To generate buzz, don’t follow the crowd and play by your own rules.

For example, try following in the footsteps of Red Bull. In 2012, Red Bull sponsored a space diving project featuring Austrian Skydiver, Felix Baumgartner. On 14 October 2012, Baumgartner became the first to break the sound barrier. The event was broadcast live on more than 40 TV stations and 130 digital outlets, delivered across more than 60 countries. The video also went viral on social media channels, with a record breaking 8 million views on YouTube. By sponsoring this major event, Red Bull garnered tens of millions of dollars in global exposure.

By creating an event that was so creative and significant, Red Bull exceeded the standards of traditional marketing dominated by larger corporations. When you advertise in the Super Bowl, it’s very hard to stand out because you are one of 70 ads, vying for consumer and media attention. Red Bull played by their own rules and did something completely different. As a result, they were able to stand out and their campaign left a lasting impression.

2. Start with Why

The most successful brands have a core belief, which drives what they do and how they compete. For example, Dove’s campaign for real beauty was driven by their core belief that the beauty industry sets unrealistic standards which are harmful and detrimental to women’s self esteem. Thus, the objective of Dove’s real beauty was to celebrate “real beauty”.

In the wise words of Simon Sinek, “People Don’t Buy What You Do, They Buy Why You Do It”. If you start with “why”, instead of “what” and you market your beliefs, consumers will be drawn to you.

3. Create a sense of Belonging

 Everyone wants to belong. Belonging to a community provides us with a sense of importance. Develop a personal relationship with consumers in order to generate buzz around your company. Answer why people should be associated with your brand and give them reason to be loyal to you. Go beyond simply marketing a great product and identify why people would want everyone to know that they are connected to you.

The “I’m with Coco” campaign launched in 2012 is a prime example of how creating a sense of belonging can generate buzz and drive brand loyalty. When Conan O’Brien encountered difficulty at NBC, a movement was launched up on his side. Thousands of Facebook users rallied behind him in the midst of his crisis as to whether or not he’ll stay with NBC. His Facebook page “I’m with Coco” generated buzz, attracting hundreds of thousands of users.

 4. Build a Community and Create a Culture

 Creating a community around your product or service will draw people to your brand and enable customers to emotionally connect with the brand. Consider Harley Davidson for example. They have an extremely loyal customer base, so much so that people tattoo the brand’s logo onto their bodies.

The major reason for their success is the way in which they have built an entire community, culture and lifestyle around their brand. Through their Harley Davidson merchandise, online communities, and clubs, Harley Davidson has built a strong culture and community for its consumers.

For many, owning a Harley-Davidson motorcycle is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. It enables them to own a piece of history and grants them access to belonging to an elite click. Harley-Davidson is not just a motorcycle; it is a way of life.

5. Enable Customer Self-Expression

 Burgeoning trends in mass customization and user-generated content on blogs, YouTube, and social networks, reflect consumers’ growing interest in brands and products that reflect their unique personalities.

HSBC set up a soapbox to enable real people to vent and share their thoughts and opinion. Another prime example is Nike I.D. With this initiative, Nike enabled customers to design their own shoe to make it one of a campaign. This initiative worked to drive and spur word of mouth marketing.

6. Encourage Play

Provide customers with fun ways to actively engage and interact with the brand. Launch a contest or competition for customers or create a game for customers to play.

A great example of this is the Tipp-Experience campaign that went viral on YouTube in 2010. Tipp-Ex launched the Tipp-Experience – an innovative campaign that provides viewers with a fun branded experience and encourages play. After a short video introduction, a hunter asks the user to suggest things he can do with a bear aside from shooting it. Users enter their suggestions in a text field at the top of the screen. Users can order the hunter to dance, wrestle, paint, watch TV with and even marry the bear – the amount of options available seems infinite. The fun and interactive game ensues in a highly entertaining branded experience.

