Drawing Up Solutions with CPX

Recently, our sales team  was in need of some new direct response materials.  They joined forces with the marketing team to come up with a new strategy for a direct response campaign that was both fun and interactive.  The ideas were then passed on to our in-house creative team who created a series of comic strips designed to highlight the many solutions that CPX has to offer.  The CPX Solutions series recently debuted their first installment, Cost Per “Like”, which was just featured in a sponsorship newsletter for BIMA (Boston Interactive Media Association).

In this first episode, we meet Mike, a social media strategist with a major dilemma.  In 2 weeks, Mike has to present to his company’s executive board who want to see results.  Only one problem though, the successful social strategy he needs to develop is lacking in more ways than one and driving fans to his company Facebook page is not as easy as he thought.  Will he reach his goal before the big presentation?  Will CPX Solutions save the day?  Read more to find out what happens to Mike.

 CPX Interactive Serves Up Social Media Integration 

‘Thank You’ to our Account Executive, Emerging Verticals: Stephen Kelly for the contribution…

What isn’t involved with social media these days? When Marc Zuckerburg dreamed up Facebook did he think it could enable the overthrow of an Egyptian president? Did he know it would create a new medium for grandmothers to keep tabs on her grandchildren?

Just as Zuckerburg didn’t know how social media would change society today, we don’t know where this great big wave of digital interaction will take us in the future. The viral nature of social media makes information spread like wild fire and CPX is using that heat to fuel our brands. 

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and President of Facebook

CPX Interactive is spurring into this wild beast with innovative products and services to help leverage the power of social media for the success of our clients. CPX is on a select list of Facebook approved advertisers that Google couldn’t even make (http://bit.ly/efvnCM). 

CPX offers clients the ability to gain exposure and popularity on Facebook through our ad vendor platform. The platform optimizes campaigns to reach a target collection of “likes” for a fan page, or “allows” for an application. This is a great tool CPX offers brands looking to expand their presence on Facebook.

Social media integration into high definition rich media ad units is another innovative way CPX is linking our brands to consumers. These interactive ads contain multiple high resolution images, flash animations and HD video while seamlessly linking brand websites and “likes” to Facebook Fan Pages. This ad unit also gives users the ability to post the featured content directly on Facebook or Twitter for all their friends to see. 

The creative team at CPX Interactive also engineers great custom ads for brands. These creatives can be fully integrated with Facebook “like” buttons and are provided for clients solely at added value.

The CPX Social Media Package allows brands to reach users inside a variety of different social media platforms across the web. This advertising vertical is an attractive addition to CPX’s collection of packages because of the frequency and loyalty of use among site members. Social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn see 30% of users visit multiple times an hour.

Our social lives are continuously being integrated into digital form. Brands will ultimately influence society online just as they do today, and the role of social endorsement of products will evolve into this space as well. The internet is becoming a social gathering place, and CPX Interactive is providing brands innovative ways to attend the party.

We know that it can be a little confusing.

We make it easy : )–

Although many marketers have realized the importance of social media in their overall strategy, not all of them are integrating social media with the rest of their campaign. Certain features, like polls and product reviews, are the most commonly integrated, but others, like blogs and microblogging, are still run separately by a large percentage of marketers.

Earlier this month, we wrote about how social media is only one piece of the marketing puzzle. There are things that cannot be done through social media, just as there are things that are not as effective through traditional media channels. Integrating social media with your campaign allows all of the various elements to compliment and supplement one another. For example, we include we include our Twitter/Facebook/Blog links on printed materials for industry events, and as part of the contact section at the bottom of press releases.   We also asked all of our employees to include these links in their e-mail signatures. These things give our social media presence context.

By Samantha Karol
@cpxsam
Sr. Marketing Assistant

Social media is great. People from opposite ends of the Earth can be involved in conversation with one another. We can receive real time updates from hundreds of people at once.  It allows companies unprecedented opportunities to connect with their customers. But, there are certain things that social media can’t do, and we have to remember that it’s only one piece of the marketing puzzle.

While it’s good to accumulate fans and followers, these numbers don’t mean anything if you’re not getting your message across. Are all of these people mindlessly reading your streams? Or are they interacting with the content you post and clicking on the links? Has your website seen increased traffic since you created your social media presence?  These are the questions you need to ask.

If you’re not getting the response you had hoped for, try and figure out why. Maybe you need to integrate your social media presence with other aspects of your marketing plan. At CPX, we include our Twitter/Facebook/Blog links on printed materials for industry events, and as part of the contact section at the bottom of press releases.   We also asked all of our employees to include these links in their e-mail signatures. These things give our social media presence context.

One thing that cannot be stressed enough is that social media takes time and effort. You have to be willing to dedicate resources to it if you want to succeed, and you can’t expect to see results overnight. Even though most social sites are free of cost, that doesn’t mean they are simple and can be put on the back burner. Also, remember that social media is still relatively new. Even the “experts” don’t have years and years of experience like professionals in traditional marketing.

By Samantha Karol
@cpxsam
Sr. Marketing Assistant

In October, Twitter launched a new feature: Twitter Lists. They allow the Twitter user to sort the people they are following into smaller lists so important tweets no longer get lost in the shuffle. Although compiling these lists may seem tedious, they can definitely provide value for your company.  Here are some tips and suggestions for making the most of lists:

• Create lists for groups like industry experts, clients, journalists, etc. so you can keep up with their tweets.
• When you attend, sponsor, or host an event, collect e-mail addresses and plug them into Twitter. Create a list and give it the same name as the event.
• Remember that you can determine whether a list will be private or public after you create it. If you set the list to private, no one will know that list exists except you, even the people who are on it.
• With the previous tip in mind, keep a list of your competitors. That way, you can keep tabs on what they’re doing and how they’re using social media.
• Check out the lists you’ve been put into by other Twitter users. This is a good indication of whether you’re conveying messages the way you intend to, and how other people perceive your company.
• Along the same lines, look through the lists other people have made, and see if any of them would be worthwhile for you to follow. They have already done the leg work of putting those people into a specific category, and they probably made the list public because they thought it could be of use to others.

So, log into Twitter, click New List in the sidebar, and start listing!  And of course, stay up to date with CPX Interactive by following us on Twitter!

By Samantha Karol, Sr. Marketing Assistant

According to this survey, conducted in April of this year, only 17.6% of respondents do not have an active social media presence and don’t want one.  However, the majority of companies continue to develop their presence on social media sites, recognizing the opportunity to reach clients and customers through these channels.

A recent study by Burson-Marsteller found that 21% of Fortune 100 companies are active on Twitter, Facebook, or have a corporate blog, while 22% are active on two of those channels, and 17% are active on all three. Twitter is the most popular channel among these companies. (View the rest of their findings here.)

As for companies who do not currently have a social media presence, many are making it a priority for the future. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) found that social media was the most popular response from US marketing executives when asked which channel they would like to employ to develop their brand.

For more on using social media for your company, and to see what we do here at CPX, check out these Social Media Marketing Tips & Tricks.

This blog is kind of like “Social Media Headquarters” for CPX Interactive. But, we have quite a few other pages across the Web, and we invite you to visit us there as well.

We also blog on WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and Vox.  For photos from around the office,  CPX and industry events, and company trips, visit our pages on Flickr and Shutterfly. Longer CPX videos are on YouTube, and shorter blips can be found on the CPX Interactive channel on 12seconds.tv.

CPX also has a Twitter feed, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, Delicious bookmarks, and a FriendFeed. So, if you’re on any of these sites, be sure to check out our pages. We’d love to connect with you!

Thoughts from Samantha Karol, Marketing Assistant:

Over the past month or so, I’ve been reading and learning a lot about social media marketing. I’m always eager to take in as much information as I can, so I can make sure that CPX’s social media marketing efforts are as successful as possible.

