Computerworld takes a look at the value of social media; featuring two PerkettPR clients & their ROI

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rdWhether you call it social media, new media, social marketing or another moniker, the big question remains the same – how do you measure its value? We’ve been able to measure value from day one of jumping into the social marketing world here at PerkettPR, and now we’re thrilled to be helping clients to do the same. Reality Digital and Litle & Co are both featured in a series of articles on Computerworld today regarding the value and ROI they’ve seen with their social media efforts.

In “One Company’s ROI Tally for Social Media,” Reality Digital’s CEO Cynthia Francis says calculating return on investment starts with understanding what you want to accomplish. She includes a breakdown of investment vs return, including:

  • Total investment for social media programs (including technology costs and PR agency hours): roughly $3,000 per month
  • Total sales leads generated in April, May and June: 72
  • Average sales leads per month: 24
  • Average cost per sales lead: $125
  • Lead conversion to sales opportunities: 11.1%
  • Lead conversion to closed deals: 1.4%

Litle&coIn “What’s your Twitter ROI? How to measure social media payoff,” our client John Stevens, director of corporate content and communications at Litle & Co., says the company has seen “six-figure revenue come in because of the connections made through social media.” He discusses the need for firm ROI figures and future decisions around using public sites such as Twitter or building proprietary systems.

What’s your return been on social media investments to-date? Do you expect the ROI to increase, decrease or remain the same in the next 6-12 months? How are you using social media in your business? CMOs and marketers, what kind of help you do plan to enlist for PR, social marketing and advertising in the next year? Please take our survey – it’s only two questions and we’d love to hear from you. Thanks!

Welcome to SimpliSafe – PerkettPR’s Newest Client

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SimplisafeI’d like to extend a big welcome to SimpliSafe and send a big huge “thanks” for choosing PerkettPR. Simplisafe provides a sleek and unique consumer “gadget” that also happens to have a very solid value proposition: home security. SimpliSafe provides young urban professionals and college students with a wireless home security system, ideal for any city dweller or those who frequently change residences and are looking for reliable apartment security options.

A cost-effective alternative to more traditional alarm systems, SimpliSafe allows you to pay as you go – no long term contracts – and you own the system. Therefore, you can take the system with you when you move. Best of all, it doesn’t even require a landline or internet connection to reach their 24/7 emergency dispatch center. For more information, visit their website or connect with SimpliSafe on Twitter.

Simplisafe

When asked why they chose PerkettPR, CEO and co-founder Chad Laurans said, “PerkettPR brings a great combination of traditional media experience and social media savvy that will help us spread the word about SimpliSafe. Word of mouth is already a big factor for us and with PerkettPR’s help, we aim to drive awareness to new levels.”

We’re extremely excited to help SimpliSafe extend their brand awareness and community – stay tuned!

New Hampshire Social Media Breakfast Recap

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During the latest New Hampshire Social Media Breakfast held at Rick’s Pond View and sponsored by CustomScoop, the topic of the morning was focused on Government 2.0 – how utilities and municipalities are using social media to communicate and connect with customers and the public. Some of the speakers of the day included Martin Murray from Public Service of New Hampshire (PSNH) and John Daly of The Boston Police Department who both spoke and shared how their organizations are adopting social media technologies.

I was especially interested in the presentation by Martin Murray who handles media relations for PSNH – better known as @PSNH on Twitter.

With the ice storm that hit on December 11, 2008, the word quickly got out that @PSNH was on Twitter and followers increased by 1,700% as customers were seeking answers and comfort in knowing that others were dealing with similar situations and that @PSNH was listening and responding.

As a customer of PSNH, I was very impressed with the organization’s use of Twitter to communicate with its customers during one of the biggest ice storms in the company’s history. The treacherous storm knocked out power to more than 320,000 residents across the state – including mine – for six very long days.

I also found it interesting that, along with Twitter, PSNH has also adopted other social media tools to engage with and communicate with customers – using Flickr and YouTube to share pictures and videos, as well as setting up a Facebook fan page.

In the video clip below, Martin sums up how the customer experience has changed significantly with PSNH’s adoption of Twitter. Instead of private one-to-one phone conversations with a customer, PSNH is now able to share and include others in those discussions publicly – getting more information out to more people.

PSNH video:

John Daly and The Boston Police Department (BPD), known as @Boston_Police on Twitter, are also not strangers to social media. They were the first city police department to have a blog and with their Text a Tip program, people can text their anonymous tips. It wasn’t until recently that John decided to get the BPD onto Twitter to use it as a public information tool.

