Have you ever made the mistake of liking one of your own posts on accident? Did you unlike it quickly, worried that you’d look like you were patting yourself on the back? One of our clients, Plan B Consultants, was having a similar problem, in that their employees and consultants, who were also page admins were some times inadvertently liking the page’s comment as the page.

So we put together this quick screen shot to help ensure that when liking the page’s comments they were doing so as themselves and not the company.

ps. A little secret: Just click on comment and see which thumbnail comes up. If you see your gorgeous mug then you know you’re doing it right!

Edited to add:

It appears from some feedback that people might be having a problem with one of their page settings…. Use facebook as your page and then click “Edit Page” – then under “Your Settings” see if “Posting Preferences: Always comment and post on your page as Plan B Consultants, Inc., even when using Facebook as Cherie Smith Prochaska.” is checked. If so, uncheck it and you should be good to go!

Running for Champagne Shirts by CherryJean.com

Last week, Cherie and I traveled to Las Vegas to run the Rock N Roll half-marathon. While Vegas is always a good time and this visit was no exception, the race itself had some serious logistical issues. Not to sweep those issues under the rug — there were many valid complaints from hundreds of runners, ranging from allegedly contaminated water to a shortage of post-race food to a poorly organized starting and finishing area — what fascinated us as an online marketing firm was Rock ‘N’ Roll’s response (or somewhat lack thereof) to the backlash on Facebook and Twitter. It was — and still is, really — like watching a train wreck happen in slow motion.

When a huge company such as the Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon Series (they currently organize nearly 30 races across the U.S., Canada, and Europe) fumbles with their social media response to valid complaints from (high) paying customers, it provides a lesson for any company using social media as a platform to interact with customers. Social media — Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, etc. — can be an invaluable tool but it can do more harm than good if not well-used.

For instance, as soon as the race ended, upset and sick runners took to Facebook to voice their frustrations. Hundreds of those comments were not answered — and those that were eventually answered were not done so very quickly — and when a response was given, it was a blanket PR response from the CEO (and written with incorrect facts, too). Any company in charge of a race with 44K runners (at $140/each, that’s over $6 million), hiring social media managers should be a key decision — smart, thorough people who can offer levelheaded responses without delay. When you wait to respond to angry, upset, and disappointed customers (and runners are a passionate repeat “customer” group), you look guilty and unsympathetic.

Some of the Facebook comments:

Additionally, Zappos.com was tied to this event as a lead sponsor and Zappos.com is known for their stellar customer service. (I, for one can vouch for that service on many personal occasions.) This brings into question what sponsors should ask when partnering with companies. Zappos.com couldn’t have predicted these particular events would unfold, but I wonder how many sponsors ask of companies: “Do you have full-time staff to handle your social media responses?” I bet it’s not a standard question but maybe it should be.

Finally, just today (over a week after the race), Rock ‘N’ Roll emailed a $50 discount offer for the next Rock ‘N’ Roll race — a January race in Arizona. When many runners expressed that it would be impossible for them to travel again so soon after Vegas, and wondered if they could use that discount on another race, the answer was always something similar to this:

The offer felt like another customer service fail. Obviously the majority of runners who had a bad Vegas experience couldn’t travel a month later and the organization most likely knew this. They made an offer they knew wouldn’t make much of a difference to the issues at hand or to their bottom line.

So, a few final thoughts on the issue from a social media standpoint:

• Most large scale events should have social media staff, to handle (in real time) post-event response
• As many comments as possible should be directly answered, through comments or emails
• Admit mistakes outright and offer concrete solutions (you can’t change the experience, but you can refund entry fees, offer considerable future discounts, or a combination of both — and make those solutions benefit all that had complaints, not a select few)
• Avoid blanket press releases and instead address individual concerns

What do you think? What’s a company’s social media responsibility when an event has disorganized and dangerous logistics? And, are sponsors responsible for a company’s social media response?

Can we get a little personal for a minute? This certainly has nothing to do with web design and it’s probably a stretch to even say that it related to graphic design but it certainly is creative and it makes me happy so I’m posting it!

See most of the work I do makes me happy and even though I’m not a baker, there is a 50% chance it’s in my genes, I mean look at my cousin Mel’s cupcake shop!

