Sage Island Interactive Marketing Blog » Social Media

Sage Island Seminar on Social Media

elizabeth — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:47:57 +0000

We are looking forward to Mike’s upcoming presentation: “Building Traffic with Social Media” at UNCW on March 1st! This informative seminar will help business owners take their existing social media campaigns to the next level with helpful tips and strategies on building quality traffic. Many thanks to our friends at the SBTDC (Small Business & Technology Development Center) for hosting this event. We hope you’ll join us!

One Tree Hill Wrap Sale Auction This Weekend

Sage Island — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:02:03 +0000

With an extremely successful turn out to their Wardrobe Sale last weekend, Auction Co. of Wilmington, Warner Bros. and the EUE Screen Gem Studios staff are gearing up for what’s sure to be a very busy weekend of live auction events in the second part of their Official Wrap Sale. This weekend’s auction will take place Friday, Saturday and Sunday on the Screen Gem lots and surrounding property. With filming over and the final season soon coming to an end, this may be your last chance to own a piece of the show. Whether you’re a One Tree Hill fan or just an auction aficionado, there will be plenty of great pieces to bid on this weekend. The live auction will offer anything from furniture, home décor and appliances to lighting and musical instruments!

Sage Island was lucky enough to work with the great people over at Auction Co. of Wilmington and the teams at One Tree Hill and Warner Bros. for this job. Tasked with designing and building a website that mirrors the One Tree Hill brand and showcases the vast amount of items for sale, the new website is built in WordPress, which integrates perfectly with their Flickr photo albums containing THOUSANDS of photos of the items being auctioned off on December 9-11. With over 5 million fans on Facebook, One Tree Hill supporters are anxiously awaiting the second part of the Wrap Sale this weekend.

We have so enjoyed working with this One Tree Hill project, the perfect send off to the production that has been in our backyard for so many years. We are looking forward to attending the Auction ourselves!

Sage Island Food Bank: The Power of Sharing

elizabeth — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:54:48 +0000

We have partnered with the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina this holiday season to raise awareness and donations for those at risk of hunger in our area. This organization has been providing food for people in 34 counties in central and eastern North Carolina for over 30 years.

We are counting on the power of social media to help us do it! Help spread the word by sharing this blog post, our Facebook Event, or Tweeting about it with the hashtag #SageIslandFoodBank. We have a drop box in our office and welcome financial donations as well in the form of checks made out to: Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina. For every five items you bring or $5 you donate, you are entered into our raffle for the chance to win a sweet prize. We will be posting updates and more information on the Sage Island Facebook Page.

One Tree Hill Comes To An End

Sage Island — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:40:22 +0000

With one of the largest online fan communities, One Tree Hill has grown immensely in popularity over the years and it’s all filmed right outside our office doors! As Wilmingtonians, we have been lucky to see the actors and scenes being filmed around our town for years. Over the past nine seasons they have accumulated thousands of pieces for their sets and wardrobes, which is all being made available to purchase at their much anticipated Wrap Sale.

Sage Island was lucky enough to work with the great people over at Auction Co. of Wilmington and the team at One Tree Hill for this job. Tasked with designing and building a website that mirrors the One Tree Hill brand and showcases the vast amount of items for sale, we were excited to get to work. The new website is built in WordPress, which integrates perfectly with their Flickr photo albums containing THOUSANDS of photos of the items being auctioned off on December 9-11. With over 5 million fans on Facebook, One Tree Hill supporters are anxiously awaiting the Wrap Sale and we know will be visiting the website for a sneak peak. That being said,the website needed to be able to handle the large amount of traffic, which our hosting department gladly took care of!

Breck Gear Ramps Up Social Media!

