VUE MEDIA GROUP (www.VUEMediaGroup.com) March 4, 2009

Greetings, My name is Shawn Welk; I am the New Media director for VUE Media Group. I would like to take this time to share some valuable information in regards to our services and marketing. VUE Media Group provides customized professional design and website management tailored to fit any client or artists, from small to medium businesses and corporate America. Expert Web Design and Marketing! Whether you want us to build your website or you wish to do it yourself, VUE Media Group (www.VUEMediaGroup.com) has the solutions you need at the best prices you’ll find. VUE Media Group (www.VUEMediaGroup.com) is not an overseas company. VUE Media Group (www.VUEMediaGroup.com) is located in beautiful Southern California & Atlantic Beach, Fl USA. Questions? Pick up the phone and ask us!

Custom Website Design!

Our web sites are perfect for businesses of all sizes. Each website comes with it’s own content management system allowing you to manage, edit and modify your website from any Internet location without any special programs. VUE Media Group (www.VUEMediaGroup.com) can also expand your website with any type of features your business needs from Social Networks (similar to Facebook and MySpace) to shopping carts to media galleries. But VUE Media Group (www.VUEMediaGroup.com) does not stop there! Our website packages come with 1 year free hosting, personalized training so you can manage your website and as always direct access to your project manager. In addition, VUE Media Group (www.VUEMediaGroup.com) can increase traffic to your website with our highly experienced search engine optimization team.

Build Your Own Website!

VUE Media Group (www.VUEMediaGroup.com) offer two methods to become your own web designer. Professional website Design Templates and our easy to use Online Web Site Builder. Web Design Templates are pre-websites recommended for those who already have some background with web design and web development programs like Photoshop, Flash and HTML editors. Just make your modifications and upload the files to your server. VUE Media Group (www.VUEMediaGroup.com) carries templates for Flash, HTML, Open Source CMS, Ecommerce, Forums and many more. Over 10,000 designs to choose from! These design templates make it easy for the novice or professional to complete their project on time and with amazing visual results.

Online Web Site Builders allows the beginner webmaster to choose from over 1,500 template designs and using our online management system you can build your first webpage in as little as ten minutes. Our site builder comes with dozens of features included like shopping carts, photo galleries, newsletters and more. For as little as $24/month you can have a website up today.

Mobile Marketing!

VUE Media Group (www.VUEMediaGroup.com) enables cost-effective, customized mobile marketing and communications for any brand, media company, marketing agency, or content owner. VUE Media Group (www.VUEMediaGroup.com) is an industry leader in advanced mobile technology and solutions for clients across all industries. Our solution is built on a multi-functional patent-pending web-based software, custom integrated campaigns, and exceptional support to our clients. VUE Media Group, Keeping Internet Solutions Simple! Once again, thank you for your interest and I look forward to speaking with you soon. Please send me two times you might be available for us to further discuss your needs and how we can help. To Your Success, Shawn Welk 904.545.3928 ShawnWelk@gmail.com www.InSocialMedia.com Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body – the producers and consumers themselves. Herbert Hooverar future. My dept works in the Internets social world. Check outMyspace.com/NUSwerve, Myspace.com/Interchanges, Myspace.com/VWDUBClub, MySpace.com/CaitlinBrunell,Myspace.com/LiveVolvo

www.LiveVolvo.Com

www.VWDUBClub.com

www.CaitlinsCloset.org

Stay tuned for some Pop Culture Living. I am all about endorsing life thru Pop Culture Marketing….

Shawn

Online connections can build customer base January 12, 2009

Online connections can build customer base

 

Jacksonville Business Journal – by Dolly Penland Correspondent

 

Many people get most of their information from the Internet, especially when planning to buy products or services. Consumers want solid product information rather than responding to traditional marketing techniques. However, one thing that hasn’t changed over the years is the value of advice and recommendations from friends before buying.

One way companies can find those most interested in their offerings and provide the information they want is to make customers into friends through social networking sites such as Myspace or Facebook.

“In the past, with traditional media, advertisers would just dominate the market by pushing their message through as many outlets as possible: TV, radio, newsprint, whereas now the buyer has control,” said Shawn Welk, director of new media at Interchanges.com. One technique the company calls “social droving” involves identifying and inviting likely “friends.”

Because many buyers avoid any hint of a hard sell, those who join a company’s network presumably have a genuine interest in the product. “You invite them to be part of the network and they choose to be part of that network,” said Welk, who works with businesses on social marketing strategies. “They can stay with you or opt out” at a later date.

Businesses and other groups can create networks of friends. “It allows for more information without being bombarded with heavy sales tactics,” Welk said. Businesses “use it as an information tool, to send information to prospective customers.”