Most of you who know me, know that my twin boys (←warning: blog that gets yearly updates!) turned three today! And this being their first year in preschool I got really excited about the cupcakes we were going to take to school. I googled a few ideas and almost opted for store bought cupcakes because most of them were pretty complicated and we’ve been pretty busy lately. Then I ran across the cookie monster cupcake! And it was pretty perfect. The boys LOVE cupcakes, cookies and marshmallows. Trifecta.

So here’s how I did it in 6 easy steps!

1. Bake the cupcakes of  your choosing, making sure to fill the cups to the top. We went with the quintessential funfetti flavor, one box filled 12 cupcakes.

2. While they are baking you can prepare the googley eyes.

All the examples I saw used white chocolate discs. But the boys love them some “mellows” so I wanted to find a way to make this work. They are just large marshmallows with dollops of blue gel icing. I let these sit for about an hour before I put them on the cookie monster cupcake so the gel didn’t run.

3. Next the fur.

I put half a bag of coconut into the food processor with a whole tube of blue gel icing. Just be careful when you are doing this because I noticed steam coming from the top, after spinning it for a while. Sorta worried I was burning up the machine, I checked and thankfully the steam wasn’t hot it was cold? I was actually beginning to liquify the coconut and it was creating a mist. So don’t do that.

Once I got the coconut to the blue hue I wanted, I transferred it to a bowl and mixed in a shaker of sprinkles to make cookie monster a little bit sparkly and fabulous. Ha, my poor boys.

Now that they’ve baked and have nice big muffin tops (finally, a situation when that’s actually desired!), let them cool and then you can begin icing and assembling.

What NOT to do. Don’t cut the mouth slot before you ice with frosting or your cookie monster will look like this:

4. First you’ll want to ice the top. I chose Pillsbury Easy Frost (which is 99% of the reason this was so darn easy). Then over the bowl of fur, holding the cupcake upright (or the muffin top will begin to separate), place handfulls of fur onto the icing. Rotate the cupcake from the base as you go and lightly pressing the fur down.

5. Mouth: Then after your satisfied with the fur coverage, take a serrated knife and give the little monster a mouth. Just cut about 1/4 of the way in at an angle so you don’t cut the whole top off or encourage it to separate. Then lift the knife to open the mouth and shove the Chips Ahoy cookie in!

6. Eyes: After the gel icing has set (note: it won’t be completely dry, just a little less gooey) take your serrated knife and cut a little of the rounded part off the marshmallows so the eyes will sit flat on the cupcake.

If not then they will either roll off or you will have to secure them with tooth picks. Which is neither cute nor safe, both of which we want our cookie monster cupcakes to be, right? See example pic of what-not-to-do above if you’re still contemplating securing with toothpicks.

After you cut a few you’ll want to rinse the mellow build up off the knife with hot water so you can keep getting nice clean cuts.

A little icing on the bottom of the eyes also helps them to stick.

It can get a little messy so hopefully you’ll have helpers as good as mine to clean up the mess!

And be sure to share your cookie monster cupcakes with friends!

Every once in while, when Jennie is not working on writing copy or social media marketing for our clients, she gets the chance to pitch C*Squared Associates. We are so proud of the first press coverage we received from these efforts (and to think she’s only been at it for two months)!

Founder, Cherie Prochaska, was featured in The Aggie Network’s Texas Aggie Magazine. If you know anything about The Aggie Network you’ll agree that this is huge!

Do you have company news of your own that you’d like to get some media love? We are standing by ready to help. Contact us today: 503-272-1878.

One of the many things C*Squared Associates can do for you, as a blogger or small business owner, is design a custom banner or blog header for you. We’ve enjoyed doing just that for blogs such as Food Lush, Elly Says Opa, and My Grand Illusions.

If your site could use a fresh banner, especially a free one, hop on over to Style Lush for the chance to win this very thing. It’s as simple as commenting, and you have until this Friday, so don’t wait.

Or, if a banner isn’t quite what you want, but it’s close, C*Squared is offering two hours toward custom design work (think, Twitter background, custom logo, etc.) in place of the banner; the options are really endless for you to pair up with us on something you’ve been wanting to do for your website or blog.

Comment today over on Style Lush and good luck!

Recently, C*Squared was lucky enough to assist in the new design and launch of Hotel Sales Training Company, Plan B Consultants’ website. Plan B is a hospitality consulting firm, specializing in improving hotel business and sales with hands-on assistance. (Please “like” them on Facebook and also follow them on Twitter!)