However, this does mean that you should neglect your offline marketing efforts and solely rely on your online marketing strategy. Your offline marketing efforts should still occupy a central role in your overall marketing plan; however they should be in alliance with and compliment your online marketing strategy. In order to enhance your company’s brand image, increase ROI and ultimately yield superior results, your company must strike a balance and consolidate your online and offline marketing strategies.

Here are 3 ways in which you can integrate your offline and online marketing efforts to maximize results.

1. Formulate a Consistent Message

There should be a standard of consistency across your company’s marketing channels. To formulate a consistent brand image and message, ensure your company “voice” and tone, logo, fonts, graphics and other identifying elements are consistent across your online and offline marketing channels. One of the key reasons Apple has such a powerful brand image is because all of their products, social media sites, advertisements and other marketing channels are always consistent and immediately recognizable. They never deviate.

Consistency builds trust and familiarity, makes it easier for consumers to recognize your brand and ultimately engenders brand loyalty amongst consumers. Moreover, a consistent brand image reinforces your messages and strengthens your brand positioning and statement.

Failing to maintain a consistent brand image across marketing channels can result in conflicting messages and ultimately, the weakening of your brand message and value.

2. Cross-Reference Online & Offline Marketing Materials

In addition to formulating a consistent message, a brand should cross-reference online and offline marketing materials.

Ensure your offline marketing materials alludes to your online marketing efforts. For your offline marketing materials such as posters and brochures, provide a URL to your website and landing page, Facebook page and Twitter name. You can utilize QR codes to provide consumers with a quick and efficient means to access your company’s website via their smart phone. You can also integrate online marketing with traditional marketing channels such as Television. For example, display a Twitter #Hashtag at the end of your TV commercial so consumers can start an online dialogue about and engage with your brand, product or service.

In the same way, always ensure your online marketing efforts make reference to your offline marketing materials and efforts. For example, utilize your social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter to promote offline events. Furthermore, if you have an online catalogue, ensure you include a sign-up form for customers who are interested in receiving the print version.

3. Analyze and Improve your Marketing Strategy

The advancements of digital marketing has made it possible for companies to analyze their consumer data and use the information to make adjustments to and inform future marketing decisions. Online strategies are easy to track and the consumer data provided by online platforms are of great value and beneficial to your company. For example, if you are managing a Facebook page for your brand, the “Insights” tab provides comprehensive data regarding consumer activity. Facebook will provide you with a visual overview of consumer activity, depicting total page likes, the weekly total reach and the number of people talking about your page etc. (refer to image below). This information is valuable as it can inform your marketing strategy; the data indicates what works and what doesn’t. For example, if there is a significant increase in page likes after you host a contest for your customers, this is a clear indication that this particular strategy was effective in attracting new clientele. Thus, contests should be incorporated in your regular marketing campaign.

Moreover, Facebook “Insights” provides you with data regarding the demographics and location of your consumers. You are able to determine the percentage of your Facebook Fans who are male or female, where they live and what languages they speak. This data can be utilized in determining and refining your target audience. Once you have a clear idea of who is responding to your marketing efforts, you are able to refine and tailor your marketing strategy to the needs and wants of your target audience.

With the technological advancements of online marketing, you can utilize the consumer data to leverage your offline marketing. As such, ensure your online marketing data informs your offline marketing strategy. For example, you could identify the keywords customers use to find your company online and integrate these into your offline marketing materials.

Moreover, compare online metrics with offline results and invest your resources and marketing efforts towards strategies that have promised to yield positive results. In doing so, you’ll be able to fine-tune both online and offline strategies until they incorporate the best use of your marketing budget.

Here are 5 simple ways to convert an event into an online experience:

1) Consider the touch points as opportunities

Think about how the offline activation or event plays out, what exactly are you doing there with your customer and how are you interacting with them?  Each of these touch points of interactions are opportunities for online engagement. For example, is there a check-in call to action when they enter, or strategically positioned kiosk in the store?  Walk through the customer journey and map out the touch points and how you plan to engage them along the way.

