Sage Island has been given a special discount code just for our Facebook fans and customers, so if you are in the area and want to attend,  register with the code: sagebiztech. This waives the $5 entry fee to attend both the Expo and the after hours event. We hope to see you there!

The first few weeks of the new year have been busy ones for us. We’ve already hit up Surf Expo, an action sports tradeshow in Orlando that is near in dear to our heart–  they are both a client of ours and the hub of all things action sports for a lot of our customers! We have kicked off many new projects on a local level that we are can’t wait to share with you. A few ecommerce projects are underway, a favorite local hangout is getting a website facelift, and we have been fortunate enough to receive several real estate and developer clients this month- an excellent indicator for our local economy. Stay tuned for more details!

We feel so fortunate to be starting off the year with such a bang, and are anxious to see what the year will bring. Our resolution is to continue to stay ahead of the trend in terms of cutting edge marketing and design technologies, and bring you the best products and service possible. Here’s to a great 2012!

Study Findings and Suggested Tips to Optimizing Your Local Listings:

Finding: 71% of searchers value the information contained in local search results. 60% of these searchers said that local listings with an image get their attention more than standard listings.

Tip: Make your local listing stand out from the crowd. After claiming your listings within Google Places, Yahoo and Bing local listings, you wil want to enhance it with a great looking photo.

Finding: 17% of searchers do not use local geo-modifiers when searching, with this percentage on the rise amoung younger searchers. While on the other hand, older searchers are more inclined to search using local modifiers – roughly 63%.

Tip: When targeting a younger audience, businesses should focus more on generic terms. When targeting older consumers, businesses should focus more on local modifiers within their search related terms.

Finding: 60% of local searchers add a city name to their search query. 42% of searchers choose to add a zip code.

Tip: Optimizing for town name and city name should deliver more traffic than ZIP code, but a well-rounded local SEO campaign should utilize both.

Optimizing your local listings ensures that potential customers find you using search and map functions within search engines. Doing this correctly will support your SEO marketing efforts, as well as increase your visibility and online reputation. For more information, check out Google, Yahoo and Bing Local Listings. If you have questions, or would like to discuss claiming and optimizing your local listings, we would be happy to help. Contact Sage Island today!

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.

So the next time you are out-and-about with friends or looking for somewhere to dine, open Google Places from your Facebook mobile app. Click the check-in option, and you will be given a list of Nearby Places that are offering Check-In-Deals. Once you check-in you are able to see what offers are nearby and share those deals with your friends.

When you select a local business, you simply check-in to view and claim the deal. Simple as that! You may also notice that there are four types of Facebook Check-In-Deals:

Individual Deals: Get discounts on merchandise
Friend Deals: You and your friends can take advantage of a coupon together, you just have to tag your friends within your check-in to receive the deal
Loyalty Deals: For repeat customers that check-in frequently
Charity Deals: Local businesses will pledge to donate to a cause when you check-in

To redeem your Check-In-Deals, simply show your redemption screen to the local business offering the deal.

For more information on Check-In-Deals, visit Facebook Places. If you have any questions about Facebook Marketing, please feel free to contact our interactive marketing specialist here at Sage Island.

Facebook launched their Deals site earlier today to a small group of cities including San Francisco, Dallas, Austin, Atlanta and San Diego. The new Groupon competitor site fully utilizes all of the social features of Facebook, such as Notifications, Sponsored Stories, Likes and Shares amongst friends, email blasts and more.  Within the Facebook Deals Guide for Business they describe the Deals feature as a way to create unique social experiences for friends to enjoy together. Deals encourage people to share their excitement about your business, creating word-of-mouth for your business and can help you build long lasting relationships with your customers.

We believe this new Facebook feature is a great way to increase new customer reach, as well as increase your brand and customer loyalty. Facebook seems to be making it increasingly easier for people to recommend your business through several different sharing options within their platform. These days it is crucial to utilize the marketing features of Facebook and other social media channels because of their endless opportunities and simpler marketing tactics.

If you have any questions about Facebook Marketing, please feel free to contact us here at Sage Island.

Your next step should be to track what “social customers” are saying about you and your company. Monitoring and engaging these conversations will allow you as a business owner to keep your finger on the pulse of the market, and make quick business decisions.

Facebook Insights

Facebook’s analytics tool, also known as Facebook Insights, provides you with important metrics specifically related to your company’s Facebook Fan Page. This tool allows you to view a comprehensive dashboard highlighting top level metrics around the posts and visits to your company’s Fan page. By understanding and analyzing Insight’s metrics, marketers are better prepared to respond to customer feedback and needs.

Within Facebook Insights Dashboard, you will see both User Insights and Interaction Insights. User Insights allow you to view monthly active users, total and new page Likes, Likes from referring sites, user demographics, tabs views and photo views. In addition, Interaction Insights allow you to track daily comment views, mentions within status updates, reviews, wall posts and video posts surrounding your company.

Monitoring the total number of new Fans or Likes is a valuable metric to consider. At what point did you receive the most Likes? How were you engaging these “social customers”? What content were you pushing on your Fan Page? Once you have defined the factors that contributed to this growth you will be able to cater your marketing strategy accordingly. Aside from new Fans or Likes, it is also beneficial to know the average number of comments you typically receive on any given post. Measuring this engagement metric will allow you to increase the number of posts around topics based on your fans interest. These insights gather data comparable to what you would receive from a focus group, but they are totally free.

