Category Archives: Uncategorized

Meet the newest members of the Engage121 family

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Engage121| 1 Comment

written by:

Mareena Maki
Client Service Coordinator
@MareenaMaki
Learn more about Mareena on Pinterest

Hello! My name is Mareena Maki and I am the new Client Service Coordinator for Engage121. I’m from Denver,Colorado but moved to Connecticut in June 2012 to pursue the “East Coast” lifestyle (and of course, for my college sweetheart). While growing up, I was the little girl running around with the neighborhood kids having water balloon fights, racing down the hill on wagons, and getting bumps and bruises along the way.

I learned to embrace adventure and the great outdoors. In 2010, I got my Bachelors degree in Economics from Colorado State Universityand had an amazing opportunity to work in the Colorado Governor’s Office as a PR/Communications Intern. On my free time, I enjoy duck hunting, playing golf, and watching reality TV shows. One thing you would never guess about me is that I love Step Aerobics; you may look silly but what a great workout.

There is never a dull moment in social media; which is why my goal at Engage121 is to keep up with marketing trends, learn about our clients, and enhance their experience through our services. As social media continues to evolve, I want to add value and contribute my knowledge and skills to my Client Support team so we are up-to-date with the latest and greatest.

Sarah Engle
Client Support Specialist
@Fengles
learn more about Sarah on Pinterest

Hello, my name is Sarah. I was born and raised in Sunnyvale, CA located in the Bay Area. I have three accomplished siblings who I am very close to. One currently works in Africa for a non-profit and the other is a sophomore at MIT. While I played five sports in middle school, I cut down to two sports in high school (basketball and track) and eventually was recruited to Columbia University in the City of New York to pole vault for their Division I track and field team.

At Columbia I studied Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies with some classwork in computer programming. I graduated a few months ago in May 2012. While competing in track at Columbia, I broke both the indoor and outdoor pole vault records and helped lead my team to our first conference championship in school history.

I spend my free time studying Arabic, attempting to write a novel, training for a half marathon, and working to earn a black belt in Krav Maga.

During college I entered the world of business social media feet first, working as a campus representative for Muscle Milk and then as a marketing intern for Foot Locker, Inc, which led me to seek out a job at Engage121 as a Client Support Specialist.

One thing you’d never guess about me: I can’t smell skunk. I was almost on the tv show Wipeout (but then I had to go to college).

Join me in welcoming Mareena and Sarah to our team by leaving a comment below.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Engage121, Uncategorized

Tagged Client Support, Social Media Support, Staff, Team members

Now that I have a Social Flow account, what do I do with it?

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Jennifer MacDonald| Leave a comment

written by:

Jennifer MacDonald

Tweet. Tweet. Tweet.

That’s right, start tweeting. You do not need to worry about bombarding your followers; SocialFlow does the scheduling for you. Compose your tweets using the resonance meter, which measures the effectiveness of your tweet depending on the keywords that are used. If your meter is in the red try putting more explanation and details in your tweet, as well as leaving at least 10 characters for someone to ReTweet your message. The meter should start to move towards the green, remember green means go!

Our clients who have used SocialFlow have seen great results. Our client’s followers have increased by 5.9% incrementally, (MOM). SocialFlow factors in when your audience is the most engaged and most active to determine the best time to send your tweet to help gain you more engagement with your followers. SocialFlow’s algorithm factors in many things, such as trending topics, audience, followers, historical data, and trends.

I have been using SocialFlow for the @engage121 twitter handle since April 4^th, my ReTweets in 30 days increased by 8%. My new followers are more focused around the audience I am targeting: Tech, CMOs, and Social Media Professionals. Before SocialFlow my new followers ran the gamut for the industries they were associated with, now I am seeing the conversations I was looking for.

The true value points in using SocialFlow to me is; 1. Not having to track when my audience is the most responsive, 2. Knowing what time of the week or day 3. And what content is relevant to them at that time. Then documenting those results in an Excel doc and trying to think about that, quickly, before scheduling each tweet. I put tweets in my SocialFlow queue and select a mandatory release time by the end of the hour, day, week, or by a set time. When I come into work the next day I will notice that my tweets were sent at 12:30am, 4:00am and other times that I would not have thought of. We do have many clients in the United Kingdom and other time zones. SocialFlow helps me keep ALL of my followers engaged.

How do you determine the best time to Tweet?

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Community Manager Tips, Engage121 Clients, Engage121 Product Features, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Uncategorized

Tagged Optimize your Tweets, social media optimization, SocialFlow, Twitter, Twitter Optimization

Engage and Reward your audience

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Jennifer MacDonald| 2 Comments

written by:

Jennifer MacDonald

In the first post in our Best Practices series for Optimizing your Social Media Publishing, number 5 states:

Engage & reward you audience: Interactions, contests, quizzes and conversation are all great ways to engage and reward your audience in Social Media. Use a content management and publishing applications like Engage121 to help you effectively and efficiently reach your community and prospects.

We all talk about engagement but how is it defined? How is it measured?

We define engagement as starting or promoting interaction around content or the brand. The interactions are measured in the number of clicks, replies, shares, likes and comments.

