Huggrz Boot Wraps – a new fashion accessory that customizes your boots – contacted DKD New Media Strategies last summer and we’ve spent the last six months taking Huggrz from startup to the talk of the Sundance Film Festival and features on ABC World News Tonight and the Huffington Post. Here are a few of the takeaways from how we helped this B2C client:

1. Focus on both the online and in print at the same time, all the time.

When Huggrz first engaged DKD New Media last summer, despite our online expertise, we directed them to immediately focus on print media and introduced them to the appropriate PR team. Print has a longer lead time and even last summer we were late in the game for most magazines. The online gift list opportunities would come along in October-December (including a spotlight on ABC World News Tonight’s Made in America Gift List). Online and print media also have very different functions. Online promotions drive customers to purchase from your site. Print and television tend to drive individuals to retailers. We documented this via Google Analytics – after any print or TV exposure, we saw hits to our “store locator” page increase. Whereas, during online campaigns we could track the increase in online sales and which sites were referring the traffic.

2. New products require customer education.

Huggrz Boot Wraps (and accessories) allow you to style your existing boots. This is a new concept and we needed to spend a lot of the time educating the audience as to not only what they were, but why there were different from our competitors. This meant that visuals were extremely important. Here are some of the ways we flooded the web with visuals:

• YouTube
• Facebook
• Blog
• Twitter
• Polyvore
• Pinterest (launching our own page soon with the new Fall line, but other folks are already pinning away).

3. Understand your keywords and the importance of a blog.

One challenge we had was with the name “boot wraps.” Potential customers (and competitors) have called them, and similar products, everything from leg warmers to boot covers to boot toppers. We created a blog strategy where articles encompassed the keywords that potential customers might use and established the differences between our brand and others. We used tracking software on blogs and google analytics to monitor and adjust as necessary. We took care to not “keyword stuff” but to create engaging content that also met SEO standards.

4. Know your market(s).

For Huggrz Boot Wraps, we had a couple of distinct audiences: fashion-forward teens and 20&30somethings and the more practical 40+ crowds. When you market online you can test different messages for different groups. We quickly discovered that teens preferred the Bennington collection of knit and sweater boot wraps as well as the Santa Fe animal prints and the 30 and 40+ crowds loved the Aspen collection’s faux fur boot wraps. Throughout the year, we successfully used Facebook and Google Ads to test messaging and track demographic response.  Also note that we even had to create different policies for marketing to teens online.

5. Start building an online presence ASAP

As a new fashion brand, Huggrz needed to have an online footprint to establish credibility. We focused on building the Huggrz Facebook page through sweepstakes and targeted ads. We knew that we had to hit a couple thousand fans quickly in order for Huggrz to no longer look like a small mom and pop shop.  We also added videos and images to Goolge, Bing and other search engines via YouTube and online web releases.

Finally, we made strategic use of flash sales and blogger giveaways – both were geared to not only move product but build an online presence with our targeted markets.

6. Make sure your social media strategy supports your overall business development strategy.

As a fashion accessory company, we knew that celebrity associations would be key to distinguishing Huggrz from the competition. We focused on gift bags (our first was the CMA Country Awards), gifting suite opportunities we discovered online (BravoTV, Sundance Film Festival and the Oscars). As they were happening in person we promoted these opportunities online with a mix of tweets, web releases, blog items and videos. In addition, when Huggrz was spotlighted anywhere online, our online marketing team stepped right in to promote these opportunities.

7. With a seasonal product you need an off-season strategy.

Selling winter accessories in the summer direct to consumers isn’t easy. This is why the next 6 months will be focused on promoting the president of Huggrz, Deb Miller. Fortunately for us, the Huffington Post felt that Deb was worthy of a feature story that had over 1.7 million views and sent tens of thousands of hits to our website.

Here at DKD New Media we don’t put “social media” in a box and label it “marketing.” We believe social media can be integrated throughout your entire sales cycle. Here’s a quick preview of how we approach social media when it comes to improving your bottom line. Please feel free to contact us for more information.

Last month, we wrote about marketing to teens on Twitter and how to reach them through promoted tweets, accounts and trends.  Ironically, we ended up proving our point that paying a Kardashian thousands of dollars to tweet about your product might not be the worst idea. Simply by mentioning a Kardashian in that blog post title, we made that article one of our most popular on the search engines.

But what should you do if you can’t afford a Kardashian for a Twitter promotion? On Facebook, to interact with teens who don’t already “like” your Facebook Page, you can employ ads targeted specifically at teens (as long as they comply with local laws with regard to advertising to minors). Twitter, on the other hand, provides direct access to Twitter conversations, provided that the user does not protect their tweets.

