Social media is here to stay (check out our Social Media FAQs). It’s not a fad. It’s a fun (yes, fun) and effective way to build relationships with your current customers while attracting new ones. The most exciting aspect of social media is that it’s not difficult to utilize once you “get it”. We are here to open your mind and create the shift necessary so yours is a brain that thinks in terms of social media.

Social Media Training

We will provide you and/or your staff with our social media training. You will leave with an understanding of how to leverage the power of social media, the tools necessary to monitor your brand (tap into conversations), Facebook and Twitter skills that will impress even your 15 year old (including knowledge of how to run a Facebook Ad campaign), and the ability to get your product and/or your business in front of your friends, and their friends, and their friends…

Cost of one-on-one training: $100/hour (est. 2 -5 hours)
Cost of staff training: Please contact us for estimate.

Social Media and Web 2.0 Implementation

Do you have a blog? If so, does it talk to your Facebook page? Does your Facebook page talk to Twitter? The power of social media is, well, being social. That goes for the applications that you’re using, too.

Our Social Media and Web 2.0 services range from setting up your social media outlets (initialization, application installation, cross platform interaction), to creating blogs and message boards for your site. What’s more, we’ll make sure that all of these outlets are talking to each other, meaning that you only have to update one to broadcast it to the others. Now that’s efficiency!

Cost of Social Media implementation: $100/hour

Social Media Marketing Plan Customization

We will meet with you, listen carefully to what you want to accomplish, and ask incisive questions to learn more about your business and its goals. We will then use our unique skill set to craft a customized social media marketing plan which will utilize those services that we think will best help your business. We will also define goals and metrics so that you can better measure success. Finally, we will draft a detailed step-by-step action plan so that you can implement the strategy in-house.

If you’d like us to implement the plan for you, well, you’re in luck because we do that, too (see below).

Cost of Social Media Marketing Plan: Varies. Please contact us for estimate.

Campaign Management – We’ll Facebook and Twitter for You

If you’re a business that knows you need fans and followers but don’t have the knowledge, time, or staff to pull it off, we’ll do it for you. We can customize a plan for you that it fits into your budget.

This service is most often offered as an add-on to our Customized Social Media Marketing Plan. That is, we’ll do the Facebooking and Tweeting for you for an agreed amount of time at which point you can decide to have us continue or take it over from us. However, if you have a strategy of your own that you want us to implement, we’d be happy to determine if we can help.

Cost of Campaign Management: $100/hour (time est. varies per contract)

Social Media Analysis

Are you tweeting without success? Having a hard time finding Facebook fans? Blogging your heart out without comments (or even reads)? Just aren’t having any fun?

We will analyze your current social media strategies, tell you what you are doing wrong, and put you on a path that will get you the online attention you deserve.

Cost of Social Media Analysis: $100/hour (est. 2 -4 hours)

Web Coaching

We like to explain web coaching using the analogy of a personal trainer. Anybody can exercise on their own. They may run a little, do some yoga, and hit the weights at the gym. However, if they’re not getting the results they want, they hire a personal trainer who has the knowledge and expertise to focus their efforts on what’s important to them (your arms look great, btw), resulting in a more fit body that is firing on all cylinders.

Think of us as your personal web trainers. Many of our clients have basic web skills. They have their social media accounts set up. They have blogs. They have e-mail newsletters. They have everything from Zing-Dings to photo streams, but they don’t know how to focus their efforts. In other words, they are all over the place, a bit overwhelmed, and feel like they’re spinning their wheels.

We will analyze your online tactics and tell you where to best focus your energy in order to obtain your desired results. We can meet once for a general assessment, or we can meet regularly, so we’re sure you’re staying on the right track. Protein shakes are extra.

Cost of Web Coaching: $100/hour

Other Web Services

What is social media?

Social media is the distribution of information via online social interaction. That social interaction can occur on your own website (blogs, product reviews, message boards, etc.), or on external sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.).

Social media involving your brand occurs with or without your active participation.

Why use social media?

Here’s the deal. We could go into the multitude of reasons as to why your business should be using social media, but, the truth is, there’s only one reason that really translates. Your business should be using social media because your competition already is. What’s more, if your competition is using social media effectively, they are not only stealing your potential customers, but they’re quietly collecting your current ones.

Is social media a trend that I can ignore until it goes away?

It depends. Do you think the internet is a trend you can ignore until it goes away? Since you’re reading this online, I’d have to guess your answer to this question is “no”.

Social media has been around as long as the internet has been in our homes. Back then it came in the form of newsgroups, message boards, chat, etc. What we’re witnessing right now is the evolution of social media, or Web 2.0. Social media is how people choose to communicate with each other online. While something will eventually come along and replace Facebook and Twitter, it’s important that you understand what social media is and how to effectively participate in it, because social media is now and will continue to be a key player in nearly every company’s successful marketing strategy.

Oh, and if that’s not enough to convince you, here’s a nice little video from the kids over at Socialnomics:

How much time and money will social media cost my business?

It depends. At minimum, you should dedicate five minutes a day to social media. The tools are free, so the cost is dependent on what five minutes of your time is worth. When you begin to see results, you can dedicate more time. And, because you’ll be seeing results, you won’t see social media as something that takes away from your business, but something that brings you business and adds to your company’s overall worth.

When it comes to social media, a little bit goes a long way.

A kid who works for me knows Facebook, should I let him run my social media campaign?

Believe it or not, we see this one a lot. Because one of our specialties is social media for wineries, we’ve found that many a winery simply lets a member of their tasting room staff take charge of their social media campaign. While it’s fantastic that winery has someone ready and willing to take on this task, it is dangerous to let anyone take control of your company’s online reputation without a social media plan, or without social media rules. The solution to this problem is easy. Train that person in your tasting room, and they could be your biggest asset. If you don’t (and we see this happening quite often), that person could be unknowingly and unintentionally damaging your brand.