2011-horoscope

Happy New Year Capital District and beyond!

Social media marketing tied with its cousin, online viral public relations, when used in the business world is basically a brand having a conversation with its perspective buyer. In other words, it’s public relations by another name. As with most public relations, it is best to work with a professional when developing and implementing your plan….and you do need a plan!

Social media can take many different forms including Internet forums, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures, and video. Technologies include: blogs, music and picture sharing,, wall-postings, e-mail, instant messaging, crowd sourcing, and voice over IP to name a few. Examples of social media applications are:

·    “Facebook” (social networking)
·    “Google Groups” (reference, social networking)
·    “Wikipedia” (reference)
·    “Linkedin” (social networking)
·     “Yahoo Buzz” (social network aggregation)
·    “Digg” (bookmarking)
·    “YouTube” (social networking and video sharing)
·    “Del.icio.us” (bookmarkin)
·    “Second Life” (virtual reality)
·    “Flickr” (photo sharing)
·    “Twitter” (social networking and microblogging)
·    “Tenporium” (social polling and consumer product reviews)
·    Microblogs such as  “Jaiku”, and “Pownce”

Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like “FriendFeed”, “MyBlogLog” and “Plaxo.”

Viral Public Relations is a direct-to-consumer form of public relations that creates news stories online for consumers to find your products, services, or cause. Your audience becomes the millions of people with internet connections, access to search engines, and RSS readers. This involves making sure your press releases are posted online to all online news sources, are replete with keyword-rich content, have links imbedded to deliver potential customer to landing pages on your Web site, are optimized first searching and browsing, have social media tags for “Technorati’, “Digg” and “Del.icio.us”, and drive people into the sales process. This will fundamentally change the way you use news releases and drive buyers straight to your organization precisely at a time that they are ready to buy.

So, now that your head is spinning with terms, jargon, site names and information, you must to be asking yourself, “How can this help me?” Let’s get down to brass tacks here. The insurance industry has always been about networking. Get your cards in front of enough people, shake enough hands, eat enough rubber chickens, and use those relationships to turn them into clients. Now social media is the great frontier of networking. You can get your name and company in front of more people in a week than all you would at all the rubber chicken dinners you could attend in Piscataway, New Jersey in five years.

Right now there are more than 500 million active users on Facebook and 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day. The average user has 130 friends. People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook  and there are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. The potential for businesses to develop relationships within this network is incredible.

You have to be asking yourself, “How do I keep on top of it all?” New internet tools are becoming available almost on a daily basis but not all tools are suited for every company. There is such a thing as bad public relations.  This is where bringing in a profession can help you wade through all the options available to your company to choose the ones that are best suited for your needs. In addition to developing your social media and viral public relations strategy, a professional can handle all the individual tasks that make up your plan. They would create an integrated approach that will provide essential accountability throughout your public relations program and prevent your campaign from drifting off course.

At the NewCom Group we spend countless hours a day researching numerous social media sites and viral public relations techniques to find what fits our clients best. Not every site is perfect for every client and one of the biggest mistakes made in social media marketing is not knowing the culture of the site you are joining. This could end up with you being ignored at best and banned at worst! You have to remember this is SOCIAL media marketing. Your message needs to have a social context and not be pushy or overtly sleazy. Many other mistake made by businesses attempting this for the first time include, being fake in any way, not listening to the group, being oblivious to formal and unwritten social rules, and approaching all social media channels at the same time.

Hopefully I haven’t scared you away from social media, but have given you a healthy respect for what seems to be very simple but is actually very complicated. If done correctly, social media and viral public relations can provide your company with access to clients at a relatively low cost compared to other mainstream forms of advertising. But once again, it does require planning.

As you go through the process you have to plan out what you want to inform your prospects about and where it is best to find them. For example, if you sell wedding insurance you should look at sites like “Wedding Wire” or “Bridezilla” and work within those communities. Alternatively, if you sell car insurance you can look to the many car enthusiast sites, forums and twitter feeds. If it is your personal lines you want push there are family sites and blogs you can comment on. Maybe its business insurance you are focusing on? Then you can use sites like “LinkedIn” and many others. Most importantly you need to focus your message, keep it consistent and conversational, and make sure you aren’t too pushy.

