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!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

Who doesn’t love a good deal? With today’s introduction of Facebook Deals, we wanted to remind everyone of the recent addition of Check-In-Deals through Facebook Places. Launched at the end of January, Check-In-Deals help consumers get special offers when checking in at a local business from a mobile device.

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.