Most companies monitor Twitter for mentions of their brand.  So, if your target demographic includes teenagers, and a trendsetting teen mentions your product, it’s a home run!  But, before you go in and hijack that conversation, you might want to take a moment and consider your best course of action.

Below is an example of a teen tweeting about my client, Huggrz Boot Wraps.

Yowza! We love to see these. And, it’s completely tempting to retweet it or jump in and engage.  But, hijacking teenage conversations might not be the best plan of action.  After all, these are teens. When they use Twitter, it’s to communicate with their friends, not with grownups.  

Seeing teenaged girls discuss Huggrz was great for market research, but we weren’t comfortable advising our client to directly engage with them. This is why we came up with some guidelines for interacting on Twitter both in general, and with regard to minors.

Twitter Protocol Policy

1. For original tweets, stick to a mix of topics that would be interesting to your target market, mixed in with a couple of promotional tweets per week.
2. Stay away from making any political commentary. If it’s a big news story, pose a question, but don’t express an opinion (See Ashton Kutcher on Penn State fiasco)
3. Before you RT someone else, preview/test any and all links.
4. Use #hashtags judiciously.
5. ALWAYS respond if someone uses your @name or puts your brand or product reference in a #hashtag.
   • If it’s a rave, RT and thank them!
   • If it’s a complaint, thank them for alerting you and ask them to DM their contact information so that you can respond to them personally.
   • If you are running some sort of contest/discount code, then share that information.
   • If you are going to be running discounts in the future via Twitter or your Facebook page, then recommend they join the Facebook page or follow you on Twitter.
6. If someone mentions your brand but it’s NOT addressed in a way to get the brand’s attention (i.e. with an @ or #), then consider the following.
• If it’s a teenager, do NOT jump in the conversation without running it by decision-makers.  Most teens SHOULD be using their protected tweet settings, and if they are not, they often think they are.
• If it’s an adult or someone in the industry, it is more likely that responding would be acceptable.
• If someone uses a #hashtag that is relevant to your product or company, then it is ok to jump into the conversation (this would be fine for any age).  A #hashtag is an indication that they want their statement to be discovered in the public twitterverse.

Any social or new media strategy or protocols are going to have to evolve with the medium. While the above represents our initial policy with regard to customers, especially teens, on Twitter, it is possible this will change as teens get more sophisticated in their use of Twitter.  Have you had success with engaging teens on social media? Tell us about it.

If you need help creating social media policies for your company, please contact us.

It’s always scary to find a recording of a speech you made over 2 years ago. Especially when you make predictions about technology. But sometimes they end up being better than you remembered.

Below is a video of a talk I gave to Sidwell Friends Alumni about Generation Y in the workplace.  Fortunately for me, most of my predictions came true including:

1. the demise of MySpace;
2. corporate blogging would be the norm;
3. grownups would take over Facebook and the kids would go elsewhere;
4. an increase in working from home; and
5. the attraction of cluster housing around transportation and light rail.

Good thing on the last one because that exactly describes one of DKD New Media Strategies’ clients: Southfield in Weymouth, MA.

Diane K. Danielson presents Generation Y in the Workplace:

Generation Y in the Workplace – Part 2

Generation Y in the Workplace – Part 3

Generation Y in the Workplace – Part 4

Diane Danielson is the principal consultant at DKD New Media Strategies LLC and is available to speak on topics related to social media, online marketing, Generation Y and the workplace.

Related articles

• DKD New Media’s Diane Danielson to speak on social media in October (dkdnewmedia.com)
• Employee Entitlement Attitudes and Generation Y in the Workplace (themarlincompany.com)

A quick Google search of “Teens and Twitter” will yield plenty of articles about how teens do not use Twitter. Yet, most of that data is outdated as over the summer of 2011 teens have started finding their way onto the Twitterverse.

Personally, I noticed a sudden influx of high school kids joining en masse over the summer. If this is a national trend, it’s likely that the social media studies have yet to capture this momentum.  The PEW Internet & American Life project has the latest information (published this month) about teens on twitter and the percentages are still low – 10-20% adoption by teens –  but with some interesting demographic differences.

In contrast to social network sites, Twitter use among teens is marked by much more variation between groups. Specifically, girls are twice as likely to use Twitter as boys (22% of online girls use Twitter, compared with 10% of online boys), and black teens are three times as likely to be Twitter users than either white or Latino teens (34% of online black teens use Twitter). Twitter adoption is especially low among younger boys, as just 2% of online boys ages 12-13 are Twitter users.

