The 12th Annual Dayton AleFest is kicking off this Saturday at Carillon Historical Park. Bash Foo and Get Social! Radio got their hands on two tickets to give away.
Following the link at the bottom of this page to enter to win. Tickets for Dayton AleFest are on sale now to Friday for $35/each and $40 on Saturday.
The promoter is expecting about 4,500 ale-lovers to descend on Carillon Park this Saturday to celebrate AleFest.
Want more details? Visit their website at http://daytonbeerweek.com or http://alefest.com/dayton.htm

Chapter 2

Back in July of last year (Should Municipalities use Social Media) I wrote about how city government could use social media to communicate with their residents. Since then, my little experiment with the City of Tipp City has been going full steam. The City launched their facebook fan page back in October, 2009 and now have 614 fans. The City Manager, Jon Crusey is the primary editor of the fan page and uses the resource to communicate to residents about:

1. Snow Emergencies – Often during the winter road closures, troublesome potholes and trash collection day changes necessitate urgent communications with residents.
2. City Council Agenda – One of the murky areas for residents had been lack of knowledge of what is going on with City Council. Full agenda summaries are now available online from Facebook.
3. Financial Transparency – The City uses the page to post winning bids for work being performed around town, street repairs, water towers, etc.
4. Schedule of Events – The City can now announce events and uses the wall to post openings/closings

Social State of the City

If you visited the link, you noticed that the facebook fan page did not have direct fan comments to the wall enabled. This prohibits the fans of Tipp City from creating their own interesting, snide, or thoughtful commentary on the City’s wall. What impact does this have on their “social state?”

• Fan counts stay artificially low. Residents with a “beef” with the City won’t become a fan, because they can’t create their own rant post
• Rants that are shared within threads started by the City can be edited out, keeping the friendly state of affairs in-tact
• Comments within the City threads are mostly favorable
• Links are presented on the fan page that lead readers to the City’s website http://tippcityohio.gov

I have consulted with several of my social media peers regarding Tipp City’s specific use and management of their facebook fan page and there seems to be agreement that their work is a good example of a municipality taking its first step into the social media vista. The worst scenario of course would have been an experience where the City received a barrage of comments, rants and questions that they were not staffed to handle. What has resulted has been a steady stream of mostly positive comments about the City making an effort to stay in touch with residents.

KUDOS go out to Jon Crusey, City Manager of Tipp City for his use of facebook to better communicate with residents. Hopefully other cities and townships in Ohio are able to learn from Tipp City’s example and use facebook to better deal with communication challenges that they may face.

Bash Foo Social Media | Promote Your Page Too

Bash Foo provides its clients with a serious (yet fun) look at marketing their brand to clients across the web. We are experienced in programming  local micro-targeted campaigns to massive web marketing initiatives.

Here are just a few of the areas of expertise we use to build your brand relevance:

E-Mail Marketing  – Promote your business, boost sales, engage your audience, and reach out to your potential customers with newsletters, special offers, surveys and event management. Bash Foo has teamed up with market leader Constant Contact to deliver affordable and effective email marketing campaigns. Don’t underestimate the continued power of email messaging to drive sales for you.

Press Release Management. No matter how big or small your company is, we can help you write and distribute your press releases to the major online news media outlets, including Google News, Yahoo! News, Topix.Net, PR.WEB and smaller industry-specific media, blogs and RSS groups.

Third Party Blogging. Blogging is extremely popular today, and almost any niche on the Web has a vibrant blogger community developing around it. Blog sites built around your niche products and services are one of the best public relations and advertising platforms you can find for your website. Third party blogging helps your business in many ways.

Media Buyer. Are you interested in buying up advertising in website, search engines, social media, radio and television? Have you ever tried to use Google AdWords and become totally confused as to how it works and worried that you will waste your precious marketing dollars? We make the purchase decisions simple and streamlined. Bash Foo also works to negotiate the best prices for you and combine the multiple efforts into a coordinated sales campaign for your brand(s).