It was such a refreshing experience, for both Cherie and myself, to work with Amy (Plan B founder) because her vision of the site and the site’s content was straightforward and clear. We simply helped execute that vision for her, and it was a fun team to be a part of.

One special thing about Amy (and Plan B by extension) is her desire to integrate social media marketing into her business plan and future company goals. This is pretty common by itself — most small businesses are trying to do just that — but Amy asked all the right questions and has jumped into Facebook promotion head first (growing her Facebook page from a dozen likes to nearly 60 in just a week’s time). When you’re eager to make social media work for your business (and eager to put in the work required), you see the difference in the results.

Check out Plan B’s new site and keep an eye on their social media presence. We think they’ll be making quite a splash!

A few months ago, Cherie & Julia submitted a logo to the Zambia Tourism Department Branding Contest, an open competition that called for anyone and everyone to submit a personally designed logo in hopes it would be chosen as Zambia Tourism’s newest brand.

While Cherie & Julia’s logo wasn’t selected, the experience still brings up an interesting discussion regarding crowdsourcing as a marketing tool or, on the opposite side of the coin, as a way to get your foot in the door of a saturated job market.

Zambia logo

The Zambia Tourism Department had “2,017 different people produce 4,445 slogans and 956 different images from 45 countries” and each person or group did so free of charge. Each person or group who submitted a logo did so, it’s safe to assume, for the exposure, for the opportunity, and for the chance to expand his, her, or their portfolio. (And, of course, for the chance to take an all-expenses paid, two-week trip to Zambia, which was offered to the winning team.)

So, it definitely can be worth tossing your hourly or project rate out the window from time to time (when the opportunity makes sense to do so) and for a lot of small business owners or bloggers just starting out, crowdsourcing IS an opportunity that makes sense. Why not try to generate interest and buzz for your company or talent if you can, even if it’s without an invoice attached? If you can draw attention to your talent or company by just putting yourself out there, won’t it possibly pay off in the end?

Just check out some of the ideas and thoughts produced by the online community on the subject of crowdsourcing:

• One Book, One Twitter (a crowdsourcing campaign for a sidebar badge)
• “The Crowd is Wise, but Can It Draw?” (thoughts from Slate.com on the topic)
• “Flickr to Crowdsource Footage of Royal Wedding.”
• The Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Global Education Challenge (if you have a must-be-heard idea to change the landscape of American education, why not share it with one of the largest textbook manufacturers?)
• Then there’s Crowdsource This, an idea that feels so simplistically genius, I can’t believe no one else has thought of it!

So, what do you think of the idea? Innovative and creative? Or a trend that undervalues talented designers, writers, and programmers?

A friend of C*Squared Associates, Shasta with Outrageous Fortune, recently asked us to help strengthen her social media presence and grow her blog audience. Cherie suggested a handful of strategies and Shasta will periodically post about what she’s found through using those tools and resources.

First, a couple sites Cherie recommended to Shasta (that might be helpful to you, as well):

1. Lynda.com. This is a subscription service that provides training videos on a myriad of topics, from software to social media. Cherie suggested one specific video on keyword research. (You can access that video once you sign up!)

2. SEOmoz.org. Here you can sign-up for software that shows you how to maximize SEO on your website, specifically through title tags, meta descriptions, and on-page factors.

Armed with Cherie’s suggestions, here are some snippets from Shasta’s recent blog post:

Google Analytics is a free service that gives you mountains of data on your traffic, such as where you guys come from, how long you stay and how many pages you look at (don’t worry, you’re still anonymous).

Do you know about Google Analytics? If not, we highly suggest you get to know about it. Sign up for the (free) service and track your traffic, see what posts people are most positively responding to, and where your readers are coming from.

Keyword research is a big, big project that I haven’t had time to really get into right now. But I need to make time, because it is essential for making SEO (search engine optimization) work. The basic premise is this: people enter phrases into search engines to answer a question or find specific information. If you can use the terms searchers use but not many websites use, then you will rank high in their search results.

Shasta defines “keyword research” so straightforwardly and if you want to build your website or blog traffic, we think this is a must-know topic.

Title tags are one of the top things search engines look at to match searches, so it’s best to put a keyword-rich description up there.

