Soshalize

Soshal Group is an Ottawa-based agency focused on social intelligence, strategy and media.

[soshalgroup]

Making a Case for Retail Sales in a Mobile World

There’s no argument to be made here regarding the importance of mobile in the consumer buying process. As a (self-proclaimed) retail sales veteran with over seven years of experience, I've seen the transition from the consumer’s reliance on the in-store experience and salespeople to that of their own research to help them make purchasing decisions. Not that prior to ~14.1 MB/s, people weren't able to research their options with mobile data download speeds, but mobile devices have developed to make that process even simpler. According to Nielsen’s Q3-Q4 2011 “US Digital Consumer Report,” 29% of smartphone owners use their device for shopping-related activities. Top mobile shopping activities include in-store price comparisons (38%), browsing products through the mobile web or apps (38%), and reading online product reviews (32%) (eMarketer, Feb. 2012). How can traditional retailers keep up with an increasingly mobile world?

Online retailers have been doing a great job identifying their pain points and providing service offerings to sway consumers towards online shopping; free shipping, one-day shipping, extended return policies, product knowledge databases, customer reviews, competitive costs, etc. As a result, many mobile shoppers use retail stores purely as a playground for putting the products in their hands.  In a study by Google and IPSOS OTX during the 2011 holiday shopping season 19% of smartphones users began their journey by researching on their device, going to a store to test the product, then going back online for purchase (eMarketer, Feb. 2012, same link as above).

More and more, big box stores are becoming “showrooms” for online shoppers to test products that they saw online (Forbes, 2012). Most of these retailers are also unable to compete with online prices due to their profit margins being much smaller. Although the percentage of smartphone use for shopping-related activities is currently nowhere near 100%, that number will continue to grow as the amount of online and mobile shopping solutions increase.

The first thing that retailers need to do is drop the assumption that consumers simply don’t know what they want. Serious buyers will arm themselves with knowledge and speaking to sales staff is only a fraction of the buying process. Therefore, retailers need to be where customers are looking for their sources. Big box retailers that focus on making their online and mobile shopping experiences as easy as, or easier than shopping at one of their stores have found the greatest success.

The common  mistake is for stores to move forward with mobile apps but then these apps serve as nothing more than a catalogue. These apps were built with the wrong question in mind: “How do I bring users into my store(s)?” The right question is: “How do I make users stay on the app/site?” Make your online store a one-stop shop for information, identify your customer’s pain points and resolve them by offering interactive tools.

For a better idea of successful practices, check out a couple of my favourite shopping apps:

Sephora 

Pizza Pizza 

Asako is one of Soshal Group's awesome Account Managers. When she's not busy keeping her clients happy, she spends her free time listening to new music, trying out new recipes, and mostly reading tech blogs.

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Engagement Programs: 3 Common Mistakes

Soshal Group launched its Digital Engagement Practice with an understanding that brands and organizations need to be proactive in improving their connectivity with important stakeholders: customers, employees, members, and the public. To achieve this goal, there needs to be tailored-strategies for these groups, and implementation of technologies to improve communication flow. This means so much more than casually responding to customer service issues on Twitter, or periodically responding to employee suggestions by email. Engagement needs to happen across all operations, launching campaigns to stimulate use of these platforms or channels and incorporating advanced tracking and measurement programs. Engagement practices can be extremely valuable to any organization, so long as it can avoid these 3 common shortfalls of engagement execution.

The “Check the box” Faux-pas

Many organizations treat their engagement strategies as necessary evils, which allow them to check a box that says, “Yes, we use social media and have a feedback email for employee use. Engagement requirement achieved.”

Engaging stakeholders should not be a means to check off a box, but a strategy that’s leveraged for solving problems and improving a competitive advantage. Best engagement practices require the identification of key company objectives, incorporating methods of connectivity, and establishing metrics to identify how this strategy meets those objectives.

Engaging employees, customers, members, or the public provides a vast amount of opportunities to improve the bottom line of ANY organization. However, engaging for the sake of checking the box, and jumping on the engagement bandwagon is a wasted opportunity to improve your business at a functional level.

Engaging the wrong people

Marketers will often times make the mistake of treating their engagement programs like mass-media channels, where the same message is broadcast to a large user base. There is often strength in numbers, but to see transformative success from your efforts, you will need to recognize that not all of your stakeholders carry as much weight as others. It is important to segment these stakeholders into relevant sub-groups and craft targeting messaging, content, and responses that will elicit the greatest action (employee feedback, crowdsourcing of the public, facilitating connections between members, or communicating with shareholders and customers).

In many engagement programs, there may be obvious go-to groups or individuals who should be involved and engaged. This is likely because of the status they carry within your organization, the volume of their voice, or the likelihood of responding to your message. While these groups may seem like obvious targets for engagement, a successful practice looks beyond the obvious, and ensures the strategy reaches the quieter, less obvious, but equally valuable voices. In this approach, marketers are ensuring that the conversation is both inclusive and complete.