2) Give your guests something to talk about with a Hashtag

Offline community exists by connecting everyone together through one theme, and that theme is communicated through a Twitter hashtag. Twitter is a great resource to utilize when hosting a company event. 77 of the world’s 100 largest companies use Twitter. The potential for meaningful engagement with consumers, prospects, employees, shareholders and others makes this service a great venue to engage. Thus, when you are organizing an event, you should create a Twitter hashtag that creatively sums up what’s happening. hashtags should be unique, clear and short (ten characters or less).

To maximize Twitter engagement surrounding the event, advertise the use of a Twitter hashtag in all promotional materials leading up to the event, such as invites and posters. Encourage guests to follow and use the hashtag, even if they aren’t able to attend.

Creating unique hashtags for talks are great for speakers and panel moderators as it stimulates intellectual dialogue and provides a real-time feedback loop. It also allows those unable to attend a particular session to follow along and get involved virtually.

To ensure that attendees are actively engaged and using the hashtag consistently and appropriately, designate someone to live tweet and monitor the stream. It is also crucial to monitor conversations so that you can reply or retweet while the event is taking place.

3) Create a visual experience

 As mentioned previously, set up your call to actions in as many places as possible.  Setting up Twitter walls throughout the event space is an effective way to attract attendees and engage them in online discussions as well.  Twitter walls can be set up with a large TV/monitor or projector. There are various vendors that offer Twitter wall functionality such as Socialping, TweetWally, Visible Tweets, Tweetbeam & Hootfeed. Each vendor offers varying degrees of customizability and analytics.

But Twitter isn’t the only opportunity; Instagram is another effective social media tool that provides attendees with a fun and interactive way to engage, enabling them to take the offline experience of the event online. Encourage your guests to upload their own photos of the event along with the relevant pre-defined hashtags. By encouraging attendees to upload photos of the event to Instagram, not only will this work to actively engage attendees and get them involved, but it will also benefit your company by functioning as a marketing tool. When attendees share their photos of the event on Instagram, their followers will see the photos and thus, awareness regarding the event will increase. Encouraging attendees to upload photos onto Instagram will in effect generate buzz and promote the event to potential customers and future attendees.

To integrate this visual experience with your company event, you can also create an Instagram wall.  Social Mosa displays crowd-sourced Instagram photos in a generative animation on venue screens. Instagram walls work in the same way as Twitter walls. Event guests use their smart phones to upload Instagram photos to the predefined event hashtag. Social Mosa continually searches for that content then drags it into the Mosaic animation. In the process, every Instagram photo is manually filtered using their Monitor application. Accepted Instagram photos automatically transform into branded cards in the Mosaic. Together, the images create a beautiful fluid animation. The more guests participate, the more visually impressive your event will be.

4) Give back by providing incentives

But as we all know, getting users to post and tweet isn’t easy; they need incentives along the way. Organize a competition and award those attendees who engage the most on Twitter or Instagram during the event. This will function as an incentive to encourage attendees to actively engage and increase participation in the online dialogue. The gift can be anything, but the more unique it can be to your audience, the better.

Also, feel free to get creative in the process, hold a scavenger hunt at your offline event, or a special competition where competitors must get their friends online to vote for them if they’re to win offline.  Programs like this can be communicated in many ways and will also impact the feed on the Twitter wall as well.

5) Analyze the data

There is a lot of potential and value in collecting and providing information through social channels. Post polls, follow people that are using the event hashtag and listen to what attendees are most excited about. Listening tools such as Radian6, Sysomos, or Tweet  Archivist, that can capture the feed and analyze the data after the event. The collected information can indicate what worked and what didn’t work during the event. Thus, the data generated from the social media channels should be analyzed to inform decisions on how to run more successful events in the future.