Simple Rules of Engagement

1. Do ask questions that revolve around relevant subject matter.
You know that this will help you build the right fan base who is interested in your area of business.

2. Don’t continuously blast a marketing message.
It’s not polite to speak at people at a party and only talk about yourself, why do it on social networks.

3. Do try to keep the conversation going.
If someone comments with a question or simply states an opinion, respond positively. Not only is it helpful to keep the conversation going, it’s a reward for the fan to hear from you. These days, it’s downright expected.

How do I Reward my audience? What is a reward in social media?

Any positive reinforcement for participation, something that makes the follower or fan feel good for interacting with the brand and promotes future interaction from them.

Examples of Effective Rewards
1. As you respond to fans, consistently engaging them, you will build loyal fans. When they are consistently engaging, one way to reward them is to give them an exclusive offer – something only they can receive. Ask them to DM you for a special discount code, gift card, or exclusive opportunity of some sort.

2. Do try to promote them as much as they promote your brand by engaging with you. Give a #FF shout out or mention them on Facebook, letting others know you value this individual will make them feel good (you should give them a heads up).

3. Don’t always give things away to your fans on Facebook by having them post, like, comment or share something on your wall, which is against Facebook’s terms of service. You’re always giving away free things and your number of likes is increasing, so you only post new content once a month. Your fans are only coming back to your page to get free stuff, not to consume and repurpose your content, but you don’t care because you have 5,000 likes for you page.

4. Do use all the tools available to you to. Create contests on Facebook to reward your community administered through a custom app, and get some promotion for yourself since apps now have like, and tweet buttons.

You know that rewarding your fans isn’t enough; you must give them something of value (exclusive content, a chance to display their own talents to your audience, information they can use) which will insure that you have a valuable community built around people who are interested in your industry, so you blog once a week and share it on your networks.

There are many unique ways a company or brand can engage with and reward their audience.

How have you done this effectively?

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Community Manager Tips, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Uncategorized

Tagged social media optimization, SocialFlow

Why should I let my franchisees use Social Media?

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Jennifer MacDonald| 2 Comments

written by:

Jennifer MacDonald

Why wouldn’t you? I’m going to guess that your first thought is brand management. That is understandable. But, you let your franchisees market their business now and you have brand guidelines for them to follow. You provide training when they first join your franchise network, and maybe you show them how to use your email marketing system. Why not add a little training about using Facebook for business as well?

If you don’t have the manpower for training, then make sure to add some guidelines to your brand policy. Point your franchisees in the right direction for support, such as Facebook’s Help Center or Twitter’s support center. List a few good blogs for them to follow in order to learn Best Practices, such as Spin Sucks, SmartBrief on Social Media, and Mashable.

A social media policy for your franchise network would be a great addition, not only for risk management but also to keep you, the franchisor, out of trouble. There are many great templates online that you can use as a guideline, which are free to download. I would recommend having your lawyer look over the policy before you distribute it to your franchise network.

After you’ve created a ground base for your franchise system to use Social Media you will begin to see many benefits.

1. Your brand name starts showing up in search more. Social Networks are now crawled by Google, even Pinterest boards are appearing in Search.

2. You now have one more reason why someone should buy your franchise instead of your competitor’s. Not only do you provide marketing training and materials, but Social Media has provided a great network for all of your franchisees. You will have a few who are having great success, which you can use as Case Studies to grow adoption among your system. As for your competitor who doesn’t let their franchisees use social media, it shows that they are not innovative and cutting edge. It really makes you wonder where their business will be in the future.

3. Your franchisees grow their network and sales increase. Social Media allows your franchisees to become better known in their local market, more easily interact with their clients, and leverage their current clients for referrals.

4. At the International Franchise Association conference you are already on board with Social Media and you answer questions that other franchisors have since they have not yet jumped on the social train. You look like a successful, brand-focused franchise system, and are admired by other IFA members.

The real benefits of letting your franchisees use Social Media will start to show in the near future, depending on how active they are, and that is when you will see the true pay off for your time and services.

Are you still hesitant?

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Facebook, Franchising, Franchising goes Social, Pinterest, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Uncategorized

Tagged Franchisees, franchising goes social, franchisors, Social Media for Franchising, social media in franchising

Taking Social Media Internally

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Jennifer MacDonald| Leave a comment

written by:

Jennifer MacDonald

There is an additional approach to Social Media for those of you who are concerned about privacy or do not want to jump on the Facebook train. Internal social networks are starting to become the next big thing for large corporations and they are generating huge ROI for companies when it comes to business growth that is generated from the ideas that are shared internally between executives.

USA Today wrote a great article Social media is reinventing how business is done, the article states:

“Companies are using social networks to build teams that solve problems faster, share information better among their employees and partners, bring customer ideas for new product designs to market earlier, and redesign all kinds of corporate software in Facebook’s easy-to-learn style.”

In today’s world many people are working remotely, and the new challenge for an organization is competing with different time zones, conference calls and hundreds of emails to get their attention. What if you want to have your executive leaders brainstorm with the customer service reps, who work on the floor, to think of new ways to serve your customers? Some of the reps may feel intimidated talking to a 30 year veteran leading the company, either in person or on the phone. How can you overcome this and get them to talk one on one? Knock down the barriers, Twitter’s claimed success. Create an internal social network for co-workers to share ideas, collaborate, and even conduct training webinars.

