Montage Consulting Group’s Stream of Business Consciousness

Optimizing your marketing and sales strategies using the social web.

Summer's over!

Summer's over and the kids are back in school! I've been quiet on my website/posterous site this summer due to family responsibilities and well, summer!

Behind the scenes, we've been adding new clients;  the National Reality Football League (realityfootballusa.com) and Beaver Hodgins King Proposed Legislation (search Beaver Hodgins King Proposed Legislation on Facebook).  We're providing the following services for them:

  • website redesign and usability consulting (NRFL)
  • social media strategy and execution (NRFL and BHK)
  • marketing strategies and execution (NRFL)
  • public relations strategies and execution (NRFL and BHK)
  • business development strategic planning (NRFL)

Both of these clients are making a difference with their efforts. The NRFL is a football league built by fans, for fans, in eight districts around the US.  There are four components to the NRFL that make it unique:

  • Fans interact on a web-based platform
  • Reality TV show
  • Real football games played by teams with rosters selected by fans
  • Opportunity for fans, players, sponsors and investors to generate an income stream by referring other fans.

(If you know a standout college football or former pro player that still loves the game and wants to play, please ask them to contact me, as we are looking for players!)

Beaver Hodgins King Proposed Legislation has been written to honor the memory of three friends in Washington, two of whom were killed by a drunk driver. Washington has some of the weakest drunk driving laws in the nation.  The BHK proposed legislation seeks to stiffen the penalties for offenders. 

We're excited to be working with both of these clients!  

I hope the summer has treated you well and that you're hitting the ground running this fall. (I'm in Texas and it's not fall here till November, but you know what I mean!) Have a great weekend!

 

--Donna

 

 

 

Get Ready: Here Comes Twitter Business Center

-->

After months of rumored testing, small business owners can finally get a glimpse of the forthcoming Twitter Business Center, which boasts several impressive new features to help them connect with customers. Mashable has the full scoop (with screenshots) of the new Twitter console and there’s lots of promising features to talk about.

First off, don’t get too excited: The TBC is currently only available to select accounts where Twitter has already turned on the switch, but it’s expected that the rollout will continue on a gradual basis. And, of course, some folks already have it. Mashable shows that a very small group of business owners have already started to receive emails inviting them to test the Twitter Toolkit.

After receiving the invite, users can access a new Business tab in their settings to activate the features. Once there, businesses owners are asked to fill in some additional information about their company, including contact info and if they identify as a small business, large company or an individual/group.

Here are some key features to look forward to:

  • Verified Business Accounts: Because trust is key in social media, the ability to receive a Verified Twitter account may help many small business owners increase trust in customer’s eyes. Previously Verified Twitter accounts have only been available to individuals. By expanding this, Twitter helps small business owners gain some street cred with their customers and helps show them that the business is serious about engaging. No more wondering if the account belongs to a company you trust or just someone pretending to be them.
  • DM Customers You’re Not Following: This is a big one. Once this goes into effect, business owners will be able to have private conversations with customers without having to directly follow them on Twitter. This will aid customer service issues and will also prevent business owners from having to mass follow everyone in order to allow interaction. Businesses essentially get to take back their Twitter accounts and customers can interact with the brands that are important to them without having to do it in full view of the public. Business will have to choose to make this option available so, if for some reason, you DON’T want customers to be able to DM you, you can still stick your head in the sand. This feature alone has the potential to really increase a SMBs ability to improve customer service.
  • Contributors Tab: This is one we knew was coming. The new Contributors tab will allow business owners to add multiple users to a business account to make it easier for multiple people to tweet under that name. It should prove very handy for managing and streamlining accounts.

Overall, it looks like Twitter is taking some serious steps to making Twitter more business-friendly and giving companies the tools they need to better manage their accounts. There’s no word on when the Twitter Business Center will be available to all users or if Twitter plans to charge for the new features. I suspect we’ll be hearing quite a bit more in the coming weeks about just what Twitter’s up to and how you can benefit as a small business owner.

Stay tuned!

Popularity: 9% [?]

About the Author

Lisa Barone Lisa Barone is Co-Founder and Chief Branding Officer at Outspoken Media, Inc., an Internet marketing company that specializes in providing clients with online reputation management, social media services, and other Internet services. She blogs daily over at the Outspoken Media blog.

