Two keys to successful social media growth:

1) Social Media Design

Your social media design matters! A good design will draw an audience to your brand and even attract sponsors to your page! And you guessed it. Sponsors that are want to get on your page means more on your bottom line.  We’ve seen how a design can enhance your image very quickly! Our good friends at Bleed Blue Kentucky went from 500 fans to over 1,000 in just a few weeks and they are still growing. A good Facebook Timeline header, customized Facebook tabs, and Twitter backgrounds will go a long way! And not only in your design but with the interaction on your page.

2) Content Management

It wasn’t just design that helped with the growth of our friends at Bleed Blue Kentucky. But also good content management. They’ve done a great job of posting questions relating to their content to engage fans and gain interaction on the page. Interaction is gold on Facebook and Twitter. Good questions and content will create a viral buzz essentially getting people to talk about your brand with you hardly breaking a sweat. Contests and promotions are also a great way to draw in interaction! Our friends at the Horse Racing Radio Network are very good at this. They hold contests asking people to give them their entries for a race on their Facebook Wall or on Twitter using the contest hashtag. They’ve grown tremendously doing this and has worked well for them.

Design and content management will go a long way for your business! If you want more on how to make that happen, contact Phoenix Blue today!

JD Duran

Follow me on Twitter @JD_Duran

Follow them on Facebook and on Twitter!

While browsing through an article about UK Basketball, it became apparent that the UK Athletic Department also takes social media very seriously. They encourage the athletes to utilize Twitter and often teach them how to Tweet while avoiding missteps with the media and public.

But when it comes to Facebook, there are just a few minor adjustments that could be made that would take the University and the athletics department to the next level.  And it all starts with design! The new Timeline format on Facebook lets you take branding to all new levels! And this is where UK could use some tweaks. They’ve had some nice header images, but the customized tabs they have are not very good.  Customized tabs on Facebook need a unique design to draw in your audience and give them them some sort of interaction! Unfortunately, the tabs they have now aren’t at the level they could be. However, should UK take advantage of the customized tabs with the design elements they have, there won’t be another school in the US that will be able to keep up with them on social media!

As we’ve mentioned before, using Facebook Timeline makes information readily accessible and chronologically organized. However, even if Facebook keeps the page organized, it’s still up to the administrator to keep content clear, clean, and concise. Photo captions, status updates, and post descriptions should be very brief and point-driven. All extra information should be gathered from the content being posted. Users are often visually intrigued, so an abundance of lengthy text-filled boxes can be a turn off. Using a service such as Bit.ly along with a teaser description can be very effective. The user will be intrigued by the tease and not driven away by a paragraph of text.

Interacting with the public is also key to successful social media design. UK does an impeccable job of responding to their followers on Twitter, but not so much on Facebook. Of course it’s nearly impossible to respond to the hundreds of thousands of UK fans, students, and alumni, but why not make an effort to respond to insightful comments? Responding encourages interaction and pleases the audience. When your audience is pleased, they always come back for more and spread the word about your brand to other potential fans.

Kudos to the University of Kentucky for their social media! We applaud and support UK for everything they’ve done thus far! Overall, the UK social media does a great job with the designs they do have and the interaction they’ve done alreayd! We believe that with just a few changes, UK social media will be a dominant force in collegiate athletics online. We’re just ready to see a change so the rest of the world can witness the greatness of UK that we see every day here in Lexington!!

Website design is vital but a dominant social media presence is what will drive traffic to your site. For instance, Facebook has recently switched everything over to the new Timeline. The Timeline pages make design even more crucial to your social media presence! We, at Phoenix Blue, excel at social media design, making it not only attractive, but also interactive! If you aren’t familiar with the new Timeline design, check out our client, Derby City Thunder’s timeline page at http://www.facebook.com/DerbyCityThunder. Facebook tabs makes it easier for your clients or customers to access the information they want in an easy, clear manner without the hassle of searching through pages and pages of other posts while gaining interaction with the  page. Your design matters! If you have a bland, boring page, nobody will want to come to it. But when it’s fun and draws your attention, that’s when you gain the most out of Facebook.

Twitter is another very popular social medium. Not only can we design a fresh, eye-popping layout for your page, but we can also come up with a design for who, what, when, where, and how you tweet. For instance, our client Tom Leach runs his “Leach Report” radio show Monday-Friday at 9AM. Therefore, peak tweeting hours for him are from 9-10AM. Also, his podcasts are posted in the afternoon, so we make a few more additional afternoon posts because we feel that’s when his listeners will be checking back.

Each business has their own target market that requires special attention in order to satisfy all their needs. Phoenix Blue can analyze those needs and design a specific, detailed social media plan for your target. Once interaction with your target begins, that presence is established and consumer loyalty comes into fruition. Not only will your business grow, but your clientele’s appreciation for your business will grow as well!

Contact us today!

We are so excited to be celebrating with the voice of the Wildcats, Tom Leach, as well as many local musicians and local businesses. Bellini’s will be selling drinks and Goodfella’s will be selling pizza. There will be guaranteed fun for all ages and many opportunities to donate to some great local charities. So please stop by to celebrate our team bringing the title back to Lexington while showing some support to our local talent and businesses!

