Category Archives: Social Media

Sports and Social Media – The New Progression

Analisa
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For the first time in Major League Baseball history, players on the field were able to interact with fans via social media platforms with updates, video and pictures during the All-Star Game activities. MLB were calling it the “Social Media Derby” and “one of the most immersive social media events in MLB history.” The MLB encouraged the players and fans to utilize the specialized hashtag on Twitter, #HRDerby. Even our hometown athletes like Hunter Pence of the Houston Astros took part in the new progression. There were 23 All-Star players that actively tweeted during the activities, which gained 121,428 new followers and the MLB Facebook account gaining 190% more “likes” during an 18-hour period. The MLB has hit it out of the ballpark with this one!

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A Social Mob: Using the Unexpected to Build Your Brand

Jaclyn
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Last Friday I attended the monthly Houston Social Media Breakfast, where people from all over the industry and all over Houston come to meet, network and learn.

This month’s breakfast, which focused on the mechanics and strategy of PR stunts, was nothing like I expected. In fact, a series of unexpected events infiltrated the breakfast – bringing life to the points made. Speaker Aimee Woodall had just begun when an attendee stood up and serenaded the restaurant, shortly there after “protestors” appeared outside with signs promoting “love and publicity stunts, not war,” and to cap it all off a lively, dancing bear caused quite a scene. Continue reading →

Texans Draft Party scores a touchdown using social media

Cindy
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My wife and I attended the Houston Texans Draft party last Thursday night, and we were quite impressed at how the Texans are using social media to interact with their fans. They have ads all over the stadium with their Facebook and Twitter information, but more importantly, they have someone who is actively posting to their Facebook and Twitter pages. Here is just one of their many that night:

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365 Reasons

Erica
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We are constantly looking for innovative ways to engage our clients’ fans online.  On January 1, we started a social media campaign for Fort Bend County called “365 Reasons to Move to Fort Bend.”  We challenged ourselves to post each day a reason that business owners would (and do) love Fort Bend –  job environment, quality of life, local company success stories and awards and recognitions the County has received.

Just as we suspected, there was plenty of material to draw from. Did you know that Forbes Magazine named the County the “Best Place to Get Ahead” in February 2010?  It’s easy to generate daily (and meaningful) content with so many accolades.

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The best part? By taking full advantage of tools like Twitter and Facebook, which are designed for daily engagement and conversation, we’ve seen real results. Since the start of the campaign our followership and feedback on Twitter and Facebook are on the rise!

And that’s reason #1 to think about your online strategy in terms of 365.

Rock the Vote!

Elisa
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Marketers and Geeks unite!

Every March, geeks around the world converge upon Austin, Texas for the annual SXSW Interactive Festival. It is a celebration of innovation, technology and new ideas. This year, I’m excited to have made the first cut as a panelist.

The working title for our panel is, “Cheerleader vs. Geeks. How Interactive Teams Can Bring Marketing and IT Together.” We’ll talk about how to foster collaborative relationships between Venus and Mars and provide an IT-to-Marketing language glossary.

To make the final cut, we need your votes to demonstrate interest in our topic – so click the graphic to read the full description and cast your vote. We also love feedback and want to see your comments!

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Interested in attending SXSW Interactive Festival? Check out their helpful website. Early registration ends September 24th. Hope to see you there!

What an amazing Shell Houston Open weekend!

Maggie
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At Marion Montgomery, we consider ourselves extremely lucky to have such awesome clients. This past weekend we got to work with the folks from Shell Oil, the Houston Golf Association and Redstone Companies on the Shell Houston Open — and were reminded yet again to thank our lucky stars!

The Shell Houston Open festivities kicked off last month with our first ever Shell Houston Open tweetup at Houston’s beloved Coffee Groundz. JR Cohen was our unofficial host with the most and the awesome PR folks from Shell gave away passes to the tournament. We grilled burgers for everyone and used the event to start spreading the word about all of the things the tournament does for Houston charities and the Houston economy as a whole.

On Tuesday night of tournament week, we got to attend the Legacy Dinner where Shell honors someone for their humanitarian and volunteer service. Last year, First Lady Barbara Bush was honored for her work fighting illiteracy, and this year it was none other than the legendary Emmitt Smith! Pat and Emmitt Smith Charities strives to create educational experiences and enrichment opportunities for underprivileged children. It was a super fun evening and one of our SHO Social Media Ambassadors, Monica Danna, even got in a high five with Emmitt! To top it off, ESPN’s Mike and Mike were there, because Shell had earlier auctioned off a chance to play with them in the Shell Houston Open Pro Am. The money raised by the auction — $48,500! — went to Mike and Mike’s favorite charity, the V Foundation for Cancer Research.

