Social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us and stumbleupon are valuable to your interactive marketing in two ways. First, they provide inbound links, improving your organic search rankings for certain keywords. Second, they serve as an unbiased user recommendation, and as such are a great form of word-of-mouth marketing.

A visitor who finds your site through a link on a social bookmarking site is predisposed to have a positive opinion, because they generally click on the links of their trusted sources for relevant information.

We’ve been studying the most recent crop of social bookmarking sites, rating them for their relevance to brand marketers. Here are the results:

1. Digg - Okay, technically, it’s not strictly a social bookmarking site, but more of a social news aggregator. Even so, there is a reason the term “Digg effect” has been coined. A front-page mention on Digg can bring a server-crunching volume of traffic to your company website.
2. Del.icio.us - It may not get many headlines these days, but by virtue of being one of the first social bookmarking sites, del.icio.us has a large, active user-base. Also, the newer versions of popular blogging software Wordpress come pre-installed with the ability to show the author’s “tag cloud” from his or her del.icio.us account, spreading the reach and popularity of the service.
3. StumbleUpon - This is a newer service that has a sort of random, “find the coolest sites you weren’t looking for” aspect to it. It’s seen a recent spike in interest and is growing in popularity.
4. Ma.gnolia - Another more recent addition to the social bookmarking space, this one is more popular with designers and graphic arts folks, thanks to its attractively-designed user interface.
5. Reddit - Can’t break into Digg? You might have better luck with Reddit, whose user-base is a bit friendlier to those who are openly promoting themselves.

Our focus in Client Services is providing a great service experience.  We accomplish that partly through following a solid process, and partly through maintaining a steady flow of communication between our internal teams and the client. 

Every agency wants the client to have a great service experience.  Ultimately, it’s the success of the projects assigned to us, and how well we fulfill their expectations that determine client satisfaction.  With that in mind, we do our best to set high goals for ourselves, while setting realistic, achievable expectations for our clients.  However, as a brand marketer or marketing director, there are three key things you can do to set yourself up for a better agency service experience.

1. Set clear and specific goals.  Interactive agencies, in particular, are used to having to demonstrate Return on Investment (ROI) for our work.  However, to do that effectively, we need to know what benchmarks we are measuring, what your business goals are for any project or campaign, and what constitutes “success” for you.  The more clear and specific you can be in the beginning, the higher the likelihood that the end result will hit that target.
2. Ask questions.  Marketers hire interactive agencies for our depth of knowledge, because they understand that interactive is a complicated discipline.  A good agency educates their clients on the value of their interactive marketing.  The more questions you ask, the more you help your agency empower you to make good decisions about how your company will leverage interactive. 
3. Let your agency know when they are missing the mark.  No one bats 1000. If the creative doesn’t quite capture your brand, or there are additional features that need to be scoped out before the project moves any further, or if your business goals and strategy have changed unexpectedly and those changes need to be reflected in the project, the sooner you let your agency know, the better.  An agency can’t fix a situation till they’re aware of it. 

Obviously, we hope that you’ll choose us as your interactive agency.  Clearly, the agency’s own commitment to service has a huge impact on the service experience you’ll receive.  But simply by making a conscious effort to address these three key issues, you can make sure that on your end, you’re setting yourself up for success. 

Please join Katina and Mike as they discuss the hottest spots online and the major social media growth being experienced currently by Facebook and others.

 

 LeapCast - LFI Trends 9.24.07 - Top 10 Online Hot Spots: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

On this episode of LFI University, Katina and Mike discuss Geek Gods, Karma Queens and Innerpreneurs - a new marketing book from Ron Rentel.

 

 LeapCast - LFI University: 9.10.07 - Book Review and Discussion: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

During my extended Labor Day weekend I took some time to do what I really enjoy: play video games. My current addiction is NCAA College Football and Tiger Woods Golf. It is obvious from watching college football all day Saturday and golf on Sunday that the clothing and equipment that is used in these two sports are dominated by a selective group of companies: Nike, Adidas, Titleist, and Ping to mention a few. This product placement is the same for video games, if not bigger!

Recently, I read an article on promomagazine.com that comments on the ever-growing in-game advertising fad and noted that in-game advertising is projected to reach $80 million this year. Companies pay to have their logos on the uniforms, shoes, golf bags, gloves, etc. In addition, companies can pay to have their product headlined in the game, such as Old Spice does in NCAA College Football. Every time a team reaches the red zone there is an Old Spice ad that takes up half of the screen. That is a huge ad placement for a men’s deodorant brand that targets athletic men. These two examples only scrape the surface of the growing world of in-game advertising, which is expected to be a $850 million industry by 2011!

Not only are companies utilizing their brand in platform games, but also in free online games. For instance, Red Bull created a game called Flutag USA where the objective is to make certain objects fly the farthest, hence the term, “it will give you wings!�

It seems that everyday the world of media and internet are changing and creating new ways to transport messages to viewers. The new technology in video games in next-generation video games and I think this extends beyond just the realistic game play by opening up a new world to businesses that never could have imagined to have ad placement in video games. This avenue allows business, such as Old Spice, the ability to target their primary audience, athletic men, while having the ability to target an audience who has a general interest in football.

It seems like yesterday that I was playing RBI Baseball on Nintendo where graphics were circles and squares and there was no mention of advertising for businesses. Now, we can play games that allow us to be Peyton Manning, have the ability to drop back and throw a bomb to Reggie Wayne for six all by the motion of our arms. Its will be exciting to see what video games have in place for ad and product placement in the next five years!