Throwing Engagement on Top of the Pile

The wealth of tools and applications made available at a low cost makes it seemingly easy to launch your own engagement program. However, to be truly successful with a strategy as a means to improve your business’ operations or bottom line, engagement needs to be integrated within an organization’s brand, culture, and business processes - not simply thrown on top of your existing activities.

If the word “engagement” gets summed up within your organization as “social media”, the likelihood of measurable success will be difficult to achieve. Soshal Group fully recognizes that this term is both a buzzword and very difficult to define, but it’s important to recognize that, if properly executed, digital engagement programs can go far beyond your Facebook page. Once your digital engagement strategy reflects this, then you will be on your way to experiencing success.

If you feel your organization is making some of these mistakes, or you’re interested in learning more about engagement practices, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Soshal Group's Digital Engagement expert Paul Dombowsky: [email protected].   

  Jodie, Marketing Coordinator for Soshal’s Digital Engagement Practice, is keen on understanding industries that might benefit from the Soshal approach and to impart knowledge of best engagement practices. As a digital marketing enthusiast, she writes on industry trends and strategy. Passions include running, white wine, and How I Met your Mother re-runs.

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Soshal Group launching Digital Engagement Practice

A growing client roster looking to connect with members, customers, employees, and their communities across multiple touch points has spawned a new Digital Engagement Practice at Soshal Group. The agency has enlisted the help of Ideavibes founder, Paul Dombowsky, to help it launch the practice. The digital engagement offering focuses on solving internal and external client challenges around policy, technology integration, collaboration, content development, and stakeholder research.

Paul will bring years of experience working with a wide variety of brands and public organizations in both Canada and the US on crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, citizen engagement, community development, and social media initiatives. He will work closely with existing Soshal Group clients (the Canadian Medical Association, United Way Canada, and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario), but Soshal Group hopes to acquire new partnerships with government, health, non-profit organizations, associations, and consumer brands where digital engagement is a focus.

 Dave, CEO of Soshal Group, says, “The goal for this business unit is to create a service and product offering that pushes our clients’ digital engagement programs forward in the right direction. Paul has truly bought into Soshal’s mission of architecting opportunities for our clients, team, and community, and has proven himself as an industry thought-leader in multiple markets.”

“Digital Engagement tools provide a great way for organizations to engage their crowd (citizens, customers, prospects, etc.) from a tactical perspective through open innovation or crowdsourcing. We have found that clients need help building the strategy and supporting the social media requirements of effective engagement. Partnering with Soshal Group, I look forward to helping clients by implementing innovative and effective digital engagement programs using a robust set of tools and solutions that is unique in the marketplace,” according to Paul.

The Digital Engagement Practice is one of several new business units Soshal Group is developing as we round-out our position as a fully-integrated digital agency.  

  As CEO of Soshal Group, Dave is responsible for our growth, strategic concepts, and client programs. When he's not working to help our clients be social by nature, Dave is an active supporter of entrepreneurship in Ottawa and spends his "free" time helping other start-­‐ups develop sales and marketing programs.

[soshalgroup]

A Social Media Learnathon: SoCapOtt 2012

This past weekend, Soshal Group had the pleasure of attending, sponsoring, and speaking at Ottawa’s own “Social Media Learnathon” A.K.A the Social Capital Conference. It was an action packed day full of bright speakers and attendees, roundtables, keynotes, and networking all wrapped up into one.

The event was held at Algonquin College, one of our amazing clients, which was a great venue for a conference of this caliber – considering Algonquin is one of the most social colleges in the province.

Now, I attended SoCapOtt last year also – and I was blown away with the difference that one year makes. The level and thought leadership of the sessions that I attended was far above the level it was at last year. You heard people talking about gaining valuable insight out of social (Kelly Rusk had a presentation on using social media for research), making a return on your investment in social, and web engagement management (from the oh, so talented Joe Boughner who also brought candy to the table. Wins ‘em over every time). It was a breath of fresh air to see these critical topics brought to light, and it was also refreshing to hear the thoughts we here at Soshal Group often think.

We delivered a presentation on ‘Making Dollars and Cents of Social Media’ that was well received by the professional audience – and it was great to see a full room of people in attendance. Unfortunately, unlike Joe, we didn’t have any candy to give away, but I believe in the message that we were able to deliver. In order to achieve ROI, social has to be an integrated effort – beyond just the marketing, IT, or communications departments; social needs to be part of everyone’s job, not just the job of one person. It was nice to see that so many attendees agreed with our views on this – and also nice to be challenged with questions from the audience.

We here at Soshal Group want to extend our warmest thanks to the organizers, Karen Wilson and Laura Wellman (and their amazing team, of course). It was a great pleasure to be able to be there and connect with some amazing people!

Did you attend the Social Capital Conference? What was your best takeaway from the event?

Marissa, Soshal Group’s Digital Strategist, is a social media wonder woman. She explores the newest technology trends and blogs with a sharp-eye for strategy. It’s safe to say she’s consumed by all things digital.

[soshalgroup]

Introducing New Soshalite Travis Boisvenue

Hi Gang, My name is Travis, and I'm the new media producer at Soshal Group. I'll be working with the team on content creation, overseeing video production, and writing and editing a lot of copy (god help me). I’ll also be contributing to the Soshalize Blog on video, technology, and media news. I've built my experience in the world of journalism where I wrote or produced videos for the likes of the Ottawa Citizen, OpenFile, and This magazine, and was previously the senior producer at Ottawa startup MediaStyle. I know it doesn’t take a huge budget to create great quality content that’s informative and entertaining. With the right equipment, some sharp editing, and a few smart collaborators, you’ve got everything you need to get people’s attention.

You'll be seeing a lot of my work for Soshal clients soon, but until then, here's a sample of my work; a short documentary on modern houses and urban design in Ottawa. Hope everyone digs it!

--travis

Travis is Soshal's Group's media producer. He's a digital video expert and a copy writer who cut his teeth in the world of journalism. On the side, he shoots videos and writes about cities, design, and music. And beer. 

[soshalgroup]

Personality Layers in User Experience

OMG like seriously?? Patience, Grasshopper!

As the web becomes more social, we’re seeing web and mobile platforms becoming more and more personified. While the true technological capabilities of social focus on cross-platform integration, ability to share and publish content to social channels, calls to action, and other features, the personification of the user experience should not be left behind. 

User experience discussions rightfully begin with the business case of a usable interface. Optimizing landing pages and sales processes for conversion are certainly among the more important elements to consider in user experience, but there are smaller pieces of the UX pie that are often ignored, but that add memorable and stickiness value to a platform.

This personification of wait times, error pages, and other parts of a user’s interaction with a web service is a small set of pixels in the bigger picture; however the attention to detail communicates a well thought out approach to user experience.

Start getting emotional!

The point, of course, isn’t just to have witty copy. The point is to consider all the pieces in a user’s interaction with a page, a site, a product, etc. Don’t just build a site for optimal usability; build it also for optimal engagement and emotional interaction. Human beings are still emotive creatures; technological innovation hasn’t yet taken that away from us. Knowing your customer - even in the digital era - is still the most fundamental component of a successful sale. Understand and appeal to your customers’ emotions, create memorable experiences and interactions that are in line with their emotional footprint, and leverage those with beautifully designed pages, creative and targeted copywriting, and efficient and well communicated calls to action and processes.

Making New Friends Gets Harder with age

In what would seem to be entirely unrelated, a recent New York Times article discussed the difficulties of making friends in adulthood. The article posits that after a certain age, people begin to lose their openness and free-spirited nature, thus making it more difficult to create new friendships and relationships. As responsibilities mount, the desire and need to have friends doesn’t disappear, but the time and creativity required to cultivate and nurture those friendships becomes a seriously scarce resource.

Brands, which are increasingly becoming personified in the digital era, have this same problem. In this hyper-social era, brands are commanded to be more personable, to be more human. As the brand becomes (or is perceived to be) more mature – which in this day and age, takes less time than ever before – it becomes more and more difficult to create positive emotions in its relationships (see “Yahoo! Inc.”) Thus, as brands become more personified, and online experiences become more social, we can, and must, start relating friendship theories to user acquisition and user experience theories. Are you rewarding your users? Are you creating positive emotions in every element of a user’s engagement with your site/platform/product? Are you eliminating doubts about the integrity of your information collection and privacy processes, and eliminating doubts about the integrity of your online sales process? Are you valuing their contributions? Suddenly user experience isn’t just about sexy imagery; it’s about being trustworthy, reliable, dependable, and exciting; everything that a good friend is.

“Why did you do all this for me?" he asked. "I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.”  -- E.B White, Charlotte’s Web

Doing Business with Friends

It can be argued that this is a chicken or egg scenario; do people like doing business with their friends? Or do people do business with people who become their friends because they’re easy to work with, because they provide repeatable value, and because mutual interests are being looked after in a healthy business relationship?

The truth is that it doesn’t matter which one it is. Our perspective is that user experience is about respecting your user’s time and money. It’s about providing value for their dollar and providing value for their time. The less time it takes to convince them to spend money with you, the better. Make that experience emotionally positive and reinforcing, and you’ve got yourself a repeat buyer – assuming, of course, that your product isn’t total crap.

All this is easier said than done, mind you. But making friends isn’t always easy; but it is always worth it

Japman is Soshal Group's Chief Financial Officer, an avid tea drinker, a community-oriented individual, and believes good businesses are good community members. He is primarily focused on industry-level and technological developments and solidifying Soshal Group's position in the industry.  

[soshalgroup]

Twitter Clutter Control

Twitter has announced a new form of “Search and Discovery” that, as most of you have probably heard, is a package of autocorrect, autocomplete query and “People you follow” search functionality. Although it’s still in its earliest stage and will be rolling out gradually, Twitter is taking steps in the right direction to help users manage some of that Twitter clutter. While these updates are useful for searching through overwhelming amounts of tweets, businesses need to ask themselves; does this clutter include your content?

It’s great that marketer’s can sleep easy knowing that their tweets have undergone autocorrect, but the value of this update comes from the drop down box with suggested search content and stream lining conversations through “People you follow”. Not only will these searches shape the direction of a conversation, it also leads a user’s attention to accounts consistently on top of relevant and interesting content.

