What is the value of social media for brands? How should companies be using it? AREA203 Digital social media strategist Ryan Russell tackles how brands can score in social media.

Follow us on Twitter at @AREA203Digital.

Follow Ryan Russell at @RyanWPRussell.

→ Heather Huston, Strategist, Social Media, AREA203 Digital; follow… @hustonian

AREA203 Digital’s very own Chief Creative Officer Tavis Salazar has been named one of the 20 most influential individuals under the age of 40 in Chatter magazine’s “20 Under 40″ list for 2013.

Chatter magazine, June 2013 edition

Chatter, an upscale Chattanooga city magazine started their “20 Under 40″ series in 2011. This yearly ‘class’ of influential Chattanoogans all under the age of 40 have something in common (and no, not just their ages): They have all extended their passions past their chosen professions to represent our community in countless ways. The 2013 class is making an impact that will be felt by generations to come.

“Being able to use my creative talents to give back to non-profit organizations across the nation is pretty rewarding,” Tavis told Chatter when asked about his proudest professional moment. “But I’m most proud of the team that I’ve had the privilege of developing at AREA203.”

Tavis Salazar, Chief Creative Officer for AREA203 Digital
Photo Credit: Steven Ratajczyk of Chatter Magazine

More About Mr. Salazar

Tavis is known around the AREA203 office as the guy with the tattoos, record collection, and trucker hats. But he is also known as the guy who challenges his employees to think outside the box, run with the riskier ideas, and do things that have never been done before. Originally from Miami, FL and holding a degree from Miami University of Art and Design, he has 15 years of experience in the creative/design field, working with big name brands like: Bloomingdales, Bigelow Teas, Macy’s, Crabtree & Evelyn, and Dillard’s, to name a few.

Tavis has been with AREA203 Digital for nearly four years and leads a team of more than 20 creative individuals, including creative directors, art directors, designers, writers, and UX developers. If that isn’t enough to show you he’s achieved greatness all before turning the big 4-0, he has also been a driving force in helping the agency win seven gold ADDY awards (including two District 7 awards, covering creative work from Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee), 14 silver ADDY awards (including two District 7 awards), and a “Best of Show” ADDY award—all within the past two years.

Tavis Salazar at the 2013 Chattanooga ADDY Awards, holding a “Best of Show” honor for the Cloudswell logo

We are very proud about your accomplishment, Tavis! We can’t wait to see what your leadership and creativity will spark in the coming years!

Check your local newsstand for a free copy of Chatter.

→ Brooke Fontana, PR Specialist, AREA203 Digital… @Brookie_Fontana

Last weekend, Chattanooga hosted the USA Cycling Professional Road and Time Trial National Championships, which was lauded as a tremendous success by many people involved. NBC Sports commentator Kristin Armstrong said that “ever since I’ve been here I feel like I’ve been home. It’s just a great town.” USA Cycling President and CEO Steve Johnson said that Chattanooga “knocked it out of the park.”

I must admit: I missed it because of Memorial Day travels. Afraid my Chattanooga street cred would be forever damaged if I didn’t know what was going on, I watched much of the race online and frequently checked the hashtag #USPRO to see images from the event. A lot of the shots that came out of the event were great, showcasing the fast pace of cycling, the enthusiasm of the crowds, and the fantastic scenery around Chattanooga. Here are my eight favorite shots from the race:

PHOTO NUMBER 8

Great shot from the Tennessee Riverwalk

(Photo by @sauceboxink)

PHOTO NUMBER 7

Thirsty? Enjoy the High Life, Mr. Cyclist.

(Photo by @brittneycarnell)

PHOTO NUMBER 6

Volkswagen’s great social campaign

(Photo by @mandajbloom)

PHOTO NUMBER 5

A little snack for the road

(Photo by @thepauld)

PHOTO NUMBER 4

Tennessee Aquarium frames the leaders.

(Photo by @chattanooga)

PHOTO NUMBER 3

Chalking the Race: Chattanooga Style

(Photo by @xtremeterrain)

PHOTO NUMBER 2

The Moment of Victory: Jade Wilcoxson crosses the finish line.