For example, in August 2011, the hashtag #smsci was used to track and facilitate conversation around Dan Zarrella’s “The Science of Social Media” webinar. Hashtracking.com enabled HubSpot to track and quantify the effect of conversations surrounding the event. The analytics enable users to track campaigns, measure reach and determine the influence of a given topic. The hashtag #smsci was mentioned in 13,500 tweets and resulted in over 19.7 million impressions, most of which occurred during the duration of webinar. With access to these types of statistics, Marketers are able to measure the effect and reach of their events and promotions.

Lets start by understanding what User facing design is: According to Wikipedia, In broad terms, user-centered design (UCD) is a type of user interface design and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process.

Two of the key terms uses to refine these processes are Usability and User experience.
The ISO defines Usability as “The effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users achieve specified goals in particular environments”.
User experience is defined as “a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service”.

A simple way to explain the difference, is to define the terms as a question: Usability answers the question, “Can the user accomplish their goal?” User experience answers the question : Did the user have as delightful an experience as possible?
Lets use a metaphor of climbing a mountain. The goal of the user is to get to the summit.
Now lets say there are 2 ways to climb to the summit:

1. Walking A trail, that is relativity moderate, has many signs but not a lot of views. It takes about 2 hours to get to the top.

2. Using Rock climbing technics on a vertical, shorter way. This might take up to 6 hours to climb, but climbers are exposed to breathtaking views all the way up.

Option number one represents a usability approach: the climber will achieve his / her goal in the most efficient and effective way. Option number two, on the other hand, provides excitement and satisfaction before, during and after achieving the same goal, therefore, the user experience is the most important part.

Measure Usability and User experience

How can we measure Usability or User experience in relation to a product or service?
Paul Bryan (2008) suggests that Usability is Important for all digital experiences, however, for software design and development it is a critical measuring stick. Software should be continually shaped by on-going, small rounds of usability testing. As for User experience, Products, services, public spaces, and web sites will fall or rise based on their user experience design. [2]

Thomas Baekdal, suggests the following principles of measuring usability and user experience:
Usability is about the “ability to use” something. The aim for a usable product is to make it easy to use. A product has a high level of usability when:
-It requires less mental effort to use
-The frequency of mistakes using it is less, or when the mistakes are less disastrous
-It is more powerful, where “more powerful” means that it can be used to do more or do it faster
-It is more learnable, that is, when a person can figure it out quicker [Baekdal , 2006]

On the other hand, User-experience is not like usability – it is about feelings. The aim here is to create happiness. You want people to feel happy before, during and after they have used your product. To do that you need to take all kinds of things into consideration. Things like:, Environment, Colors mood, Smell, Touch, Audio feedback, Visual feedback, Trust, Branding, Show-off effect, Usefulness, Practicality, Coexistence, Emotional effect, etc.
This is much harder to achieve. None of these things can be accurately analysed. It is a touchy feeling kind of thing. [Baekdal , 2006]A simple example might illustrate the difference between the measurement of usability versus user experience:
A female user shops for shoes online. The interface of the online store is easy to understand and she finds the shoes she wants within a few minutes. She also finds the size and color, and place her order quickly. We can say that the website she used to buy the shoes is very USABLE.
Two weeks later the shoes arrives. When she opens the box, she finds out that the store sent the wrong color.
She calls costumer support but has to wait 30 minutes to speak with a representative. Later, she has to wait in line at the post office to send the shoes back. Now, we can say that although the site was usable, the overall user experience was not good. ( Illustration 2 + 3 )

Who is responsible ?

I remember in my first year as an interface designer in a user facing internet startup, one of the biggest problems in my daily work was defining the scope of my responsibility.
While my job definition included User facing design and user experience, it was clear to me that a designer alone can not be responsible for creating the user experience. I think it is important to know what resources are available to the organization for improving usability and user experience.

