I sit down with Libby Issendorf, Digital Strategist for the Flint Group, to discuss her past experience at Campbell Mithun and what brought her to Fargo. We’ll also talk about her social media work with the US Speedskating team, her upcoming trip to the Winter Olympics, and where businesses should start their social media efforts.
Can social media help sell tickets?
Social media can accomplish a lot. Solve customer service issues. Provide insights. Forge connections. Identify opportunities. And, we now know for certain, help sell tickets and definitely increase awareness.
In partnership with UND Fighting Sioux Athletics, SimmonsFlint and Flint Interactive developed and implemented a social media campaign to promote “Meltdown at The Ralph,” one night of UND basketball in key games at the majestic Ralph Engelstad Arena, usually reserved for UND hockey.
We created an online landing page, where we aimed all other platforms, including:
- YouTube videos featuring players and coaches from the UND hoops teams, playing a little basketball on the hockey rink and checking out the arena (UND men’s hockey players were good sports in making cameo appearances)
- Twitter updates
- Facebook status updates and advertisements
- Emails to UND alumni, students and other sports’ ticketholders
- In-Arena Video Promos shown on the big screen during UND home hockey and basketball games
- Traditional media, including print, radio and TV commercials, promos in game broadcasts, billboards and public relations
Winning numbers
Even though the UND teams didn’t win, the games attracted 4,354 fans, the largest crowd the two teams have ever played for in Grand Forks.
Other game stats:
- 960 students attended the game, also a new record and far above the average 144 students/game for basketball this season
- Game revenue more than doubled the highest single game revenue this season
To discuss how social media fits your game plan, contact us.
Who is more helpful, the company or the customer?
About a week ago I booked a long overdue family vacation. We looked at several options from resorts to villas to cruises, and settled on a cruise with Norwegian Cruise Line. Needless to say, my 4 and 6 year olds were bouncing off the walls.
Last night I was thinking about the process we went through in booking our trip. Many queries started either on Google Maps, Cruise Reviews or Trip Advisor. From there, it was usually a brief stop on the website for the property, then right back to consumer reviews and photos on a third-party site. This happened over and over.
When we settled on the cruise, we wanted to look at the excursions the ship had to offer. We found ourselves off the NCL website and on to caribbeanportreviews.com to get what we really wanted, which was firsthand opinions of the excursions. My kids wanted to see every square inch of the ship, so we looked at pictures posted by past vacationers, again off the corporate site. NCL did provide some nice 360 view tools, but there were large parts of the ship missing.
I have seven different websites bookmarked, and when I put them all together, they answered most of the questions we had. It shouldn’t take that many sites to get the content I’m looking for. That just leads to a very poor customer experience. I know it is a big undertaking, but why wouldn’t NCL want to provide a one-stop platform for this information? Six of the seven sites (the seventh being ncl.com) I used to make my decision had information on all the major cruise lines. Do they really want potential customers reading about everything everyone else has to offer?
Are you providing what your customers want? Have you asked them what they want? Remember, if they are not getting the information they need from you, they are getting it from someplace else. Do you know where that is?
People are looking for authentic content when making buying decisions. You need to provide the opportunity for your customers to provide it. If you don’t have the capacity to maintain a sharing platform, you need to at least provide links out to sites that have this information, like Amazon reviews, Yelp, or Trip Advisor. Make it easy for your audience.
Question: Are reviews, tips and photos less credible when they are on a corporate website, even if they are not being sanitized? Do you trust them? Would you go to a third party site anyway? Tell me what you think.
Red River Valley Research Corridor ~ Life Sciences Action Summit ~ February 19, 2010 Fargo, ND
Co-hosted by U.S. Senator Byron L. Dorgan and the Red River Valley Research Corridor. Fargo, ND, February 19, 2009
This year’s summit will focus on developing and strengthening the Red River Valley’s burgeoning life sciences industry. Presenters including entrepreneurs, financiers, researchers, and scientists from the region and around the nation will discuss and explore actions the region can and is taking to foster strong, sustainable growth in the life sciences sector.
More about the Life Sciences Action Summit
River Valley Research Corridor Action Summits
The Red River Valley Research Corridor and U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan work in cooperation with leading economic, science and technology-based organizations in North Dakota and the Great Plains region to organize action summits.
Action summits are high-impact conferences that have a razor-like focus on specific research and technology development opportunities in the region. The summits are intended to:
- Facilitate learning, networking and collaboration in the region.
- Connect with key partners in business and government from outside the region in a highly focused and purposeful manner.
- Showcase science and technology-based capabilities and initiatives in the Corridor.
- Engage key players inside and outside the region to put a focus on what do we do now and in the future to make the Red River Valley Corridor an epicenter of research, development and/or production in this particular science and technology field.
Previous Research Corridor action summits have focused on hydrogen energy, venture capital, radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies, polymers and coatings, life sciences, animal identification systems and unmanned aircraft systems.
The Red River Valley Research Corridor is an independent non-profit corporation committed to catalyzing and promoting science, technology and engineering initiatives that create new opportunities in the region
Red River Valley Research Corridor Coordinating Center
Dr. Delore Zimmerman, President & CEO of Praxis Strategy Group in Grand Forks, Fargo & Los Angeles, California was named to serve as the Coordinator. Delore has over twenty years experience working with companies in technology and information industries, universities and local development groups. Since its founding Praxis has been awarded 8 Small Business Innovation Research Awards.
