VerticalResponse Featured Partner

In the September issue of the VerticalResponse Partner Newsletter, Finn Digital was featured for our work both in email marketing as well as for our integration of social media to email.

A reprint of the feature is below:

Partner Highlight

Finn Digital: Mastering the "Twitterverse"

Finn Digital is an award-winning interactive marketing agency that provides innovative solutions for email campaigns, full-service animation, video, social media campaigns and much more.

Every week, Finn Digital sends their "Hot Sheet," a newsletter with five quick hits of cool, hot, trendy, smart and funny things on the Internet.

By keeping their email content streamlined, focused, consistent and FUN, Finn Digital has achieved phenomenal email success with open rates often exceeding 50% and clickthrough rates that often surpass 25%--that's more than 2 times the industry average.

Not happy to just rest on its email program, Finn Digital is also mastering Social Media with a popular destination on Twitter that has gained nearly 400 followers. By providing interesting news and information on a regular basis, they have expanded their reach. Twitter enables them to send messages, company news, and re-post email campaigns, opening them up to an audience that goes beyond their regular email subscribers.

Find Finn Digital on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Well done, Finn Digital for leading the Email AND Social Media revolution...Keep up the great work and thank you for being an incredible VR Partner!

Event Experience: Increasing Attendee ROI with Social Design

Finn Digital's newest staff member, interactive account executive Kari Dunham, co-wrote her first professional article for the BizTimes Marketing+PR newsletter, published on September 9, 2009.

A reprint of the article is below:
Event Experience: Increasing Attendee ROI with Social Design

By: Kari Dunham, Interactive Account Executive, and Bill Finn, President, of Finn Digital LLC, www.finndigital.com

As humans we continuously strive to grow our network of relationships. Events like parties, dinners or reunions are the original social network, bringing people together to expand personal and professional relationship, so it's no surprise that we created conferences to build our professional black book. In the digital age, we professionals seldom develop a solely "in-person relationship." Therefore, conference organizers are beginning to bring what was once a "physical" event to the web.

Successful conference exposure has expanded to include social technology before, during and after an event. Serving as a hub for information, online social networks can initiate key relationships between presenters and attendees prior to the event. Attendees can utilize conference-specific community platforms to post notes from presentations, print out agendas or develop list of attendees to meet while onsite. Further, traffic on these conference social networks double after these events, specifically because they act as "online archives" for conversations and event feedback or attendees use them to follow-up with contacts.

Some popular platforms being utilized for conferences include:

1. Ning
Ning is as an external social networking site where attendees can create their own social community and invite others to join. Similar to social networks like Facebook or MySpace, Ning offers profiles, comments, and photos, as well as conference-friendly features like "chat", event pages for attendees to RSVP to conference sessions with visible attendee lists, and a blog tab to post notes or comment post-sessions. The premium version can integrate a live Twitter stream on the home page. Ning is free to use, with ad-free and customizable premium packages available for $25 a month*.

2. CrowdVine
CrowdVine is a conference-developed social network offering in-depth profile, messaging, and search features, establishing relationships between attendees as "a friend"; "a fan"; or "someone to meet". Calendar features allow attendees to create their own agendas and discuss sessions. A feedback feature rates a session's content or speaker while want-to-meet lists help attendees pinpoint who they would like to meet and who wants to meet them. Blog, photo and Twitter streams are aggregated into the dashboard for easy viewing. CrowdVine has free versions, but customizable, ad-free versions begin at $399 per event.*

3. Pathable
Pathable is a conference-specific social networking platform with a "tagging" system. As a member of this network, attendees can identify and converse with others at the conference with similar tags. Pathable also works with existing Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, alerting attendees when their connections will be attending. Perfect for the mobile world, Pathable offers iPhone and smart phone applications for organizing agendas, contacts and more. They can also produce name tags/conference badges with basic attendee information, attendees' tags and a list of people to meet. Pathable charges, on average, a $1,000 set-up fee for each event and approximately $3 - $6 per attendee for its services.*


Social networks provide the tools for conference attendees to "socialize" before, during and after the event. However, these networks require a marketing strategy to educate attendees on the features and benefits of each tool. Encourage attendees within the social platform to blog, tweet, geo-tag and post photos, videos or comments to discussion boards/forums. This official "social media team" can receive conference perks/incentives as a bonus during the event while demonstrating the use of the tools. With a conversation already started, attendees won't be intimidated to share their comments and experiences.