Connect with Lisa Barone:

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  1. [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Brenda Tello Horton, Reputation Advisor, mariagudelis, Gretchen Glasscock, Kathy Foster and others. Kathy Foster said: Get Ready: Here Comes Twitter Business Center: After months of rumored testing, small business owners can finally … http://bit.ly/duIZB1 [...]

  2. Tim says:

    The contributors tab is key, hopefully it will allow different access levels and connect personal twitter accounts (employees) to the business account.

  3. Robert Brady says:

    Verified accounts will be great, but the whole DM thing will probably be a little confusing at first. Personally I would be puzzled to get a DM from some Twitter account I’d never heard about, but I’m sure that they’ll put in some type of controls so business DM spammers don’t become rampant.

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If small businesses don't have a Twitter account, it is indeed time to get one!

Social media expert sees Austin as emerging hub

By Kirk Ladendorf

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Published: 7:59 p.m. Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Austin is becoming a hub for social media.

That's the assessment of Andy Sernovitz, who runs the Social Media Business Council, a group of 115 companies, each with $1 billion or more in annual revenue, that meets regularly to talk about best practices in using and governing social media in members' operations.

Sernovitz, who runs a marketing firm in Chicago called GasPedal, is moving himself, his family and the Social Media Business Council to Austin by August, which is when the new school year starts. GasPedal, his marketing company, will remain in the Windy City.

Austin, Sernovitz says, has the lifestyle, the talent base and the entrepreneurial spirit to become one of the focal points for social media.

"This town feels like the Bay Area in the early 1990s," he said Monday on a trip to Austin to check out houses and schools for his children.

The recent decision of Facebook Inc. to set up an operations center in Austin just confirms Sernovitz's assessment.

His group grew out of Dell Inc.'s early involvement in social media in 2007 as the computer maker sought to deal with bloggers, who were criticizing Dell's products and services. Dell learned to engage with disgruntled customers and critics online and to try to resolve issues before they became larger problems. Gradually, those efforts bolstered the company's reputation among readers of technology blogs and Web sites.

"Dell was the first major company to get social media right," Sernovitz said. "They were the first company to be attacked by bloggers, and they figured it out because they were forced to."

When companies started asking Dell for tips about social media, the need for a business council became apparent. His company, which did consulting for Dell, took over the project of creating the Social Media Business Council, which now includes such companies as McDonald's Corp., Procter & Gamble Co., Microsoft Corp. and Pfizer Inc.

Key players from member companies share information on how they deal with social media opportunities and issues on a regular basis. Every few months, they gather somewhere in the country for a face-to-face discussion of ideas and suggestions.

When Toyota was dealing with its automobile safety issues, it was laying out its plans for using social media to tell its side of the story, Sernovitz said.

Because social media, including Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other platforms, are still evolving, big companies are still figuring out how to use them for marketing, while setting rules about just what is allowed online and what isn't for company employees.

Because the landscape of social media keeps changing, companies keep finding value in sharing their ideas and challenges, Sernovitz said.

As more businesses join the group, Sernovitz says the council probably will break into separate discussion groups involving 80 to 100 companies each.

kladendoff@statesman.com; 445-3622

via statesman.com

Not a surprise for those of us from ATX! I am always surprised when I talk to friends in other major metro areas (including Chicago), who aren't as plugged in as we are in Austin.

HootSuite to Integrate with Foursquare and MySpace This Week

via mashable.com

Although I haven't checked yet, my gut instinct is this is hootsuite's attempt to penetrate a younger demographic--it strikes me that Foursquare and MySpace's demos are younger than the demos inherent in their existing partnerships; LinkedIn and Facebook.

I use MySpace, only because I'm an avid music fan and it provides a richer musical interface than Facebook provides at this time. I've always tended to keep my online identities fairly distinct and don't know if I'll integrate MySpace into the mix. Interesting partnerships, nonetheless.

Effect of music on cognitive function - Los Angeles Times

via articles.latimes.com

So very true!

Making Your Google Alerts Smarter | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

via ducttapemarketing.com

Testing this with various terms to see how it works. One is with "SXSW," which should generate a lot of traffic, so I can see how it handles brands with high frequency mentions.

Google Buzz Boosts Sharing On Google Reader By 35 Percent

via feedproxy.google.com

Early statistics about the impact of Google Buzz. Are you using Buzz?

Elton John

via parade.com

Great article about Elton John's being a prodigy, overcoming addiction, and crating his legacy.