Click here to read more.

Clearly teens (and tweens) have to be using Twitter because how else can one explain the 14 million Twitter followers for Justin Beiber and 11 million for Kim Kardashian? Or the fact that the PSATs was a top trending topic in October.  Of note, too, is the increased adoption rate of Twitter by black teens. This is likely due to Twitter being easily accessed from any cell phone, even non-smartphones; and in line with demographics of older users, where African-American populations are more likely to use Twitter than other social networks.

Perhaps Twitter was inevitable for teenagers as parents took over Facebook. However, the biggest attraction seems to be the ability to “text” multiple friends at once. Many teens are using their privacy settings to keep their Tweets protected. Still, there are just as many who aren’t. This means that kids are publicly posting information including names, ages, and locations; geographic and date-stamped photos; and information that would make a college admissions officer or future employer blush.  For more about the downside of Twitter and teens, click here.

So now we know that teens are on Twitter, how do you market to them?  

Twitter has introduced advertising and here’s a brief overview of the options:

Promoted Tweets

Through Twitter, you can create tweets that will be featured throughout the site. Promoted tweets are triggered by key word searches and can target followers similar to the ones you already have. You can also geo-target Twitter users. Promoted tweets are Cost-Per-Engagement. This means you only pay when people interact with your Promoted Tweets by ReTweeting, favoriting, and replying. How much does that cost? It varies, but when you visit the Twitter advertising site the minimum monthly budget they are seeking is $5,000.

Promoted Accounts

Twitter also has promoted accounts that appear under the recommendations of “who to follow.” In this case, you pay by the follower.  It’s likely to cost a couple thousand per month (like the promoted tweets), but this approach may be more comparable to Facebook ads where you are generally paying between $.30 and $1.00+/like.

Promoted Trends

Want to show up as a promoted trend on Twitter? Be ready to shell out about $120,000/day.

Third-Party Sponsored Tweets

Through sites like Sponsored Tweets, Adly, MyLikes, and TwtMob. you can sponsor celebrities, like the aforementioned Kim Kardashian, to tweet about your product. While SponsoredTweets doesn’t give a price for Kim, her lesser-known sister, Khloe is asking for $8,000+ per tweet. While you can also sponsor non-celebrities with large followings, you should expect to pay a couple thousand for an effective campaign.

Based on the (unofficial) research we’ve been doing about teens online, it appears that celebrity-sponsored tweets could be the best option to reach them.  However, for most start-ups and mid-sized businesses, $5,000+/month on a single marketing campaign (or Tweet) is a pretty steep price, especially for a pilot test.

This means smaller businesses must engage teens as they discover them on Twitter. We are working with clients to do this. But teens are fickle and, as a precaution, we’ve created some specific social media guidelines for engaging with teens on Twitter.

Stay tuned for more about marketing to teens through social media!

Diane K. Danielson is the principal consultant with DKD New Media Strategies, LLC based in the Greater Boston area. She works with B2B and B2C companies develop online marketing programs that fit their budget and meet their business development goals.

Related articles

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• 6 Tips for Using Promoted Tweets to Boost Your Brand’s Visibility (searchenginewatch.com)

This summer my family was playing a home version of the popular game show, Family Feud. You know, the one where families play against each other by trying to guess the most popular answers to a series of questions. (i.e., see below for a funny clip of the show where the question is “what’s something that’s passed around?”).

One of our family members had a hard time with the game because he wanted to always choose the “right” answer. Yet, the best answers are not always the most accurate or most clever, they are what the AVERAGE person would say.

This is similar to how you should think about local SEO. What would your average client or customer Google to find you or a service or product you provide. Are they going to put in “Italian food + your town” or “Pizza + your region” when they search online? Your goal is to make sure your site shows up for both searches.

This was a situation we had to deal with for a new client. HUGGRZ™ Boot Wraps are a new fashion accessory that allows you to update the look of your favorite boots (Uggs, heels and even cowboy boots). We call them boot wraps, and part of our strategy is to influence the use of the term “boot wraps.” While this is our “right” answer, some potential customers call them boot covers, boot sleeves, and/or boot sweaters. Or course, we want them to search for “boot wraps,” but we’re working to ensure that those who use the other names can still find HUGGRZ.

