Anthony, Author at Anthony Haag

How much time do you spend on Social Media Marketing?

February 11, 2013Anthony

Alright, it is time that I get back to blogging outside of work. Why, you ask? Well, a lot has been going on and I feel that can use these medium to express my thoughts and hopefully teach others about the world of Social Media Marketing and learn something as well. Plus, I have a lot of topics on mind. I was giving a Social Media presentation to our partners at work on Friday and I was asked the question, how much time should you spend on Social Media? That question was immediately followed up with; we want to get on Twitter but have been told that it will take a lot of time monitoring. We will get into why you have not been doing Social Media in a later post, so we will only be focusing on the question of how much time should be spent on Social Media.

At work, we are a small office where everyone wears multiple hats and we have a wide spread Social Media program that includes, blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Pinterest, Google + and Instagram. So for me at work, to run an effective Social Media campaign a minimum of 4 hours a day is needed. In my mind, that is on the low end. I know that each company and industry are different and that time will vary depending on what your Social Media Campaign includes. Some companies will even have a dedicated Social Media specialist doing this full time.

Now, back to question, that I was asked, how much time do you spend on Twitter? I believe that Twitter alone can be done in less time. There are programs that allow you to set-up keywords, and offer great analytics and they are Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Sprout Social and there are others. In full disclosure, I am a Hootsuite fan.

I answered the question, by saying that you can do Twitter in an hour to an hour an a half a day, but yes you have to monitor throughout the day. Hootsuite is a great program to let you do this and it allows you to link it to Twitter, Facebook, etc. I recommended doing some research before hand to see what your customers are talking about and what your competitors are doing. I would follow your competitors, set up your keywords to what others are talking about and join the conversation. People don’t just want to hear about you, they want specials / deals and want to feel like they are communicating with someone. Twitter is about sharing and listening to what others have to say. Brands should have a human voice behind it as well and not just advertising. Hootsuite is free and is a web based program. You can check-in to see what people are saying in the morning, schedule your tweets, reply to people and check your keyword columns. Then leave the program up on your desktop all day and check it every half hour or so. We can get into when to post and what times work best in another blog post, but after 5pm you still have to monitor it. Remember, just because the work day ends at 5, Social Media does not.

How much time do you spend on Social Media a day? If you were only doing Twitter and nothing else how much time would you spend on it?

Does your company have a Social Media Strategy in place?

August 18, 2011September 25, 2016Anthony

I was honored to speak a few weeks back, at a Chamber of Commerce event on Social Media Marketing. The audience was small business owners and marketing and public relations professionals looking at incorporating Social Media into their marketing plans. What I found interesting was how many people were using Facebook and Twitter, but they were not tracking their online activity or did not have a Social Media strategy incorporated in their marketing plan.

The first thing that I tell business owners and marketing professionals is to make sure they have their Facebook page set-up as a business page and not as a personnel page. I still still a lot of business who have it set-up improperly and it is a pet peeve of mine. I cringe every time I see a person become friends with a business on Facebook instead of “liking” them.

Review of New Phone; HTC Desire from US Cellular

November 17, 2010Anthony

After my first post, I have been neglecting the blog. I am telling myself to do a better job and post atleast once a week. So, this post is better late than never.

I have been itching to get a new cell phone for sometime now. A few weeks ago, I took the plunge and switched from a blackberry to an Android based phone. I stayed with U.S. Cellular because I have received great service from them since 2001. In August, they released 2 Android based phones – the Samsung Acclaim (which my wife got) and the HTC Desire (which I went with). The Desire is very similar to the Nexus One and considered to be its cousin.

I was a little worried about making the switch at first because I was not sure I would like the touch screen. Since, I am techy savy, I felt I would get used to it. Plus, they have a 30 day trail period, which I could have gone back to a Blackberry if it turned out I did not like the touch screen. US Cellular also rolled out this new program called the Belief Program in October, and I wanted to check that out. Basically, since I was a long standing customer, I did not have to sign a contract with them, which is a plus. They also have a 5% discount for signing up for automatic payment. Those were two pluses that I liked. The sales associates were also very helpful and friendly, I even impressed them with how much I know about the phones. I had been doing my homework for months.