On The NewCom Group’s social media pages we focus a lot of attention on our Hollywood clients. We post a lot of video clips and create events for their upcoming films or shows in which they will be featured. We provide links to their pages and they are members of ours groups. All this is done as a conversation with the community to provide them with “insider information”. The goal is to keep fans coming back for more information, create a buzz around our actors and production companies and shows NewCom as a leader in the public relations field.  All this is done without an obvious sales pitch.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to work with a professional. They will create a comprehensive plan that will:

·    Identify your target markets
·    Develop your niche in the marketplace through proper social media branding
·    Create a viral campaign identity
·    Define the purpose of your social media marketing and viral public relations program
·    Develop a comprehensive method of marketing
·    Choose your social media and viral public relations tools

A professional will write content that is remarkable, unique, and newsworthy. This content will be marketed through vast social media and viral public relations sites. This will be part of a comprehensive program that will target a variety of different internet groups and categories and well as viral public relations sites and social media press release.

A professional will keep up on the social networks on a regular basis and make sure you are constantly visible. They will also make sure to be in contact with your organization on a regular basis to keep the program fresh and moving forwards.  Most importantly, they will make sure all your sites align with each other. It is crucial that your blog feeds into your “Facebook” page and your “Twitter” feed and that your “Twitter” feed connects back to your website. These types of cross connections create the value in social media and viral public relations.

It isn’t a matter of if you should do social media and viral public relations; it’s now a matter of how you are going to do it!

Victor Cipolla is the Executive Vice-President of The NewCom Group a full service Public Relations firm and Ad Agency specializing in Social Media Marketing , Viral Public Relations and Entertainment Publicity.  NewCom has offices in Albany and Los Angeles.  You can find Vic on as www.twitter.com/newcomvic  and you can find The NewCom Group at www.thenewcomgroup.com and on facebook at www.facebook.com/thenewcomgroup or our blog www.weherdcats.com  and many many other places!

Happy Holiday’s from our family to yours! May your day’s be merry and bright this season!

The Newcom Crew-

Vic

Buzz

Anna

Michele

Twitter allows you to put your product before potential customers that have not walked into your place of business yet. The goal of Twitter is to get as many followers as you can and by doing so, you have increased your potential client base exponentially. It is also a great tool to drive traffic back to your website to A, learn more about you and your company and B, to drive traffic and sales to your online store. Twitter also allows you and your company to seem like “real” people who share the same struggles and ebbs of life that they do. Being “real” in the business world today is everything.

Getting started is very simple. Just create an account with an existing any email you have. Once this is done, Twitter actually helps you find people to follow based on your profile and search criteria. Once you start following folks, you will get folks to follow you back and interact with you. In the beginning, you will be following more people then are following you. That’s ok and no cause for concern. Once you start getting followers and are posting regularly, that may change. A key to remember when getting started is that Twitter only allows 140 characters in a single post. You will learn to shorten words and urls in order to fit it all in. There are other Twitter functions out there that will allow you to write more, one being TwitWall.

But what will you Tweet about?

With Twitter, you are able to advertise your blog postings, sales going on, coupons you may be offering, or anything and everything in between. Like the weather, or something interesting you read in the news. Is someone in your office getting married or having a baby? Tweet about it with their permission. This brings a human touch to your account.  Remodeling your office? Had a company party with company photos? Use Twitpic to post photos of the progress or of your staff. These things may seem trivial, but you will find that you will get more interaction and questions than you thought possible. Being “real” goes a long way on Twitter. One of the biggest mistakes that folks make when starting is to just Tweet about business or sales. This will turn your followers against you! Spam is a highly debated topic on Twitter, so it’s best to be subtle.

Getting involved in trending topics is a great way to take your wall global. When you post in a trending topic, it takes you out of your time line and puts you into the global Twitter time line. This opens up your tweets, profile and URL to the world really and who doesn’t want that?

NewCom hopes that this basic Twitter overview has inspired you to get your feet wet in the Social Media market. Still not sure? Got questions? Contact us today and learn more about how we can help you and your company obtain a large web presence.

Anna Patten is the Director of Online Public Relations for The Newcom Group. She currently handles all on line networking for The Newcom Group and their clients as well as their professional blogging needs. You can email her at anna@thenewcomgroup.com or find her on Facebook

IPADs For Autism Auction!