The best way to show potential clients true business value is to provide a clear demonstration of benefits from the use of strategic web marketing. Most everyone I meet with understands that the Internet can be a very powerful way to market their goods and services, however many have tried and failed to attract interested customers to their website(s) and quit focusing on web marketing.

Here are a few current projects that I am engaging in:

The Get Social! Radio Show

My very first business was a small DJ company in Oxford, Ohio. I “spun vinyl” at local dances, weddings and parties. From there I worked in a number of radio stations, learning the trade. Now twenty years later, I pick the mic back up as host of the Get Social! Radio Show. Internet radio is really a great way to share news, information and create a “following” for your brand. As host of the Get Social! Radio Show I have created opportunities for Ohio businesses to connect with and share information about them and their products with listeners. Callers can ask business owners questions and owners can share the reasons why their brand is important to consumers.

Read More About: The Get Social! Radio Show

Why Buy Ohio Alliance

This has to be the most rewarding project for me. I am fiercely territorial and seek to support all Ohio businesses who have made a choice to Buy Ohio themselves. Dollars spent in Ohio should go to Ohio businesses and not “out of town”. Big Box stores take Ohio income and distribute it somewhere else. When Ohioans choose to “Buy Ohio” they make an economic decision to support Ohio businesses and help our state economy and employment.

Read More About: Why Buy Ohio

TippNews DAILY

Back in 1988 I was the editor of my high school paper. Even then I appreciated the value of the English language as well as the powerful freedoms that Washington, Adams et. al provided for us in the Constitution. Now many years later I pick back up the Editor cap and have produced a citizen journalism site where local residents can speak their mind and share stories about their families, their organizations, their businesses or the things that make them smile. No one gets paid to write an article, but everyone benefits from the availability of swift and frequent information dissemination within our community.

Read More About: TippNews DAILY

If you would like to get involved in one of these great opportunities to highlight your business or your brand, give me a call!

Get Social!” is an interactive, live Internet talk-radio show that highlights the activities of local businesses and organizations in Dayton and the Miami Valley.

As the name implies, the broadcast is to help enable socialization of businesses with the community and their customers. Hosts Mike McDermott and Greg Enslen explore juicy, “behind-the-scenes” information about businesses across the Miami Valley as well as the ties that their special guests have to the community.

If you have ever been asked to identify the Return on Investment (ROI) of a social media campaign, you probably have looked at tools like Techrigy’s SM2 product.

While community managers beat the “electronic pavement” every day to enhance and moderate brand dialogues, what is running in the background is clearly important. It sets the tone for the B2B relationship as well as enables the community manager to set a baseline for success.

I actually backed into the relationship with Techrigy. Early this year I struggled with a number of different business analytics and met up with Connie Bensen @cbensen on Twitter. Our tweets led me to her site where I discovered some blog articles that were just what I needed. Connie (on Twitter) let me know about a meetup in Toledo where her boss Aaron Newman, CEO and Founder of Techrigy, would be speaking. As my calendar was free and the weather was nice I took the 3 hour drive up to Toledo to meet Aaron. He provided us with a bit of insight as to how his software analyzes and captures components of social demographics that other tools do not. When was the last time that you saw software that could correctly identify consumer sentiment. The only component of consumer sentiment that SM2 seems to miss on is humor and innuendo. So a comment on Twitter like “I LOVE it when my PC blue-screens!” is classified as a positive sentiment. Knowing this Aaron allows you to make manual corrections to the data with a thumbs up/thumbs down click.

I use Techrigy’s SM2 product to identify all of the keyword opportunities that my clients’ current SEO optimization plan has missed. Specifically, it will tell me what sort of phraseology consumers use to not only “search on” but also “comment on” inside of blogs, twitter, facebook, etc. I am amazed sometimes at the varied types of social platforms that SM2 can dig into. I am presented with a very unique and valuable look at consumer metrics that Google Analytics fails on. If you are just building a business plan or thinking about expanding your operations, I have found that SM2 does a great job of letting you know what your consumers may think of your new ideas.

You rarely get to vet the CEO of a company before the product, and I can assure you that I was pleased with the quality and capability of both in this case.