Social networking won’t guarantee a sale, but it does give companies another channel to pass on information.

“Traditionally, Volvo and VW customers e-mail or call,” said Dennis Walters, Internet sales and marketing manager at O’Steen Automotive Group, which has two sites, www.myspace.com/livevolvo and www.myspace.com/vwdubclub. With computer-savvy clients, “I find them on Myspace and become friends only. They have to accept when they see [the friend request], and they say, ‘That’s the guy I talked to when I went down there or e-mailed.’ It actually works out a lot better.”

Businesses can market to friends via bulletins, blogs or comments. That information can range from offered specials to simple product updates.

“I don’t use Myspace as a sales tool,” Walters said. “I use it as a way to keep in touch, a contact tool to let them know if we’re having free car washes, or new accessories come in, or if we’re looking for certain trade-in cars, or an event going on. We use it as a communication tool more than anything else.”

Walters said being a friend, not a salesman pushing a product, pays off. “I’m getting a very favorable response. Several customers have bought from me [who are] friends.”

Social networking isn’t yet a stand-alone marketing tool, but rather a complement to a standard advertising campaign. “You can never get rid of television advertising, the radio advertising or even the newspaper advertising,” Walters said.

However, social networking offers a chance to target the most desirable prospects. “Our demographic for Volvo and VW are highly educated and 95 percent of [these car] buyers have broadband in their homes. They’re very Internet-savvy. If your demographic is an educated, Internet-savvy customer, go and advertise where the customers are going to be.”

Social networks also help raise brand awareness, whether for companies or other groups, such as nonprofits.

That’s why Caitlin Brunell decided in November to add a Myspace page,www.myspace.com/caitlinscloset, for her charity Caitlin’s Closet. Founded in 1996, the nonprofit collects new and gently worn ball gowns and donates them to girls who otherwise would not get to go to a prom or other formal function for lack of a dress.

“When it started, it was, ‘We’ll see how many dresses we can get and figure out how we can give them out.’ Now, it’s, ‘Where can we store them all?’ ” said Stacy Brunell, Caitlin’s mom.

The Brunells are getting as involved with their Myspace communities as with the real-life communities in which they live and work. Stacy’s husband and former Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback, Mark, uses his Myspace page to draw friends’ attention to The Brunell Family Foundation, but he also has given the page more personal attention. For example, his social networking friends were the first to find out that he had signed with the New Orleans Saints for the upcoming season.

 