Twitter has yet to release details of the algorithms of its personalized and predictive search, but both types of search appear to be time sensitive and work similarly to Twitter’s “Top” search option; promoting both recent and relevant content from users with a significant following. So if your business is only using twitter on occasion, it’s likely you won’t be on anyone’s radar.

The good news is that search results are sculpted by its users, and businesses have every opportunity to achieve high ranking in any given search.  Here are a few simple recommendations that will help your business make the cut in these new search functions:  

1) Monitor search results: Up until this point, search has been an afterthought for Twitter users because the application provided the bare minimum, but now it’ll be increasingly important to assess SEO within your Twitter content.  Take the extra time to research key words and hash tags that are trending, and avoid tags that are overly used, or have no searchable purpose or value .If there’s a topic where people are using multiple terms, Twitter will direct the query to the term associated with the most conversation, so make sure you’re not talking by yourself. Acknowledging Twitter SEO isn’t a new strategy, but we can predict that search will be increasingly important for social media efforts.

2) Consistent Twitter Topics: There’s value in consistently tweeting about specific industry-related topics or content that is relevant to a business or brand objective. Now that Twitter is improving search functionality, it’s even easier to become a user’s go-to source for specific content.

These new features add value to the marketer in unison: if you’ve built a solid audience, and tweet consistently on a topic of interest, your keywords will appear in a search. This is especially useful to businesses who manage their social media in house and tweet through Twitter’s native dashboard. These updates mean your content could be pushed aside with the rest of that uninteresting material. However, being aware of where your business falls in a Twitter search will only help you assess your Twitter presence. 

Amelia, Soshal Group’s Communications Coordinator, is a self-professed Girl Geek and Tech-Comms junkie. She enjoys blogging on all-things-nerdy-and-awesome, and offers a unique social perspective on the ever changing tech-industry.

[soshalgroup]

Connecting from Within- Social Communication in Health Care

Many health care organizations are at least considering how social technology can enhance or streamline their communications and operational efforts. From our experience and our research, most health care organizations tend to be heavily focused on public outreach or other forms of external stakeholder engagement. While I encourage experimentation like this whole-heartedly, I also recommend that these organizations take a moment to ponder how these concepts and tools could assist in their own internal communications.

Few organizations – in any industry – could unanimously and honestly admit to having excellent communication flow internally. Chains of command, bureaucratic policies, or just plain overworked people all contribute to the breakdown of internal communication; it’s the nature of the beast.

For health care organizations working alongside physicians, nurses, emergency response teams, or groups who otherwise are difficult to get in a room together for discussions, I would argue that seeking a means of connecting these individuals should be equally as critical as your public engagement efforts, if not more so.

Creating a Social Layer

Social networks are a solution we highly endorse. Now, I don’t necessarily mean Facebook, Twitter, or other “mainstream” social networks. I’m also not suggesting that you create standalone pseudo-Facebook with your branding slapped on it, but think along the lines of a social layer, woven into all nooks and crannies of your organization.

In addition to creating an opportunity for staff to share and collaborate on ideas, address issues from a cross-functional perspective, or allow for interaction between employees who have never met one another, establishing a social layer will help you with your external social engagement efforts as well.

Developing Internal Social Flow

I'm sure you can brainstorm even more synergistic areas, but here are four significant areas that are applicable to health care organizations across the board:

User Adoption – You’re likely dealing with individuals from departments with different perspectives, objectives, and methods. If you can figure out how to demonstrate value to your assortment of internal groups, you’ll be well practiced to connect with external users as well.

Community Management – An individual – or better yet, a cross-functional team – in charge of directing conversation and encouraging platform use will help keep the community engaged and avoid drop-off. This, again, offers practice for external social communications efforts.

Familiarity & Comfort with Tools – If your organization is like those which we have worked with, there is often a negative, paralyzing stigma around the use of “social” mediums for professional use. By starting slow and focusing on internal use, people will have a chance to better understand these tools, their purpose, and how to communicate in an appropriate manner. This will make public social engagement less intimidating.

Infrastructure – With a properly established internal network, if or when an external issue or crisis arises, your organization will be much better coordinated, potentially reacting in a quicker manner than possible without this connective layer.

Take some time to reflect on how your communications efforts are spent. Are you exclusively looking through the window at the outside world, or are you exploring internal uses for the same concepts of open, multi-user, timely communication?

Look out for number one; if your organization can’t run as a highly efficient machine, how can you reach your potential to help those who your organization serves?

Phil Sonea oversees the ongoing improvement of our service offerings, as our COO. His personality can best be described as "curious, with an insatiable appetite for knowledge and food". Caution: dry humour and sarcasm are inevitable-you've been warned.

[soshalgroup]

Building a Great Experience

There are no shortage of design-centric buzzwords that float around the halls and boardrooms of digitally minded brands and agencies. User experience (UX), user interface (UI), responsiveness, scalability, and social integration are but a few terms that we hear or discuss at Soshal Group on a daily basis. But what really goes into designing a truly phenomenal experience for your customers and stakeholders?

If you ask Soshal Group's senior designer, Chad MacDonald, he'll be the first person to tell you that much of his job revolves around building design strategies, rather than pushing pixels. He’ll insist that there are a variety of things to consider during the design process: the speed at which technology is moving, whether the design is keeping pace, and if you've accounted for the hyper-resolution screens found on devices like the iPad and new MacBook. It’s time we start thinking about user -experience in a whole new light. We should be working towards building strategies around design, not design around strategies.

To be or not to be responsive, that is the question?

Well, it's not really a question. In our opinion, responsiveness shouldn't even be up for debate, but we've seen many “new” websites and social apps that suggest it hasn't been given any thought. They neglect factors like various screen sizes, the resolution of those screens, and how it could affect the user’s experience. Our feeling is that this is likely the result of misconceptions surrounding responsive design. Often times clients will buy into the idea that “responsive design” should cost double the price of a desktop-only version. In 2012, we feel it’s irresponsible to architect strategy, design, or technology without the utmost scalability and at cost that isn't anything but fair. With that in mind, if the medium (desktop, mobile, and tablet devices) isn't considered at a strategic level from the beginning, then there's really no point in pursuing the project further.

Want to test that theory?

There are far too few brands and organizations doing the proper testing and on-going user-experience research on their websites, social applications, and mobile applications. If you are going to invest dollars into a new strategy, design, and/or technology, it's imperative to build research dollars into your budget. Should your buttons be blue, green, or orange to optimize conversion? What should the order be for each field on your contact form? Why aren’t more users sharing the stories created through your Timeline app? How can you increase time-on-site?

Let's stop strategizing about design and start designing proper strategies for our web, social, and mobile technologies. Let's give our users a great experience and commit to constantly improving it.

Sincerely,  Dave Hale, CEO.

As CEO of Soshal Group, Dave is responsible for our growth, strategic concepts, and client programs. When he's not working to help our clients be social by nature, Dave is an active supporter of entrepreneurship in Ottawa and spends his "free" time helping other start-­‐ups develop sales and marketing programs.

[soshalgroup]

Introducing New Soshalite Marissa Gagnier

Hey Everyone! I’d like to introduce myself as the newest member of the Soshal Group team (otherwise known around here as a Soshalite). My name is Marissa Gagnier and I’m joining the team as a Digital Strategist.

Before I get too ahead of myself, let me tell you a bit about myself. I've spent the last two years working as a Social Media Specialist for Corel Corporation here in Ottawa, contributing to their social marketing strategy across numerous consumer and professional software products.

I decided to come over to Soshal Group because I’ve personally seen how great the team is, and how hard they work. I love being a part of a fast-paced, dedicated team – so I truly believe that this was a great move. My role here will be consumed with all things digital; from integrating social functionalities within websites, to social platform and strategy development for our clients.

I would like to think that I could bring some great experience to Soshal Group, coming from a more corporate client side of things. During my time at Corel, I was able to establish a firm sense of process development, as well as understanding how larger organizations function within it.

From a professional perspective, I think Soshal Group will advance my career and give me a flavor of what it’s like to work with different clients with different needs, rather than just having the one large client. I think that I will also advance personally with this great group of people and I definitely have a lot learn here.

I look forward to a great adventure with some great people here at Soshal Group!

Sincerely,

Marissa Gagnier Digital Strategist 

Marissa, Soshal Group’s Digital Strategist, is a social media wonder woman. She explores the newest technology trends and blogs with a sharp-eye for strategy. It’s safe to say she’s consumed by all things digital.

[soshalgroup]

A Little Education Goes a Long Way

When Facebook reached the 100 million user mark in 2008, digital marketer’s interests were peaked at the opportunity to target content at a growing global audience. In that same year, Facebook would introduce Ads and Pages for brands, adding to the buzz of social media’s business potential. Flash forward to 2012 and the platform’s reach is enormous. It boasts 526 million daily active users, and a slew of newly implemented, business-friendly features such as Sponsored Stories advertising, and Timeline for brand Pages. Unfortunately, the difference between then and now is the current sentiment towards Facebook; that excitement dwindled down to little more than disdain. It’s without question that Facebook provides marketers and technologists with an impressive platform, but not everyone is convinced that the Platform is enough.   

Once Facebook released its IPO and became publicly traded, its Platform took a number of blows for its alleged inability to, for the sake of simplicity, make money for brands. With major public rejections from General Motors and a beating from bloggers on publications like Forbes, it’s clear that there’s a level of dissatisfaction with the paid elements of Facebook’s offering to brands. There’s a stigma lingering that Facebook is strictly a “cool” social tool that hasn’t appropriately been tapped for profit.  

Taking Back the Conversation

There’s no doubt that there are changing expectations of social media as a business tool, and Facebook probably should’ve addressed this shift in a more timely fashion; now it’s forced to play a bit of catch up. To ensure that shareholders and advertising clients are seeing value, Facebook has responded by offering applications and resources that demystify the platform’s potential. Ultimately, Facebook is taking back the conversation surrounding social media by promoting its content: insight and direction that applies to both its traditional and non-traditional marketing initiatives. Despite the current witch-hunt behind Facebook’s social utility, this is a momentous period for the company. We’re watching the beginnings of a transformation: situating itself as both a lucrative and “cool” engagement platform that bridges the gap between communications and technology.

