The work involved in building the social websites will be as follows:

Set up:

1. Account setup (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)

2. Aggregating the accounts:

You can have blog post content automatically into the social accounts. There are a few ways to do this based on what accounts you have to use.

Example:

a. Facebook

Has a feature in notes that feeds in blog post when using WordPress CMS.

b. LinkedIn

Has a built-in feature that feeds in blog posts when using WordPress CMS.

c. Twitter

You can use www.ping.fm to deliver the post from your wordpress CMS to twitter. There also plug-ins for wordpress that can do this for you.

So for the main three accounts you have a few different options to go from and depending on the social marketing strategy you would work up a formula.

The one thing you need to make sure about is the campaigns do not overlap and have double post.

Monthly maintenance:

This would be based on the amount of post that need to be done a week. I have streamlined much of the process by using free tools such as ping.fm, hootsuite, twitterfeed. Content is always key. The more you produce, the more your site will be considered relevant and important to the search engines. The other kicker will be the inbound links which shows how many sites find your information more important then others.

To jump start a site’s traffic you will need to do social bookmarking. The social websites are a form of communicating a brand. Social bookmarking is a way of targeting the consumer and allowing them to promote and spread the brand. This will feed inbound links further making sure the site’s content is considered relative and important.

An account will have to be created for the following:

Main aggregator I use.

onlywire.com

Feeds to any of the following:

(Accounts will have to be created for each one)

Ask

Bebo

Bibsonomy

Blinklist

BookmarkSync

Connotea

Delicious

Digg

Diigo

Facebook

Fark

Faves

FriendFeed

Google Bookmarks

Hi5

Jumptags

LinkaGoGo

Mister Wong

Mixx

Multiply

MySpace

Newsvine

Plaxo

Plurk

Propeller

Reddit

Simpy

Slashdot

Spurl

Stumbleupon

Tumbl

Twitter

Yahoo Bookmarks

So the process of maintenance would be as follows:

1. Build Content

2. Add post and search engine optimize page.

3. Check social sites for posted materials.

4. Social Bookmark urls to various SBM sites with one tool 5. Analyze traffic and data with Google Analytics and Web developer tools provided by the search engines.

5. Last but not least (Monitor any type of feedback and follow up).

If you are not going to use the play of content to build and gain fans or visitors then you would have to target the individuals or companies themselves. I think this will be a little tougher because it would be more PR. You will have to produce the list of companies and or people that would best suite client. Investigate the list to determine who or what is already online and has a channel you can get to and then promote a social site from those channels.

Here the thing, some of those channels will be hard to come by because some people do not want to be found or do not care to spread your information. So what you have to do is get the client to start there own social network as an individuals and promote there product from already establish channels. The president, vice, directors, and employees would have to get involved to create an internal social network to promote the external one.

The only other tactic that can be introduced would be the play of a viral campaigns, which can be very successful but really take some creative thinking and I am not sure if there is anything that can be applied to this type client other than a really well done image ad. Social Bookmarking like Digg could help spread the ad.

My recommendations would be to make a play on content and have them establish a content outline that can be written on a weekly or monthly basis. This will help produce fans and visitor loyalty to the site. I would also set up links on the main site to promote a Facebook, twitter and other types of accounts on the website to help gain visitors who are already interested in the already established materials. The 3rd thing would be to promote the site with online media buys such as ad words, Facebook advertising and so on.

There is no good answer. Before you can really come up with an all encompassing strategy, you need to have all the research in order and then break it down.

Start with the building blocks.

Phase: 1
a. Establish the structure and content of social websites.
b. Establish the demographic.
c. Build the connections (This would be creating the accounts and making them visible to all the channels you have).

Phase: 2
a. Build the content in all the channels and then social bookmark them
b. Start online media buys
c. Establish a contact form to capture leads

Phase 3:
a. Evaluate the changes and what channels are working and adjust accordingly.

This model saves design companies because the job is processed faster and has a clearer direction. Technology has a way of replacing positions and improving others. There are also tools like www.basecamphq.com which can track a project and eliminate the need for project coordinators and managers.