The usability of a web site involves only those people who directly influence the design of the site. However, to create a pleasurable user experience, we now have to involve people from all over the organization, including those people dictating how the store operations are designed and implemented. [3]
An article by the Nielsen Norman Group suggests that a True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features. In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company’s offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design. [4]

What about Aesthetics?

The ISO concept of usability allows aesthetic issues to be addressed, if they are important to the user. For example : one of Apple’s strengths is that most of its products are highly engaging and attractive.
If the user’s task was simply to select and play MP3 files then the iPod would not have the market dominance it has. For most people, their task involves personal entertainment and having a product which is a delight to hold and use is part of that experience. [5].
Aesthetics might be one of the principles that connects usability to user experience. We can say it is a tool that helps a usable product to also provide a better experience. However, it is not enough.
Nielsen Norman Group, in its own definition of UX, suggest a broader explanation to how a user experience can be combines with usability principles : User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products. The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use.

Paring the concepts together:

In Sum, Usability is a narrower concept than user experience since it only focuses on goal achievement when using a web site. By contrast, user experience is a “consequence of the presentation, functionality, system performance, interactive behavior, and assistive capabilities of the interactive system”.
There are a lot of terms for the design of how the site functions and works, from “usability design” to “user experience,” what remains constant is that if we want to become better designers we have to pair these two concepts together. [6]
Many design thinkers have come up with lists of principles and guidelines for designing for usability or for creating a better user experience. I choose to list 5 of these principles, from a usability perspective as well as a User experience. I was surprised to find out how similar these principles are.

1. The Pareto Principal, or the 80 / 20 Rule

80% of users only use 20% of features . According to this principle, A high percentage of effects in any large system are caused by a low percentage of variables. [7]
Using this principal we can identify what that small percentage of actions that most of the users are performing , We can then put higher emphasis on those tasks and actions to make the site easier to use.
The effort of recognizing these tasks might result in users feeling more confidant and less confused.

2. Hick’s law, “Less is more” and Occam’s Razor

I find these principles related , and also as a practical guidelines to the 20/80 rule.
Hick’s law states that with every additional choice the time it will take for one to make a selection increases. This means that the more options a user has when using your website or web application the more difficult it will be to use. This law really speaks the importance of simplicity.
This isn’t necessarily about minimalism, but it is important to make sure that everything in the design has a purpose. Some things are purely functional; other things are purely aesthetic. But if they aren’t adding to the overall positivity of the experience, then take it out. Reduce the design to the necessary fundamentals and people will find it much easier to draw themselves in the white space. [8]
Occam’s Razor put simply, states that “the simplest solution is almost always the best.” Being ruthless about the value that a page or piece of content provides and removing anything that is unnecessary will make significantly stronger and more effective designs.
“A design isn’t finished when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. [Johnson, 2010].

3. Aesthetic-Usability Effect

Aesthetic designs look easier to use and have a higher probability of being used, whether or not they actually are easier to use. More usable but less-aesthetic designs may suffer a lack of acceptance that renders issues of usability moot. [ Lidwell, et al., 2003] This might be listed as a usability principle, but it is in fact a perfect example of the relationships between usability and user experience.

4. Feedback / Visibility

According to the Usability principle of visibility, systems are more usable when they clearly indicate their status, the possible actions that can be performed, and the consequences of the actions once performed.
UX magazine’s principles for experience design refers to feedback as well: “tell them why they’re waiting. Tell them that you’re working. Tell them you heard them and offer the next step along their path. Design is not a monologue, it’s a conversation”.[Hess, 2010]

5. Entry Point or “Make a good first impression”

People do judge books by their covers, Internet sites by their first pages, and Buildings by their lobbies. This initial impression of a system or environment greatly influences subsequent perceptions and attitudes, which then affects the quality of subsequent interactions.