During a break in the action from PodCamp Ohio 2009 I had the opportunity to speak with Amybeth Hale, a social media recruiter with AT&T. We started to chat about some of the interesting ways that social media can be used to source unique, “one-of-a-kind” talent. Somewhere in the midst of our discussion Amybeth whipped out her pink Flip camera and started recording.

One of the beautiful things about PodCamp is that each one of us has a particular communication specialty. Some are best behind a podcasting microphone, others a camera, and a great deal only when logged into their blog post interface of choice. This laid back and very social community comes from all walks of life, but all believe in the strong pronounced voice of the consumer. I am very pleased to see that AT&T (through Amybeth) sees the evolution of these new forms of digital media and recognizes their importance. Hopefully their continued participation will allow this well respected company to obtain the high performance talent and customer leads necessary to compete.

Is Everything You Know About SEO Wrong? » aimClear Search Marketing Blog.

Excellent SMX Wrapup. Clearly the search engine optimization techniques are now heavily leaning towards Blogging.
Everyone.. Group Hurrah??!!
Not quite. I seem to think that major entities will need to start “socializing” so that they can retain their JUST ranking. No more sitting on your laurels.

It’s happened to the best of us. We invite a sales consultant into our office and have them demonstrate a product or service for us. They whip out a binder or slide-deck of compelling information and data points. Their voice whistles along as they speak about the features and benefits. You are hooked. Then you ask the fateful question. “So how much does something like that cost?”

Consultants many times answer this question with “It depends”. I tend to lean towards full disclosure. While I am not the first to disclose what a Community Manager makes, I may be the first to disclose the costs involved in social media in comparison with other forms of traditional media.

I tell companies that I usually charge $499 to setup a blog site, tuned for the search engines, loaded with features and set to effectively market their product. This blog also allows them the ability to update their own content.

“Well.. I don’t have time to write my own content” is the next thing that my clients usually say. OK, I can create unique, creative content to build your brand for between $200 and $300 per month.

$499 one time.
$250/mos.
Total first year investment: $3,499

Once presented with the initial years expense many owners will balk at the price stating that they cannot commit that sort of funding to this type of marketing. So, I then set off to find out what these businesses were spending on other sorts of media advertising.

• 10 day radio spot on one station in a medium sized market: $10,000-$15,000

• Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising: $3,500 per month
  • Total first year investment for ONE PPC campaign: $42,000

• Billboard cost: $1,000 and $2,500 per month
  • Total first year investment for ONE billboard ad: $12,000-$30,000

• Direct postcard mailing to 10,000 households: $3,800 one time
  • Total first year investment to send out 4 postcards per year: $15,200

• Yellow Pages 1 inch listing: $30-175 per month
  • Total first year investment for ONE Yellow Pages 1 inch listing: $360-$2,100

• Two magnetic signs for your car/truck: $300 one time cost

• Pack of 1,000 business cards: $50 one time cost

As you can see, my social media rates sit somewhere between  the 1 inch advertisement in the yellow pages and sending out 10,000 post cards 4 times a year. Available 7x24x365 social media is a very affordable form of advertising. And unlike the yellow pages or post cards, your customer distribution grows exponentially for free. Say 1000 people look at your blog in the first month. 3,000 in the third, and so on and so on. Very quickly you find that you have exceeded the distribution targets of both the yellow pages and direct mail campaigns.

Now that I have fully enraged Community Managers everywhere by revealing my Social Media pricing, I have to throw out a few caveats.

• First, I am a full-time blogger and can handle multiple campaigns at once. We buy in bulk and pass the savings on to you!
• Second, I live in the Midwest so I don’t have the overhead my friends on the coasts do.
• Third, while my rates demonstrate my average blogging and SM consulting fees, I do have several customers with complex needs who pay significantly higher rates.

Again I have to ask.. Are you paying too much for your Social Media campaign?
Is it slurping up cash like a freight train? Does it keep you from paying your utility bill or from sleeping at night? Then yes.. you are probably paying too much, but overall social media has demonstrated that it can be highly effective at reaching more people who are better targets for your advertising dollars with a higher propensity to buy. Think higher conversion. Think Socially.