She’s right again! Title tags are often overlooked but incredibly important.

Head over to Outrageous Fortune to read the full post and follow along as she continues to use easy tools and resources that C*Squared has suggested to her in order to measure her growing blog.

Thanks, Shasta!

To kick off C*Squared’s blog, I thought I’d share some social media tips and tricks I’ve garnered over the last few years, as social media marketing has really taken off.

I’ve broken this into three categories: blogging, Facebook, and Twitter.

Blogging

• Make post titles straightforward, placing proper nouns or important key words and in the first 3-4 words of the title
• Make sure the permalink matches the post title.
• Hyperlink proper nouns and names instead of vague phrases like “go here” or “this link”
• Select the option to open links (when hyperlinking) in a new window, so you won’t direct people away from your site when you link
• Respond to each comment that comes in, either directly or on your blog
• Identify other important blogs of the same category and become a frequent commenter on those sites. Also, incorporate those URLs into posts of your own through hyperlinking.
• Promote each post through your Facebook and Twitter accounts, if you have them. Many blog platforms allow you to sync these accounts together, so it’s easy as checking a box.
• Closely monitor Google Analytics on your site to see your traffic sources and to connect with other sites and bloggers who are linking to you
• Use spellcheck for each post
• Include an easy link (either a graphic or text link) to your Facebook and Twitter accounts in your blog’s sidebar
• Create and maintain a blogroll

Facebook

• Update your status at least once a day, to engage your friends and followers
• Identify “power FB users” who are in your same category and “like” their page and then engage on their walls and pages
• Whenever writing about a person, place, company, or site be sure to include their FB page in your status (by liking them and then using @Name). It will show up on their wall and let them easily see your feedback.
• Engage followers and fans on Facebook by writing open-ended questions in a status, or responding to any comment you receive.
• Intersperse links to your blog and site with new, fresh content so your page doesn’t come across like spam to your followers
• Consider a Facebook ad about your company or an event. Rates can be reasonable and analytics are run through FB, so you can easily gauge ad success.
• If you have an iPhone or other smart phone, sync your account with your phone, so you can send out updates as they occur to you.

Twitter

• Find a nice balance between too many tweets and not enough. A general number to keep in mind is 2-3x a day for fresh content, 1-2 RTs, and then always respond to anyone who is writing about you or to you.
• Whenever writing about a person, place, company, or site, include their Twitter handle (by saying @Name) so they can see your tweet more easily
• If you’re writing to someone (or about someone) and the Twitter handle is the first word of the tweet, use a period before it, so your entire followers list can see the tweet (otherwise, just the people following both you and the person you’re communicating with/about will see it) (Example “.@csquaredassc is offering a discount to all their Twitter fans for this week only!”)
• Respond to all DMs
• Shorten all links by using bitly (http://bit.ly/), or a similar service, in order to keep track of traffic from that link
• Use a service like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to schedule tweets in advance and to keep more than one social media platform accessible in the same place. Additionally, you can track a tweet’s success with these sites.
• If you have an iPhone or other smart phone, sync your account with your phone, so you can send out updates as they occur to you.

This is brief and general overview of some nice and easy ways to make social media work for you. We’ll continue to share trends and tips with you, so you can make social media a tool in your company’s success story!

(Ask any questions either in the comments or by emailing me directly at jennifer@c-squaredassociates.com.)

We’re so thrilled you’ve stopped by to read our first blog post (and we hope you’ll return to read the second and third and hundredth). Who are “we,” you might ask? Glad you did! We’re the team behind C*Squared Associates. (More specifically, Cherie Prochaska and Jennie Canzoneri.) We’ll both be popping up on the blog from time to time with the latest industry trends, social media tips and tricks, and news about our clients and our company.

C*Squared is all about figuring out how to make your company better (and in turn, that makes us better) and we’re also pretty enthusiastic about marketing — specifically online, but we love in-person networking when we can do it, so if you know of marketing or design opportunities or conventions in Portland or DFW, let us know!

We’ll be on Facebook and Twitter often, but you can expect new, fresh, expanded content in this space once a week at a minimum, content we hope will help you grow your company and will also teach you a thing or two about online marketing and design. (Starting this week, even!)

C*Squared is excited to meet and work with new clients. If you think that could possible be you, check out our services and get in touch with us today!