The Ocean Agency

Social media, and Twitter in particular, are big here in Chicago.

According to HubSpot’s “Top Twitter Cities” Chicago is number 3 in the world, behind London and Los Angeles.

Now, this Hubspot grade is not about the number of Twitter users, but based on the the number of “elite” Twitter users in an area.

What does this mean for your Chicago business? Connecting with those in the Chicago social media world is a great way to generate word of mouth about your business or product. Investing time in social networking is more and more important as social networking activity continues to grow. It has recently overtaken porn as the 1 activity for people on the web.

When you look at the top 50 Chicago Twitter users you see that they are not just marketers, PR people, or advertisers. They are the folks that are innovators,  journalists, publications, and brands that truly have a pulse on the City.

No longer is social media some new or experimental format, it is the media.

As business in Chicago, social media presents itself as a giant opportunity to expand your business. With an accurate plan and measurable objectives the time to act is now.

We give interactive marketing advice to companies in Chicago and all over the country. Of course, the Ocean Agency is more than happy to help with interactive marketing strategy, social media guidelines, and with social business design. This is an example of where we get our inspiration from:

Today, Cisco has released findings from its latest study about how business use social media to colloberate and interact with customers.

What is so special about this study?

1) The process:

The study utilized qualitative and not just quantitative methods. By using in depth interviews by graduate students and professors from universities all over the world, the data is espcially robust and reliable.

2) The findings:

Companies need to integrate their new media efforts with internal IT professionals, and that internal social media use needs to be more effectively organized and regulated.

IT professionals? Regulation of social media efforts? What does this mean for your business?

This post is part of the Guest Blog Grand Tour over at Life Without Pants – an epic journey of over 75 guest posts. Want to learn more about Matt Cheuvront & see how far the rabbit hole goes? Subscribe to the Life Without Pants RSS feed & follow him on Twitter to keep in touch!

Remember a couple years ago when the term “Social Media” was foreign to all of us. Now, everyone and their mother (literally – my mom friended me on Facebook last week) is on the bandwagon trying to get the hang of this Social Media thing.

It’s become much more than a tool to stay connected with your old high school buddies, or to update your friends on what you ate for dinner last night. Social Media has become a regular part of our daily lives, and for businesses, an integral part of their marketing and PR strategies.

So with everyone on board – how does a business stand out from the rest? At the end of the day – Social Media is about forging, nurturing, and promoting relationships. The one on one connection Social Media allows between businesses and their consumers are allowing small businesses to not only compete with larger corporations, but thrive and succeed where the competition falls short.

Here in Chicago – there are a lot of businesses who “get” Social Media –
Threadless
Foiled Cupcakes,
GroupOn and
Grubhub to name a few.

Our generation is wise to the corporate act – and very rarely do we buy into a straight up sales pitch. This is why, when it comes to online advertising, we’re seeing more affiliate geo-targeted campaigns rather than pure Google ads. Businesses that get it focus on building a relationship first, helping us realize that there is a need or want there, and then acting on it.

Mari Luangrath, founder of Chicago-based Foiled Cupcakes, connected with me as a friend. She followed me several months ago and since then, we’ve become good friends both on and offline. Not once did she sell me on her product – not once did she throw a sales pitch my way. She focused solely on building a genuine relationship and friendship with me. Now I’m days away from signing a contract to have Foiled Cupcakes cater my wedding.

So what can business learn from this? What’s the take away? Here are some basic takeaways to implement into your Social Media marketing strategy:

If you’re a business owner, social media is tantalizing. For free, you can set up a profile on a variety of different networks and have your products reach a larger customer base than ever before. All you have to do is make something viral, talk to the right influencers, and watch your sales time go through the roof!

While social media experts and consultants may tell you to “crush it” , become a “trust agent” or harness the power of the “groundswell” they generally underestimate  the time, investment, and strategy that goes into effective social media marketing, PR, and branding.

This post is inspired by an experiment by @VanessaMiemis, author of the emergent by design blog. She asked her followers to write a post, entitled What I’ve Learned About Twitter, and then create a discussion around it. This is my contribution.

I’ll break this post down into three sections: What I’ve learned about individual Twitter use, What I’ve learned about using Twitter for small business, and what I’ve learned about using Twitter for larger corporations and well known brands.

Facebook Fan Pages are becoming more and more ubiquitous, with over 300,000 businesses using the feature. These fan pages go above and beyond, and resemble full functioning websites more than a Facebook profile.

It is pretty clear that social media works for big brands. Just to name a few, we all admire the utilization of SM by Southwest, Jet Blue, Comcast, and Dell among a myriad of others.

But what about smaller companies? What about small and medium sized businesses that don’t have the brand awareness of a large corporation? Does it work for them?

I spend a lot of time convincing businesses that social media marketing is real and here to stay. But I’m pretty sure you all wouldn’t appreciate a sales pitch in a blog post, so instead I’m going to give 21 examples of small to medium sized Chicago businesses that are using social media effectively. In no particular order:

Foursquare is a location based social networking tool, with a competitive edge. Foursquare has generally been billed as the next “hot” social media platform, and partly based on this widespread hype early adopters have flocked to the service.

Foursquare takes aspects of many popular social networks and ads a very powerful force: Competition. Users compete by “checking in” at different locations to become the mayor of certain locations. So, if you go to your favorite bar or restuarant 5 times a week, and check in every time, you unlock badges and can essentially rule a spot.

We are big nerds readers here at the Ocean Agency. Yes, there is a recent blog post about how much Jacqueline loves her Kindle (proof of nerdiness). So to further our reputation as voracious readers and content lovers, here is some of the content that inspires us everyday.

You probably read some of these blogs already, and there may be some others that you haven’t heard of. They all get the Ocean Agency seal of approval however. We realize that there are thousands of great and worthy blogs out there to be on this list, these are just the ones that we pay special attention to. This is by no means a complete list, but we think it’s a pretty good one.

(one of our designers, Nick, reading away)

Every DJ has heard this: In this day and age, just about anyone can “DJ” a party. All you have to do is make a playlist and hit play, right?

WRONG.

Every social media marketer has heard this:  Anyone can be a social media marketer, all you need is a blog, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn account.

WRONG AS WELL.

Interestingly, the keys to being a successful DJ and social media marketer are surprisingly similar: