Yesterday, Dawn announced she’d be moving on from Outspoken Media. It was hard to see in print, but Dawn stuck with us through an incredibly exhausting year and earned a spot in this family regardless of where her career takes her. We thank her for everything she brought to Outspoken, all the long hours and the work ethic that never ceased to impress. She’ll be missed.
With Dawn’s departure there were questions raised, especially since her announcement follows on the heels of Rae stepping down as CEO. Over the past two years Outspoken Media has experienced a tremendous amount of growth. That growth came in many shapes and sizes, and with the hard work and trust of many individuals. It has been exhausting, difficult, scary and, at times, absolutely insane. It’s also been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life to date.
As the company grew on performance reports and ledgers, Lisa and I have grown as individuals. Did we do it without any bumps along the way? No. Did we do it without any help? No. But did we do it with a fire in our bellies to keep Outspoken Media our number one priority no matter how often our significant others, family and friends asked us to please shut the computer down? Yes. Business isn’t always fun, but the challenges make us better professionals and, I would like to think, people.
I am proud of what Outspoken Media has accomplished as a brand, a business and a service provider. It’s our baby and to the answer your questions – yes, we’re here to stay. We may not have the same names as when we began, but like any new business, if we cannot overcome inevitable obstacles gracefully and quickly, we didn’t have much going for us to begin with.
We’ve built something special and we will continue to grow this business in the New Year with the help of our team and clients. Now also seems like an appropriate time to welcome in two new faces to Outspoken Media. Well, at least new to you. They’ve actually been part of our family for a while now. They’re two women who joined our team and showed us how important team is to business. They complete us and in 2011 will be the other half of Outspoken Media.
Sabre Angelique Sarnataro
Internet Marketing Specialist
Sabre serves as one of our Internet marketing specialists and came to Outspoken with a strong background in traditional marketing. She’s worked in promotions, broadcast advertising and print marketing, also delving into freelance web design/development and social media consulting. She has the core belief that every person should print the definition of “honest” to their mirror, not only to remind them of its varied meanings, but to inject it into their everyday lives. She believes a good marketing approach will always include passion, personality and honesty.
Clients will love her because she attacks their projects with passion, creativity and a unique voice. We love her because she’s a tough Italian, outspoken, and has no shame when it comes to the amount of frosting one requires to assemble a gingerbread house [still a sore subject around the office]. She’s also slowly working to increase Lisa’s pop culture knowledge, which we all really appreciate. Her knowledge, her fire and her spunk make her a perfect complement to Outspoken.
Michelle Lyttle Lowery
Senior Content Manager
After serving time in both the United States Air Force as a cryptologic linguist (no, seriously) and Corporate America, Michelle serendipitously fell into Web writing, and hasn’t looked back since. For more than 20 years, Michelle parlayed her love of language into successful writing and editing pursuits. A self-described word nerd, she loves reading and books, and thinks grammar and etymology are fun. She speaks Spanish and Russian conversationally, and could probably get around Paris and Berlin without too much trouble. Since September 2008, she’s been honing her skills as a Web writer and editor, and learning the art and science of SEO, and Internet marketing.
Clients will love Michelle because her uncompromising personal expectations, honest writing, and versatile style and voice. We love Michelle for her excitement, her desire to dig in and get her hands dirty, and for occasionally sending emails so amazing they make us giggle and/or cry. Michelle currently resides in South Carolina so, sadly, she’s not in the office with Lisa, Sabre and myself. But that doesn’t stop us from bugging her via video Skype chats.
Just like any new company, this past year has been a lesson in smart hiring as we opened up our new Troy, NY office. However, with the addition of Michelle and Sabre, we’re confident we got it right.
To date we’ve been mostly a virtual shop with Lisa and myself working out of our apartments for the better part of the past two years (wee, no pants Friday!). It worked well when it was just us, but as the team grew we saw the effect that working virtually had on morale. As a result, we’ll only be considering candidates in upstate New York for (most) future positions. Yes, Michelle telecommutes, but she’s an exception due to her level of awesomeness and how well she vibes with the team. There’s something to be said for working in an office together with group coffee runs, late night client deadlines and maps for industry domination in 2011.
