that said, there’s reality in the small-business world. If you create a social strategy and you have key marketing messages that you’d like to promote at key times, by all means schedule, BUT know when they leave so you can monitor reactions.

Let me know if you have any questions about HootSuite or would like for us to show you how it works. It’s pretty darn cool if you ask me. It works, it’s powerful and we haven’t even gotten into the analytics and custom reports it offers!

Vail Resorts Connects Skiers with Amazing Social Network

Posted on September 28, 2010 in Social Media in Wichita Kansas by JuggleMedia

Facebook, social media, Twitter, Vail Resorts Awesomeness, Wichita Social Media, YouTube

All you have to do it watch this:

Makes me miss Colorado all over again. This is truly amazing. I wish I was a part of it. This social network/application/awesomeness/altimeter/lift ticket will allow skiers (okay and you boarders too, blech) to stay connected on and off the mountain while monitoring a bunch of important info.

All I have to do now is pack.

“New” Twitter Released. Tells People to Come Back to Play.

Posted on September 14, 2010 in Social Media in Wichita Kansas by JuggleMedia

Twitter, Twitter.com, Wichita Kansas, Wichita Social Media

Twitter this evening released a new version of its site letting users interact more with the site by essentially embedding multimedia straight into the Twitter feed. It also changed the site design a little bit, and is making it easier to find information on the site. It is going from text to multimedia on its site, changing the direction on what Twitter.com was initially built to do.

This shift, I feel, is in an attempt to draw Twitter users back to the Twitter.com site and hope that they spend more time there. Taking keys from Facebook users, who spend boucoup time ON the site, Twitter users by comparison use thousands of apps that allow the information to be presented to them on iPads, phones, web-browser built-ins to spend time off the site. Essentially, it’s like telling the kids to go out and play and then changing the tone to tell them to stay in and play. A little confusing, but in the end, smart for Twitter. Once they reel everybody back to the site, they can then begin adding Twitter ads in the side columns, much  like on Facebook, and start monetizing the technology.

Check out Twitter’s Video about the new Twitter.

Twitter will be rolling out the new service over the next few weeks, allowing users to switch back and fourth between the new and the old, but eventually everybody will be on the New Twitter.

What do you think? Will you be spending more time on Twitter.com or is this change too little, too late?

[Link]- The Next 5 Years in Social Media

Posted on September 8, 2010 in Social Media in Wichita Kansas by JuggleMedia

Facebook, Mashable, online marketing, Twitter, wichita ks, Wichita Social Media, YouTube

Social Media has no-doubt become on of the most popular buzz words in the last 5-years. Starting with services like Friendster and MySpace, social media sites have come and gone and to some, some speculation on whether this is a fad or a powerful tool.

Internet blog Mashable posted an article on what the future holds for social media. As Wichita’s social media company, it’s our job to tell you what these world-wide phenomenons mean to you and your business right here in Wichita. To read the article, click here.

Here’s some of the most notable thoughts for you to consider. First, the concept of social media is becoming  more and more ingrained into our everyday lives. Most websites now are starting to add Facebook “Like” buttons and Twitter “Tweet-This” buttons to make information easier to share. The further this technology reaches and entrenches into our everday lives, the harder and harder it is to list it as a fad.

Second, we are constantly asked “What’s the next thing?” There was Friendster, then MySpace and now Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We’d argue that there isn’t a “next thing” just that the largest networks are only going to get larger. Facebook, for example, has 500 Million ACTIVE users. These are people that log in and actively use the site, not just create an account and “play.” YouTube is also a monster, owned by Google and the second-larges search engine in the world.

PLUS- these larger social networks are very smart and have a lot of power. The barrier to enter the social marketplace is so large now. Facebook has a tremendous amount of power holding onto 1/12th of the world’s population personal information. Imagine the amount of money needed to get to that level starting from scratch. Facebook and similar companies won’t let that happen. They purchase these little start-ups and any network that gets attention and integrates the technology into their site. Very smart.

We will see social media become more and more mobile in the next five years. Devices like smart-phones and tablets like the iPad allow people to do business and be connected anywhere. Plus, mobile applications are a huge marketplace and business-specific applications are going to be a huge need in the coming years.

Finally, video will trump text. Sites like YouTube are making it very easy to upload videos and share information. As a society, text is becoming more and more boring. You need to keep a person’s attention and video communication tells more than just mundane text. Non-verbal communication ques will be more and more important as social technology grows. At least we hope so or we will all be impersonal robots.

So what does this mean for your business here in Wichita? Well, first you MUST be on social networks. Places like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are here and here to stay. Get on and start communicating effectively (we’ll show you how). Second, you MUST learn how to create a more open business structure. Yes, your competitors will be watching, but there are effective ways to discuss your business with audiences without giving away the secret recipe. It’s easy and we will show you how. Third, you MUST learn how to interact. Many, many, many, many businesses come to us AFTER they’ve started “communicating” on social networks because they’ve started but aren’t getting anywhere. They view it as a waste of time. Learning how to interact on these social channels is important and very vital to the long-term success one may experience in these social spaces.

