About

Klout

Monday, March 26, 2012

Ever wondered how influential you are with social media. Ever wonder if what you say actually gets through to people. Ever wonder if you are more popular than your friends?

Well Klout can help you out with all of those, well except the last one. Klout is a website that measures your influence on social media by giving you a klout score (mine is staying around a 54).

So big deal - why does it matter? For companies looking to broaden their reach they can see three different things:
  1. True Reach
  2. Amplification
  3. Network
With these you get real numbers about how many people you reach on average, how likely it is that it will get re posted and how many people are in your solid network.

The other perk to using Klout is it's perks. Companies go to Klout in search of people who are influential about certain topics to help spread the word about their product. Early screenings of movies, free products, trips to Seattle. The key is that you have to be influential. Right now I am just below the Klout score needed to get something good but I have gotten Axe hair gel (worked great but I prefer pomade), access to websites like www.wahooley.com and gift cards to new online stores.

If you are using social media in anyway outside of connecting with friends you should sign up for Klout.

Tweet Adder

Ethics Statement: Tweet Adder is not paying me nor did they ask me to write this blog post.

As many may already know, I run a youtube series and blog called Awkward Moments In Life. Recently I have been trying to increase my social media footprint on Facebook and Twitter. For me Facebook was something easy for me to do. I set up a page and invited my friends and saw my page likes go up.

However twitter was something completely new to me. I had my own twitter but at the time didn't use it that much. The other problem I had is that most people in my social network didn't (and still don't) use twitter.

While trying to figure out what to do I talked with a friend of mine who is the video director and social media manager for the band Waking Jordan.

He told me how he was able to get so many followers on the band's twitter page through a service called Tweet Adder.

Tweet Adder is a software that you can buy from their website for around $50. This software can control all of your twitter functions. But how well does it work?

Well in the past two months I went from 300 followers to over 1,500.

The best part about the service is that there is no catch, hidden charges, or spamming. The idea is pretty simple.

What I did to get those 300 followers was follow about 1,000 people. One third of those people followed me back because they felt that I had something that they would want to stay up to date with. This took a lot of my time and I am not a big fan of following people all day. Also the people that I followed were across the board of interests and not the kind of people who would engage in my theme of awkward moments.

With tweet adder I can search specific topics - #awkwardmoments, #funnyvideo #anythingreally. From there I can follow people who search for those topics and if they feel like I offer good content they will follow me back.

The other best part is the automated tweeting. I never kept up with my tweets and would go a week in between tweeting something. Now what I do is spend about an hour a week coming up with tweets associated with my theme of awkward moments and type them into tweet adder. I then turn on the automation on and Tweet Adder sends out one of these tweets that I wrote every four to six hours.

The biggest thing that I learned from this is that although I am having a machine do a lot of my automation I still have to interact on a personal level. I still have to respond to direct messages, mentions, and tweet on relevant topics of the day.

Overall though - Tweet Adder is a great tool that helps me be more social at a larger level.

Seattle Part 5 - Creature

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Photo from Dennis Archer


This last week I went on a school sponsored internship trip to Seattle to visit companies in the area. We visited a wide range of companies that work in Advertising, PR, and Digital Filmmaking. Over the next days I am going to spotlight each company we went to and what I learned from them.


The next place that I visited on my trip to Seattle was to Creature, the most creative advertising agency we went to in Seattle. We met with Pat Horn, one of the creative directors at Creature.
He explained to us the process that Creature goes through when working with a client. It goes like this:

  1. Make a client briefe
  2. Bring the brief to client services
  3. Take it to both the strategy and creative departments
  4. They make a one page creative brief 
  5. The produce the media
Overall I learned a lot from creature. The major thing was to think outside of the box for advertising. My favorite campaign they did was  the Starbucks red cup campaign. This consisted of magnet Starbucks cups they would put on the top of the roof of taxis. When people would see these taxis drivin around with this cup of coffee on the roof and stop them they would get a $5 giftcard. 

My favorite part of the meeting was seeing a commercial they were working on. Creature focuses on creating creative but strategically power advertising.

Key points I learned
  • Your portfolio should be filled with what you like not what your teacher's like
  • Healthy tension never hurt anybody
  • Everybody needs to be creative
  • Ideas need to infiltrate pop culture

Seattle Part 4 - Digital Kitchen

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

This last week I went on a school sponsored internship trip to Seattle to visit companies in the area. We visited a wide range of companies that work in Advertising, PR, and Digital Filmmaking. Over the next days I am going to spotlight each company we went to and what I learned from them.


