Agency president, Carin Galletta and Angelsmith president, Eric Oliver were introduced to Romililly Pinot Noir during a “meeting” at a local Marin County bar. After tasting the luscious 2006, the partners vowed to obsessively track down as many bottles as possible resulting in a negotiation for Romililly’s last bottles in its library. The agency partners lost that battle, but won the business.

For more information on the young Sonoma County winemakers, check them out on Facebook.

Since 2006, DoubleTake Marketing has transformed baggage carousels at 23 North American airports with its patent pending AdSpressive Graphics and a variety of creative, out-of-the-box campaigns for clients including Toyota, Harrah’s, and Overstock.com.

In addition to reaching nearly one million travelers who check bags daily, the DoubleTake Marketing platform offers a breakthrough advertising placement that provides a potentially interactive experience for the viewer. A creative Harrah’s campaign transformed a baggage carousel at Kansas City International Airport into a larger-than-life roulette wheel, prompting travelers to bet with each other on which number and color their bag would land.

DoubleTake Marketing was created when one of the company’s founders, Michael Gleeson, was waiting for his luggage and realized that everyone was staring at the carousel. DoubleTake Marketing was created to capitalize on this dull waiting time by introducing vibrant, moving ads directly into consumers’ lines of vision, offering travelers unexpected boredom relief and advertisers prime access to an ideal, affluent demographic.

For more information on DoubleTake
LinkedIn
• Zack Clark, co-founder and CEO
• Michael Gleeson, co-founder
• DoubleTake Marketing
Flickr
• All Photo Stream

YouTube
• Durability
• Fox News
• Baggage Carousel Advertising Install Process

Facebook
• Facebook.com/DoubleTake Marketing

After more than four years of working on joint client accounts, Angelsmith, Inc. and Ink Foundry have created a strategic alliance. The companies will marry Angelsmith’s design and technology expertise with Ink Foundry’s marketing capabilities to create a powerhouse team.


Effective immediately, Eric Oliver, President of Angelsmith, will assume the role of Chief Technology Officer for Ink Foundry. In this new role he will advise clients on technologies that add value to their brands; develop websites, blogs and applications to help clients better access social networks; and recommend and build solutions to expand a brand’s digital footprint.


The strategic partnership allow Ink Foundry to offer a wide range of cutting edge, technology-based social media solutions to its clients including website development, platform-specific application development, banner ads, ecommerce, and comprehensive email marketing campaigns.


Oliver is a huge proponent of using open source, low cost, high quality technology to power small business websites.


“It doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg in order to look professional and function properly,” states Oliver. He adds, “For example, we can use the free WordPress blog engine to power corporate websites, which makes it easy for businesses to manage their sites, sets them up for future scalability, makes them visible on mobile devices, streamlines the search engine optimization process, and allows us to rapidly deploy in a matter of days.”


Founded in 2001, Angelsmith has a wide range of category experience, excelling in gaming, entertainment, travel & tourism, and restaurant industries. Some of the company’s clients include THQ, Disney, Namco Bandai Games America, and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Eric’s Bio

Please vote for the person who you believe deserves to get their social media career started as the next Ink Foundry team member.

We reduced the list down to three from our initial intent to have 10 for you to vote on.  In the past we’ve received hundreds of email resumes; but when we ask individuals to create a video resume, the applicants dropped significantly.  Our take on it?  When you ask people to do something exceptional, like create a video resume, only the exceptional step up.

Deadline: Voting will close at midnight on Friday, Feb 12.

Round up your friends, professors, family, fans and followers and get them to vote with you!

Lauren

Rachel

Tyler

PHOTO CREDIT: April Zosia

If you would like to know more about Ink Foundry’s social media marketing employee hiring process via video application, check out our original post, The Resume Is Dead. And let us know if you have any questions.

Viewing the videos on YouTube is getting us so much more excited about our next team member than a traditional resume application process.

HOW TO APPLY:

1. Create a maximum 3 minute (or less) video about how this is the perfect internship for you. Key items to include:
* Your name
* Your experience with social media
* Any work experience
* Education
* Your three best skills
* Why you want to work at Ink Foundry
* Three social media thought leaders or bloggers who you admire
* Demonstrate your creativity, sense of humor, fun spirit
* Describe your perfect work day
2. Upload your video to YouTube with the tag “Ink Foundry SMM Intern” in quotation marks.

# Leave a comment on this post with a link to your video and a link to three writing samples.
# Deadline: Upload your video and post your comment at http://www.inkfoundry.com/2010/01/the-resume-is-dead/by 5pm Pacific, Thursday, Feb 4th.

Click here for complete details on how to apply.

I am a voracious reader and would re-arrange deadlines to finish a compelling book! However, I am not a book reviewer/critic so this list includes my quick top line thoughts, not full blown reviews, you can find a ton of them on Amazon. I will be adding to this list regularly, and I’m always looking for the next great book, so feel free to share your favorites in the comments below.