At JuggleMedia, we help businesses start, understand and communicate effectively to audiences within these social channels. It’s a fun and rewarding process that takes time, knowledge and the proper start. Give us a call at 316-747-9266 and let’s see where you are and it we can help. You can visit us on our Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels if you’d like.

It’s WEDDING WEEK!

Posted on August 23, 2010 in Social Media in Wichita Kansas by JuggleMedia

Facebook, JuggleMedia Wichita, MailChimp, Social Media Strategy, Twitter, Ustream, wedding, Wichita Social Media, YouTube

Usually, I try to keep the blog posting here on JuggleMedia.com about social media and how it pertains to companies in and around Wichita, Kansas. Today, however, I’m going completely off the reservation.

IT’S MY WEDDING WEEK!

Yep. It is. Boo-yah! I thought this day would never come!

So what does this mean to you, and more important, why am I writing about this here and not on my Facebook Page? Well, simply put there are some things that even businesses can learn about social media when it comes to the social channels we’ve set-up for our wedding

First, let’s start with our Wedding Website. If you go to ryanandkelsi.com, you’ll see it looks a lot like another site somewhere out there, say, oh, JuggleMedia. That’s because we use WordPress.org and the Mystique theme. Being that I know the Mystique theme pretty well, I didn’t want to spend hours and hours creating a site from scratch. WordPress gives you the tools to get online and pretty fast.

Instead of going for a “Save the Date” card, about 80% of our guests are on Facebook, so we opted for an event called “Ryan & Kelsi Save-The-Date.” We were going to call it Ryan & Kelsi Wedding, but we wanted our audience to know that this was something they were getting and it needs to be written down. That and Facebook Events offers some pretty sweet calendar export tools that allows our guest to click one button and they’ve got it down.

Now that the event is FINALLY here, we are using different channels to continue to promote how we’re doing. For example, our personal Facebook Pages have been an excellent place for our audience to interact with us. Also, we use our personal Twitter accounts to keep the wedding party up to date. We’ve even used GoogleDocs to capture our RSVPs and then we can send an email blast to all of our guest using MailChimp to update them on where they need to be and when. Finally, we’re still kicking around the idea of using my UStream channel to stream our wedding live to a few guests that can’t make it, like my cousin who is on the no-fly list because she is so pregnant she is about to pop. We’re still deciding for personal reasons if we want to do that. I’ll let you know.

All of these different channels connect a different segment of the audience that we need to communicate. It’s about overlap and not just picking one and saying that’s it. Not all of our guest are on Facebook (although that’s by far the largest portion) and not even there are they guarenteed to connect. Social Media is about using these channels together to get your message across while understanding your audience and who they are.

In business, it’s the same way. Setting up all of these different channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, UStream, GoogleDocs, MailChimp and the thousand other channels is important ONLY IF that’s where your audience hangs out. I still had to send my Grandma a paper invitation, but was able to talk to her over Skype about it. (Funny side-note- She did say that if she knew she was going to be on TV she would have put on more make-up. Pretty funny stuff!)

So when you are thinking about events, business meetings and marketing in general think about these different social channels and the audience. When you need help call me at JuggleMedia, Wichita’s Social Media Company after Labor Day. We help Wichita companies understand these channels, how to connect people and how to transfer the audience into actual customers. We have a proven track-record of successful campaigns and pages including one currently running that has gained an average of 40 new followers a day on Facebook. Enjoy your day!

Cancun, here we come!

Ryan

[Praise!]- Ordering my cable via Twitter

Posted on July 19, 2010 in Social Media in Wichita Kansas by JuggleMedia

Cox, Twitter, Wichita Social Media

In an age where social media is FINALLY starting to catch on, I find it extremely important to praise those local businesses that are “doing it right” via their social channels. Today, Cox Communications and their team of tweets happen to be on my list of awesome local businesses in Wichita, Kansas who are using social media effectively.

What happened? It’s simple. I’m in the process of ordering my cable and internet at my next house all through Twitter and email. No store. No lines. No Gas. No PROBLEMS!

I give the Cox Communications Twitter Team of @Cox_Will, @Cox_Jessica and @Cox_Katie props for all their hard work and persistence in a town that is slow to adapt to these new technologies. Good work. Keep it up.

At JuggleMedia, we work with several businesses within Wichita, Kansas to understand Twitter. Remember when email was new? Welcome Twitter, a web-based text service designed at sending short-burst communication. Using Cox Communications as an example, think of Twitter as the physical cable in the ground. On one end, there’s Cox Communications, a service that brings that cable to your house and allows you to see television, internet and phone service. On the other side there’s NBC, CBS, ABC and 14,000+ other content producers pushing out information to people. Twitter is the common pipe that gets that information places. On one end there are mobile phones, internet-based applications and programs that allow people to put information into the pipeline and using that “Twitter” language, connect to other phones, applications and programs. The cool thing is now EVERYBODY is a content producer, not just the big networks!

If you need more help understanding Twitter, just give us a call at 316-747-9266. At JuggleMedia we help you understand these social media technologies. We’re right here in Wichita so we can actually meet you, shake your hand and help you use these tools to communicate with people. We help you get past “Getting on Twitter” and get you and your business to communicate “with Twitter” to get more sales.

We think its pretty cool stuff. Especially if we get to avoid the lines.

Thanks Cox.