jacksonville@bizjournals.com | 396-3502

Top 10 Social Video Sites March 14, 2008

Top 10 Video SitesThe video numbers are quite staggering. comScore Video Metrix’s reports that over 10 billion videos were watched in December 2007, with about 75% of all American’s online in December watching at least one video.Online users are actively searching for videos. Google trends shows that more people are looking for videos than are interested in shopping or news.You know that YouTube is the 10,000 pound gorilla in the video space, but who are the other websites that you should be looking at, and who visits them? Using Quantcast we have put together a list of the top 10(actually its top 11) video sites that social marketers might be interested in, and who visits these sites.YouTube.comYou cannot have a discussion about video sites without beginning with YouTube. Youtube.com is a huge site that reaches over 62 million U.S. monthly uniques. The site caters to a slightly female (51%) audience that is young (between 18-24) and white (73%). Interestingly 51% of YouTube visitors have a household income over $60k and 53% have attended college or graduate school.DailymotionDailymotion.com is a top 250 site that reaches over 48 million monthly uniques, of which 6.5 million (13%) are in the U.S. The site appeals to a somewhat male audience (60%) that earns between$30-$60k a year.For a video site with such a large user base, Dailymotion is rarely mentioned in the US in mainstream media. Dailymotion allows users to browse videos by searching tags, channels or user-created groups; the search system also introduces results based on things other users have searched for. The maximum size of a video per file is 150 MB (compared to 100 MB for YouTube). Video limit is 20 minutes (compared with YouTube’s 10 minutes)-MetacafeMetacafe is one of the world’s largest video sites that specializes in short-form original content – from new, emerging talents and established Hollywood heavyweights alike. With 27 million unique vistors a month (9 million in the US), Metacafe is the second largest video site in the US.Metacafe attracts a heavily male (61%) audience, between the ages of 25-34 (23%) with a household income of between $30-60k (36%).Metacafe was ranked second behind MySpaceTV in number of user comments per video posted in 2007. The “Metadata Metrics” report from AccuStream iMedia Research equated user comments with engagement.Imeem.comImeem.com is a top 250 site that reaches over 21 million monthly uniques, of which 7.4 million (35%) are in the U.S. The site is popular among a very slightly female biased, more African American, younger group.Launched in October 2004, Imeem.com has both a social network structure as well as a content browsing/filtering structure similar to that of Flickr and YouTube. Quantcast ranks imeem as the top social music site.Vids.MySpace.comVids.myspace.com is a top 250 destination that reaches over 10 million U.S. monthly uniques. The destination attracts a female slanted (57%), youthful (38% are under 24) audience that earns between $30-60k a year. In early 2007, MySpace introduced MySpaceTV (http://myspace.tv/), a service similar to the YouTube. MySpaceTV is now in beta mode, and will be probably be launched as a separate site in either 2008 or early 2009.Google VideoVideo.google.com is a top 250 destination that reaches over 6.0 million U.S. monthly uniques. The destination caters to a young (18-24), white (71%), male audience (53%). Google video attracts a slightly younger audience than YouTube.Video.MSN.comVideo.msn.com is a large destination that reaches over 2.7 million U.S. monthly uniques. The destination appeals to a slightly female audience (51%), older group (52% are over 45)Video.Yahoo.comVideo.Yahoo.com is a top 5,000 destination that reaches over 2.0 million U.S. monthly uniques. The destination caters to a more youthful (18-24 is 31% of audience), male (56%) following that earns between $30-60k.Yahoo video combines a traditional video search engine, which crawls and links off to videos on different web sites, with a traditional video hosting environment that allows users to upload, share, tag, and host their videos on Yahoo!,Livevideo.comLivevideo.com is a top 5,000 site that reaches over 1.7 million U.S. monthly uniques. The site is popular amongst males (60%), 35-44 (23%), who earn between$30-$100k a year(66%).Blip.tvBlip.tv is a top 5,000 site that reaches over 1.4 million U.S. monthly uniques. The site caters to a rather male audience (615), between the ages of 25-34. What makes blip.tv different than the other sites is that it focuses on “episodic content” or “shows,” rather than viral video,Searchforvideo.comSearchforvideo.com is a top 5,000 site that reaches over 561K U.S. monthly uniques. The site attracts a heavily male audience (57%), that is more affluent (53% earn over $60k) and more evenly distributed amongst the different age groups.

Understanding The Little Giant in MySpace…. YOU! January 28, 2008

Understanding The Little Giant in Myspace…. You!

With tens of millions of users (but probably not the purported 100 million), MySpace.com is a force to be reckoned with. Especially when you consider that MySpace apparently drives more traffic to online retailers than MSN Search, according to some recent Hitwise data.

But MySpace is hard for many of us adults to get our heads around. It just doesn’t seem logical: How does it hold the interest of so many young people with short attention spans, despite the fact that the design/usability is so atrocious, the Web page creation platform is so frustratingly restrictive, and it’s chock full of so many profiles that are obviously fake, spam, duplicated, or abandoned?

“Um, it’s about looking cool, fitting in, and hanging out, Duh!” one might imagine a teen MySpace user answering.

Then where do us adults feature in this? Besides offering a tempting place for stalkers and voyeurs to hang out and follow the daily lives of the teenagers who haven’t made their profiles private (can you say “Creepy!”?), MySpace is host to concerned parents trying to keep tabs on their kids, college students, obsessed sports fans, and realtors. In other words, the Average Joe or Jane. MySpace is a real slice of humanity.

Of course within the MySpace ecosystem exist marketers. But most are clueless. One would expect sophisticated MySpace presences from big brand marketers. However, that is usually not the case. And generally those that are present, like Blockbuster UK, 7Eleven, and Meijer, lack key ingredients for MySpace success—like an impressive number of “Friends.”

What is probably horrifying to these brand marketers is that employees and customers think nothing of developing a MySpace presence on behalf of the company—one that may not be very flattering. Consider, for example, these unofficial MySpace pages for Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and Target. Undoubtedly, this leads to customer confusion, because it can be difficult to ascertain the author of a MySpace profile. And such unauthorized pages can tarnish the company’s reputation, depending on their content.

 Before you leap in to MySpace as a marketer, you’d best understand it. Because if you don’t, the MySpace community can turn on you the moment you make your first misstep. Just like bloggers can. (Note: many MySpace users are bloggers too. MySpace supports blogging within its platform.) The cardinal rule in MySpace is the same one as in the blogosphere: Keep it real.

Still, despite the hazards, MySpace offers a lot promise as a venue for marketers to hawk their wares. MySpace allows you to interject yourself into existing networks of trust-based relationships and to bond with your visitors in ways not possible elsewhere on the Web. And you can interact with huge numbers of adults, not just teenagers. Surprisingly, more than half of MySpace visitors are age 35 or older, and more than two-thirds are age 25 or older, according to comScore Media Metrix.