Closing the Divide

 Most have heard the expression that technology changes faster than the mind-set of those who use it, and this holds true to those unsuccessful with the Facebook Platform. Fortunately, Facebook acknowledges the gap between what it offers and how it is being used, taking to education to close the divide. The doubt and discomfort will no longer brew among marketers who have been left to their own devices. Facebook is working to eliminate this all together by creating the right infrastructure to support effective social media business practices. The most recent tools and applications: Facebook for Business, Facebook Insights & Admin Panel, Facebook Admin positions & scheduled posts, and Facebook Studio, to name a few.

A New Playing Field

Education appears to be Facebook’s driving force, but I’ll be the first to admit that it still has a long way to go to steer its massive ship in the right direction. Although I’ve given examples to only a few of Facebook’s many online resources and tools, these initiatives are exactly what Facebook needs to shed any feelings of uncertainty, especially among big brands. Not only are these features great for identifying context of usage and best practices, but also a degree of comfort and management of a marketer’s expectations. With this in mind, is it accurate to say Facebook is experiencing a setback? It’s more likely that these new offerings will put Facebook on a new playing field, identifying a period of progression, innovation and self-evaluation so to better serve businesses big and small.   

Amelia, Soshal Group’s Communications Coordinator, is a self-professed Girl Geek and Tech-Comms junkie. She enjoys blogging on all-things-nerdy-and-awesome, and offers a unique social perspective on the ever changing tech-industry.

[soshalgroup]

Growing Up Soshal

Our team has grown up a lot over the past few months. While new business and existing client demands continue to grow at a steady pace, the biggest change at Soshal Group is our view of the digital industry; where we fit into it, and how we can disrupt the status quo. After speaking with clients, partners, advisors, our team, family, and friends, we've come to a few conclusions:

Media is but one element of the social ecosystem.

Marketing is becoming more about technology than communication.

The term “integrated” is over-used and poorly understood amongst most agencies.

Today we’re excited to unveil the “new” Soshal Group, a digital agency that’s social by nature. We’re not marketers, we’re digital business strategists who blend thoughts, pixels, and code to deliver amazing results. While we know that content is king, we think that context rules. We believe that the agency model is broken and we're committed to finding solutions to fix it.

With that being said, if you’re the kind of person who loves your brand, is ready to push your digital business further and faster than your competitors, and expects nothing short of brilliance from those you work with, it’s time to get Soshal.

We architect exceptional opportunities for our clients, team, and community. Most importantly, we don’t work with brands; we work with the people behind them.

Thank you to everyone who has supported our growth over the last few years; it has been a humbling experience.

Sincerely,

Dave Hale, CEO. 

[soshalgroup]

Soshalize Podcast - Episode 07

Soshalize Podcast: Episode 07 - Social Commerce: Turning your online social properties into online stores

Special Guest: Steven Lee, Director of Information Groups and Technology at Booster Juice 

Welcome to the seventh episode of the Soshalize Podcast; a weekly discussion between digital marketers, tecnologists, and media personalities about the industries’ hottest topics. 

This week, Dave soshalizes with Steven Lee about social commerce and how to leverage fanbases and communities built up on social networks to turn those properties into online stores. Dave and Steven talk about exploring s-commerce features added to existing platforms, as well as the value of developing a proprietary app.

Please subscribe to the show on iTunes

Running time - 24:52 File Association  - mp3 Size: 22.76 MB

Shownotes:

Get in touch with Dave:

by email,

on Twitter @DaveCHale,

or LinkedIn.

Get to know Soshal Group:

on Tumblr,

on Twitter @SoshalGroup,

on Facebook.

Thanks to our guest Steven Lee for soshalizing with us.

Follow Booster Juice on Twitter @BoosterJuice

on Facebook

Check out the Clearly Contacts website

Read about their DNA Award

Sounds clips used created by Simon Lacelle, SandyRB & Nickifit from Freesound.org

Have any comments, questions, or suggestions? We’d love to hear them! Leave a comment here or send them over to [email protected] with “Podcast” in the title

Thanks for Soshalizing, and see you next week!

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Soshalize Podcast - Episode 06

Soshalize Podcast: Episode 06 - Back to the Basics: How Social and Digital Technologies are Affecting Customer Service

Special Guest: Aaron Magness, VP of Marketing, Clearly Contacts.ca

Welcome to the sixth episode of the Soshalize Podcast; a weekly discussion between digital marketers, tecnologists, and media personalities about the industries’ hottest topics.

This week Dave soshalizes with Aaron Magness, VP of Marketing at Clearly Contacts, Canada's largest online retailer of contact lenses, eyeglasses, and sunglasses. Before Aaron joined the Clearly team in late 2011, he was the Senior Director of Brand Marketing & Business Development at Zappos. He was the perfect candidate for this week's topic and getting some perspectives on delivering customer service in the e-commerce industry.