Even our own site needed to pass the Family Feud/local SEO test.  While we have virtual team members, we base out of a very small town in Massachusetts.  The chance of someone looking online for an “online marketing consultant” in “Cohasset” is minimal, so we had to make sure our site would appear if someone searched for “online marketing consultants in “Greater Boston” and on the “South Shore,” as they encompass larger areas and are probably what most people would search for on Google.

DKD New Media Tip: Play Family Feud with your employees and team. Consider what the top answers would be if you asked 100 people in your target market “What would you Google to find us?” Survey says …

If you need help with Local SEO, please give DKD New Media Strategies, LLC a call at 781-923-0767 or contact us online.

Related articles

• Which online business directories are worth it? (dkdnewmedia.com)
• Why isn’t my business showing up on Google Places? (dkdnewmedia.com)
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We don’t question that there are superstar interns out there (we like to think we were ones once, too). We just want our clients to consider the following before entrusting or expecting an intern to develop an effective online marketing strategy simply because they have a Facebook personal profile or a Twitter account.

1. Social media is a tactic not a strategy.  You need to have  an overall business and marketing strategy in place before doing social media outreach. Social media should be used to support or expand your traditional plans not replace them.
2. Social media works best when focused on a specific niche or target market.  Avoid the spray and pray approach. Target a niche that is your most profitable or that you want to grow. Focusing on that will not only result in better content, but in better engagement with potential clients and customers.
3. Social media is for engaging with customers and potential customers, not for selling. Start the conversation online but take the sales pitch offline (b2b) or send them to your website (b2c).
4. Social media is more like networking than marketing.  It’s a way to build relationships over time. It’s not a one-way push of information unless you are in the business of publishing news headlines.
5. Social media is not technically free: it takes either time or money. Your rewards are directly related to the time or money you put in.
6. Social media grows exponentially because it works on leverage. i.e., it’s easier to go from 1,000 to 3,000 “likes” on Facebook, than it is from 300 to 1,000.  This is due to a ripple effect of the number of people who can see actions others are taking on line.
7. Social media works best when you use at least one platform to produce original content. Employ automation wisely.
8. Social media is not a quick fix. It’s about building relationships, not a one-night stand.
9. Social media needs to be a company-wide effort, not rest in a corner of marketing.  See our Social Media and the Sales Cycle post.
10. Social media can have some legal ramifications.  Whether it’s copyright infringement, violation of company policies (or lack of a social media policy), brand monitoring, or client complaints, you might not want to hand over total control of your online reputation and marketing to the boss’s college-aged nephew.

For more about social media download our eBook or give us a call at 1.781.923.0767.

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Each month, I like to join a few other social media users and folks who want to learn more, for what we call a TweetUp. A TweetUp is a fancy name for a “MeetUp” or get together. The “Tweet” is a reference to Twitter which is how we advertise it. It also is a nod to the inclusiveness of the get-together. If you are calling your event a TweetUp and posting it on Twitter, it is assumed that it is open to everyone interested in the subject matter.

Here in the Greater Boston area, there are lots of TweetUps. I happen to attend the South Shore TweetUps, which are held monthly on the first Wed. of the month and hosted by @ReikoB and friends.  The next one is on Nov. 2, 2011.  Click here for more details.

Last month, I was the special guest and I thought it would be fun to pose some Trivia questions to spark the discussion.  How many of these did you know? (answers below).

1. What is the friend limit on Facebook?
2. Name the three founders of Twitter (up to 3 points).
3. What was the name of the company where the founders worked when they came up with the idea of Twitter?
4. What is the most popular brand on Facebook in 2011?
5. What was the first # ever used on Twitter?
6. What years were LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter launched? (up to 3 points)
7. Who has the most followers on Twitter?  Katy Perry, Barack Obama, Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian or Justin Beiber?
8. Who has the most fans on Facebook?  Shakira, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Eminem, or Michael Jackson?
9. In which Olympics did the Winklevoss Twins compete?
10. Where was FourSquare officially launched?
11. How do you get to be a “Mayor” on FourSquare?
12. What is the name of Mark Zuckerberg’s dog? Bonus point if you know the breed.
13. What was the most tweeted event so far in history (measured in tweets per seconds)?

Answers below:

1. 5,000
2. Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams
3. Odeo (a podcasting company).
4. Coca-cola
5. #Barcamp – Aug. 23rd, 2007
6. LinkedIn: 2003, Facebook: 2004, Twitter: 2006
7. Lady Gaga (followed by Justin, Barack, Katy, Kim)
8. Eminem (followed by Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson, Shakira)
9. 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics
10. SXSW
11. Mayorships are calculated based on the most *days* with check-ins in the past 60 days
12. Beast. Puli.
13. The Women’s World Cup final between Japan and the United States set the record for tweets per second, eclipsing the wedding of Prince William and Kate and the death of Osama bin Laden (the latter wins for most tweets over an extended period of time).