• Enjoy and early morning wake up call and breakfast
• Get the Black Friday News full of specials and coupons
• Receive the Black Friday Special Energy snack pack
• Enjoy our gift wrapping party
• And much more all for one low price!

• Ematrix and VelaShape II presented by B.I.O.
• A dazzling display of seasonal styling presented by Saratoga Trunk
• Wine, lite bites and music
• Special pricing for Attendees

October 25, 2010

Newcom Model and Tattoo Artist, Bettina will be appearing in her first Fast Lane photo shoot this evening at Mohawk Motor Sports ! Bettina is happy and excited to be featured with Fast Lane and Mohawk and looks forward to working with them in the future. The Newcom Group will be on hand to handle press for our client. Contact Anna Patten for more information today. 518-431-6003

To learn more about Fast Lane, visit http://www.fastlanebiker.com/OnlineZine.html

Join Duke Bazzel for the AVO Heritage Cigar Launch Party,
Thur Oct 28From 5 to 9pm at the New Latham Shop,724 Rt.9. In addition to all the great deals and awesome giveaways that they always have at their events, they will welcome special guest's Juciy 518, The Juicy Girls and Buzzkill from The Pirates Den. All will be handing out prizes too! So come out and help us launch a great new cigar at Dukes new location and meet the ladies as well!

Press Release: September 2010

Westbury, NY – Danny’s Wish, an organization started to raise money for Autism and Autism related spectrum disorders, today announced a new campaign designed to provide iPads to schools catering to the development of autistic children.

“Our mission at Danny’s Wish is to provide life enhancing experiences and resources for kids and families dealing with Autism and Autism related spectrum disorders,” said Dino Sgueglia, President of Danny’s Wish.  “We’re very excited to have started our latest fundraiser, iPads For Autism.  The iPad provides alternative communication and learning applications that allow Autistic children to flourish.  These applications grant children new and amazing opportunities by fostering enhanced communication, independence, daily life skills, and developmental growth.  More importantly, the iPad gives those without a voice a chance to be heard.  Join Danny’s Wish in raising money to provide iPad’s for schools and individuals with Autism!”

Since the iPad’s unveiling in April, autism experts and parents have brought it into countless homes and classrooms around the world. Developers have begun creating an abundance of applications specifically designed for users with special needs, and initial studies are already measuring the effectiveness of the iPad as learning tools for children with autism. As a result, some children have been able to communicate their thoughts to adults for the very first time. Others have learned life skills that had eluded them for years.

“I originally purchased the iPad for myself and my wife so that we could review information for work.  Shortly thereafter we began downloading games and movies to occupy us when we travel.  Soon my son Danny began playing some of the games with no difficulty or reservations.  There are just so many applications it can be used for.  It is truly a great device.”

“There are many ways you can help!  You can make a donation through any one of our donation channels. No contribution is too small or too large, and we really appreciate your contribution.  Additionally, we encourage you to spread the word about iPads For Autism to friends and family! Together, concluded Sgueglia, we can give these kids a voice!”

You can also help Danny’s Wish by logging on to our website at www.dannyswish.org and making a donation there!

Newcom client and International Model Jai Marie will be on the runway at the Stop Staring! Fashion Show to Benefit Locks of Love, tonight, October 6, 2010 at 7:30P.M. Locks of Love is a public non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada under age 21 suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis. Jai Marie is very happy to be a part of such a wonderful event that will benefit so many.

To get more information on the event, visit  http://www.stopstaringclothing.com/press-releases/09-28-10-fasion-show-to-benefit-locks-of-love.html

Stop Staring! Fashion Show to Benefit Locks of Love

At Hollywood's SkyBar

7:30P.M.

Runway show

Silent Auction

Poker Tournament

The Newcom Group will be on had to handle press for our client

Contact Vic Cipolla

The Newcom Group

310-651-9983

Newcom Model and Tattoo Artist, Bettina will be rockin' a Juicy 518 shirt this Saturday at the Pirates Den Photo Shoot! Bettina is happy and excited to begin a partnership with Juicy 518 and to be a Juicy girl! Check out Juicy518.com on the web for the best deals in the Capital District!

Stop in to the Pirates Den on Saturday and say "...Juicy 518 sent me" to get $10.00 off any piercing!

The Newcom Group will be on hand to handle press for our client. Contact Anna Patten for more information today. 518-431-6003