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Running time - 22:17 File Association  - mp3 Size: 20.9 MB

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Thanks to our guest Aaron Magness for soshalizing with us.

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Read about their DNA Award

Sounds clips used created by Simon Lacelle, SandyRB & Nickifit from Freesound.org

Have any comments, questions, or suggestions? We’d love to hear them! Leave a comment here or send them over to [email protected] with “Podcast” in the title

Thanks for Soshalizing, and see you next week!

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Online Retailers Move Beyond Digital

As CEO of Soshal Group, Dave is responsible for our growth, strategic concepts, and client programs. When he's not working to help our clients be social by nature, Dave is an active supporter of entrepreneurship in Ottawa and spends his "free" time helping other start-­‐ups develop sales and marketing programs.

Despite the hype around e-commerce, m-commerce (mobile) and social commerce, very few Canadian retailers have implemented a digital shopping solution. To say they are lagging is unfair, as there can be many headaches associated with online purchasing, from distribution to customer service to order fulfilment.

Of course, there are some Canadian brands that have operated solely online from day one, and are now embracing a new trend that gives these companies a physical footprint in the real world, if only for a few days.

Pop-up stores have become a key component to an online retailer’s strategy. Essentially, a pop-up store is one that a brand sets up in high-traffic areas, such as malls, subway stations or popular urban areas for a few days or weeks, with the goal of driving new customer foot traffic to its temporary store and giving existing customers an outlet to connect with the brand in a more personal way.

Earlier this month, Well.ca launched a virtual pop-up store in a Toronto subway station in partnership with Procter & Gamble. The virtual store is a unique concept that allows consumers to check out various products such as Pampers and Tide, and order directly from smartphone apps that can be launched through QR (quick response) codes found on each product. In true Well.ca style, products are being shipped as fast as the next day, at no cost to the customer.

Meanwhile, the Vancouver-based custom men’s apparel company Indochino hasn’t just hopped on the band wagon – it’s quickly established itself as a visionary brand when it comes to rolling out pop-up stores across Canada.

Indochino has even branded its nationwide pop-up stores and the company’s “Traveling Tailor” will be set up in Ottawa later this month. The Traveling Tailor has already left its mark in Vancouver and Calgary and, after its stop in Ottawa, the company plans to roll out the concept in other key Canadian markets, including a multi-week setup in Toronto later this spring.

“Retail isn’t black and white,” says Indochino co-founder and CEO Kyle Vucko. “I used to only think about e-commerce, but our vision needs to be much bigger as a multi-channel retailer that makes guys look great wherever they want to shop.”

For Mr. Vucko, this means online, offline, mobile, on social media channels and anywhere else consumers could think to purchase his clothing. There are tremendous benefits to the pop-up store, as well. “Media hype, scarcity, immediacy and an amazing brand experience are all at the core of our strategy,” he says.

Well.ca and Indochino are setting the standard for online Canadian retailers when it comes to pop-up locations. This trend is sure to continue across the country as success stories like these emerge. The real question will be whether it is better to live online and pop-up every now and then, or to build a store and then worry about an e-commerce solution.

This article was originally written for the Ottawa Business Journal. See the article on OBJ.ca here.

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Native Twitter Monetization

Asako is Soshal Group's communications coordinator. When she's not managing our communications initiatives, she spends her free time listening to new music, trying out new recipes, and mostly reading tech blogs. Careful chatting her up about new gadgets...she could talk for hours!

When Twitter joined Facebook and Google+ in launching their own brand pages back in December 2011, many brands and marketers wondered whether they were of any significant use as they were. The pages had two key elements that differentiated them from regular accounts, both of which were free to use. One was the ability to add a large banner image underneath their profile description that could be used for displaying their logo and tagline with more emphasis. The other element was the ability to keep an expanded post pinned to the top of their time line. As an example, here is Best Buy's current Twitter brand page, which has both the large header image as well as a pinned photo tweet:

21 major brands were invited to be a part of the initial launch as they had committed $25,000 in advertising with Twitter, were already very active in their Twitter activities, and were looking for a way to make their page stand out in the crowd. Brand pages are only available to Twitter advertisers and Executive sources are saying that some big changes are coming to brand pages that will focus on adding experiences, including e-commerce, and contests and sweepstakes.

The new product will allow apps to be built by developers, much like the experience on Facebook, but the features will be built into the Twitter time line. This will be a new type of tweet that goes beyond the standard 140-character message, image, or video. The most exciting implication of this is the potential to create native e-commerce apps built within the Twitter time line. This would clarify the value of Twitter's brand pages better to marketers as it would drive users to their own pages.

Since last month, Twitter has been rolling out new programs with brands for e-commerce. Two notable examples both come from American Express, who launched a self-serve ad platform for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as a program in which it sends offers to Twitter users in exchange for certain actions, such as tweeting a particular hashtag. Dell, Best Buy, H&M, and 1-800-Flowers have all participated in using the latter feature since January.

