Archive for August, 2010

Social Media ROI: Overdrive Interactive Launches Comprehensive Social Media Measurement Dashboard

Thursday, August 26th, 2010 by admin

BOSTON (Aug. 25, 2010) /PRNewswire/ — Marketers who have been struggling to quantify the value of their social media marketing efforts may not be grappling much longer. Today, Boston digital marketing agency Overdrive Interactive launched SocialEye, a robust tracking and measurement dashboard designed to reveal the true ROI of social media marketing.

In addition to tracking newer social media metrics such as connections (friends, fans and followers) and buzz, the comprehensive SocialEye dashboard helps marketers report on the actual ROI (return on investment) of their social media efforts, reporting on metrics such as site traffic, leads and revenue generated by social media marketing efforts.

Overdrive Interactive CEO, Harry Gold said, “SocialEye goes beyond the buzz to assign hard metrics such as site traffic, leads and revenue against social media programs. Now marketers can measure the ROI from social media marketing in the same way they do everything else online.”

Customers who implemented SocialEye in its pilot phase reported immediate value of the dashboard.

“Partnering with Overdrive has truly elevated the quality of our social listening and reporting,” said Megan O’Malley, strategy and planning associate at Mktg. Inc. “The SocialEye platform in particular has enabled the depth and breadth of analytics that our clients had been craving but that other companies had been unable to deliver.”

The SocialEye dashboard lets marketers track and analyze:

  • - Social media connections such as Facebook likes and fans, Twitter followers and blog feed subscribers
  • - Page views and plays from social profiles and video channels
  • - Engagement levels, including comments that show what social actions spark consumer reactions and interaction
  • - Media equivalent values showing the worth of social assets, impressions, visits and connections
  • - Site visits and actual traffic to a company’s website resulting directly from social media
  • - Site conversions and transactions — actual leads and revenue from social media marketing

SocialEye can be fully integrated with existing CRM systems to link call center inquires, offline sales and repeat sales to their originating social media sources.

See a SocialEye video, download a whitepaper about measuring social media ROI and receive a customized consultation for your company’s social ROI needs by calling 617-254-5000 ext. 1103 or visiting socialeye.com.

Microsoft Street Slide Sets the Standard for Virtual Street Navigation

Friday, August 20th, 2010 by Shaun Campos

Microsoft Research is working on some really cool technology called Street Slide that brings online street navigation to a whole new level. Browsing through streets on interfaces like Google Street View limits users to a 360-degree photographic panoramic view called a bubble. You traverse the virtual street blocks by clicking and double clicking on parts of the street you want to explore in greater detail. As you’ve probably experienced first hand, all this clicking, mouse re-angling, and zooming in and out of the street bubbles can get rather confusing and frustrating.

Newbury St. in Boston, MA on Google Street View. Useful and informative but not the most user-friendly.

Street Slide is different because it doesn’t just limit your street browsing to 360-degree panoramic bubbles. Street Slide lets you zoom out of the bubble to view a multi-perspective panoramic strip of the entire street. You can ”slide” across the street strip, which appears to give you a much more immersive browsing experience. Thomas Ricker of Engadget described Street View well, calling it an ” instant visual summary of the surroundings — similar to viewing the entire street from a distance.” This broad level viewing approach, combined with ability to still explore areas in a panoramic bubble, make Street Slide far more engaging and user-friendly than Google Street View or Bing Maps Streetside.

As you can see in the screen shot above, the panoramic strip leaves a lot of open space at the top and the bottom, which Microsoft utilized to include clickable building logos and street numbers.

I’m really looking forward to the launch of this, which unfortunatley won’t be for a while, as Microsoft has yet to release word on when the technology will be available.  For now, you’ll have to make do with the cool demo here.

via: BBHLabs and Microsoft Research

Bang, Gilt, and DVF

Friday, August 20th, 2010 by Bianca Garcia

If you know what those three terms mean, you’re most likely a fashionista. And if you’re reading this blog, you’re most likely into social media. Are fashion and social media a natural marriage? I think so.

Bang is Marc Jacobs’ latest fragrance for men. Not only is it storming the digital advertising space (see the ads on the ears of today’s New York Times below), it is also trying to infiltrate the world of social media, starting with Facebook’s poke-loving users.

Bang’s Facebook Page features a “Bang! You’re It” game where users can virtually “bang” their friends to earn points – the “bang” is supposedly similar to the Facebook “poke”. The more points you get, the more chances you have of winning prizes, including a trip to the Marc Jacobs fashion show in NYC. Wink, poke, like… why not bang?

While the name of the game – and the fragrance – is suggestive, the designer argues that it has many, different meanings. At the launch of the campaign, Marc Jacobs said, “when the word ‘BANG’ came to me, I liked that it was a sound and also that it felt like something was finished, done, end of story and, you know, kind of complete.”

In spite of the brand’s etymology, the social media slant plays up the sexy ads, and promotes viral engagement and branding opportunities for Marc Jacobs.

Gilt, on the other hand, is one of the many members-only premium shopping sites that has shopaholics religiously awaiting their sales to buy brand names in a frenzy.  It utilizes email, Twitter, and Facebook updates to promote ongoing and upcoming sales.  Last year, Gilt launched their iPhone shopping app, and recently launched applications for the iPad and Android.

Jyothi Rao, Gilt Group General Manager for Women’s, is featured today on eMarketer. When asked how Gilt is participating in social media marketing to fully leverage its sales opportunities, she says, “The most important thing with social media is not just to be pushing information out, but to be engaging in a dialogue with your customers…. You’ll see us in the role of trusted editor, engaging in two-way communication with our membership base. We  have wonderful relationships with bloggers. Of course Facebook and Twitter continue to be very important instruments.”

What she said about social media may be applied not just to fashion brands, but to everyone in the space looking to carve out a community.

Last but not least, DVF stands for Diane Von Furstenberg, fashion icon and world-acclaimed designer. DVF is one if the most popular and well-loved designers on Twitter, with over 93,000 followers. She is one of the growing number of fashion luminaries who are giving the public access to behind-the-scenes, with updates on upcoming designs, trends, shows, appearances, sales, and other data that used to be kept for those “in the know”.

In an Mashable article on how the fashion industry is embracing social media, the designer further advocates transparency in fashion.  “Ignoring the Internet [and social media] is madness,” she said. “We decided to have a presence because it was a very organic way for us to communicate online.”

An organic way to communicate online? That’s what social media is all about. The great thing about these three brands is that they are utilizing social media tools to encourage communication and interaction; nothing is forced, and the user can initiate and control his/her exposure.

I have always been a big fan of Marc Jacobs, Gilt, and Diane Von Furstenberg, but their presence in online and social media makes me admire them even more. And it makes me want to go shopping.