18th holeSo what was the actual tournament like for the MMI crew?

Leading up to and during the tournament, one of our main jobs was to be the liaison between the Shell Houston Open core charities and the media. MMIer Sarah actually wrote a post on the SHOandTell blog a few months ago about how fulfilling and moving it is to get to work with the charities. Did you know that since 1992, the tournament has raised almost 50 million for charities? Amazing.

During the tournament we worked directly with the producer Shell hired to cover the event, creating end-of-day recap videos that would be posted to ShellTube, the company’s internal YouTube-like site. I had a lot of fun working with Evan (the producer) on the videos. We focused on the charity aspect of the tournament as well as what the tournament brings to Shell as a company.

When we weren’t managing charity interviews or filming with Evan, we were walking from hole to hole and tweeting up a storm and running with all things social media.

A special thank you to Paul from The Loop Scoop, the CultureMap team, Monica, Chris Pitre and Fiery James for coming out to play with the MMI team. We had a blast with y’all!!

And to Shell Oil, Houston Golf Association and Redstone — thanks for hosting this amazing event that does so much good for so many! See you next year!

SXSW: Customer Service in a 140 Character World

Maggie
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Gone are the days of traditional customer support. In a world of Twitter, Facebook, and customer complaint sites like GetSatisfaction, customers are now jumping online to vent and publicize their customer support issues. But does it work for everyone and can complex customer service issues really be resolved within a 140…
Gone

TwitterTime for some more MMI live from SXSW Coverage! And it’s time to talk Twitter (and a few other things).

Let’s face it. Traditional customer support is out the window with the advent of sites like Twitter, Facebook and GetSatisfaction. Customers can hop online from anywhere and vent about products or services in real time. Since we encourage our clients to engage with their customers via these platforms, I jumped at the chance to attend Customer Service in a 140 Character World!

The panel was made up of Twitter customer service experts Frank Eliason with Comcast (@comcastcares), Lois Townsend (@ltownsend) with HP, Toby Richards (@TobyRichards) with General Motors and Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) with the Altimeter. The panel was moderated by  Caroline McCarthy.

What I liked most about the panel was that there were differing opinions about Twitter. There was a lot to take in! For example, Lois said that HP considers Twitter a way to connect but not converse. If someone complains about your product on Twitter, reach out to them and tell them where to go and be their virtual concierge. As soon as she was done with her explanation, Frank jumped in to totally disagree. If you follow @comcastcares, you know they definitely treat Twitter as a dialogue.

There was also great debate about who handles online customer service… Is it your customer service team or your PR team? There was a consensus among the panelists that BOTH teams need to be involved. Your customer service team needs to be reaching out to those customers that need help while your PR team can monitor the conversation going on about your product and offer relevant information to followers.

The question was asked; what happens when you get someone with a huge Twitter following and a vast number of fans tweeting super negative things about your brand?

The response from the panel was pretty clear. Eventually this is going to happen to your brand and it actually doesn’t take someone with a million followers to effect your brand. In social media, anything can go viral. Always treat people with complaints well. When something bad happens, leverage that by showing people you are responsive and open about the problem and willing to help get their issues resolved. This approach goes a long way to helping turn that unhappy customer into a super fan.

Frank did make one really great point during this part of the conversation. He said “transparency doesn’t always mean say yes to the customer.” He goes on and says that “transparency means that you are listening, responding and being open with your customers. You can’t give everyone free cable just because they complain about it online.”

Here are the biggest takeaways I got from the panel:

  1. It’s important to establish listening systems
  2. Empower your staff to act quickly by creating a best practices guideline
  3. Be genuine
  4. You still need traditional customer service measures
  5. It’s okay to stop responding when someone becomes a troll (some people are just mean)
  6. Integrate. Integrate. Integrate.
  7. Link to solutions
  8. Keep your eyes on where your customers are going
  9. BE THERE!

Tomorrow is the last day of SXSW so expect another post then. I’m going to be sad to say goodbye to Austin but I’m ready to be home in Houston soon.