(Photo by @jenk135)

PHOTO NUMBER 1

Why We Call It “The Scenic City.”

(Photo by @alexworthy)

→ Ryan Russell, Social Media Strategist, AREA203 Digital … @ryanwprussell

Google algorithm updates target and attack websites that appear to make their living off black hat SEO techniques, irrelevant content, and shady link practices. As a SEO firm or large company, you are probably aware of these terms, and if you have a good SEO working with you, you are looking at analytics reports to make sure you have escaped the the wrath of Penguin 2.0.

But if you’re a small business owner, these terms and Google’s latest algorithm update may not seem relevant to you. But trust me, they are. If your business relies on website traffic and conversions, your full attention should be focused on Penguin 2.0 and the early reports on which websites it’s affecting and how.

What Does It Mean: Translating Penguin 2.0

Typically, when Google adds another wrinkle to their algorithm—or, in this case, updates a previously existing one—it takes days, weeks, or sometimes even months to see the full affect of the change. In this case, early reports suggest the following things about the second edition of the update that specifically targets links and linking practices:

• More Bark Than Bite—The overall affect of this update was smaller (so far) than was expected within the search community. Nobody but the Google engineers themselves know how powerful these updates will be, and the hype for this update seems to have been overblown.
• Low-quality Sites and Big Brands Hurt—Everything from extremely spam-centric gaming and porn sites to big brands like Dish and The Salvation Army felt the affects of this update. Also, small businesses (maybe yours?) that either didn’t take SEO seriously enough or couldn’t delineate between good and bad SEO practices were negatively affected.
• Digging Deeper Than the Homepage—Some people suggest the major difference between Penguin 1.0 and 2.0 is the depth of the analysis of links. The thought is that, originally, only the homepage and maybe other high-profile pages of sites were targeted. In this update, it seems the algorithm drills down further in an attempt to crackdown on site-wide links and other shady practices sometimes found only on deeper page levels.

Practical Steps Moving Forward

So, you’ve been hit. Your web traffic has dramatically decreased in a matter of days and you haven’t made any major changes recently to your front- or back-end development, SEO, or other contributing channels. Chances are that when your site was crawled by Googlebot, it was negatively affected by the update. Your small business is dependent on your consistent web traffic, so move quickly with the following road map to recovery and success:

1. Monitor Your Analytics

The proof is in the puddin’. The decrease in organic traffic that began on May 22—or soon thereafter—can be attributed to Penguin 2.0.

2. Gather Information and Move On from Past SEOs

Do you have a record of any and all changes to your website? If you’re like most small business owners, you probably don’t. But start digging: look for records of proposed site changes that were implemented in the past. Most of all, focus on SEO. Have you—or anybody else who was in control of the website at one point—done some “SEO”? Finding any record of changes made to the website in the name of SEO were probably black hat and did more harm than good. Spam tactics that used to get rankings on the first page for your number one keyword now get sites targeted and penalized. Move on from those tactics—and that SEO—to a more formidable strategy.

3. Remove and Replace the Bad Links

As I mentioned earlier, Penguin predominantly deals with links rather than content or other website elements. Basically, your website was hit because of the quantity of poor or spammy links pointing to it, giving it more value according to most search engine algorithms than it should have. As a result, when you lose the value of those links, you lose your rankings and traffic numbers. You have two choices: remove those poor links pointing to your website or replace them. The correct answer? Both.

Google Webmaster Tools is one of many free SEO tools that allows you to download a CSV file containing the majority of relevant links pointing back to your business’ website. You can—and should—find ways to reach out to the webmasters of the poor and spammy domains that linked to you, asking for the link(s) to be removed. Chances are not all of them will cooperate, but make sure you put forth the effort and write everything down. Once you’ve gone through all of the bad links, use the disavow tool within Webmaster Tools to notify Google that you’re aware of the spammy links and have attempted to address them. This can be a daunting task that takes weeks or months, so it’s totally normal if you’re feeling overwhelmed. Need a hand going through this process? We’d love to help.

4. Follow Current SEO Best Practices

SEO is a constantly changing industry that has evolved many times in its short existence. However, below is an extremely brief breakdown of what to do to ensure your website is following the best practices:

• Content is King—The content on your website should not only be prominent, but it should be valuable to the visitors of your site. If you’re a clothing retailer, create content that talks about the latest fashion trends, the benefits of one fabric over another, how irritating tags can be on T-shirts, or anything else that will speak to your customer base. Quality and variety (written content, images, video, infographics, interactive elements, etc.) should take high priority in your content strategy.
• On-site SEO Management—This covers a wide variety of elements that couldn’t properly be discussed in a single paragraph, but examine your title tags, meta descriptions, images, link structures, keyword strategy, videos, sitemaps, robots.txt file, and more to ensure what you’re doing is the most valuable for both visitors and the search engines.
• Social Media Strategy—Don’t forget about social; it can pay huge dividends for your small business, especially when confined to a local area. If your company doesn’t currently have a presence on relevant social networks, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to speak directly to your customer, have an instantaneous customer feedback channel, and acquire healthy, relevant inbound links to your site. When social media works in harmony with SEO, it’s a beautiful thing.

These changes take time and energy on your part, but assuming you implement correctly, expect to see your organic traffic numbers return to normal heights. It may take months, but Penguin 2.0 doesn’t have to ruin the success of your small business. Stay calm and take a deep breath, esteemed business owner: you, too, can fight off Google’s second Penguin.

→ Brady Callahan, Content Specialist, AREA203 Digital; follow… @BradyDCallahan

AREA203 Digital, a full-service digital agency, is recognized from all disciplines in the 2013 Advertising Age Agency Report, released April 30, 2013 by the trade publication Advertising Age. The agency is ranked among more than 900 advertising and marketing firms in the United States.

With a ranking of 439, AREA203 achieved its first-ever appearance in the top 500 rankings of all agencies listed in the report. AREA203 is the only agency ranked from Chattanooga, Tennessee and one of only four from the entire state.

“We are honored to be recognized by Advertising Age as one of the nation’s—and Tennessee’s—leading ad agencies,” says Doug Freeman, President of AREA203 Digital. “This recognition is driven by numerous client successes, and steered by dedicated determination from our team.”

The 69th annual Advertising Agency Report was produced by the Advertising Age DataCenter. The report appeared in Advertising Age’s April 30, 2013, print edition and on AdAge.com. It includes rankings of more than 500 advertising, marketing-services, and media agencies based on 2012 revenue.

AREA203 Digital is a full-service digital agency headquartered in Chattanooga, TN. By helping brands create influence through innovative thinking and doing, AREA203 delivers measurable solutions that address their clients’ needs. AREA203 practices Corporate Social Responsibility by donating profits and time to many global causes. For more information, visit AREA203.com, read their blog AREA2oh3.com, or follow us on Twitter @AREA203Digital.

→ Casey Knox, Director of Communications and PR, AREA203 Digital; follow @caseymaeknox

Crowdfunding recently got a shot in the arm from big named celebrities like Zach Braff and Rob Thomas (not the Matchbox 20 guy, the “Veronica Mars” guy). Their projects have been the most prominent of the new trend in celebrity projects on Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites.

Veronica Mars Star Kristen Bell.

Rob Thomas, the director of the former CW show that has a huge cult following and abruptly ended after three seasons, recently launched a Kickstarter campaign that blew through its $2 million dollar goal (it raised $5,702,153) in a mere 12 hours, setting the record for largest number of supporters (91,585). Braff, who made his name on the hit show Scrubs and as the director for the upstart movie “Garden State,” reached the goal for his new film “Wish I Was Here” in three days, giving Garden State fans the follow up they’ve been seeking for years.

Celebrities getting involved with their fans, fans getting involved with their cult heroes. Sounds like a win-win, right? Well, indie filmmakers and bands have been trashing these celebrity projects, claiming that celebrities are taking advantage of fans and emptying the coffers of donors who might have donated to other artists who are more in need of funding. Braff recently received even more negative press aftersecuring millions of dollars in funds “gap financing” from Entertainment to help fund the remainder of the film on top of Braff’s own money that he is investing himself.

Celebrities aren’t the problem. Bad content is.