Do you have what it takes to crack MySpace? The most unlikely of marketers seem to have it—bars, bands, and quirky dot-coms. One of my favorite examples of MySpace marketing is Project Red. Not only is Project Red a world-changing organization on a mission to defeat AIDS in Africa, its MySpace profile is attractive and engaging.

Other noteworthy examples come from Apple Computer, the Brooklyn Museum, Drumz Clothing, the Orlando Magic, the movie studio that produced Superman Returns, the comedy character Borat, and the musical artist “Weird Al” Yankovic.
A couple of these I’ve been tracking for several months, watching the size of their networks expand. First, consider Apple Computer. Its various flavors of iPod Nano have a place on MySpace, e.g. Pink Nano, which is enjoying a meteoric rise in Friend status. I started tracking Pink Nano on October 15, when it had 1,500 MySpace friends. A week later, on October 22, it had climbed to 7,449 friends. On October 27, it was up to 37,070 friends. Now, on December 3, as I write this article, it has reached 55,776. Not a bad marketing job, Apple!

Now consider the “comeback king” of musical parody—”Weird Al” Yankovic. He’s using social media quite successfully to help breathe new life into his 27-year-long music career—thanks, in no small part, to YouTube and MySpace. Yankovic told Reuters/Billboard in a recent interview that he had accumulated 155,000 MySpace friends since he joined the site in July—all of which he had personally added. He stated, “I used to be a little pickier. Now I just kind of click as fast as I can.” (I can only imagine the Repetitive Stress Injury from that much clicking!) Here’s the kicker: a week after this article came out, he was already up to 219,033 friends! Another seven days later, and Weird Al had gained another 24,000 MySpace friends (up to 243,221). Now, on December 3, it’s at 325,614!

One small company that has enjoyed a degree of success in terms of traffic and sales through MySpace is the online jewelry retailer Pugster. Its mascot, a pug dog named Pinky, is the subject of the MySpace profile—a clever move, as it puts a disarming “face” to the company. The firm built up its MySpace page to a very respectable 8,053 friends.

 Here are some secrets of my success:

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer numbers on MySpace—and important to try to focus on marketing to the “right” group for your product or service — otherwise you’ll be spending a LOT of time on people who will never be interested in you.But, on the other hand, when starting off, you need to get Friends. It’s kind of a bragging right on MySpace. If you have too few friends, it’ll be tough to get the good ones—the ones who will end up buying from you. So, before you go after those, get a few hundred “bad” friends—bands are the easiest. They’ll give you a respectable number on your Friends list, and will leave comments on your page—giving a little realism boost to your profile—making the addition of friends of the “good” type that much easier.Where else could we find a place to actually build relationships with people—who may or may not have heard of us before. We spend time daily emailing people, and guess what, they email back. It becomes the ultimate soft-sell tool.Have patience. Without a huge brand presence, don’t expect to turn profits. The only investment is your time. As long as you regularly give people something interesting—blogs, music, and other tidbits that AREN’T related to your business—then you’ll develop enough trust for them to be interested in what you DO sell.

Keep it personal—talk with the people as if you’d email a new friend. Say “Hi,” get to know them, and they’ll want to get to know you. If you try to sell, sell, sell, you’ll have a hard time earning respect on MySpace.

As far as layouts, there are a few “schools of thought”—one says make it fancy and high end, but the other, and seemingly more successful one, says simplicity is best. Since people are browsing through so many profiles with the same layout, they look for certain features in certain places. If you move too many things around, you’ll frustrate your visitors and they’ll leave. Make it intuitive and easy, just like a good e-commerce site.

If there’s anything a “seasoned” MySpace user hates it is a slow page. The MySpace site has loads of slow loaders. You may get friends with a lot of stuff on your page, but they won’t actually spend the time to interact with you.

Written By:

Shawn A. Welk

New Media Director

Interchanges.com

MySpace.com/Interchanges

Hello world! Interchanges Is Here…. January 28, 2008

What’s up World. My name is Shawn I work for Interchanges.com as the new media director. You will be hearing a lot from me and my crew in the near future. My dept works in the Internets social world. Check out Myspace.com/NUSwerve, Myspace.com/Interchanges, Myspace.com/VWDUBClub, MySpace.com/CaitlinBrunell, Myspace.com/LiveVolvowww.LiveVolvo.Comwww.VWDUBClub.comwww.CaitlinsCloset.orgStay tuned for some Pop Culture Living. I am all about endorsing life thru Pop Culture Marketing….Swerve