Now back to the HTC Desire. I could not wait to get my hands on this phone. The decision was between the HTC Desire and the Blackberry Bold. I definitely made the right choice. Within several minutes of having the phone in my hands I was in love. Plus, a few days later I was used to the touch screen. This phone has all of the bells and whistles. It has a 3.7″ touchscreen (480x 800), 1 GHz processor, 5.0 Camera/Camcorder with LED flash, Full HTML browser with Flash lite support, on screen QWERTY keypad, blue tooth and wifi capabilities. It also comes pre-loaded with these apps, Facebook, Peep (Twitter), Myspace, QuickOffice, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Talk, Android Market, YouTube and many more. I immediately downloaded the real Twitter since Hootsuite was not available yet, as soon as it was available I downloaded that.

The 5 mega-pixel camera does its job by taking sharp quality pictures with no perceptual lag time. The video camera option works out ok, as it records slight dark in 1280x 720 but really all depends on lighting.

In all, if you are with US Cellular or it is available in your area, this is the phone to get with them. They currently have 3 Android phones on the market the HTC Desire, Samsung Acclaim and newly released Samsung Mesmerize. The Mesmerize was released within the past month. The Acclaim is the second option to the Desire and in my opinion I would save up to to get the Desire. I am extremely happy with the Desire and US Cellular.

A New Adventure and Review of “The Social Network”

October 9, 2010Anthony

Hello and welcome to my new blog! I believe each project has to have a strategy and be thought through before starting. I have wanted to start my own blog for awhile but was not sure which direction I wanted it to go, until recently.

This blog will go through the Technology Thoughts of a Marketing Minded person (hence, the title of the blog). I will talk about everything Technology, Social Media and Marketing and how they are working together in today’s society. I will even talk about my experience with each of them as well as my interactions and knowledge received from the Lake County Social Networking Group. This is a really awesome group of people, who love Social Media and are extremely knowledgeable about Technology and Social Media.

I am also extremely new at working with wordpress. So please bear with me as I am learning this new platform and current design. It is going to be bumpy at first, but with any project it will be nurtured and get better weekly. With that, let’s get started.

Last week Friday was opening night of the movie, The Social Network. My wife and I decided to have a date night and go and see this movie. Now we both like Facebook, and with Social Media Marketing as part of my job, we thought this was perfect. We went to the later show and the theater was only a 1/4 full, which we both thought was surprising. But after the movie, I found out that its target audience usually does not go to movies on opening weekend. It saw an opening weekend sales of $23 million.

On the surface The Social Network is about the website Facebook and how it was created, but it is much deeper than that. It is about money, power and greed. The movie starts out with Zuckerberg talking to his girlfriend in a bar near Harvard. You quickly realize that Zuckerberg is smarter than you have ever imagined, as he is a genius. He is socially inept in face to face settings and dealing with people but is on a level of his own when it comes to knowledge. The film centers on the controversy over the ownership of the idea of Facebook, which was originally called “The Facebook”.

Zuckerberg wanted something more than anyone else, it was portrayed that he believed that this was bigger than him or his roommates and this would change the world. I believe he was right in that sense. Facebook is bigger than most originally thought and has changed the game in the way that people communicate and how businesses target consumers in online marketing. They have over 500 million users and continue to grow. But the movie goes beyond that, it demonstrates what it takes to be an entrepreneur. That an idea is just an idea until it is put into action. Some Harvard students filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg claiming that Facebook was their idea. As Zuckerberg said in the movie, “If Facebook was your idea, then you should have created Facebook”. In a sense telling viewers that if you have an idea, keep it to yourself or people you trust so that no one else steals that idea and you lose out on an opportunity you may never get back. Zuckerberg was easily swayed by fame and fortune, it didn’t portray him as having money, (his lone friend, Eduardo, put up the money to start Facebook), by Sean Parker who was the Founder of Napster. Parker steered Zuckerberg in a direction of growing the business with his high up connections and nightlife parties. Eventually hurting his friendship with his friend and business partner Eduardo, who also filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg. In the end, I felt that Zuckerberg was truly sorry for some of his actions along the way of creating Facebook. If you have read the book, (which I have not), I have been told that the movie follows it very closely.

In the end, I feel that we can all take away something from this film about the youngest billionaire, whether we are aspiring to be an entrepreneur or not. Lessons that I learned are; don’t settle for the status quo, put your idea and vision to the limit, you just never know what can be reached. Communication is important in any business or project whether you are the boss or the employee, and your project is only as good as your results. Each project/idea is never finished, as there are always modifications that can be made to be done to help it grow.

I encourage everyone to see the movie whether part of your job is Social Media Marketing or you’re a casual Facebook user, and I hope you enjoy as much as I did!