Upon hearing the word “blog,” we often are inclined to revert to the cliché; the odes of tweenage girls venting about boy trouble, feline-fashion tips from recluse cat-ladies, or the perfectly pink posts of Hollywood celebrity gossip gurus. Blogs have long been the regarded as the artwork of amateurs. However, with the emergence of social media marketing, blogs are now booming with new-and-improved content intended to inform a more professional audience.
Looking at our recent video case study release focusing on NewUrbanismBlog.com and the sustainable design market, one can notice the cross-industry perk blogs pertain thanks to social media marketing, the first and most notable benefit being the self-promotional factor. (more…)
I would like share a story that Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing, was presented by Hamptons Green Alliance. The story focuses on the HGA presentation of housing development updates at the AIA Peconic Member Dinner Meeting in Southampton, NY.
Hamptons Green Alliance Members Present HGA House Update to AIA Peconic Dinner Meeting
Bridgehampton, NY – Members of the Hamptons Green Alliance (http://www.hamptonsgreenalliance.com), believed to be the first group of contractors who specialize in a variety of disciplines in the building industry to formally come together to share their expertise and promote sustainable building practices, recently presented their first project to members of the AIA Peconic Member Dinner Meeting in Southampton, NY.
The HGA project, which was announced last year, is a net zero energy, carbon neutral and LEED platinum house on Long Island. In what is believed to be a first in the Hamptons – if not the nation – this home is being rebuilt from the ashes of a horrific fire.
The presentation, which focused on the planning process for the HGA house project, which followed many of the concepts described in AIA new Integrated Project Delivery forms, also included reviews of the sustainable technologies used to attain the goals of the project as well as those that have been used to create energy in sustainable ways. There was a discussion of how thin film photovoltaic creates electricity with less impact on aesthetics, and a review of the status of residential windmills for this project. Other sustainable technologies required to meet the project’s goals were discussed such as low flow plumbing fixtures, smart home electronic technology, improvement of soil composition organically and reviews of materials to reduce the home’s carbon footprint.
All founding members of the Hamptons Green Alliance were on hand to field questions concerning the technologies that each has brought to the project.
The group, working with the Long Island Chapter of the United States Green Building Council, intends to seek LEED Certified Platinum status for the house, as well as implement a methodology developed by Frank Dalene, president of Telemark, Inc. and a founding member of the Hamptons Green Alliance. In addition to the presentation on the HGA House, Mr. Dalene also presented information on ICEMAN, a mathematical formula that scientifically determines the carbon footprint of any manufactured product. The mechanism is briefly explained on the website: www.carbonfactorindex.com
With all the hype regarding the new Apple iPad tablet I want to share some recent news. Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc. announces the new apple iPad tablet at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on Wednesday.
“When something exceedes your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical,” said Apple’s Senior Vice President of Design Jony Ive. The magicians at work behind the tool that changed modern technology, the iPhone, are at it again, and this time they’ve created a product that, at this point, seems like a mere illusion. The iPad, which will be available in two to three months, will truly revolutionize everyday life. This innovative piece of technology will change the way consumers work, with large touch-screen Internet and e-mail capabilities, and play, with videos, photos, iBooks, and a YouTube app. The iPad also comes with a comprehensive contact list, calendar, and an on-screen keyboard accompanying a place to take notes, although now, we’d expect nothing less from Apple.
The iPad has Wi-Fi availability and can also run on AT&T’s third generation wireless network. With a convenient size, around that of a magazine, and weighing only 1.5 pounds, the iPad fits nicely into a purse or briefcase, making it light enough to take to the office, and big enough to read on the subway. Because of its user-friendly lay-out and design, coupled with Apple’s strong reputation of reliability, this new gadget will no doubt become the latest must-have accessory. If that’s not enough to excite even the most savvy technaholic, the iPad is equipped with a battery life lasting up to ten hours, making this little widget nothing short of a wonder.
This is an article from mobivity.com written by Patricia Carson about new NBC mobile alerts for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The article discusses how you can have easier access to all of your favorite winter events using mobile phone software.