See how the Business Marketing Association's National Conference in Chicago demonstrated this team effort.

With online social networking platforms, attendees are seeing more business opportunities out of their conference experience, raising their ROI in professional events despite the economic climate.


*These prices are provided as of July 2009 and are dependent on quote from each company.

BMA 2009 Bell Award for Finn Digital Hot Sheet

BMA 2009 Bell Award for Finn Digital Hot Sheet
Originally uploaded by Finn Digital

BMA Milwaukee President Karen Conrad is pictured here with Finn Digital's Bill Finn and Jill Schmidt as they accept the Bell Award in Division 28: Newsletters for our Finn Digital Hot Sheet.

Read all about our awards here.

Check out all of the winners at this year's Bell Awards.

-Tiff P.
Media Project Manager

BMA Bell & Excellence Awards 2009

BMA Bell & Excellence Awards 2009
Originally uploaded by Finn Digital

Finn Digital was honored with 2 awards at last night's Bell Awards 2.0, sponsored by the Business Marketing Association, Milwaukee Chapter.

We were awarded a Bell Award in Division 28: Newsletters for our weekly email newsletter called the "Finn Digital Hot Sheet" as well as an Excellence Award in Division 23: Online Communications Programs for the Johnson Bank "Holiday Game".

It's always an honor to be recognized for our hard work, so kudos to the entire team on both projects!

If you want to know why our newsletter is so "hot", sign up for our newsletter!

-Tiff P.
Media Project Manager

SEO Tips We Can All Use

On March 19, 4/5ths of the Finn Digital team attended the latest Milwaukee Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) event featuring Brent Payne, director of search engine optimization for Tribune Interactive.

Brent provided an overview of what search engine optimization (SEO) entails, statistics on how Googlebot calculates its search algorithm for the powerhouse search engine Google, and useful tools we can all use to evaluate how our websites measure up.

Some Key Takeaways:

There are roughy 2,000 queries made per second on Google. While that number may seem impressive, it's key to remember that 87% of people don't go past the first page of Google's search results, which is why it's so important to rank in that first page.

Google's search listings automatically refreshes every 30 days, so your updated content will appear in the search refreshed at a bare minimum once a month. But if Google deems your site "important" enough, it's web crawlers--known as spiders--will review your page and update your listings more often.

How do you get your site to be "spidered" or "crawled" more often? Update your content and make sure it's relevant. Google looks for three things, particularly for inbound and outbound links for your website: popularity, authority, and relevance. It's not just about the number of links coming in and out (popularity) but where the links come from (e.g., links from .gov and .edu will have greater "authority" than links from John Doe's blog) and how relevant both the links and the associated content are.

GoogleBot is the search "robot" that crawls the millions of websites on the Internet for links/code and has 3 key attributes that need to be kept in mind: it's literal, it needs context, and it's blind. GoogleBot only crawls the information it finds on the website, and doesn't understand jokes or "clever" content. It sees the text/code and that's what it uses for its calculations (again proving that relevance is key). It uses the links as jumping points to build context for its search, so if all of your links are about X product and they link to other websites about X product, it increases the context being created. Finally, it's blind: GoogleBot cannot see iFrame content (HTML content inside HTML content), JavaScript, Flash elements, or images (so sites that are all Flash, like some of the larger companies, can be "blank" to GoogleBot). It only reads text and links, so good web developers (like the ones we have here at Finn Digital) update the code to allow for crawlers to recognize Flash and images. It's more work, but a small effort in boosting SEO.

When doing searches, Google hits your home page most often, so keep your newest, updated, relevant content here.

Keywords are vital to increasing your SEO. The URLs, content, and links on your website pages should have key phrases in them to boost relevance. Remember that Google doesn't find possessives, acronyms (unless popularly known within your industry), or plurals to be very important as long as the rest of the key word/phrase is intact. A great tool for checking your keywords: Google Keyword Reserach Tool.