Twitter hopes that these new features will add incentive for marketers to take part of their advertising program as an easier way to drive revenue on the micro-blogging site. There has not been any exact dates announced for the release of this product, but Twitter has been telling their clients to expect it sometime this year.

[soshalgroup]

Why Promotions Won't be Enough: Facebook's New Brand Pages

Asako is Soshal Group's communications coordinator. When she's not managing our communications initiatives, she spends her free time listening to new music, trying out new recipes, and mostly reading tech blogs. Careful chatting her up about new gadgets...she could talk for hours!

Ever since Timeline came out for personal Facebook profiles, many had been wondering and even anticipating (ourselves included) its arrival to pages. Well, if anyone with a page had checked on it yesterday, they would have noticed an option to preview how the new page would look. Yesterday was the first day that Timeline could be implemented, and all pages will automatically switch over to it on March 30th. For a lot of pages out there, this means they will have to change their Facebook strategies if they want to have any significant reach. Advertisements just are not enough in the social world, and Timeline is a manifestation of that fact. We will be discussing here what the new Pages means for brands and the new features that come with it, features that will be no longer, and how to maintain a successful Facebook Page. Yesterday, we watched Facebook’s first conference for marketers where all of these new changes were announced. The event began with keynotes from members of the executive team, Sheryl Sandberg, Chris Cox, Mike Hoefflinger, and David Fisher, who all introduced the new products being rolled out and the rationale behind them. The event then went into various breakout sessions where Facebook designers and engineers went into finer detail on how to utilize these features. The new Pages have enriched Facebook functionality between brands and consumers in these three ways: Through better expression of identity, having greater audience reach, and letting brands respond to people in a quick and more personal way. The new pages have become a “mission control” for a business on Facebook, allowing them to build connections with people by sharing their unique stories. As David Hoefflinger said in his keynote, ads can be noise, whereas stories can be the basis of a relationship. Pages have gone through a design overhaul that is much more visually engaging than its predecessor, with new features such as the cover photo, profile picture, and views and apps. You can see some great examples of pages provided by Facebook here, or here's a screen shot from Harley Davidson's Facebook Page. A feature that was taken away with the new pages was the Landing Tab, the first thing users saw when they visited a page. This caused a headache for some as many used this as a way to communicate promotions and entice users to like their page. Instead the first thing people will see is the cover photo and profile picture. The cover photo is not a replacement Landing Tab, and Facebook has outlined some guidelines to follow for using them. They are not allowed to have calls to action (such as “like our page,” “share with your friends,” etc.), and is meant to be an opportunity to share the brand’s identity in an appealing way. The profile picture should simply be your logo that fans will associate with your brand, whereas the cover photo should be changed often to test what fans will react well with. Depending on the brand, that picture could be a variety of things. Always start with the values that you want to portray, and build an image around that idea. Any custom applications from before (such as tabs) will now show up in under Views and Apps. Four app icons are visible when someone lands on the page, but the area can be expanded to show more up to 12 more apps. These can be rearranged so that some are more prominent than others, and should be used to showcase any custom apps. Also anyone that is currently using any apps should consider redesigning them as they can now be up to 810 pixels in width. Another great way for brands to express their identity is the Timeline itself, which has replaced the wall. A company now has the ability to add events and milestones, which is particularly great for brands with historical backgrounds. The idea is to draw fans to the page by telling a compelling story about the company that they will naturally like and share with others. When going through old posts that were on the wall, only have the best and well-received ones showing on the timeline, as they will will become a part of the history. Particular posts can be highlighted, where it will be emphasized by taking up two columns instead of one, and posts can be pinned to the top of the timeline as well to showcase any current events or promotions. Facebook ads can also now come from posts on the Timeline where users are able to interact with the post by liking or commenting, and see how other users have engaged with it. This is crucial as Facebook has found in tests that news feed ads have 5-10 times the click through rate than any other section of the site. All of these efforts will not only be visible to desktop Facebook users however, and there is now a much bigger reach. After much talk, they finally brought Facebook ad integration to mobile. A Premium Facebook experience has been launched where premium ads built off Page Timeline posts will now be able to appear on mobile news feeds. These ads will also appear when a user logs out of their account as a massive image on the page. As there are over 37 million people logging out of the networking site everyday, this is an enormous opportunity that they have caught onto. Due to the fact that most people that log out of Facebook are used to quickly navigating away from the site, the key is to create an interesting ad that will capture their attention long enough for them to actually click on it. As mentioned previously, Facebook has changed their Pages so brands can express their identity and increase their reach, but now they can give quick and personal responses to their consumers (and community managers out there should be rejoicing). A new messaging function is available where people can send messages, complaints, or queries directly to the page admins. This is a feature that truly focuses itself around customer service, and admins should not just reply with a 1-800 number to call or a generic customer service email. This is an opportunity to figure out the needs of a potential customer for life! This is a change that will separate the good and the bad Facebook strategies, and it is a system that will not tolerate half-assed management. The best way to reach an audience is to not only post content everyday, but making it something that is informative or interesting. It’s an opportunity for businesses to create connections with consumers in ways that genuinely interests them, and turning them into fans that will champion the brand.