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This week we saw yet another controversy about a brand being trashed on Twitter.  In this case, Nancy Lee Grahn from the soap opera, General Hospital, claims that their wardrobe head was looking to buy wedding dresses for the show and was refused entrance to a Vera Wang bridal boutique because the soap opera watching crowd was not their targeted market. Below is the beginning of the tirade of tweets.

Misspellings aside, as Nancy rightly points out in her longer post on the topic, a brand that outfits Kim Kardashian and sells via Kohl’s should not pretend to be above daytime television viewers. Unfortunately, she is basing her accusations on what may have been one employee’s representation of the brand and blasting that out to thousands of people.

What can we learn from this?

• People may talk about your brand on social media whether you are there or not. In almost every case, it’s best to know what’s being said and have an opportunity to defend yourself.

Kudos to Vera Wang for not jumping in and creating a nasty twitter battle directly with @NancyLeeGrahn. That never works out well for anyone. Hopefully they have contacted her directly and made an attempt to resolve this privately.  However, because they have a Twitter following 5x the size of Nancy’s they are now doing a nice job of putting out messages, both detailing and embracing their support of all television viewers, and even following up with examples of dressing daytime celebrities like Lisa Rinna.

• You don’t control your brand. You are what the market says you are. 

Yesterday, I caught a talk on exactly this topic by Peter Shankman (@petershankman) at the Diva Toolbox Conference where I was also speaking. He was promoting his new book, Customer Service: New Rules for a Social Media World and discussed how he once created a networking site for airline flights, but after a Lisa Loeb reality show decided to use it as a dating site, he quickly changed his marketing and his business model to become the brand that the market wanted.

Similarly, until recently, I owned a company called the Downtown Women’s Club, which, for 13 years, focused on creating networking opportunities for women. When we launched in 1998, the focus was on young women in corporate America struggling with maternity leave issues and hitting the glass ceiling. Over the years, I kept close track of the website demographics via tools like google analytics, Facebook insights, and online surveys. By 2007, our membership had completely transformed. The average age of new members was closer to 50 than 30, and it was now mostly women looking to learn technology, find second careers and own their own businesses. We had two choices: Market to younger audiences again, or change our programming. We chose the latter.

• You can use social media to influence, but not control your brand.

Just because you can’t use a tool or platform to control something, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it at all. DKD New Media fashion client, Huggrz Boot Wraps, is introducing a new fashion accessory (wraps that you slip onto your old Uggs and other boots to update them to this year’s fur, fringe and sweater boot trends). While we can’t mandate what the market calls the product – boot covers, boot wraps or something else – by jumping into the conversation early via traditional public relations and social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogging and blogger outreach), we can certainly influence the market using keywords effectively and appropriately.

P.S. I love the latter part of this video where the YouTuber added a scene from Julia Roberts’ 2010 film Valentine’s Day where she still remembers the store that made a “Big mistake. Big. HUGE!”  Although I really wish people would pay better attention to their spelling online (note the title of the video).  More about how poor grammar and spelling can affect your online brand in a future post.

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In 2010, DKD New Media began working with BASIQUES, a high-end fashion boutique with store locations in Boston and Houston to launch an online sales and marketing program. Owner Sheri Falk’s fashion philosophy is that you only need 10 investment pieces (“Basiques”) plus a few underpinnings and accessories in order to have a complete wardrobe. Ideal clients are businesswomen who travel and can appreciate owning an entire wardrobe that fits in a single suitcase. The challenge was to make sure these busy women find out about this fabulous and versatile line of fashion and then to be able to buy it no matter where they live, work or play.

Basiques engaged DKD New Media to develop an online store and a social media strategy. This involved:

• building an e-commerce site (www.Basiques.com)
• creating a blog for SEO/social media purposes
• copywriting for the site and blog
• developing a Facebook page and Twitter account
• writing a Social Media Roadmap to promote Basiques and Sheri Falk as fashion expert
• producing two marketing videos: Start Your Investment Wardrobe and Stress-Less Dressing: The Perfect White Shirt
• drafting online press release assistance
• publishing an eBook on Stress-Less Dressing
• introductions to fashion websites, bloggers & collaborative partners

Within 14 days of launching the social media strategy, Basiques had over $1,000 in online sales.

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