From keynote addresses and panels at OMMA Social, to articles on Mashable and iMedia Connection, there have been a few consistent themes.  Here is some of what I’ve learned:

• Social media marketing takes a lot of time and effort. As Lisa Wehr put it, “Social media marketing isn’t a quick, free way to impact your bottom line. It isn’t something that you should give to an intern because they know how to set up a MySpace page.” If you want to get a lot out of it, you have to put a lot into it. Consider hiring someone to focus on executing your social media plan.

• Research the various social media channels, and the learn the difference before you build your pages.  Determine which sites are best for you and develop a strategy instead of diving right in.

• On Twitter: Share historic moments like awards, recognition, and new office openings, and give your followers a taste of what it’s like to work at your company.

• The most commonly emphasized point is the following: Be authentic, write with a human voice, and tell the story of your company from a different perspective than can be found on your corporate website.

What We Do:

• I spend the majority of my time working with social media for CPX. I was brought on, in part, because not only do I enjoy and understand social media, but I know how to use it. However, I certainly don’t know everything, and the Internet is a constantly changing medium, so I’m always researching new ideas.

• On Twitter, we have definitely shared historic moments with our followers:

• As for authenticity, we don’t auto-tweet, and all of the content on this and our other blogs and social media pages is  posted by me or someone else in the marketing department. In addition to our company Twitter feed, there are a number of us who tweet on our own.

• Showing a different side of CPX through these social media channels is very important to us. We want you to meet the people behind the logo.

Like I said, we’re always learning and growing, but so far, social media has been a great way for CPX to connect, share and explore.

This week, Forrester Research released their five year forecast, projecting an increase in interactive ad spending, despite a decrease in advertising budgets overall.  Search and display advertising will continue to bring in the most money, but the most substantial growth they predict is in social media, rising from $716 million this year to $3.1 billion in 2014. The percentage of ad spend devoted to interactive is projected to reach 21% in 2014, a sizable increase from 12% this year.

For a visual, and more information on Forrester’s findings, visit their blog or read this article on Mashable.

As I was browsing through the articles in the Social Media section of iMedia Connection, I came across a title that made me stop and think: “Why Twitter will soon become obsolete.” The author of this article, Jason Clark, is quick to point out that he is not a Twitter hater, and actually happens to be a Twitter user himself (@clarkster). Nonetheless, he explains his theory of Twitter’s eventual demise by putting it into context with the history of social networking sites from past to present.

Clark explains that, although the term “social networks” is a popular buzzword these days, the concept is not new.  Online bulletin boards, forums, and e-mail paved the way for social media as we know it today. Social media marketing has also been around for a lot longer than we realize. In fact, those annoying e-mails that we now refer to as spam were one of the earliest incarnations.  Speaking of, has anyone noticed the spam-like accounts and messages that have begun to infiltrate the Twitter space? I’m talking about the Auto DMs that promise thousands of followers and plans guaranteed to get you rich quick. Clark asks what I think is a very important question: “How long will it take to wear people down dealing with these kinds of requests?”

Combine the increasing prevalence of Twitter spam with the site’s low retention rate, “limited and obscure nomenclature,” simple functionality, and the upcoming release of Google Wave, and Clark predicts that Twitter won’t stay on top for long.

While I agree with a lot of these points, I also think that Twitter will fare better than some of its predecessors.  I’m definitely not an expert in social media history, but I’ve lived through most of it. I was in middle school at the time when message boards were all the rage and AOL Instant Messenger came into existence, high school when MySpace entered the scene, and a college freshman when Facebook took campuses countrywide by storm. As a self-proclaimed technology nerd, I have to admit that it’s been pretty exciting to watch the Internet develop.

I’ve never seen anything like Twitter, and although I’m pretty sure it can’t keep growing at the rate it has been, I think it will retain popularity for a long time.  Just look at the ages I was when each of these sites came to be, which are coincidentally quite fitting, and you’ll see the difference between Twitter and all of the rest.  Twitter has staying power because it reaches the greatest variety of users: people of different ages, professions, education levels, locations, political parties, and religious beliefs…I could go on and on.

What do you think? Will Twitter soon become obsolete?  What have you witnessed as social media has developed over the years?