Check out the video below where John talks about how they are utilizing Twitter, as well as their plans for integrating it into their 911 Center to use as an early warning detection system – cool stuff!

BPD video:

Both The Boston Police Department and PSNH saw an opportunity to improve communications with the adoption of social media technologies. The results have proved that it is indeed a smart move – doing so has helped both entities to connect with the public and their customers on a more personal level. They can now include customers in the discussions at hand – no other communications method can offer the same results.

P.S. – The next New Hampshire Social Media Breakfast is scheduled for April 17th at 8am.

Social Media + New York City + Fashion Week = Inside the Tents

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We’ve been having a great time with our client Gift Girl – and we haven’t even launched yet! In addition to some fun pre-launch video interviews, Gift Girl has now teamed with My It Things to create Inside The Tents – an aggregated inside look from fashionista bloggers and reporters covering Mercedes Benz Fashion week in New York City, which kicks off tomorrow.

Combining social media technologies and fashion, Inside The Tents “was born to provide a fresh look into the very exclusive Bryant Park Tents during Mercedes Benz Fashion week. As more and more independent new media journalists are getting access into behind the scenes of the most fabulous fashion event of the season, they share with the world news and observations usually left to selected group of magazine editors.”

This unique effort aggregates feeds from various social media communities and applications such as Twitter, Flickr, live blogging and video streaming, “sometimes getting ahead of the traditional media to bring the latest trends to the fashion aficionados around the web.”

If you can’t be there live for this to-die-for fashion event, be sure to follow Inside the Tents for everything fashion coming out of Bryant Park in this coming week. Tecchies may find it of interest as well – it should be fun to see social media in action outside of the traditional business world.

Join us August 4 to Kick Off Boston Restaurant Week

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Join us and our client Constant Contact as we gear up for Boston’s Restaurant Week. On August 4, Constant Contact joins in the festivities by hosting a free seminar to educate Boston-area restaurant owners on the power of email marketing. Various Boston restaurants will share their email marketing success stories, including Finale,  Rialto, Masa and more.

Also open to the public – and useful for any small business owner who desires to learn more about email marketing – the workshop will demonstrate how easy it is to design and execute email campaigns to drive customer loyalty and interaction, increase sales and build long lasting, positive reputations. Participants will learn best practices for  building a quality list, increasing email open rates, encouraging readers to take action, and analyzing click-behavior to improve results.

Boston’s Restaurant Week features 3-course lunches and dinners for $20.08 and $33.08 respectively, at more  than 200 restaurants in and around Boston.  Bring your appetites August 10 through August 15, 2008  & August 17 through August 22, 2008.

Visit the unofficial guide to restaurant week for more details.

The  Power of Email Marketing: Restaurant Edition
Boston  Public Library
700 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts
August  4, 2008, 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Click here to register

Please join us at POPSignal Thursday: Wii’d Love to Meet

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PerkettPR will be sponsoring POPSignal’s Boston event Thursday night at Tequila Rain. There, we’ll be mingling with clients, VCs, reporters, bloggers and social media friends from various backgrounds. Please stop by our table to say hello and light up the night (yes, we’ll be the ones glowing in the dark again), or come challenge us to a game of Wii, where we’ll be introducing our new client, Slingpage, and offering additional private beta invitations. (The first 500 went like hotcakes today after TechCrunch offered them in a pre-launch post.

We’re also continuing our trend of on site interviews – we’re interested in turning the camera on reporters, bloggers and entrepreneurs. Have a new technology to tout? Opinions on the social media landscape? Insights on the future of tech? Please share them with us and we’ll feature them here post-party. We look forward to seeing Boston’s best!

Thanks to Brian Balfour and Jay Meattle for organizing the event.

Mzinga and the Power of Community

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Grant Robertson from DownloadSquad.com interviews Aaron Strout (VP of New Media) from Mzinga at SXSW 2008. Aaron talks about how Mzinga helps customers leverage the power of community with their enterprise-class, white-label social media platform.


SXSW 2008: Mzinga from Download Squad on Vimeo.

[via downloadsquad.com]

Mzinga Acquires Prospero – Come join the conversation!

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Mzinga acquires Prospero

PerkettPR client Mzinga announced today that it is acquiring Prospero, a fellow Massachusetts-based social media platform builder. Both companies excel in the creating white-label social media platforms that allow companies to create feature-rich online communities. This merger clearly places Mzinga in the spotlight as the leader in business oriented social networking. The true question lies in how this will affect other white-label providers in this space.