You don’t get a second chance! Designing a digital experience is really no different than establishing a set of rules for how to conduct yourself in a relationship. You want to make people feel comfortable when you first meet them, you want to set clear expectations about what you can and can’t offer, you want to ease them into the process, you want to be attractive and appealing and strong and sensible. Ultimately you want to ensure that they can see themselves with you for a long time.

Design for humans – Thoughts about the future

Beakdal suggest that a good user experience is much harder to achieve than a usable design. He says that the principles of a good user experience, can not be accurately analysed. He called it the “ touchy feeling kind of thing”.
But this goes beyond the “touchy feeling kind of things”. Another reason I think a good user experience is so hard to achieve, is the fact that users are humans, and all humans are different.

The world population’s heterogeneity and our Individual differences makes it difficult to maintain standards for a good or “meaningful “ user experience. Even more than it is difficult to define usability standards. A good start will be to try and understand users as humans, and see how we can design an experience that provides sustainable qualities.
Some thinkers has already called this approach a “human facing design”, although I could not find any official document describing the term by itself and not in relation to User facing design.
The use of personas and scenarios in interaction design might be a beginning for understanding how to design for humans. Persona-based scenarios are concise narrative descriptions of one or more personas using a product to achieve specific goals. They allow us to start our designs from a story describing an ideal experience from the persona’s perspective, focusing on people, and how they think and behave, rather than on technology or business goals. [9]

I believe that as an interactive designer, there is more I can offer. It is the designer’s duty to design more than just efficiencies and create a temporary feeling of satisfaction. The designer’s responsibility is to improve quality of life by improving the quality of the human experience.

References:

1.Thomas Baekdal, 2006, The Battle Between Usability and User-Experience, Available online: http://www.baekdal.com/insights/usabilty-vs-user-experience-battle

2. Paul Bryan, 2008, Distinguishing between UCD, UX, and usability , Available online : http://www.ixda.org/node/21224

3. Jared Spool , 2007, The Difference Between Usability and User Experience

Available online :http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2007/03/16/the-difference-between-usability-and-user-experience/

4. Nielsen Norman Group, 2007. User Experience – Our Definition [Online] Available at: http://www.nngroup.com/about/userexperience.html

5. Tom Stewart , 2008, Usability or user experience – what’s the difference ? Available online :http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/2321-usability-or-user-experience-what-s-the-difference?utm_campaign=Skimlinks&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=cj

6. Ross Johnson, 2010, Ten Laws to Design By , Available online : http://3.7designs.co/blog/2010/07/ten-laws-to-design-by/

7. Lidwell, Holden, & Butler. 2003, Universal Principles of Design,

8.Whitney Hess, 2010, Guiding Principles for UX Designers [Online] Available at:http://uxmag.com/articles/guiding-principles-for-ux-designers

9. Cooper, Alan. , 2007 About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design

Who are your ambassadors?

If you’re looking to create an ambassador network you have to think of who and why.  For example, if you’re B2B business do you want to strike up conversation with executives or small business owners?  And will the two overlap in anyway?  There are a lot of questions to ask here.  Hyper target who you’re looking to attract and then build your plan from there on how to convert them into ambassadors.  Google did a great job at creating a campus ambassador program that was hyper targeted to reach a niche segment of consumers, read more about it here.

Find them and initiate conversation

Expand the idea of who or what an ambassador can be and navigate getting them on board from there.  If your target is bloggers, then expect to set a week aside auditing blog-by-blog, navigating to find the influencer that would be best for your brand.  If it’s a Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram influencer, then you’re talking about the same process, just slightly modified.  Trust us; please do the appropriate amount of research.  Last thing you want is to find an influencer that would be good for the brand and to not have read a blog they wrote 6 months ago that could be perceived as controversial material, we’ve seen it happen and it can get ugly.

Be transparent about what you want

Once you’ve identified your potential network of influencers and ambassadors, you have to reach out and start the friendship, time to pick up the phone.  Reaching out to influencers is never easy, as a matter of fact most influencers have guidelines just for how you should reach out to them.  If you’re not sure how to approach this, hire the professionals, because there are even FTC rules and regulations that one would need to follow before understanding how to contact and approach an influencer, so do the appropriate research before reaching out to build your network.