The loan made critics call into question whether Braff was giving up the rights to the creative control that donors were funding originally. Braff and his producer, Stacey Sher, have rejected this notion, saying they gave donors the opportunity to cancel their funds if they desired. She stated “Worldview Entertainment is essentially a bank … loaning us the ‘gap’ between what we’ve raised together and what we need to actually make the movie.”

“Wish I Was Here” Director Zach Braff

Braff and Veronica Mars detractors believe that were these funds to be retracted, the donors would immediately flee toward funding smaller projects. They blame the success not on Braff and Rob Thomas’s hard work, on great content, or on the loyal fan bases, but on their name recognition. They believe this is what is to blame for these projects succeeding and other projects failing.

Melissa’s Kickstarter Campaign of Shame

Sabrina… er… Clarissa… I mean, Melissa Joan Hart used Kickstarter in an attempt to cash in on her fading name recognition and thrust her way into a leading movie role. The results were underwhelming to say the least: 315 supporters gave a little more than $51,000, which is less than 2% of Braff’s total. Why did Hart fail? Click the link to watch the campaign video and you tell me.

You didn’t make it through two minutes did you? I’ll save you the pain of the rest: it doesn’t get any better. The rewards are terrible ($300 for her to follow you on Twitter), the team obviously put little effort or planning into it (they never updated the page), and they were obviously doing it to sustain Hart’s career, not make a quality movie (even the video and campaign make continuous “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” and “Clarissa Explains It All” references). Name recognition does not automatically equal success; quality content that has an audience does.

Simply launching a Kickstarter campaign, setting up a Facebook page, or having a great idea does not entitle anyone to success. The best way to sell a product is to have a great product. Braff and Thomas have great products. People loved “Garden State,” and wanted to see more of Braff’s directorial work unfiltered by production companies. Veronica Mars fans have stayed engaged and excited about the show even though it was cancelled in 2007. That is great content: something that more than 91,000 people would give their money for even after six years of cancellation.

Kickstarter has funded over $528 million worth of projects

Here’s the Deal.

Don’t blame success or lack of success of your crowdfunding campaign on celebrities using the site. Kickstarter wrote a great blog entry that noted that 63% of “Veronica Mars” and Zach Braff funders had never pledged on Kickstarter before. Since these projects, these new donors have pledged over $400,000 to 2,200 projects. It hardly seems like Braff and Thomas are the bullies responsible for stealing money from other projects. If anything, it seems that they have given the site added exposure, which could potentially assist other projects.

There’s an old saying that says, “Nothing will kill a bad product faster than good marketing.” Rather than focus on the marketing tactics— in this case crowdfunding sites— focus on developing a great product that people will want to buy. Kickstarter is just a tactic, not the reason a product fails or not. Great projects that have an audience and have a great plan will likely succeed. If your Kickstarter campaign failed, chances are your product was going to fail, too. There is no escaping hard work.

→ Ryan Russell, Social Media Strategist, AREA203 Digital …@ryanwprussell

→ Brooke Fontana, PR Specialist, AREA203 Digital …@Brookie_Fontana

Gene de Libero, Chief Strategy Officer at AREA203, regularly collects must-know resources from around the web for marketers.

• How cloud, big data and mobile will make the CMO the BMOC — Tech News and Analysis
  The rise of cloud and big data is altering business models, and in the process shifting corporate hierarchies, too. The chief marketing officer could be a big beneficiary of all this change.
• Why P&G Can’t Blame 6,250 Layoffs on Facebook
  P&G doesn’t know, and they don’t get it. The most mind-boggling part of this is that their response to their inability to get last year’s digital experiment to work is… wait for it… increasing their ad budget. Business Insider also reported that these layoffs were “in part…because Facebook ended the free ride for advertisers in the middle of last year.” So even getting this stuff for free couldn’t make their new digital strategy work.
• Why Do Top Athletes Suddenly Develop “the Yips” – a Tendency to Choke under Pressure?: Scientific American
  There is no clear explanation as to why pro athletes, who frequently encounter high-stakes moments, still choke under pressure. One suggested explanation is a neurological condition called focal dystonia that results in involuntary muscle contractions when performing a motor task and tends to affect a muscle group that is used frequently and repeatedly. The cause is unclear, but the contractions may involve abnormalities in neural communication.
• 8 Data-based Tips for Optimizing Your Content on Pinterest and Instagram
  Even though the two most popular social networks to emerge in the past few years (Instagram and Pinterest) revolve around visual content, there isn’t much data about what content performs best on these platforms. Because Instagram and Pinterest revolve around visual (not textual) content and their APIs are difficult to access, it can be challenging to research these networks.
• Why Is Facebook Blue? The Science Behind Colors In Marketing | Fast Company | Business + Innovation
  Turns out, something as simple as tweaking the color of a button changes user behavior or endears people to your product. Buffer’s Leo Widrich explains the importance of color in a website and brand design.

