Register for Sage Island’s Social Media Strategy Seminar by Feb. 23rd!

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!

We are looking forward tothis year’s Biz Tech Conference/Expo on January 26th at the Wilmington Convention Center!

The event is the region’s largest business-to-business conference and this year’s agenda is packed with seminars, excellent keynote speakers (PPD founder Fred Eshelman & former NC Governor Jim Hunt), and will include a ton of local exhibitors.  If you are in the area, we invite you to register with our special BizTech discount code. This waives your $5 entry fee to attend the BizTech Expo and AfterHours- both great networking events.

Visit the Biz Tech website and use the code: sagebiztech (This code will only work until Monday, January 23^rd so register soon.)

Sage Island will be in booth #203. Stop by and see us!

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!

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!

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 Wardrobe Sale and Auction ourselves!

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!

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.

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.