Give them something to look forward to

Influencers won’t be your ambassador for just nothing, they need something in return and quite often that something involves monetary compensation of some kind, but do try and avoid that.  Think more about the experience you’re going to provide them.  For example, if you were a coffee shop and wanted ambassadors, how about inviting them to exclusive coffee tastings, giving them free coffee to experience, and including them in other relevant opportunities that might be taking place around the brand.  Here is a classic example of a great ambassador program led by Makers Mark that is often used as a successful case study.

Set expectations of the relationship

Nothing is free, not even experiences, so in this case set the expectations of what you’d like to receive for the experiences.  It’s okay to ask the ambassador to communicate their experience with their following or with their friends.  Working with an ambassador is a very delicate process, because as a brand or a registered business you cannot just pay people to say things about your brand, you have to fully disclose your relationships, this is the law.  So, once you have your ambassadors in hand and the content creation process is in the works, disclose the relationship and go public.

Meet often in person

An ambassador is someone who talks about you because they like you; they have a relationship with you.  This relationships can’t be facilitated by emails and the occasional product sampling.  Hold offline events with your ambassadors and be sure that they’re happy with your brand and the things you’re doing.  Also, us this opportunity to get their opinion on your brand and some of your business initiatives, it’s a great research opportunity and will help you better understand public perception and how to influence it.

To sum it up, finding and building ambassadors is a lot like building a trust driven community sustained by transparent relationships. The work may be heavy at first, but the result is well worth the effort.

The emergence of branded content in 2013 will be the biggest story this year and with a higher emphasis on ROI companies will be looking to develop influential content that drives consumers to purchase.  But how do you create content across the board that expands reach while also influencing?  You do it through a strategic ambassador plan.  An ambassador plan comes in many forms.  It could be a loyalty rewards network, an influencer network in the form of bloggers, or even an ID network of influential consumers.  The bottom line is if you intend to leverage social media for the right reasons in 2013 you’ll need an ambassador plan, and here’s why:

 Storytelling

 Chances are the brand team has come up with a great concept for the story you’ll communicate in 2013, however it cost about 10 million to tell on television with vocals by Beyonce and JayZ.  Skip the nonsense and think deeper about how you can engage a less expensive more influential network of your customers that leads to a brand relationship through a compelling story.

Network building

How many product launches are you holding this year?  What’s the big news?  What are you looking to tell everyone?  If your plan was to post it on Facebook, think again, you have to sponsor those posts now with $ for them to make the headlines.  Find a less expensive but even higher effective route through an ambassador network that you can easily go to in order to spread the word.

Referral opportunities

Doesn’t it feel nice when you get sales, inbounds and more from someone else repping your products that isn’t your sales team.  Sure it does and this is exactly what a good ambassador program and plan does. It gets people talking about what makes your product great, special, and important.

Marketing integration

How integrated are your marketing teams?  SEO team breathing down your neck about link building, email teams looking to build their lists, ecommerce team need more inbounds, etc.  You can solve 80% of this through a great ambassador plan.  A good influencer plan corresponds with public relations by creating earned media and user generated content that drives impressions.  The content creation and linking impacts SEO and the influence of the content, along with call to actions that drive traffic to the site and while influencing purchasing decisions.

The bottom line is, with content being the larger priority for brands in 2013, user generated aspect of that content in the form of an ambassador plan is what will ultimately move the needle and impact marketing performance.

Take a look for a quick glimpse into who we are and what we’re about.