Sending work back and forth between designers and customers through sales people can be a nightmare if the salesperson has never designed or developed a website on their own before.

This is why…under a traditional model at an advertising agency, an account executive meets with customers, sells their marketing services and brings a customer’s ideas to a designer. The designer then builds the design or functionality. Not knowing all the angles why the particular design or program works well. The salesman will go off to try to explain to the client what is working. The message and approach gets diluted and time is lost on both ends.

Customers are giving a lot of positive feedback to firms that have designers do the talking. In this day in age, Big businesses need to cut cost. They are not going to high paid executives for reinsurance. They are going to the source because time is money.

By working directly with customers, designers at Digital Complexion are able to convey customers’ ideas more quickly and accurately. Digital Complexion specializes in Social Marketing, Hybrid Web Development, Digital Design and Print.

Some of Digital Complexion’s customers include the Apollo Aviation Group, Innovative American Technologies, Carmine’s Gourmet Market, Visit Palm Beach and recently added Dr. Gloria Barredo in Jupiter, Florida for a for social marketing web campaign.

Build A Network Of Friends:

The first step to social marketing, believe it or not, is to not market your website at all. You want to start by creating a network of friends within the social site with like-interests and goals. However, you will generate traffic to your site by placing a link in your profile. Each time a member visits your profile, it’s likely they will visit your site as well. Avoid any promotions for the first few weeks. If you jump in simply by promoting your site, you will quickly be ignored by many members of the social network you are participating in.

Step 2:

Socialize Often

Spend time each day socializing on each of the social networking sites in which you are a member. The more you participate, the more exposure you (and your website) will receive, making it easier to build necessary connections.

Step 3

Slowly Introduce Website Links:

Once you have created a network of friends, you can then begin to slowly introduce links to specific areas or your website. Be cautious when attempting this. Only recommend your website when it is absolutely relevant to the member and/or topic you are posting to.

Step 4

Stay Active:

The key to social marketing is to be consistently active. Don’t take too much time off between conversations, postings, etc. You must maintain the friendships and network you have built along the way to keep a steady flow of traffic.

Digital Complexion employs A/B testing to measure the performance of two, or more, completely different variations of your webpage. By using this testing method, Digital Complexion can determine which page users respond to more positively. Measuring your visitor feedback is one of the best ways to determine the effectiveness of your website, and then make necessary changes to improve visitor experience. By improving visitor experience, you thereby improve your conversions. This is why A/B testing is so useful, and critical, to improving your website’s results.
What is A/B Testing?

According to Google, “an A/B experiment allows you to test the performance of two (or more!) entirely different versions of a page. Start with your original test page — the page whose content you want to test – then create alternate versions of that page. You can change the content of a page, alter the look and feel, or move around the layout of your alternate pages – whatever you choose. We’ll vary traffic to your original page and your alternate versions, to see what users respond to best.”
Why is A/B Testing Necessary?

There are many benefits to using A/B testing for your website. A/B testing measures the behavior of your visitors by showing which webpage they prefer. If Page A generates more conversions than Page B, then clearly Page A is the webpage that is more effective and should be used on your website. A/B testing is not only beneficial to your business, but it is necessary. This testing removes the need to guess and assume which changes may or may not improve your conversions.

A/B testing provides you with significant results which you can use to improve visitor experience and increase sales, leads and conversions. However, understanding these results and knowing how to use them is where Digital Complexion’s expertise is required to reap the full benefits from A/B testing.

Digital Complexion understands:

* What to test
* How to test
* How to interpret the results
* How to use those results to improve your website’s effectiveness

A/B Testing Helps Improve Conversions

A/B testing is an invaluable tool Digital Complexion uses as part of our analytics and testing methods to improve your internet marketing program. Bottom line, you want to improve conversions. Digital Complexion helps you achieve this through testing your webpages to find the most effective way to make visitors take action. Digital Complexion has the expertise required to get the most out of A/B testing.