The benefits of an internal Social Network:

Having to read less email
Seeing the avatar of your co-worker for instant identification
Feeling open to express your ideas in a Forum or to the CEO and not needing to wait for your idea to work its way up the ladder. Also not having to risk your idea being taken by someone else on its way to the top.
SMS alerts to let you know that someone has sent you a message, which makes participation more easily adopted
Being able to voice your opinion, communicate or learn 24/7

The disadvantages of an internal Social Network:

The cost of implementation
Getting your employees and executives on board to use the application, and to see the benefits of doing so on a regular basis
Training your network on how to use the application

At Engage121 we have created an internal social network inside our social media management software. Our tool mirrors Twitter’s functionality and allows you to post status updates to your organization, send direct messages to co-workers or publicly reply to updates. Enterprise accounts can allow franchisees to send messages to the franchisor, or an agency can message their clients internally as well.

Here at Engage121 our internal social network, Connect121, is a huge benefit to connecting with my co-workers and updating them on marketing promotions that are beginning today by posting a public update. They can reply publicly or privately to ask me questions on how this will affect our clients. Emails are becoming a less successful way for me to communicate and Connect121 enables me to get in front of everyone in my organization immediately, due to SMS alerts that can be set up to let someone know that there is an update.

Do you have an internal social network in place at your organization?

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Engage121 Product Features, Facebook, Marketing, Social Customer Service, Social Media for Sales, Social Media Management, Twitter, Uncategorized, What's new - Marketing

Tagged engage121 internal social network, internal social media

How can I optimize Social Media to achieve better results?

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Jennifer MacDonald| Leave a comment

written by:

Jennifer MacDonald

I asked our Social Media savvy friends at SocialFlow to team up with me to write a series of blog posts, listing and explaining best practices for optimizing your social media publishing. Here are our TOP 8 master points for getting results from your business efforts in Social Media.

1. Start with great content: Align an ideal mix with your goals that may incorporate evergreen content, external resources, personality, questions, tips/how-tos, video, images and audio.

2. Don’t over-publish: Find the sweet spot of enough messaging to satisfy your audience but not so much that they get tired of hearing from you.

3. Master a content cycle: Keep a constant flow between listening, planning, creating, publishing and evaluating. All are important in social, and all will enhance your results.

4. Think outside your time zone: Publish in off hours and recycle occasionally to hit night owls and those on a different schedule. Remember, not all your fans and followers are online at the same time. It’s okay to recycle your message.

5. Engage & reward your audience: Interactions, contests quizzes and conversation are all great ways to do this. Use a content management and publishing application like Engage121 to help you effectively and efficiently reach your community and prospects.

6. Make sure your website encourages social sharing: Do you have easy social tools on site? Are you using Open Graph tags correctly?

7. Meet your audience halfway: Listen to them, and use the keywords and hashtags your audience is already using.

8. Save time through science and technology: Use the SocialFlow Optimized Publisher™ to streamline your publishing to Facebook and Twitter. Optimizing means you don’t have to guess when the best time to deliver your message is or how often.

Tune in next Tuesday as we go in depth to cover how to approach and execute these best practices one-by-one.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Community Manager Tips, Foursquare, Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Uncategorized

Tagged social media optimization, SocialFlow

29 restaurant brands in 29 days

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Engage121| Leave a comment

written by:

Engage121

We’re finally settling in after a successful time at the Multi Unit Franchise Conference. If you didn’t hear, Engage121 has become the social media management application of choice for the franchise industry. Even the IFA is a client of Engage121.

Franchise companies use Engage121 to increase local store traffic, find and reward loyal customers, increase repeat visits, recruit franchisees, and keep the brand message consistent across the social media landscape.

In fact 29 restaurant brands sign up with us in 29 days. Click here to read some of our franchise client’s success stories. Our food service clients range from TGI Friday’s, Golden Corral and Twin Peaks to dessert-treat specialists like Dairy Queen and Rita’s Italian Ice. We’ve just added more restaurant review sites to our application, such as Urban Spoon and Open Table.

If you liked to see how to increase your franchise business with social media, you should see a demo of Engage121. Click here for a free demo.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Why should I use SocialFlow to tweet?

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Engage121| Leave a comment

written by:

Engage121

In this webinar Michael Chin, VP of Marketing at SocialFlow, teaches you how SocialFlow works and shows you how it can effectively increase your engagement on Twitter.

SocialFlow publishes your content (tweets) at the optimal moment; maximizing clicks, retweets, mentions and follower growth. There are many simultaneous conversations occurring on Twitter, making it difficult, if not impossible to break through the white noise and deliver your content.

We believe SocialFlow, through Engage121, can help you accomplish that task. We are now offering SocialFlow for free to all Engage121 clients for a 3 month period starting May 1st, 2012 until July 31st, 2012. Clients please refer here to learn how you can activate SocialFlow or call your customer experience rep.

How do you determine the best time to tweet?