Sales & Marketing

According to a McKinsey study on social technologies, retail banking, consumer packaged goods, and automotive industries will unlock more than 2% of total revenue through sales and marketing via social channels. Taking a deeper look at the consumer packaged goods industry, we find that CPG companies spend an average of 15-20% of their revenues on marketing and sales. By substituting insights from extensive online communities for more traditional panels and focus groups, companies have gained the same level of consumer insight at 60-80% of the cost. It has been shown that marketing campaigns that utilize social technologies can increase the ROI on advertising expenditures by as much as 30-60%.

The success that Buddy Media and Wildfire have seen over the past two years is going to wane.  ”Software as a service” is a complement, not a complete solution to a company’s social marketing efforts. Human interaction can’t be programmed. Relationships aren’t made of bits and bytes. Social marketing will he a highly personalized service that utilizes a suite of social technologies to grow and deepen the relationships between a specific brand and it’s customers.

Productivity & Collaboration

The business case for social technologies extends beyond sales and marketing. As the following two charts show, there are massive improvements to be gained in both productivity and collaboration.

It’s estimated that workers spend 28% of their day reading, writing, and responding to email. A large amount of company data is locked up in each of these messages, only to live forever in an employees inbox or sent mail folder. As companies adopt social platforms, communication becomes a new form of content and more enterprise information can become readily accessible and easily searchable. With services like Basecamp and Github both product management and product development have already become more collaborative. Productivity gains from more efficient interaction will continue to be seen as companies integrate social technologies into their daily workflow.

Fact of the matter is social technologies have been adopted at a much faster rate than previous technologies. Commercial television took 13 years to reach 50 million households and Internet service providers didn’t sign up their 50 millionth subscriber until year 3. Facebook hit the 50 million mark in just a year and Twitter in nine months. Our desire to connect and interact with one another is not going to wane. Connection has, and will always remain a common thread throughout the human narrative. Businesses too, are built on connection – a brand’s connection with their customers, a supplier’s connection with their distributors, an employer’s connection with their employees. Social technologies exist to strengthen these connections.

As we mature beyond the infancy of social technology, further adoption and integration of social technologies will become fundamental to the success of your business.

*Statistics pulled from the July 2012 issue of the McKinsey Global Institute Report.  

How to position your business for innovation may not be your top start-up question, but it should be.

Giant brands like the tech-titan Google and the ad-powerhouse Ogilvy & Mather are shifting the way they conduct business — and their experiences are providing valuable lessons for smaller ventures on how to grow.

You will work closely with both the design / build and innovation teams to create pixel perfect
experiences that adhere to web standards, making use of modern front-end technology while
ensuring compatibility across all major web and mobile browsers. You will have the
opportunity, and be encouraged, to use the latest libraries, platforms, and frameworks.

Key Skills

• CSS3
• HTML5 / XHTML
•  JavaScript / Ajax
•  jQuery
•  Data Formats (e.g. JSON / XML)
•  CMS (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.)
•  Social APIs (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Etc.)
•  Familiarity with C++, PHP, MySQL a plus

Additional Requirements

• Understanding of cross-browser / cross platform issues and how to resolve them
• Strong communication skills (especially writing) with great attention to detail
• een interest in learning and applying new technologies with a strong desire to
  enhance your own skill set
• Self-starting, responsible, and motivated team player

EDGE is a full service social media agency that marries social engagement strategy with
interactive design and build to create engaging consumer experiences that strengthen and
grow the relationships between brands and their customers. In addition to other projects,
EDGE has built the EDMX Platform (the premier customer engagement service for electronic
dance music festivals), and an interactive platform for CASIO as they prepared to launch their
synthesizer series.

EDGE will provide a casual, yet professional working environment. We believe people are at
their best when they’re engaged in their work and have the opportunity to shape their future.
You will be immersed in a team-based atmosphere and respected for the intelligence, energy,
and knowledge you bring.

Please send your resume and a brief description of why you’re interested to
sean.pfitzenmaier@edge-collective.com

If you have any questions please call EDGE at 917.512.9591

This is a freelance opportunity is for our SoHo Office (611 Broadway, Suite 704)