YouTube Insights

YouTube offers a similar reporting tool known as YouTube Insights. Much like Facebook Insights, this tool allows you monitor your company’s branded YouTube Page. You can check out who is watching your videos, see what referring sites and keywords continue to drive traffic to your branded page and what videos are the most popular. You can also drill down within a specific video to see what portion particularly sparked viewer’s attention and where the interest dropped. These metrics help you understand what content your customers like, enabling you to promote related content and grow your audience.

Twitter Analytics Dashboard

With millions of tweets occurring daily, it seems only natural that you would want to monitor any conversation surrounding your brand on Twitter. While much newer than Facebook and YouTube, Twitter has several applications that allow you to monitor when people mention or follow your company. Last quarter Twitter announced a launch of a new official Twitter analytics dashboard. This dashboard highlights real-time data regarding which tweets are spreading and which Twitter users are influential in your network. The emphasis of Twitter’s analytics is focused on the fact that the data is truly real-time, allowing for branding adjustments and marketing strategy decisions to be made on the fly.

Each of these monitoring tools will provide you with a wealth of knowledge about our company. When deciding which tools are best for your brand, remember to always keep your end goal in mind. Utilizing these tools will help you better understand how people interpret your brand, and allow you to respond quickly to customer’s needs.

Earth Day, which is held annually on April 22^nd, brings some of the most intriguing and informative ad campaigns the world has ever seen. Some of the largest corporations around the world use advertising to provide awareness to help educate people on ways to sustain and preserve our planet.  The Quiksilver Foundation has partnered with Waves for Development, a volunteer based organization that creates life-enriching experiences in coastal communities through education programs and Surf Volunteerism programs that engage travelers & transform their views of the world and themselves.  Quiksilver has been using their social media to utilize and brand this program for this year’s Earth Day.

Starbucks is also pushing a very beneficial advertising campaign for the planet.  Starbucks announced that they will serve free coffee or tea to anyone who brings in a travel mug tomorrow, Friday April 22^nd in order to reduce the waste accumulated from coffee cups. According to Starbucks, “One person switching can save trees, together we can save forests”.  Last year they pushed a similar campaign that saw more than 32 million participants, keeping nearly 1.45 million pounds of paper out of landfills.   This year at Sage Island, all employees posted their pledge to join the movement. Make your own personal pledge for “A Billion Acts of Green” at the Earth Day Network.

Today, the Google Analytics team decided to share the new version of Google Analytics with a small group of Analytics users. Luckily, Sage Island was chosen as one of them.  We are here to tell you that the future of Google Analytics is looking AMAZING and more intuitive than ever.  The functionality of this new version makes the site easier to navigate through than ever. You can look at several different analytical variables at one time, under one interface, which is incredibly helpful when comparing your site data.  The Google Analytics team has made it much easier and faster to get to the site data that you’re looking for through the enhanced Analytics platform. You can also view information about your site visitors by new dynamics such as demographics, behavior and technology.  With this new version comes a whole new updated Google Analytics Help Center and Report Finder.  There is also a section in the Help Forum for you to ask questions and discuss topics with other Analytics users.  You can sign up to be considered for this Google Analytics test run at the beta sign-up page.    If you have any questions or do not have Google Analytics set up for your site, please contact us at Sage Island.

1) Establish trust:

To be successful on Twitter, you have to build a reputation for being a trusted source. You must become your industries leading source for up-to-date and timely information. This will help you build a strong following on Twitter. You can establish this trust by referencing articles and links about the bigger picture as it relates to your business.

2) Link to your website:

Integrate your current Twitter URL into your website by placing a button or call to action on all pages within your website. When tweeting, provide back links that redirect to your site to help gain traffic to your site. Make sure that when promoting your company’s URL, that you have provided added value once they arrive. Both integrating your Twitter URL and linking to your site – will help drive your Twitter URL up in the search engines.

3) Be responsive and reward followers:

You won’t win over the twitter population if you only use twitter as a self-promoting platform. While providing one way marketing messages about your product is okay, it is preferred if you instead ask questions and engage followers in a more casual, conversational approach. Share other peoples content in order to let the “Twitter-sphere” know that you are participating in the conversation. Engaging followers, thanking followers for following and responding in real time will help you build your customer engagement.

4) Don’t forget about your keywords and character limit:

When possible, write keyword rich tweets. Beginning your tweets with a primary keyword will allow you to leverage the realtime and long-term index relevance across search engines. Also, make sure your tweet’s character limits allow for “retweetability.” It is best to keep your tweet under 120 characters in order for your followers to easily add your RT@name in front of their tweet.

5) Measure and monitor what people are saying:

Utilizing tools such as HootSuite and Radian6 will allow you to monitor, track and gain insights regarding your Twitter traffic. Similar to Google Analytics for your website, these sites provide data regarding your Twitter visits, demographics, referring site visits and specifics on individual tweets that you have sent.

Understanding these 5 Twitter tips is only the beginning. Knowing who to follow and the important hashtags for your industry are important as well. Keep your eyes out for more insightful Twitter and social media tips to come in the next week. If you have any questions, or want information regarding other social media opportunities, please contact Sage Island today.