Author Archive - Claudia D'Arcy

Community Mobilization Participation Groundswells through Social Marketing

What comes first; the chicken or the egg?

A simple question that has confounded people for generations can be applied in this perfect example of a geographically targeted community mobilization and the very measurable social media reaction.

One could not have happened with the other.

Community Activism is Born

On Feb 19^th, there was a violent mugging in our small urban city of Kingston, NY just blocks from not only the DragonSearch offices, but the corner of my home.  The neighbor of the victim spent a sleepless night worrying about the safety of his own children, his friends, his neighbors and his city and by the light of morning had found his cause and had committed himself to it entirely. By 9am on February 20^th, the Neighborhood Watch Groups of Kingston, New York, Inc. was born again.

Immediately Social Media Marketing Was Incorporated

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Taking theRadian6 Webinar Training and Appling it to Real Search

One of the questions we get often and something we fiercely recommend to everyone whether they become our clients or not, is that they must monitor the social media sphere to see what people are saying.

Now at Dragon Search are we pretty uniquely blessed, that we can still assign a real person to every account and because we are so hands on, we can have a human based monitoring in place. It’s not perfect, but it does allow us to not only keep an eye on everything, but gives us those unique opportunities to respond and engage in the conversations for a complete online marketing social strategy .

Still, we know that as both DSM and the medium of social media grows, that our human touch will not be able to keep up with real time and so we have spent considerable time looking at the various monitoring tools. Generally, the industry has declared the proven winner: Radian6 as the most comprehensive monitoring tool about.

Radian 6 Webinars for Training

Now, I have usually prided myself in being able to figure out most programs through simple trial and error. I like being self taught. However, despite being the best monitoring tool on the market, I had to admit and realize that whoever worked on the programming and usability of Radain6 does not share the same logic as myself. That’s not to say that they are wrong, but I could not figure out how to navigate the inner workings on my own, so I have registered and sat through a training webinar today.

Hence, before I forget what my notes mean, I am determined to play within the dashboard that confuses me and get a handle on this tool.  As with all things I test, I use my very familiar “litmus” and return to the world that I know best; adoption issues on the web. (more…)

Of Online Love and Lust

It must be in the air with Valentine’s Day right around the corner. Danielle Hearts Wordpress and I am infatuated with Foursquare.  Maybe we are just freely admitting ou true Geekiness, but I will confess too.

Girly Geek Internet Love

Foursquare has gotten under my skin. Even if I don’t quite “get” him yet. I think that is a part of the intrigue. Foursquare and I are just at the beginning of our relationship and I am not sure where it will go. It’s kind of nerve racking really. Foursquare is playing hard to get, making me wonder and keeping me on my toes.

Like so many of my internet infatuations, Foursquare gave me that special tingle right from the get go.  I can’t even recall when I first heard about him whether it was some blog, or at the office. I t doesn’t matter anymore. I know I sought him out to see what the buzz was about. While I was curious, once I did meet him, I wasn’t sure what to do next.

He was on my desk top, out of his element, looking like little more than some cute Twitter like directory.  I joined anyway. I had to know. And before I knew it, he had my profile.

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Choosing between SEO and SMM? Don’t!

Social Media is either the bane of a company’s marketing plans because they know they have to get into it and they have no idea how or social media is the new apple of their eye and said company cannot wait to jump all over it.

Business Should NOT Ignore Social Media

I’m really and truly glad to see that more and more companies are realizing that social media is not just a new fad and probably something that they should be considering. After all, not only is it job security, but I honestly know that anyone who is trying to ignore Social networking with the hope that it will fade out is going to really be hurting their business.  While it was only last week that traffic analyst firm Hitwise shows a clear graph demonstrating what was heard last year at the #140Ctitter Conference in NYC that  social networking sites have surpassed the traffic search engines receive. (more…)

What the Discovery Channel Won’t Tell You During Armageddon Week

Back in simpler times, people turned to God and religion to answer their questions. Whether it was spiritual advisement, or personal direction or the bigger philosophical questions of “what does it all mean”; the churches and their leaders had the answers.

Personally, I had thought that Freud and modern counseling took a lot of that power of people away from the churches and religions. Instead of going to traditional confession to make people feel better about their lives or their supposed “sins”, they went to lie down on a therapists couch and have the counselor tell them either what to do, or give them direction or inform folk that they were “normal.” In a way, absolve them of their sins and a new direction for those acts of contrition.

Keyword Research Shows that Goggle is the New God

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Sara Lee and the Perfect Cake Story

I’m going to completely contradict myself.

I am not at all a violent person and don’t ever really intend on pushing ill will towards anyone, but I do believe in venting as a healthy release of emotions.  Maybe you have noticed that when I get annoyed with particular brands that fail to live up to my expectations, I do what I do best which is research them online, abet sometimes in a stalking kind of way, and demand that they right their current injustices. 

Social Media Flaws

Yes, I do tend to be more critical of companies that are trying their hand at various social media outreaches and fail (cough:cough:best:buy:fail:twelp:force:cough), but I also use that research to look at them from both the perspectives of a SMM consultant and specialist and then also, from a user experience, since I am both. Usually, it is an attempt by a brand to approach social media in a way that shows huge fault lines and mistakes, which I like to learn from. Better their mistakes than mine!

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