Tom Leach
Our client and good friend Tom will be our special guest speaker. We are so excited that he got to call the epic football win over Tennessee and the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship in one year! It will be awesome to hear his perspective on this unforgettable season and team!

Dale Stumbo
Dale is a superb musician and songwriter hailing from Florida. He is known for pouring his heart and soul into his music. He can’t wait to play for us and partake in the Big Blue Block Party fun! Check out this video from his performance at the House of Blues  http://bit.ly/HKK1Mv

BlueJay
BlueJay is a talented, self-described “indie(ish) rock and roll” band. Take a look at one of their live shows at Cosmic Charlie’s here in Lexington  http://bit.ly/HM44xE

Daniel Griffin
Daniel hails from South Carolina and has one of the best voices you’ll ever hear.

DJ Dadi
DJ Dadi is a nationally known act who specializes in turntablism and video DJing. He is sure to get the party jumping! Check out his Facebook to learn more about his craft  http://www.facebook.com/DJDadi

If you like weight lifting, they got that too. Lots of it actually! From machines to free weights, you can do anything you want. Strength training is something you will be able to excel in at LAC.  I personally love the machines.  They make it easier for me as I’m currently out of shape.

One thing about LAC that we just love is the little things.  For one, they have towels available right there as you walk in that are fresh and available anytime.  Might seem like a small thing, but I love the convenience.  Two, did you know LAC has a cafe?  They have protein drinks, healthy food you can get to replenish your body, or you can just get something to snack on.  Third, LAC cares about your health and will do everything they can to make you feel comfortable.  They have a room just for women who might be a little insecure, but still want to work out.  They want to encourage women to work out and want them to be as comfortable as they can.  That’s pretty stand up! There are several trainers you can talk to to work one-on-one with somebody.  There are also classes you can join! And the staff is incredibly friendly and supportive! If you ask me, it’s the only place to exercise in Lexington!

For more info, check them out at www.trylac.com

Follow them on Facebook at Lexington Athletic Club and on Twitter at @JoinLAC

1. Customized Tabs on Facebook

Customized tabs are vital to maximizing your full potential and your social media success.  Customized tabs give you visibility, attraction, and a visual tool to help your page become more interactive and appealing to consumers on Facebook. It’s a great way to build a “mini-website” within Facebook.  You can create tabs to give people information while making visually attractive.  You can create tabs to help support contests and promotions. We use this all the time and is extremely successful.  In fact, we just set up a contest with the Gridiron Developmental Football league where we people can enter to win a cash prize and have to go to our customized tab in order to enter.  There really isn’t much of a limit of what we can do with these customized tabs. If you really want to maximize your Facebook page, you need to take advantage of this. It allows people to not only to go to your page, but it visually attracts them to you, keeps them on your page, and gives them what they need to know about you without having to go to another source where they may not otherwise.

2. Strategic Posting Plan

Having a strategic posting plan will make it or break it for you on social media. You can’t have a successful social media marketing campaign just on popularity alone.  How many times have you seen celebrities or politicians tweet or Facebook something that wasn’t strategic and it came back to bite them? It’s happened more times that we can count.  How you go about posting matters a ton and having a plan set it place will go a long way.  Phoenix Blue is very good at this and we can help you set up a plan that will expose your potentiall for all its worth and take it even higher.  Don’t believe me? Contact us today and we’ll show you!

3. Partnerships

Creating partnerships in social media can really go a long way.  This is especially the case while you’re trying to grow your pages.  It allows you to work with other companies in cross-promotions, contests, and even paid posts. Yes I said it, companies paying  you to post about them.  Each follower on your pages matter because they are people, not a number. And they like your page for a reason and probably have friends and family that could be potential followers too.  Creating partnerships with other friends and companies will double or triple the amount of people you could potentially reach otherwise.  And that, my friends, can be worth a lot of money.  So, don’t burn your bridges and take care of the people around you.  The more friends and partnerships you make, the more value your posts will have.

Let Phoenix Blue take your social media to new places you’ve never seen before.  We’d love to partner with you to help maximize the potential your social media has and take it beyond.  Social media is too much to ignore in business today and when done right, your business will see growth in lots of new ways in 2012. Contact us today!

Graphic Designer – We are looking for a graphic design intern that would be interested in gaining some great experience designing logo’s, customized tabs, Twitter backgrounds, and so much more.  With Phoenix Blue you will get tons of experience that you can use for college credit or for just experience in the field. So get real life experience and join the Phoenix Blue team!

Sales – We are looking for dedicated, sales minded, hard working sales interns that want real world experience! We do all kinds of marketing which will give you a great scale and wide variety of markets to find your niche in. Get the experience you need and join the Phoenix Blue team today!

If you are interested in joining our team and interning in something other than what is listed above, send us a proposal of why you want to intern with us and what position you would want.

Send us your resume and what you wish to intern for at info@phoenixblue.com

Follow Tom on Twitter @TomLeachKY and friend him on Facebook at “The Leach Report” http://www.facebook.com/LeachReport

We have reached the future of marketing and advertising and now it is evolving on a daily basis. Let your business spread its wings and fly with Phoenix Blue. It’s either that, or chill amongst the Dodo Birds on the rocks… and we all know how that story ended.

–Hatch–