With that, we hope you’ll join us in welcoming Michelle and Sabre to the team. We think you’ll agree, they live up to the Outspoken Media legacy. We also want to thank the community for their support. The messages Lisa and I have received over the past few weeks have been nothing short of amazing. Thank you.
Brands spent a lot of time and money in 2010 acquiring a social following. By building up Facebook Likes and Twitter followers, big brands like The New York Times and Mountain Dew now have a social audience pool that they can engage with.
The problem is that while some big brands have put a substantial effort into the social wave, other big brands, as well as smaller brands, are limited in their high volume approach to social media.
Additionally, the bigger brands that have already made efforts toward social follower acquisition have a tough time tracking the ROI from theirefforts. However, converging social media with display advertising can fix these social media problems, as well as the everlasting problem of banner ad blindness.
The wide reach of display advertising
Since the early days of the consumer Web, businesses have been serving their display ads on publisher sites with the goal of attracting new customers. Advertisers would back campaigns out to actual sales dollars generated directly from the ad, allowing the ROI to be measured appropriately.
E-mail marketing and SEM campaigns are tracked similarly, giving advertisers the ability to figure out how much money they need to spend on each channel to achieve a positive ROI. However, while e-mail marketing generally only targets a subscriber list, and SEM inventory mainly relies on search engines, display advertising gives advertisers the ability to target new customers and segmented audiences on the millions of Websites they visit.
This allows the brand to win additional sales from almost anywhere on the Web. But the problem with display ads is that they’re often ignored and go unnoticed by consumers, as display ads are usually,though not always,salesy and not engaging.
The engagement power of social media
Social media, however, is not ignored. Like and retweet buttons are easily and often clicked, and allow people to share brand content to their own social audience. A brand that taps into someone’s social graph can lead to dozens, even hundreds of an individual’s friends and followers to check out the brand as well.
A brand’s followers and like-ers can start receiving additional social notices from a brand, allowing audiences to engage with and share the brand’s latest deals or info about its newest products. However, this is generally seen of as an exercise in branding, adding an implicit value to brand, which is hard to track.
While advertisers know they are getting some sort of long term value, they don’t know exactly what this value is. Additionally, social share buttons are generally limited to internet real estate that the brand already owns, giving advertisers a tough time to socially connect with audiences that have interest in the brand, but have yet to check out their latest blog post, viral video, or campaign.
Convergence
As a marketer, imagine spreading your brand’s Facebook Like button to the sites that your audience visits. Imagine being able to stay in front of your audience with your Twitter feed and retweet buttons, or having ads that click-through to share your content on Linkedin.
Converging social media with display advertising lets the two forms of media synergize, and possibly become the most powerful form of internet advertising available. We’ve already seen a media convergence between display and search – the result of which can be seen in Google Adwords – which has combined the contextual targeting of their SEM platform with the inventory of their display platform.
By converging social media with traditional display buying, advertisers can build their social following and engage with their audience on millions of Websites. Big brands like Ford are already doing this, but 2011 will allow smaller brands to socially activate their audience through display ads as well, the benefits of which include:
An Unparalleled Reach – Not only do you get the inventory reach with the rising popularity of real-time bidding that new display media offers, people who engage with these ads will further share this engagement with their social-graph. This is the biggest possible reach for advertisers.
Increased Brand Engagement – As previously stated, banner ads often go unnoticed or ignored. This is mostly due to creative design – static banners tend to not jump out to consumers, while animated banners tend to move too fast, causing its messaging to be lost. By placing your brand’s social plugins into ad creatives, audience engagement increases, and their own social feed will remind them about your brand and content, as well as spread it to their own social connections.
Lifetime Trackability – With the newly democratized availability of audience targeting techniques, specifically retargeting, advertisers can now better track the total interaction between their brand and its social audience. By segmenting your brand’s social audience, retargeting allows you to track the total amount of dollars spent by your socially acquired customers over any amount of time! In some specific examples, the Facebook fans of one particular college are 233% more active with the college’s online marketing media than its Website’s general visitors, while the Facebook fans of an up-and-coming house DJ were 367% more active with the artist’s promotional ads when compared to the visitors of his official Myspace page and fan blog.
By combining social media with display buying, small and big advertisers alike are able to attract social followers from more places than ever, and are finally able to track the results and valuate their efforts. While both mediums have their own unique strengths and weaknesses, converging the two will create value that can’t be matched by each medium acting alone.
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