Kim — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 21:34:01 +0000

We were excited when long-time customer The North Face Breckenridge (Breck Gear) came to us for guidance in social media marketing! As you know, there are a number of Social Marketing tools one can use to reach out to potential product buyers around the United States. Our end goal for Breck Gear was to help increase qualified traffic to the company website through social media tools. By exploring this new marketing opportunity for them, we ultimately helped them reach a broader audience through the use of two simple, yet powerful social tools: WordPress Blog and Facebook.

WordPress Blog:
Breck Gear already had a blog through Blogger in which they frequently updated content, which was awesome, but it was completely hidden and not accessible from the website; it was also at a third party domain rather than the site domain. By being so hidden, this already established blog wasn’t giving Breck Gear a chance to showcase their posts. Our suggestion here was to build a link between the blog and website (as shown in the navigation on the site), reskin the blog in WordPress (to have the blog match the look and feel of the site) and build the blog under a directory in the domain (to ultimately give the site’s domain ‘credit’ for all that blog content).

Facebook:
Here, again, Breck Gear was a step ahead and already had a Facebook page, but we had a few suggestions for improvement. First and foremost, we suggested adjusting the account name from ‘Breck Gear’, to ‘The North Face Breckenridge’ to allow us to capitalize on the North Face association. We then suggested a creative landing page and efforts to get at least 25 ‘likes’ in order to create a vanity URL for the page.

Since our suggestions on the blog and Facebook page, Breck Gear has really taken off and are currently working on building out the photo gallery, adding videos and linking posts from the blog to the Facebook page. In the future, once they have a solid following/community, they can have fun creating a Facebook campaign or contest. I encourage everyone to check out their new blog and Facebook page and leave a comment!

‘Competing’ against the manufacturer

Kim — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:24:15 +0000

It’s always tough when the manufacturer sells direct to consumers, and often times you may feel as a retailer you are ‘competing’ against the manufacturer, but this can also be a moment to sit back, take a look at your site and current marketing strategies and view this as a window of opportunity. This is the time for you to make your site, services and products stand out from the manufacturer, but in a clean, professional way.

To help jog some ideas on what you can do for your company, below are just a few things to help you stay ahead of the curve in selling:

1. Loyalty Plan/Incentives:
Although you may not be able to control the price of a product, here you can control incentives—such as free shipping, promotional deals, discounts…etc.

2. Build Local Loyalty:
If you have the advantage of having a brick and mortar store in addition to an online shop—take advantage of this and help build the loyalty among the locals. You can seek out local resorts, tour companies, hard goods stores…etc. and have them help promote both your physical store and online store.

3. Exclusive Products/Cobranded products:
Depending on the agreement with your manufacturer, you may carry exclusive products not available on their store, or you may be able to cobrand the products for your location—play up on this if you are able to benefit from exclusivity. Promote this on your website, blog, Facebook page…etc.

4. Website Enhancement:
Now is the time you can beef up your website and make it have that ‘cool’ factor that the manufacturer’s site may not. You can add comparison tools, rating feature, testimonials on people who purchased a product from your site and how they rave about your customer service…etc.

5. Ramp up Social Media:
There is so much you can do here! First thing’s first, if you have a Facebook page, make sure it is promoted on your site. Add ‘addthis.com’ and additionally add the Facebook ‘likes’ to each product page to help boast and promote your site through social media. You can make your Facebook and site more interactive—offering a purchase discount when ‘liking’ or a Facebook contest to help boost your likes. Once you get a ton of likes established, you can consider selling your products on Facebook. You may even consider Facebook Ads to help generate likes or conversions/transactions.

6. Online Outlets:
Perhaps in addition to selling on your website, you can look into selling utilizing different outlets, such as Amazon that already reaches a huge amount of interested buyers.

7. Email Marketing:
Reach out to those that have previously purchased from you—collect email addresses via online store opt-in/purchases, physical store and Facebook and use these emails to send new product updates, discounts and specials.

The above just barely scrapes the service on things you can do as a company, especially with the upcoming holiday season. If you are interested, contact us and we are happy to take a look at your company, consult further and help with implementing any of the above ideas.