Photo courtesy of Martin Cathrae
For almost all of the companies that I visited with in Seattle I went with about 15 other communication students from BYU-Idaho. These companies are great - but none of them were related to digital filmmaking. So I looked around on the internet for companies to visit that related to that. A month before I left a friend showed me the demo reel made by Digital Kitchen.
After seeing it I wanted to meet with them and fortunately was able to set up a time to meet with them while I was in Seattle.
When I showed up to their office I instantly stuck out. My school asked that while on the trip we would dress in a suit and tie. Everybody there dressed in a way those who normally wear suits to work would describe as "casual." I would describe it as the way I would like to go to work.
That aside - DK was a very great opportunity to get to see how an interactive digital agency works. Like every agency their are art and creative directors along with people in charge of the finances and I.T.
I asked them what skills they were looking for in candidates. I was thinking they would say After Effects or Cinema 4D. In fact they aren't looking for someone with specific skills in any certain program. They are looking for people who are first and foremost creative. After that they said that it is important to be skilled with video editing platforms and motion graphics software - but they put the emphasis on people who are creative and can bring good ideas to the table.
Key points I learned from Digital Kitchen

  • Creativity is first and foremost
  • You need to have a wide variety of skills
  • If you are creative and have skills - every company in Seattle will talk about you (like every company I went to did)  

Seattle Part 3 - Wong Doody

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

This last week I went on a school sponsored internship trip to Seattle to visit companies in the area. We visited a wide range of companies that work in Advertising, PR, and Digital Filmmaking. Over the next days I am going to spotlight each company we went to and what I learned from them.


Photo courtesy of Sheldon Photography
Wong Doody was the first advertising agency that we went to on the trip. I knew they meant business when we walked in their conference room and saw a table filled with trophies. I made sure to pay attention to what they had to say.


One of the creative directors came in and began to explain how Wong Doody does advertising. The first thing he told us that we needed to know about advertising and design was:

*"Mess it up or get out of the way"

He explained what he meant by that. He showed us a campaign that Wong Doody did for the Seattle Sonics.


They decided to make a campaign based on old 80's "fire sales." Instead of making sure it looked good they decided to make it look as bad as they could. This included getting old software and computers in order to get the graphics they wanted. When you look at it you can understand what he meant by mess it up.


Another campaign they did was for WGU Washington. For this campaign they wanted to make sure that everybody knew that WGN Washington was Washington's only state-endorsed all online non profit school. For that they wanted to show an ad that explained that and also focused that they didn't spend a lot of their students money on advertising. So they put up a billboard in the middle of the state and and filmed it for 30 seconds and said exactly that. This was their example of getting out of the way.


Overall Wong Doody was a great place to visit and I was able to learn about advertising and design.


Key Points I learned from Wong Doody

  • Don't get your hand prints on the advertising
  • Run away from your comfort zone
  • Whichever way you go - commit to it
  • Think strategically and with a different perspective than everybody else
  • Our job is to make the client uncomfortable with our crazy idea and then make a bridge so they come over and join our ideas
  • *Mess it up or get out of the way
*The actual phrase was f*** it up or get the f*** out of the way but was changed on this blog.

Seattle Part 2 - Twin Star Credit Union

Saturday, March 10, 2012

This last week I went on a school sponsored internship trip to Seattle to visit companies in the area. We visited a wide range of companies that work in Advertising, PR, and Digital Filmmaking. Over the next days I am going to spotlight each company we went to and what I learned from them.


A photo taken from my hotel room of the REI building in Seattle
After going to High Street Advertising our university group headed on over to the main offices of Twin Star Credit Union. Twin Star is a large credit union in Washington that has their own internal marketing team.

It was interesting to see how an agency works with advertising and then see how a company does it on their own. The biggest difference that I saw was the time. When they needed something done they have one of their designers do it instead of in an agency where they not only have to meet with someone, discuss the project, and then have the agency balance them between their other clients.

The other thing that I liked was how they talked about their use of social media. They used it as a tool for transparncey and also customer service instead of an advertising tool. I agree with using social media that way. A lot of companies look at social media as a megaphone when it really is a two way conversation.

Key points I learned from Twin Star
  • Social media should be used for transparency
  • Marketing should be done with a mix of traditional and new media
  • Internal marketing teams can be faster than outside agencies 

Seattle Part 1 - Highstreet Advertising

Sunday, March 4, 2012

This last week I went on a school sponsored internship trip to Seattle to visit companies in the area. We visited a wide range of companies that work in Advertising, PR, and Digital Filmmaking. Over the next days I am going to spotlight each company we went to and what I learned from them.

Highstreet Advertising was the first company that we went to. Located south of Seattle in a town called Puyallup it is a small advertising agency. It was run by two people with the help of an intern (who is one of my good friends). What amazed me most about this company was the amount of work that they were able to get done as such a small operation. Their latest project – 22 videos of kids talking about their school. As someone who does video I was impressed. Oh – and the videos were in Chinese so I was even more impressed. The two people who worked their and the intern all wore many different hats and seemed to work well together.

Key Points I learned about advertising
-Teamwork is a must
-Team size doesn’t matter
-Know everything –but make sure you specialize in something

 
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