NBC Mobile Alerts for 2010 Winter Olympics
January 21st, 2010 by Patricia Carson
NBC is taking full advantage of mobile software technology for the Winter Olympics beginning on February 12, 2010. They’ve set up a whole system using mobile alerts that allows you to be alerted by TV schedules, your favorite sport, athlete, medal counts and more. Just select “Mobile, Alerts, Shop & More” from the home page navigation bar and select Mobile from the drop down menu, or click here to see the full menu of options available for the information that can be sent to you via mobile.
The fashion industry is ever changing, each season spawning different trends, fads and faux paus. Social media is now putting a new spin on the already rapidly moving industry.
Until recently, the only consumer-industry interaction has been at the checkout counter or rare red carpet event. With social media booming, we see a new breed of consumer. Taking to the blogs, vlogs and tweets, consumers voice their various trend-tips, style-suggestions and fashion-feedback.
Social media offers fashion brand-loyalists a place to network with each other as well as with the industry itself. No longer does the industry have to depend on alternate trend-spotting sources and risky production decisions, they have a free real-time source of certainty through social media content. Social media now links the consumer directly to the industry.
How will this further change the industry? Due to the rapid response capability of consumers, one can predict an even faster rate of market changes. In the fashion industry, they say one minute you’re hot, the next you’re not. Now, thanks to social media, hot just became cold as consumers trend-in and trend-out through social media content. The fashion industry will now need to adapt to an already ever-changing market. (more…)
Here is an article written by Galia Myron on Demodirt.com featuring Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing about television viewing becoming more individualistic.
Television viewing is becoming more individualistic, no more family viewing.
The days of the family gathering around the telly to take in an evening show after dinner are over, says a Swedish study that examined society’s ever-changing relationship with television. While trendwatchers have long reported that people are becoming more independent, “We are becoming more and more individualistic also in our choice of TV programs,” researcher Jakob Bjur wrote in a new dissertation from University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
“In 1999 social viewing, watching together, accounted for 45 percent, and in 2008 it was down to 37 percent. We are becoming more and more individualistic also in our TV choices, and I’m convinced that this trend will continue. We can no longer speak of TV as a social adhesive, a unifying force,” Bjur said publicly, adding that television is now a source of social fragmentation. There are other avenues for social interaction, he added, including the Internet.
I want to share a article from Allbusiness.com written by Barbara Goldberg, featuring Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing. The article focuses on the Susan G. Komen Facebook page and their recent viral public relations campaign.
What good could possibly come of revealing to the world the color of your undergarments? Apparently, quite a lot.
Just 24 hours after a viral campaign tied to breast cancer awareness exploded on Facebook two weeks ago, more than 2,000 new fans — 10 times the usual number in that time period– joined the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Facebook page. It started when women around the world forwarded this e-mail to their friends:
“Some fun is going on . . . just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY girls, no men . . . It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status . . . Pass it on & do your breast self-exams!”
The viral campaign raised disease awareness by raising the curiosity of a few good men, sparking news coverage by ABCNews.com, the Associated Press, Good Morning America, and other major outlets. And it’s continued to grow.
I would like to share some valuable online tips from Mashable staff writer Samuel Axom regarding the placement of closed captions on YouTube videos. In his tutorial he runs down the easy steps of applying captions to user videos, making the process almost “an absolute breeze.”
YouTube has a global audience, so if you want to reach as many people as possible, you’ll have to make sure subtitles are available for your videos. You’ll want closed captioning to reach the deaf and hard of hearing, too. Thankfully, that process has shifted from relatively easy to an absolute breeze in recent months. Here’s how to make it happen.
Once you’ve uploaded a video to your YouTube (YouTube) account, you have two options for generating subtitles for the video: You can use the CaptionTube web app that Google (Google) has created, or you can upload a transcript you make yourself and use Google’s speech recognition technology to automatically assign the right times to each caption. In either case, you’ll end up with a text file that you can edit to make corrections if need be, and viewers will be able to either read the captions in their native language or translate them on the fly when watching your video.