The links are affiliate links back to Amazon.

Happy reading!

Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
This is a great, easy read for anyone interested in finding out more about social media who is looking for a good primer on the subject. You won’t find anything new in here if you or the person you are buying it for are familiar with social media channels. That being said, Brogan and Smith make social media sound so chimp simple, I do think everyone should read it.

Crush It Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, by Gary Vaynerchuk
Gary Vaynerchuk figured out how to take his personality and leverage social media tools to build his family’s retail wine business. At first I was a bit put off by his loud personality (you’ll “hear” it immediately when you start to read), but was won over by his work ethic. He’s 10,000 watts of entrepreneur. A great book for an entrepreneur, someone trying to build their personal brand or anyone even marginally interested in the how social media channels can help their small business.

The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited: Real Life Lessons in Word of Mouth Marketing, by Emanuel Rosen
I’ve heard Rosen speak at a couple of social media marketing seminars and he’s a marvelous story teller. This book continues in that tradition. This book was in the gift bag at the Word of Mouth Marketing Summit and I’m so glad that it was. A must read.

Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods, by Shel Israel
Again, like Emanuel Rosen, this is a guy who knows how to tell a story. Israel uses case studies to demonstrate how companies, many you’ll recognize, have leveraged Twitter to help their business explode.

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, by Seth Godin
It’s hard to beat Godin’s thinking on social media and how unconventional leaders can achieve unexpected greatness. He makes a compelling arguement that there are groups of people, “tribes”, who are looking for leadership. So stand up and lead. He section titled, “Should They Build A Statue of You” is of particular interest.

Crowdsourcing, Why The Power of the Crowd is Driving The Future of Business, by Jeff Howe
Jeff Howe is genius. Although I have to admit, I have a bias toward just about any reporter from Wired magazine. Howe coined the phrase “crowdsourcing” back in 2006 and his book explores how the collective brain-trust of the many can frequently achieve much more than the specialized few. Great storytelling. I had to pry this one from my boyfriend’s hands so I could read it first.

PHOTO CREDIT: “Naughty Librarians” by CheeseBikini

We really like that they identified Ink Foundry as having very strong ethics. We’re so glad they noticed because we think that is one of the things that sets us apart!

Many thanks to The KBuzz team for including us!

Link to the article: 8 Great Social Media Agencies

PHOTO CREDIT: Naama

It was probably the best investment of time and money that our agency made to give us a better understanding of social media marketing and how to integrate it into our offline activities. We have continued to learn from WOMMA through out the year, made some great contacts and new friends. My partner and I will be attending again this year and we hope to see you there. Please check out the Summit site for more information. See you in Vegas, baby!

PHOTO CREDIT: Daquella

1. Listen
   • Listening to conversations about your brand can help you identify issues before they get out of control
   • Listening to what is being said about your company, your competitors and your category can put the complaint in context and so you can respond appropriately.
   • Identifying the key members of the social network will also allow you to understand the general tone of the community to better respond to a negative social media post.
2. Be Visible In Your Community
   • If you’ve been participating in conversations and a bad review comes in, it’s much more likely that as a valued member of the social community, your response to the negativity will carry enough weight to stop it from spreading. The goal is to have an ongoing relationship with the community members.
   • Frequently, brands will ask us to fix a problem that has been gathering steam on social media channels, yet they have zero visibility in that particular social network. Jumping in at this point, unless done with extreme dexterity, can look defensive and generate additional negativity.

3. Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Help
   • If there is a negative review on a social media channel that you’re not comfortable responding to or just need to run your response by someone for help, do it before hitting the send button.
4. Be Prepared
   • Consider likely scenarios for your particular business and how you would respond to them in advance.
   • Preparation can help you respond quickly and control emotive issues.
5. Gather All The Facts
   • Before responding, make sure you gather all of the necessary information first. If it turns out you don’t have the information, this can cause you to lose credibility.
6. Respond Quickly
   • Every online community has its own action-packed timeline, so make sure you respond as quickly as possible.
   • Anecdotally, one bad review seems to encourage others to do the same.
7. Move The Conversation Off The Social Network, if necessary
   • Respond publicly so the community can see your brand takes complaints seriously.
   • If that doesn’t resolve the issue, then ask the person to contact you directly via phone or email so you can privately discuss any issues in greater detail.
   • Save the other members of the community from having to sort through the details in a flurry of posts.
8. You Don’t Have To Always Respond
   • Sometimes you just don’t need to go there.
   • Example: There is a restaurant reviewer on Yelp who posts negative reviews about nearly every restaurant he claims to visit. He recently gave one of our social media marketing restaurant clients a bad review. We choose not to respond, but our advocates did. And this is the beauty of social media: your fans frequently come to your aid.
   • It’s challenging not to fire back at someone who is posting negative comments about your beloved brand.
   • You will need to quickly identify if it’s a legitimate complaint or a lone person with issues taking their bad day out on you.
   • Ask yourself, will responding be worth your time and benefit the brand? Make an enemy into a friend? Each situation is different and only you and your social media team know what’s best for your brand.
9. Review Before Sending
   • Although your time is extremely limited, it’s critically important to review what you write before sending it out.