Reused with permission from www.genedelibero.com.

Want more of Gene’s Links?
To see more posts in this series, visit Gene’s author page.

If you know her or follow our Sr. PR Specialist Louise Elliott on Twitter, it comes as no surprise that when when Victors & Spoils, a Colorado-based agency, crowdsourced a name for their new conference room, Louise was ready with a peculiar idea. It will also come as no surprise that when they selected the winning name, her’s was the one.

This crowd-sourcing solution to this (surprisingly) involved dilemma of naming a conference room garnered the attention of Ad Age. Louise’s submitted name of “Tater Tot” was even mentioned in the first sentence of their article. Ad Age went on to give more examples of famous brands’ approaches to naming their meeting space:

Twitter has been known, unsurprisingly, to name its rooms after birds. At Square, every one is named after a famous Square. At Apple, it’s been said that the conference rooms are named after a mythical land, known as Disney. (Read the full post here)

At AREA203 Digital, our conference room naming ranges from mental giants like Einstein and Newton, to the more “trendy” and higher fat content variety, such as “Bacon.” Ok, in reality it’s named for Francis Bacon but I choose to ignore that. In my previous life, one of the most interesting things I saw was on a meeting request by a contact listing “Conference Room C.” After much confusion and wandering around their office I found it was “C” as in “Connolly’s,” the local Irish pub.

As for ‘Tater Tot,” how exactly did Louise come up with the name? When asked if there was a specific reasoning or logic behind it, she replied “of course not.” Via text. And using hashtags.

True to form, she changed her mind about her answer a few hours later saying “tater tots are like a good meeting: short, crisp, and usually leading to better things. Like a cheeseburger.”

Louise’s minute of fame hasn’t changed her a bit.

We don’t know why, but we know we love it. Our new conference room is officially named Tater Tot. #gotatertot twitter.com/VictorsnSpoils…

— Victors & Spoils (@VictorsnSpoils) May 10, 2013

Adding Conference Room Namer to my CV “@victorsnspoils: Our new conference room is officially named Tater Tot. #gotatertot

— Louise Elliott (@geez_louise_) May 11, 2013

→ Craig Ray, Manager, Social Media and Content Marketing, AREA203 Digital; follow… @LeggoMyCraigo

In late March, the SEOmoz blog published an interesting blog post that I hadn’t seen discussed anywhere else in the search industry. Maybe I just had my head in the sand, but David Mihm‘s words about creating a review strategy in Google+ were fresh, innovative, and inspiring. As somebody who works in the content, SEO, and social realms I was excited to run this by my manager and begin using barnacle reviews as the AREA203 Digital Google+ page. We set up a test period to determine if the reviews were worth pursuing on a larger scale.

Setting Up the G+ Review Test

(If you’re interested in knowing more about leaving quality reviews of friendly, popular local destinations as a business, I’d highly encourage you read the original post, linked above. Not only will the rest of this post be easier to understand, but it may just inspire you and your company to conduct a similar test in your area. Ok, enough of the disclaimers…)

Chattanooga isn’t the biggest city in the world. However there are still plenty of neat places to eat, shop, explore, and visit whether you’re here as a tourist or call yourself a native. For the review test, we wanted five popular businesses that had variable followings and popularities. While all five locations would have a strong following in word-of-mouth marketing, the strength of their digital presence would vary. After polling some fellow colleagues about the most popular places to review in the downtown Chattanooga area, I settled on the following five:

• Tennessee Aquarium
• Creative Discovery Museum
• Sekisui
• Tremont Tavern
• Taqueria Jalisco

Some of AREA203 Digital’s favorite lunch spots made the list, which was a surprise to nobody. I left well-written reviews (from the agency’s brand page) that were descriptive yet concise, giving the honest opinion about what each business offers and why people should visit. The next part of the test? The waiting game.