Praxis Strategy Group is a partner with the Flint Group.
Coming SOON – Joel Kotkin’s book THE NEXT HUNDRED MILLION: America in 2050
THE NEXT HUNDRED MILLION: America in 2050
By Joel Kotkin
Release date: February 4, 2010. Published by The Penguin Press
Read more about The Next Hundred Million
In stark contrast to the rest of the world’s advanced nations, the United States is growing at a record rate and, according to census projections, will be home to four hundred million Americans by 2050. This projected rise in population is the strongest indicator of our long-term economic strength, Joel Kotkin believes, and will make us more diverse and more competitive than any nation on earth.
Drawing on prodigious research, firsthand reportage, and historical analysis, The Next Hundred Million reveals how this unprecedented growth will take physical shape and change the face of America. The majority of additional hundred million Americans will find their homes in suburbia, though the suburbs of tomorrow will not resemble the Levittowns of the 1950s or the sprawling exurbs of the late twentieth century. The suburbs of the twenty-first century will be less reliant on major cities for jobs and other amenities and, as a result, more energy efficient. Suburbs will also be the melting pots of the future as more and more immigrants opt for dispersed living over crowded inner cities and the majority in the United States becomes nonwhite by 2050.
The Next Hundred Million provides a vivid snapshot of America in 2050 by focusing not on power brokers, policy disputes, or abstract trends, but rather on the evolution of the more intimate units of American society—families, towns, neighborhoods, industries. It is upon the success or failure of these communities, Kotkin argues, that the American future rests.
Visit Amazon…
Visit Barnes & Noble.com…
Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University. He is author of The City: A Global History and is finishing a book on the American future.
Joel serves as a Senior Consultant with Praxis Strategy Group a partner with the Flint Group
5 Question Friday with John Hyduke
After the holiday hiatus, we are back with another “5 Question Friday”. John Hyduke, President of WestmorelandFlint and Business Development Director for the Flint Group, sits down to discuss what goes into opening up a new location and the growth of Flint Direct. We also manage to sneak in a conversation about hockey and his four lovely daughters.
Link Building for Increased SEO
A common misconception
is that search engine optimization (SEO) techniques within the pages of your website will solve all problems related to poor or less than desirable search engine performance. While accurate page titles and keyword-rich copy are important, there are several off-page SEO techniques that often have a faster and more significant impact on your website rankings.
Off-page SEO refers to the strategies you execute outside the pages of your website—all of which are aimed towards link building and increasing site traffic. Here are a few contextual opportunities to generate inbound links for your website:
Article Marketing
Writing and submitting articles is one way to get your site indexed. Submit one-page articles that discuss an area of expertise. Look for submission sites that specialize in the article topic and get your article posted on their website. Make sure to use anchor text in your article that directs readers to relevant content on your website. A few well-known submission sites include: Ezine Articles and Go Articles.
Blogging
Search engines love text that changes regularly; thus, making a blog a great solution for improving your ranking. A blog is the most effective, honest and fastest way to receive inbound links. However, keep in mind that blogs need to be updated regularly to keep the content fresh and exciting. A neglected blog is a bad sign for both search engines and users. Make sure you have the staff and resources in place to maintain an effective blog.
Social Media
Social media is another fast way to generate inbound links to your website. Social media also implies interactivity, which is a positive sign to both users and search engine crawlers. Look at different social media options, such as Twitter, Digg and YouTube to provide users with timely content and to help generate buzz about your website. Along with social media, however, comes reputation management—whether or not you are out actively participating in social media, your customers are out there talking about you. Keep a close watch over social media sites to make sure that the buzz being generated portrays your company in a positive light.
Quality trumps quantity when it comes to link building. Select only reputable online environments that are relevant to the content on your website. This is the ethical way to garner inbound links, and it will help you reach a targeted audience that is genuinely interested in what you have to offer.
Building Strong Brands
What are the 2009 top brands? A quick search on the web will give you numerous lists to choose from as defined by various criteria. All of us know that strong brands directly result in business value. But what do we mean when someone says a company has a “strong brand”?
It’s easiest to start with what a brand is not. It is not a logo. It is not a company name. It is not a product. A brand is the sum total of all the interactions, good and bad, an audience has with a company or product. It is the gut feeling a person has about the company or product; the place the company or product holds in the person’s mind and heart.
Your brand is not what you say it is, but rather what your audiences say it is.
So, if the brand is not what you say it is, how do you build a strong brand? Branding is creating an emotional bond with your target audiences. To do this, you need to know your unique distinctions and how you bridge the gap of what your target audiences need or want and what you uniquely offer. Once you develop a solid, relevant brand promise, you then need to deliver it consistently. One of the core building blocks of brand delivery is your employees.
Your employees are your brand’s biggest ambassadors and are an extremely important internal audience in brand building. Branding is experiential and is everyone in the organization’s responsibility. Branding starts from within and begins with commitment. In the brand development process, it is vital for communications to work with human resources to develop strategies, processes and tactics that engage employees and create a shared understanding of the brand. This activity should identify brand behavior for employees and show them how to “live the brand”.
So, how do you live your brand promise?