According to a report at the Web 2.0 conference there are now over “4.1 million blogs around the world with a new blog created every 7.4 seconds”. However, there are only about 5000 company blogs. That leaves a lot of room for you to stake your niche and gain valuable exposure. Blogosphere engagement is the process of connecting, participating and interacting with blogs and bloggers that are relevant to your value proposition. Put in simple terms, blogosphere engagement is the act of getting influential bloggers to talk about your brand.

1. Personalization:

Perhaps the single most powerful aspect of blogs is the personalization aspect. The writer is a real person, putting a human face on what might otherwise be perceived as a unknown and distant company. Blog writer provides a personal link to the company.

2. Value Added:

Provide customers with direct response to help increase return visits and boost the ROI.

3. Media Exposure:

The news media are constantly on the lookout for potential news stories. By writing about your industry, reviewing products, providing company news, and commenting on various business and economics issues, your blog is a ready source of news stories.

4. Cost Effective:

Blogging is a very low maintenance and cost approach to PR and the benefits are gained on multiple levels which reach from customer service, brand awareness, sales and so on.

Social bookmarking is a method in which users share, organize, and manage bookmarks of web resources. The trend itself has taken off because of how search engines evolved in judging data and catering to traffic trends based visitor algorithms.

Benefits of Social Bookmarking

1. Indexing:
The quickest way to have a website or particular page indexed into search engines without the search engine having to come to you.

2. Traffic Generation:
The links that will be submitted will generate traffic. Since you will also be tagging (or submitting them with meta-data (keyword), the traffic will also be targeted to users trying to find similar information.

3. Personal Branding:
Most of the social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon also give you the opportunity to develop your own page on their site. This is more like a more developed profile that you can use to list all your Brand web pages, post links to your sites and even publish content on any topic about the brand that you may be involved in.

4. Quality Backlinks:
Creating inbound links with relevant information will help point visitors back to the site thus showing the search engine how popular the site is which will increase the results. Think of the main site as the Sun and the planets are the sites that are back linking. The Sun will be the most powerful because it is the source of which is pulling them inward.

Levi's Big Flip

When Levi’s first assumed an alter ego (“Unbuttoned Films”) and uploaded a YouTube video titled “Guys backflip into jeans,” it wasn’t expecting sky-high exposure. But since its May 2008 debut, the two-minute must-share video — and its subsequent press coverage — has helped the denim giant reach an estimated 100 million people.

Hershey’s Sweet Parties

Hershey's Sweet Party Viral Marketing Ad

Hershey’s partnered with word-of-mouth marketing firm House Party to let 10,000 people dole out Hershey’s new premium Bliss chocolates at sponsored house parties. The soirees lured nearly 150,000 guests, and House Party estimates that they have shared their bliss — and their Bliss — 10 million times.

HBO’s Winning Cocktail

To promote last fall’s edgy vampire series True Blood, HBO created fake “Tru:Blood” beverage ads, vampire tolerance PSAs on YouTube, and a seemingly functional vampire-human dating site called LoveBitten.net. The stunts helped True Blood’s Sunday night viewership grow 66% over the course of its first season — faster than The Sopranos did.

Coca-Cola Zero

In the spring of 2007 posters proclaiming that “Zero is More” and that “Zero will give you life as it should be” started to appear all over Northern Europe. These posters also contained a date, April 1st, and a link to a cryptic website hosted at zeroismore.xx (xx being the corresponding TLD of the countries the posters appeared in).

People began to wonder, and more importantly talk about what revolution it was that would be taking place, and all over the Internet you would find discussions pertaining to the meaning of “Zero“. Of course when people realized that it was simply a new flavor from Coca-Cola, they might have been a little disappointed. The guys behind the campaign however were most certainly pleased with the amount of buzz that was generated. As an example of how successful the campaign was, I can mention that at one point during the summer they were not able to meet the demands because they were short-supplied with the trademarked black bottle caps the Zero bottles feature.