CaptionTube
First, direct your browser to the CaptionTube website and you’ll find a well-realized web application for importing videos, adding and timing captions for them, and exporting the captions however you want them. You’ll have to sign in with your Google account. After you’ve done that, you’ll have two options for importing a video; you can either import a list of all the videos on your account, or you can specify the web address for a public video
Word “czars” at Lake Superior State University “unfriended” 15 words and phrases and declared them “shovel-ready” for inclusion on the university’s 35th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.
“The list this year is a ‘teachable moment’ conducted free of ‘tweets,’” said a Word Banishment spokesman who was “chillaxin’” for the holidays. “‘In these economic times’, purging our language of ‘toxic assets’ is a ‘stimulus’ effort that’s ‘too big to fail.’”
Former LSSU Public Relations Director Bill Rabe and friends created “word banishment” in 1975 at a New Year’s Eve party and released the first list on New Year’s Day. Since then, LSSU has received tens of thousands of nominations for the list, which includes words and phrases from marketing, media, education, technology and more.
Word-watchers may check the alphabetical “complete list” on the website before making their submissions.
Google and Bing, along with other search engines’ newest “real-time Web search” abilities are incredible. Due to the trending available via Twitter, search engines are able to find new Web and social media marketing content in “real time.”
5 Big Real-Time Web Trends of 2009
By Samuel Axon
Web technology and social media change radically from month to month, so it’s difficult to make predictions about what The Next Big Thing is, but you can be confident that the real-time web will get bigger and more essential in 2010. It came to a head in 2009, though, and this year’s applications can give you some idea of what to expect after the New Year.
Twitter’s influence and prominence in the growth of the real-time web goes without saying, but even if it’s the flagship, there’s a fleet of other new services and ventures that are bringing real-time to millions of netizens. Here’s a roundup of the five most exciting general applications of the concept, and examples of each. But if you know of a great one that should be here, fill us in. (Read more)
Jennings Social Media Marketing in Kansas City, Mo. recently released its second case study video within a series of social media videos focused on measurable results. The second video, with 180° Urban Design & Architecture in Kansas City, features the evolution of 180°’s blog into an online news community.
Posted By: Valerie Jennings
We’ve seen professional athletes, high-profile celebrities, and the average Joe all open up to the world of Twitter and social media. According to the following blog from Mashable, the CEO of Google has joined the Twitter fold as well.
Google’s CEO Joins Twitter and Follows … Heidi Montag? At this point, not many new high- profile sign-ups to Twitter are worth reporting, sans perhaps the guy that invented the Internet and Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Twitter nemesis Facebook. But according to reports, another Twitter rival’s CEO — Eric Schmidt of Google — has joined the service. (Read More)
By Valerie Jennings
The following article from Mashable focuses on Google’s newest feature: real-time searching. This will undoubtedly be a solid feature for social media across the board.
Google Launches Real-Time Search
We knew it was inevitable, and now it’s here: Google has just launched real-time search integrated into search results pages.
Google real-time search updates as stuff is happening around the Web — for example, live tweets, Yahoo Answers, news articles and Web pages now stream in on the actual result pages for your query. It works on mobile too (at least iPhone and Android for now).(Read more…)
I was recently pitched by Hamptons Luxury Homes to review their latest news announcement about their carbon neutral headquarters for the Jennings Social Media Marketing blog. Please take a look at their exciting initiatives.
Hamptons Luxury Homes: One of Country’s First Builders to Become Carbon Neutral Continues Commitment in Green Building with Purchase of Offsets That Support Family Farm Agricultural Methane Project
Bridgehampton, NY (October 26, 2009) – Hamptons Luxury Homes (PINK:HLXH) today announced that it has offset 100% of the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the company and all of its subsidiaries, including Telemark, Inc. The announcement was made by Frank Dalene, Vice President and CFO of Hamptons Luxury Homes. (more…)
The expression of community has changed considerably since the emergence of social media technologies, but its basic foundation — the notion of individuals exchanging information, ideas, and opinions — remains firmly intact. Today, one of the most widely-used tools in developing these types of exchanges online is WordPress, the popular blogging and publishing platform. Part of its appeal is the ease with which users can build advanced functionality into their sites with plugins. If you’re interested in building a community around your site, there are plenty of third-party add-ons that can help create one.