GoogleTrends: to keep up with all of the changes on Google, check out GoogleTrends. This will provide the top 100 queries in the last hour by percentage of increase, making it easier to track just what's "hot" and what's not. To review search terms within vertical markets, try Google Insights for Search.

Don't delete your content! It's possible to repurpose your content to boost SEO. If you need to remove content, use a 301 redirect to keep all of those SEO power already built up to transfer to your new page (a good web developer can help with this!).

Most importantly, have a web analytics program like Google Analytics or Omniture installed for your website so you can keep track of your own traffic and be able to boost SEO yourself.

You can also view the entire presentation here

follow Brent Payne via twitter if you want more information.

-Tiff P.
Media Project Manager

Better Coffee : Bag #2

http://alterracoffeepro.com/ (the roaster)

http://www.nervosacoffee.com/ (the purveyor)

This is bag number two of better coffee for Finn Digital. Coffee fuels our daily work, except for Tiff, who doesn't need it. Ever. That's why she manages your projects.

Lessons Learned from Hard Rock

Everyone month, the staff at Finn Digital attends the BMA Milwaukee's meeting and networking.

Today, the featured speaker was Sean Dee, VP and Chief Marketing Officer at Hard Rock. He was able to detail for us not only the history of Hard Rock but also the "rebranding" after his arrival at the company in 2004.

Some key takeaways from his presentation:

Be curious about your brand and your consumers. Companies need to be aware of how your brand is being perceived by both your competitors and your consumers. Sometimes our perceptions don't fall into line with the desired marketing message.

Have an authentic story to tell. Yes, we all have a corporate "branding statement" for our organization, but does it come from the board room? Consumers need to know that the company's message and mission are not just some generated catch-phrase but a values statement that reflects the core of the company's philosophy.

Innovate relentlessly... keep the story fresh. Companies and brand may not want to "evolve" over time, but our consumers' needs do. By constantly being aware of the brand's presence and stretching the boundaries, it gives the consumers a reason to keep coming back for more. More importantly, having your core consumers be a part of the conversation keeps the brand relevant.

Enlist brand ambassadors--your employees. Sure, you can pay for advertising and corporate mascots and celebrity endorsements, but if your core investors--your employees--don't buy into the company, brand, and products/services, it's like building a house of cards on sand. If your staff believes in the brand, they will provide the best word-of-mouth for your clients and customers.

Give back and contribute to the culture. No matter how much name recognition you have, how much money the company generates, or how much publicity your advertising gets for you, your best intentions don't mean much if you can't be a positive force in your community. While it may be hard in economic times to give back, at the end of the day, actions speak louder than any ad.

Remember that awareness leads to affinity, which leads to action. Isn't that we're all looking for when it comes to marketing?

-Tiff P.
Media Project Manager

How Businesses Gain Real Benefits from Twitter

Reprinted from the BizTimes Marketing+PR newsletter on February 4, 2009 by FD's own Jill Schmidt:

When I read the majority of marketing articles, I find myself skipping the first paragraphs. In an age when time is one of our most valuable resources, I wish that everyone would just Get. To. The. Point. That’s the ultimate beauty of twitter. Businesses can now get right to the heart of it with their consumers in 140 characters or less and not be faulted for short replies. From a consumer perspective, it’s great to pull up a business’s profile and see how they’re publicly responding to consumers’ questions, issues or compliments. From a brand’s perspective, it offers the opportunity to throw a little personality into the mix. If your brand isn’t on twitter, it’s time to get educated and make your move.

Here’s a short list of some twitter business basics:

Twitter is real-time, person-to-person broadcasting. Log-in regularly and update, or use tools to find out when people are talking to you.

If you tweet too much, it turns people off. In this same vein, do not login multiple times a day and send out five updates at a time. A large number of Tweeters make this mistake, which is viewed as the “spam” of twitter.

Ask questions about your business, and let followers know you are taking action on their feedback.

When you tweet as a business, make sure you post a mix of professional and personal comments. Search for Comcastcares and Zappos on twitter for two strong industry examples.