For the complete article: Responding To Negative Social Media Posts

Many people are asking why we need Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines for adequate disclosure for the relationship between brands and bloggers in the first place. The primary benefit of disclosure is trust. If a blogger doesn’t respect his/her readers, and readers don’t trust the blogger, then guess what? Readers will stop visiting the site. Brands need to be equally upfront to avoid any negative repercussions from consumers. And consumers need to be able to rely on what they read in a blog. And do you really want to have a relationship under false pretenses?

The Word Of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) recently hosted a webinar to discuss the pending FTC regulations on adequate disclosure when any type of compensation is exchanged between brands, bloggers and other online influencers.

WOMMA, has initiated a project, The WOMMA Disclosure Project, that is defining the parameters by which brands, influencers and bloggers disclose their “material relationship”. For brands this means developing a core set of principles which guide relationships with bloggers and influencers. Bloggers and other digital influencers will also need to create and clearly communicate when they have accepted compensation.

The WOMMA webinar panel included Paul Rand, WOMMA-President Elect and President/CEO of Zocalo Group who served as moderator; John Bell, WOMMA President and Managing Director at 360° Digital Influence; Jory Des Jardin, Co-Founder and President, Strategic Alliances at BlogHer; Sean Corcoran, Interactive Marketing Analyst at Forrester Research; Tom Collinger, Chair of the Integrated Marketing Communications program at the Medill School Northwestern University; and Anthony DiResta, WOMMA’s general counsel and partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP.

Another benefit to both brands and bloggers, according to Jory Des Jardin, companies that use bloggers who openly disclose the relationship between themselves and the brand will rise to top with customers. Based on her experience that she shared on the WOMMA webinar, the bloggers who have been fully transparent with readers about their relationships with brands, have witnessed increased traffic to their site.

Overview
I’ve highlighted some key points that stood out to me on the webinar, but I encourage you to check the Ethics Review on the WOMMA site and the resources listed at the end of the article.

For both brands and agencies, the pending FTC guidelines most likely will not represent a dramatic departure from current standard operating best practices. According to Jory Des Jardin, disclosure for review blogs is similar to advertorial disclosure from the traditional media world. Traditional media outlets such as daily newspapers, television and radio all employ transparent practices regarding disclosure and the FTC is expected to bring its policies up to date with current technology.

Four Top Takeaways:

• Disclosure on both the brand and the digital influencer sides should be necessary and non-negotiable.
• There will be an expectation of brands to monitor activity. Advertisers/brands could be held liable for bloggers who fail to disclose.
• The “influencer” who has or will receive some form of incentive/payment/gift has an obligation to their readers to disclosure the relationship.
• If money or a product is either loaned or given with out the expectation of being returned (kind of hard to sample and then return that bottle of wine!), then it needs to be disclosed in an obvious location on both the brand and the influencer site.

Nine Best Practices:

Any list of best practices developed now, will invariably have to continue to evolve with the technology and current thinking. We will continue to update this list of social media marketing disclosure best practices as they become available.
• For The Brand
  • Publish a clear, detailed ‘terms of engagement on the website, brand microsite or campaign site.
  • Make a commitment to work with third party influencers who adhere to clear disclosure best practices by creating a one page influencer agreement that requires bloggers to, as John Bell writes, “state their true opinion.”
  • Request that all third party influencers link back to the brands ‘terms of engagement’ policy.
  • Create site badges for recurring programs.
• For The Influencer
  • If brands don’t have a ‘terms of engagement’ for working with bloggers, then ask that they create one. It doesn’t have to be the Magna Carta, a simple one page document will do.
  • Commit to working with brands who adhere to standard disclosure best practices.
  • Disclose in each post.
  • Create a policy that is visible and easy to read on your website, blog or Twitter account.
  • Include brand affiliation and /or your likelihood that you will receive compensation in the future in your bio
    • My fantasy disclosure endorsement: “I receive a new pair of Gucci boots each Fall and wear them proudly for all to see. I received them from the company and I write about them not because they were free, but because I love them from the bottom of my soul.” Gucci, are you listening?

  Resources

  • John Bell’s blog – http://johnbell.typepad.com/weblog/2009/09/best-practice-disclosure-what-brands-should-do-and-why.html
  • Izea’s Disclosure Policy Generator- http://disclosurepolicy.org/generator/generate_policy
  • MommyDaddy Blog – a good example of both a site wide disclosure and a brand disclosure on the same page, plus a nifty coding system- http://mommydaddyblog.com/disclosure/
  • WOMMA – http://allthings.womma.org/
  • Blog With Integrity – http://blogwithintegrity.com/
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