Batman – The Dark Night (movie)

The movie might not be screening for another eight months, but the early marketing efforts Warner Bros have made to promote it already stands as a bright and shining example of just how effective a viral marketing campaign can be, even within a limited budget.

Starting out with only a simple teaser page featuring the image above, fans were ecstatic when they proceeded by clicking the image and found themselves redirected to a page that featured a District Attorney Election promotional poster for a known character from the Batman Universe named Harvey Dent. This page again sent us to the real trick of the campaign (a site which is no longer active), another promotional poster, only this one defaced and seemingly mockin Harvey Dent. This page would also let users interact with the campaign by entering the email address which would give them a code that would reveal a few pixels of an image hidden “under” the defaced campaign poster.

Of course people immediately spread the word in order to get the full image revealed, and within hours the page instantly became popular on various forms of social media, and generated a lot of interest from online publications including blogs and newspapers. Naturally it didn’t take more than a few hours before the entire image was exposed, and it contained a somewhat creepy rendering of Heath Ledger portraying The Joker, which is another character in the Batman Universe.

I Love Bees – Halo 2 (video game)

The I Love Bees campaign which was launched with the initial marketing efforts of the video game Halo 2 is arguably one of the most intricate and detailed viral marketing campaigns to date. Structured as an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) the whole campaign gave no obvious mentions of any game.

It started when the first Halo 2 trailers quickly flashed a link to ILoveBees.com, a site about beekeeping that had apparently been hacked and taken over by someone who couldn’t be identified. The author, known as Dana, after finding that her site had been hacked, then created a blog asking people for help in order to get her website back.

The campaign generated a lot of attention, both from existing Halo fans, as well as new ones that were intrigued by the I Love Bees ARG. It was concluded when the players of the game were invited to a “Training Exercise“, which of course was simply a chance for those following the I Love Bees game to play Halo 2 before it was released. Participants were also given a DVD which among other things included a personal thank you message from one of the fictional characters created for the ARG.

Radiohead – In Rainbows (music)

After dropping hints about a new record even though they weren’t attached to a record label, Radiohead shocked the entire music industry when they in the beginning of October this year announced that they were giving away their album for free through their website. While downloading the album, fans were given the option to donate any sum they felt appropriate.

A month later, we can already state that this is one of the most effective marketing moves in the history of music. Even within two weeks, they had “sold” over 1.2 million albums, and on average each buyer had paid $8. That is almost $9.6 million in gross, all from a marketing campaign without any middle men, and practically no budget at all. What can we learn from Radiohead here? Think different, be radical, and people will take notice. Especially if you are already one of the most popular bands in the world.

Could Radiohead have earned more money from their album by releasing it the traditional way? Probably, I honestly don’t know what they earn these days from direct CD sales. The fact is however that most large bands earn the really big money through concert tours and merchandising, and I can assure you that Radiohead have, with this unexpected move, gained a lot of attention, trust and goodwill that can not be bought for money, and their alternative income streams will most certainly reflect that.

Ideas and experiences have shaped the way we do business and approach a particular project because the internet has evolved and terms like web 2.0, sticky content and viral marketing are now bieng thrown around in sales meetings by project managers and BIG businesses are seeing more cost effective ideas in online marketing. Web building itself, is as simple as much as it is complex. You have to ask yourself, what do you really want? On one hand you have success. On the other a million bandaids plugging holes to a sinking ship. Your biggest problems is you are not sure on which direction to go. It is not that you do not understand, it is that all roads lead to Rome and which way will break or make your business depending on the options you choose. If your going to take your budget, use it wisely. Things change every minute on the web and every decision you make it absolutely critical. If you need database development, get a quote that deals with your needs and a code platform that is scable and reasonable. Do not second guess, because we get contacted more to fix problems then to build turn key operations. Moving forward, ask us some questions and get direct and decisive answers. Do not look for the pitch, look for the solutions. Going into 2009, DC is more about spreading awareness so that people can keep their ship on course and make the internet prosper.