Subscribe to a service that “alerts” you as to when your brand is being mentioned on the web, such as Google Alerts. Businesses use these alerts to find out where conversations are, and twitter provides a platform for immediate response.

Here’s how two businesses recently made a strong impression on me through twitter engagement:

Home Depot
I complained on twitter about a series of bad experiences with Home Depot Online. Within minutes, “@theHomeDepot” was “following” me and asking to help. I gave a brief description of my problem and my order number, to which they immediately replied that they were looking into. The next day, I received an apologetic phone call from a customer service manager, and a $100 gift card was overnighted to me. I repaid Home Depot by publicly thanking them on twitter, facebook and the website GetSatisfaction. I continue to “follow” @theHomeDepot to learn about sales and marketing efforts, and they’ve secured my business.

Bissell
One of my twitter friends, or tweeples, made a comment about carpet cleaners. I replied that “I’ve impressed a party’s worth of people by pulling out the Bissell SpotBot and cleaning a red wine spill.” Bissell’s “@wemeanclean” profile directed a message to me stating that it’s “Always nice to have party tricks.” Being a SpotBot enthusiast, I took the opportunity to sing its praises in a message directed back to @wemeanclean in front of my 150+ followers and opted to “follow” their brand. Bissell was using their twitter presence to let followers know about a “cute dog” contest on their website. I’ve entered my dog and downloaded the Bissell-branded widget so that my friends in other electronic locations know to vote for my dog too. This cross promotion is the type of electronic “word of mouth” brands long for, all of which resulted from a little “shout out” on behalf of a brand to one of their consumers.

It’s ok to use twitter for extended brand promotion too, but it helps to be “cute” about it. At a recent Milwaukee Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) event, moderator Bill Finn from Finn Digital gave away t-shirts to the first four people to “tweet” about the event from their mobile phones. As a result, MIMA garnered four+ pages of twitter activity and received the most public recognition to date. Perhaps a little party trick to keep in mind for your next sponsorship opportunity.


Twitter Lingo:

Tweet: You are “tweeting” when you send a message on twitter

@ : This symbol directs your message to another user

#: This symbol allows you to “tag” your message for easy searching by others

OH = Overheard

RT = Retweet (i.e., spreading someone else’s word)

DM = Direct Message (i.e., the “email” of twitter)

Basic Twitter Tools:

Twitter Desktop Tools: update twitter posts from your desktop

Twirl

Tweetdeck

Chirpr (for Vista users.
Special thanks to Charlie Schmidt, my husband, for writing this one!

Use twitscoop to find out “what’s hot” on twitter now.

Finn Digital twitter

The Finn Digital twitter holiday tool allows you compare and post the “buzz” any topic is receiving on twitter

FD on "The Morning Blend"

Once again, we've outdone ourselves by making some great friends!

Our very own Jill wrote in to The Morning Blend for their monthly coffee contest... and won! With the economy the way it's going, Bill's had to cut back on "the good stuff" so Jill wrote in to plead our case.

We were luck to have Molly Fay and her photog/technical producer Matt Scott stop by the office to tape us for their segment. Along with getting to know what we do here at FD, our staff even got to play Guitar Hero with Molly.

See it here!

NOTE: FireFox runs the video a little funny. Better luck with IE.

Thank you again to Molly, Matt, and the entire crew at The Morning Blend. You are all welcome back anytime!

-Tiff P.
Media Project Manager

MIMA: Hiring, Training and Retaining Interactive Talent in Milwaukee

The Finn Digital team was out and about yesterday at the MIMA event entitled "Hiring, Training and Retaining Interactive Talent in Milwaukee".

Our very own Bill Finn served as moderator for a panel of interactive experts including:

• Kim Chisholm, Vice President of Marketing at Milwaukee Jobs


• Steve Glynn, President of Spreenkler


• Al Krueger, President of Comet Branding

The event was hugely successful, according to participants and the twitter activity, and it was really due to the planning of the MIMA staff, including our own Jill S.

Read blog postings about it, read the MIMA twitter feed, Spreekler twitter, Al Krueger's twitter, or see a short clip here:




-Tiff P.
Media Project Manager