Notable social media bloggers such as Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang and Scott Monty have already posted on the merger and shared their views on what the future might hold in this space. What is your take on the future of white-label social media platforms or even social media for corporations in general? To help answer that question, leaders from the newly formed Mzinga along with PerkettPR and Topaz Partners will be hosting a Twitter-based Q&A session throughout today (Monday, March 3rd).

Feel free to follow and converse with any of us on Twitter:

Mzinga/Prospero: Aaron Strout, Jim Storer, Colin Browing, and Heather Strout
PerkettPR: Jeff Glasson, Lisa Dilg and our corporate presence
Topaz Partners: Doug Haslam and Sandy Kalik

Additional Reading:

TechCrunch – More Consolidation in the White Label Social Networking Space: Mzinga Acquires Prospero

Mashable – Mzinga Acquires Prospero to Grow Online Community Solutions Sector

ReadWriteWeb – Enterprise Community Provider Mzinga Swallows Prospero

CenterNetworks – Mzinga Raises $32.5 Million and Acquires Prospero Business Social Networking Platform Provider

Aaron Strout, Mzinga – Red Letter Day

Jim Storer, Mzinga – Following the Mzinga/Prospero News

Colin Browning – Social Media: Working Behind The Scenes

Tech PR Gems – What do you do when a social media client has big news?

This event is a great example of social media companies actually putting social media tools to use and engaging in conversation to benefit the community. We look forward to chatting with you. See you in the Twittersphere!

Sermo Named Media Brand of the Year

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Congratulations to our client, Sermo, who was named Media Brand of the Year by Medical Marketing & Media. We are particularly excited about this accomplishment because Sermo took a chance in 2006 with PerkettPR – one of the only firms they interviewed that did not have a dedicated healthcare division – and it continues to be a fruitful relationship for both companies. We worked closely with their marketing team all year to spread the word about this one-of-a-kind community for physicians – and helped it to grow to 40,000 doctors and counting.

Sermo continues to revolutionize healthcare. The discussions held, and decisions made, within the community positively impact not only physicians, but the patients they care for and the pharmaceutical companies that want to forge a safer and more productive future through a more efficient exchange of knowledge and resources. Sermo is a Web-based community where physicians share observations from daily practice, discuss emerging trends and provide new insights into medications, devices and treatments.

“And since physicians have never before been able to talk with a unified
voice in such impressive numbers, sharing observations and insight
about treatments, drugs, devices and biologics, we expect Sermo to
continue to rock the pharma marketing world for some time to come.”

We couldn’t agree more! We are extremely proud of this award, thankful for such an interesting and savvy client, and excited to share even more interesting developments about Sermo in the year to come. Congratulations to Dr. Daniel Palestrant, Founder & CEO; Gina Ashe, CMO; Greg Shenk, Director of Communications and the entire team at Sermo! What a year!

Who Caught Your Eye in 2007? Tell the Crunchies Committee

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Anyone that hasn’t had a chance to nominate for the Crunchies Awards should take a look and place votes for your favorite sites, people and emerging tech companies of 2007.

Nominations are only open through tomorrow, December 12, so log on and list your favorites now. The Crunchies Committee will then choose five finalists from the submissions and voting will start on December 13 and last for approximately one month.

If you are looking for some inspiration on who to vote for, check out some of PerkettPR’s clients nominated for selection this year:

Conduit ; “best international start-up” – community toolbars

Moola.com ; “best time sink site,” “best consumer start up” and “best international start up” – the world’s first Massively Multiplayer Rewards Game (MMRG)

Ezmo ; “best consumer start up” and “best international start-up” – social music sharing

Sosius ; “best business model” – free online collaborative workspaces

Here’s some additional background on the awards from the Crunchies blog:

“Together GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb, VentureBeat and TechCrunch are pleased to announce that nominations for the inaugural 2007 Crunchies Awards are now open.

We created twenty award categories to recognize the year’s most innovative technical, creative and business accomplishments of key companies, products and people. We hope you’ll agree that the award categories are good reasons for celebration and fit for a proper ceremony.

We invite you to submit your favorite companies and products for consideration. Read the official rules. Nominations will be open through midnight pst Wednesday, December 12. Finalist voting will open Thursday, December 13 and run for approximately one month before the awards ceremony on Friday, January 18 in San Francisco.”