About Six Weeks Later

It was time to check the results of our test and see if the reviews we left were valuable, helpful to others, and considered “Top Reviews” for those locations:

For all five businesses, the AREA203 Digital review was considered one of the “Most Helpful” even though there were other good reviews posted before and after it. As much as I’d like to take credit for epic review writing abilities, there’s no magic in those words. I simply wrote an opinion about these restaurants and venues that gave a few specifics and helped others better understand what to expect on a visit. These extra impressions, if you will, can be extremely valuable. It’s safe to say our experiment was a success and we look forward to reviewing other popular businesses in the Chattanooga area on a regular basis.

What’s the Big Deal? Does it Help SEO?

The short answer to that question is yes… and no. Will you miraculously jump to the top 3 spots in the SERP for a local query now? No. But SEO is so much more than rankings now. Let’s take a minute and imagine how these reviews might help:

Pretend you’re visiting the Scenic City for the first time and want to know some of the local hot spots. You search for “things to do in Chattanooga” and something similar to the following image populates:

That lovely search carousal feature – which is tied in with the Knowledge Graph – identifies some of the most popular businesses in the area. The first result is the Tennessee Aquarium. You click it, and the Knowledge Graph changes from information about the city of Chattanooga to information specifically about the aquarium.

Google favors it’s own social network, and if you weren’t previously aware, there have been plenty of blog posts talking about the value of Google+ profiles, +1s, circles, and their positive effect on gaining SERP visibility. In the image above, you’ll notice at the bottom there is a link to the number of “Google Reviews.” Click that link; you’ll be on the Aquarium’s G+ Local page and their reviews section. And what do you see there? You see a helpful review from AREA203 Digital, a local digital marketing agency. As John Madden always said, “BOOM!“

The potential benefits of this strategy are large and it takes a incredibly short amount of time and resources to write and post reviews. Leave your thoughts in the comments after trying this tactic for your business. I’d be curious to see how this technique works in your city and for your business.

→ Brady Callahan, Content Specialist, AREA203 Digital; follow… @BradyDCallahan

When our team began working with the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, I must admit that I was ignorant about the issue of hunger in the Chattanooga area. Like many people, I have never had to wonder if I would be able to eat a meal or not. My perspective changed when I saw this statistic about Chattanooga:

One out of every four children in our area don’t know when they will eat again.

 

One in four kids. Not kids in a Third World country that we may never visit. Chattanooga kids. OUR kids. 25% of Chattanooga-area kids aren’t worrying about their math test tomorrow or what college they might get in to. They’re worrying about if they’re going to be able to eat dinner. That affects much more than their stomachs that night; it affects the way they grow, it affects their learning at school, and affects their relationship with their families. I’ve learned that despite my previous ignorance, the issue of hunger in Chattanooga is dire. But another thing that the Chattanooga Area Food Bank taught me is that there is hope that this number can be changed.

This Saturday, May 11, 2013, postal workers across Chattanooga and cities around the nation are pitching in to make solving the issue of food insecurity easier than ever. The event is called National Stamp Out Hunger Day, and all you have to do is put nonperishable food items in a bag beside your mailbox. Seriously. That’s it. A bag by your mailbox and your mail carrier will do the rest.

The Chattanooga Area Food Bank is hoping to collect over 100,000 pounds this weekend. We’re doing our part at AREA203 Digital. We’re collecting food and our Lead Team has given us a matching donation challenge (Did you know that the Food Bank can buy 10 lbs. of food for only $1?) My wife and I will be leaving a bag of food out on Saturday too.

Maybe this Saturday won’t “stamp out hunger” in Chattanooga forever, but thanks to folks like the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, families are being fed and lives are being changed. Leave a bag out this Saturday. It doesn’t get much easier than this.

For more information visit the Chattanooga Area Food Bank’s Stamp Out Hunger page.