These 10 WordPress plugins add features that will help you to engage your user base. (Read more)
Manage Your Advertising is one of 10 WordPress plug-ins available.
I would like to share the words of JR Johnson with you all from his blog post on Mashable. I’m compassionate about the views he’s expressed, and I hope you find them beneficial as well.
November 15th, 2009 | by JR Johnson
J.R. Johnson is founder and CEO of Lunch.com, a user generated content platform focused on finding common ground, and host of the Lunch for Good event series.
There’s been a rising interest in the concept of “social media for social good.” In large part, that discussion has been focused on cause-related social good. I have a different take, related more to the greater good of humanity as a whole. To my view, the Internet, specifically social media, has the potential – and responsibility – to make the world more thoughtful and tolerant by showing people their shared common ground.
For companies just getting started in the social media arena, it is critical that they not only have a strategic marketing plan to effectively implement social media, but they must also have a social media personal policy.
Here is a recent article that I wanted to share with you from Mashable about the cost of social media to employers. (more…)
I wanted to share a search engine article from Mashable regarding Google’s deal with Twitter. Now, tweets will begin showing up in search engine results – a new way for marketers to obtain placements on Google! I will be available to answer search engine optimization tactics via social media marketing through our blog.
Twitter has been virtually taken over this weekend by a great cause: #BeatCancer gets brands to donate 1 cent for every tweet containing that hashtag. It’s been a huge success so far, with 200,000+ tweets being posted since the launch yesterday.
The campaign aims to break a Guinness World Record for the most social mentions, although it’s unclear where that record currently stands.
A great story about the possibility of interactive storytelling through Twitter:
There are lots of things you can do on Twitter besides tweet — and interactive storytelling just became one of them.
Neil Gaiman, famed author and creator of The Sandman comic series, and BBC Audiobooks America have gotten together to produce an interesting creative fiction experiment utilizing the microblogging service. Neil tweeted the first line of the interactive story at noon EST Tuesday, with other Twitter users joining in to continue the tale using the hashtag #bbcawdio.
Spurred by new short-form, shoot-from-the-hip content, Web measurement tools race to embrace real-time events
Story by Rich Karpinski, Business to Business Magazine
Adobe Systems’ $1.8 billion purchase of Web analytics vendor Omniture Inc., which received regulatory approval last week, is the latest proof of the mainstreaming of online measurement.
While some market-watchers wonder how well the two companies actually fit together, the combination “has the potential to embed measurement technologies into the landscape of interactive media,” Forrester Research analyst John Lovet said. It also could signal more consolidation as well, as other competitors—most notably, Microsoft Corp.—look to acquire or partner with the remaining independent Web analytics firms. (more…)
We were pitched this story idea by Susan Bardack, chief marketing officer at Izoca,and wanted to share it with you.
Technology company reveals updated platform with a focus on social scheduling and communication
(Albany, NY) — iZoca.com, a technology company focused on efficient scheduling and communication announces a national campaign to educate groups and organizations across the country about how they can utilize iZoca to stay connected. iZoca provides a simple way for groups, organizations and individuals to share information and plan events and activities. It features tools which provide groups the ability to effectively communicate and organize both publicly and privately.
There’s no doubt that Twitter has experienced massive growth in the past year, growing 752 percent in 2008, with a total of more than 4.43 million unique visitors according to Compete. Twitter users range from teens, adults and businesses to celebrities updating their own status. Twitter has not only become a creative blueprint for business’ online marketing campaigns, it has also become a site for breaking news. There’s no telling what new trends the online community will continue to see, but one thing’s for sure, social networking sites such as Twitter are growing rapidly and making quite a splash. Mashable has more or read the full article after the jump.
This is an article from mobivity.com written by Patricia Carson about new NBC mobile alerts for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The article discusses how you can have easier access to all of your favorite winter events using mobile phone software.
CaptionTube
which provide groups the ability to effectively communicate and organize both publicly and privately.