LinkedIn Goes Public, Will Facebook Follow?

Chops — Fri, 13 May 2011 14:54:27 +0000

LinkedIn, the world’s Largest Professional Network, will be one of the first Social Media sites to open their company to the public. The much anticipated Initial Public Offering (IPO) is set for May 16th and expected to bring in as much as $274 million, way up from the original $175 million. LinkedIn is prepared to offer 7.84 million shares starting at $32, which some investors like Warren Buffet think is overpriced. The business social media site has more than 100 million users as of March 2011 compared to Facebook who has more than 500 million. The company will trade under symbol LNKD, so watch out for it as it should appear on the NYSE this month.

There is also talk of Facebook and Twitter following the same suit and going public sometime this year. It will be interesting to see how these financial developments change our sacred social media world.

Google +1 Button Coming Soon For Websites

Angela — Thu, 12 May 2011 20:58:04 +0000

Beginning in March, a small percentage of US Google Search users began seeing the +1 button appear in their search result pages. The +1 button is extremely similar to that of Facebook’s Like button or the Twitter Tweet It button.

In order to +1 a site, your Google profile needs to be public. All of your +1s will be stored in a new tab within your profile. The goal of Google’s +1 button is to help you as a user get recommendations for sites that interest you, based off of sites that your friends +1’ed.

Earlier this week, Google developers gave a sneak peak of how the Google +1 button is implemented within sites, the stats that it will display and a rollout timeline. Below are a few takeaways.

Implementing your +1 button: The buttons are available in a range of sizes. Using a simple code generator, you can specify the particular size and count features you would like to associate with your +1 button.

Reporting +1 statistics: Through Google Webmaster Central, you will have the ability to report statistics based on overall +1 activity, demographics and location.

Rollout timeline: “Weeks” out per Google.

Do you plan to use the +1 button or implement it on your website? Let us know! Stay tuned as our internet marketing team will continue to keep you up-to-date on the upcoming rollout.

Twitter Enhances TV Coverage & Viewership

Angela — Thu, 05 May 2011 20:08:43 +0000

Since the rise of social media, many people have questioned whether people are migrating away from TV to engage more in popular social media platforms. Recently, this theory was put to the test.

Major news organizations including, ABC, CNN, BBC, ITV, Sky and others have been working extremely close with Twitter’s Media Team on new ways to integrate live media coverage and Twitter. As of last week, Twitter experienced its widest television integration to date with live coverage surrounding the royal wedding. According to Twitter Media, Royal Wedding related hashtags dominated the conversation with over 5.8 million tweets in a little over four days, with peak activity at 16,000 tweets per minute between 5 and 6am ET on the wedding day. On-air integration of Twitter hashtags were made very prominent within the live TV broadcasting of the Royal Wedding events, turning normal viewers into engaged participants. As part of the new media marketing environment, it was very exciting to witness.

There are many other successful campaigns integrating Twitter and TV – the Royal Wedding was just one example that reached new heights. Twitter reports that they have found that when TV shows bring Twitter elements into a broadcast, there is a direct and immediate increase in engagement on Twitter – that can ultimately drive higher TV viewership.

These media platforms are finding ways to complement one another more and more every day. Broadcasters are eager to develop new ways to encourage engagement, and utilizing social media marketing is certainly one way to do just that.

Twitter Tornado Alerts Help To Save Lives

Angela — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:13:35 +0000

As tornadoes continue to touch down over the U.S., having access to immediate information is so important. Once again, social media platforms, especially Twitter, are helping to spread the word about the devastating tornadoes, and are perhaps saving lives.

It is said that most deaths and injuries happen to people who are uninformed and unaware. Having access to social media can help you stay alert. To track the weather conditions in your state via Twitter, you can follow #(state abbreviation)wx. For instance, our Sage Island office is in NC, so we are following the hashtag #NCwx very closely. We hope everyone stays safe until these storms pass!