The upfronts are here! The upfronts are here!
One of our favorite times of the year in media. We get special access to the television upfronts for all the new shows scheduled for the upcoming season.
Watch for our recaps, some video of our “watch party” and our predictions of which network will come out on top for the new season.
We have a lot of fun with this. Our commentary is either spot on or wackily way off base. Check back to see if you agree our “professional” opinions.
The city that is home to our corporate office gets lots of praise from various lists about cities in the US, from the fastest growing to the best of College Town, USA.
The latest “best of” list that our awesome little town found its way onto is Parade Magazine’s list of America’s Hardest Working Towns.
Low unemployment and thriving education and healthcare industries keep our town and our people prospering. That good ‘ole Midwestern work ethic probably doesn’t hurt either.
Conduit Lounge
I can’t believe a week ago today I was wrapping up my first trip to SXSW Interactive Conference. Here’s some more recap from my trip.
My second day at SXSW it only rained on me in the afternoon, and if you know anything about this interactive festival then you know it requires a lot of walking the streets of downtown Austin and trying to catch shuttles to get to your next session. Sometimes the really good ones are full when you get there, and you’re lucky if they’ll let you in to sit on the floor. Some where lined up outside waiting for one person to leave so another could go in.
I recently returned from Austin, TX where I was fortunate enough to attend the SXSW Interactive conference to learn about new social trends and listen to some great panel speakers on social parties to attend put on by various up and comers and leaders in the tech and interactive industries that I couldn’t keep up even if I had been cloned. And I could have tried, because I’m pretty sure I saw that company with a booth in the trade show exhibit hall.
Here’s my top takeaways from the sessions I attended on day 1. You can follow the conversations from the sessions with the hashtags listed by each.
Earlier this week Facebook announced that Timeline will now be available for Pages. Most brands with Facebook pages are now scrambling to figure out how the changes associated with the new “Timeline for Brands” layout will affect them. Korrie Moscato, our new social media associate, has all the answers for you. Here’s her take on the biggest change to Facebook brand pages we’ve seen yet.
Pinterest- How to use it and what to use it for? This question is being asked all over the place. This new social channel has taken off like crazy lately and is considered the next big thing in social media. Pinterest hit 10 million U.S. monthly unique visitors faster than any independent site in history, with nearly 12 million monthly unique visitors and over 10.4 million registered users. Some brands you are familiar with have already jumped on board such as Toms, Gap, HGTV, Lowe’s, and Etsy. Pinterest in generating more referral traffic to websites than YouTube, Google+ and Linkedin combined.
As a social media manager I have planned more than my fair share of Facebook ad campaigns for my clients. When I first began doing this almost 2 years ago, the landscape was uncertain at best, especially for our clients that wanted to run small local campaigns to take advantage of the cost effectiveness of the ad platform. At that time, their ads were sometimes layered in with spammy “acai berry diet” ads claiming to have been endorsed by Dr. Oz (they weren’t).
I recently took my kids to a small concert to hear some children’s music from a national artist. Funny thing was it got me thinking about followers vs. leaders. As I was sitting there with my wife and three kids listening to the music it dawned on me, leading and following truly start at an early age and continue into adulthood.
I receive an email every few months or so from a photography studio in my neighborhood, a company which got my name from a time when my kid played soccer and they took the team photo, but never actually asked for my permission to send me emails. Bill C-28, which is set to become law in Canada mid- 2012, is very strict on the use of unsolicited emails (Hereinafter referred to as Spam). Under the new law, the neighborhood photography studio could be penalized up to one million dollars a day, or ten million dollars a day if they are a registered corporation. The fines are heavy and the law is designed to eliminate spam.
Not So Much Love for Mickey D's on Twitter
McDonald’s is sponsoring a trend (#McDStories) on Twitter this week to get conversations started about the farmers that grow their food. It’s a touchy-feely message that has unfortunately, backfired on them as people use the trend to share their McDonald’s horror stories! The New York Observer is going so far as to call it the latest “Hashtag disaster.”
