Running, Music and Fireworks, Horses, and Social Media

So far this semester, we have had some fantastic guest speakers in Dr. Freberg's Social Media class, and today was no exception.  This morning we had the privilege to have Robert Young, the Vice President of Public Relations for the Kentucky Derby Festival come in and deliver another very interesting presentation.  I really enjoyed how he was giving us his perspective on social media and it's uses while showing us facts about it has helped his work with Public Relations for the festival.  A lot of the major advantages for social media campaigns that he touched on were ones that have been highlighted by previous speakers as well.  For example, the importance of real time coverage via Twitter or Facebook.  Kind of like how people were tweeting about the power outage at the Super Bowl as it was happening, Robert Young and his team will be doing the same thing this year for all the Kentucky Derby activities.  Something I thought very cool (and if you enjoy fashion, you may like this as well!!) is that during this year's fashion show for the race, they will have people tweeting live by the runway all the different fashions as the models walk with designer names, the price for the outfit being worn, as well as where you can find it!!  Very handy for those that love Derby fashion and want to find their perfect Derby outfit to show off!!  Maybe you're more partial to the airshow the morning of Thunder Over Louisville??  If you're anything like my father and me, this bit of information will appeal to you.  Derby reps will be working with the air teams for the pilots and tweeting real time coverage for those on the Waterfront keeping them updated with essentially instant schedule changes.  

A second topic Mr. Young touched on was the importance of knowing your audience and making sure the timing and content of your posts are done correctly!!  I love running and have always wanted to run one of the Derby mini marathons but, like so many others, knee injuries prevent me from doing that.  However!!  If you are one of those that make a point to run the minis every year, Robert talked about how his running audience are different from the people that are only interested in Thunder and what the theme and soundtrack will be like for the firework shows.  Maybe you only want to see the Balloon Glow and watch the balloon races??  At first, the Derby team thought it was useful to have several different Facebook pages for each event or interest.  This turned out to have negative effects for the PR team.  In my mind, it seemed to be a "mistake" that needed to be made.  At the very beginning there were 11 Facebook pages for the Derby Festival.  As time went on and  the events to were starting to begin, in became increasingly difficult to keep up with all the different pages and updates.  So how did they decide to fix that??  Have one page on Facebook and one Twitter account for the Derby Festival of course!!  In regards to Facebook, Robert said that keeping your posts short and the content on point as well as relevant is absolutely imperative.  In his words, simply because Facebook doesn't have a character limit, don't let yourself fall under the illusion that you can tell one long, massive story.  In today's society people don't have the attention span to sit and read some long, drawn out Facebook post.  Keep in short and simple to be effective!!  Pay attention to analytics to find out when your page is getting the most traffic and post during those times.  For Twitter, they are using separate hashtags for each event.  That way, individual that only care about how to book a hotel for the mini marathons can follow that hashtag while those that only care about Thunder and music can follow a specific hashtag for that.   I think this is a fantastic idea and will prove to be very effective!!

A final I thought was extremely interesting was how Robert Young and the PR team used social media to keep people following the Derby festival during down time with the Derby Chili campaign in the fall.  They were concerned no one would know about it and it would end up falling through the cracks.  Not so!!  It ended up being a tremendous success because they posted about Kroger giving you a coupon when you buy beef in order to make a chili recipe to enter.  There were no advertising costs, beef sales rose up to $1.7 million, and their entry numbers shot up from, I believe it was something like 600 from a previous Derby Burger contest to over 2,000 entries.  

If you want more information on the Derby Festival, here are their pages to visit!!  

Twitter

Facebook Page


Thank you for speaking today Mr. Young!!  

(photo credit: Dr. Karen Freberg)

I need to visualize this...oh look!! An infographic, how visually stimulating :)

By a show of hands, how many of you that have stumbled across  this blog are visual learners??  You can't see it, but I am raising my hand as well.  Sometimes it's a struggle to understand new information or data without it being presented in a right-brained manner.  Behold, the power of an infographic.  Finally, someone has found a way to present data in a way that can be easily interpreted for those that learn from a more "creative" presentation.

So what is an infographic??  Exactly as it sounds.  It's a graphic or picture that presents information about a business, social media stats, step-by-step instructions, etc.  You can also turn your resume into an infographic!!  It will definitely make you more memorable.  Infographics are a success for purely psychological reasons.  Infographics are another way to be transparent with your audience by putting all your information out there with a creative spin.  They are easily memorable, which you need for today's market.  Not only for competitive reasons but purely for the fact that if you can't capture a viewers attention and then maintain it in something like...5 seconds, you're already hurting.  And again, for those of us that find our strengths from the right side of our brain, it's easier for us to tap into the memory bank of our minds and recall information because we have a picture and colors to put with it.  For example!!  

(photo credit: Pinterest via KISSmetrics)



Now, if you had attempted to simply tell me this information vocally or written it out in stats form on a blackboard or PowerPoint...I'd probably look at you like you had grown another head.  But with the help of infographics and KISSmetrics, I understand the concept of bounce rates, the stats and analytics behind it, as well as how to strengthen bounce back rates and what not to do.  

Want an infographic about INFOGRAPHICS??  There's an infograph for that ;)

(Photo credit: Pinterest via AEJMC PRd)


To be completely honest, I wanted to attempt to make this entire blog post infographics (created by yours truly) about infographics.  Sadly, I ran out of time, but you can certainly go to these resources and make your own!!  C'mon, its fun :)

Websites:

Infographic Tools

Visual.ly

Infogr.am


Videos!!  (all of which you can find on YouTube) (give credit where it's due):

I highly recommend getting on YouTube and finding videos on your own.  Some are upwards of 20 minutes long, but very helpful :)

(the above is a bit lengthy, 'round about 7 minutes)

How Is Your Prefrontal Cortext Looking?? Neuromarketing :)

Up until this year, I have never heard of Neuromarketing.  But the more I read about it, the more I love it!!  Neuromarketing is the study of a person's sensory, cognitive, and affective responses to marketing stimuli (thank you Wikipedia!!).  That being said, I'd like to discuss an article I found about how the size of your brain could have an effect on how well you are with social media and the people you are trying to reach out to.

Roger Dooley runs a website/blog (it's fantastic, I encourage you to check it out and subscribe) primarily for all things neuromarketing and neurosciences.  He wrote a post about 6 months ago titled Bigger Brain = Social Media Success.  According to his article, a man named Robin Dunbar conducted a study on the orbital prefontal cortex and how people whose brains are larger in size in this area are generally going to be better on Twitter and Facebook.  How is this??  This is the area of your brain that is strongest with things like decision making and cognitive processing (Dooley).  It has a major influence in your intentionality, which to my understanding, is the part of your mind/personality that forms representations.  These three things combined help an individual naturally have better social skills.  Better social skills means a stronger social media presence.

Now, this isn't to say that this holds true for everyone.  What struck me about this article is that it hasn't been studied yet whether this is an unchangeable factor or if with time and training, an individual may sharpen these skills.  Like learning a new language, you can better your skills with the language.

What is your opinion!!  Let's discuss (it's how you learn!!).  Are some people naturally just "better" with social media because nature gave them a better brain for it??  Nature over nurture, as Dooley calls it.  Or do you think that with time and the correct training, a person can become better than the person with the larger PFC??

 Roger Dooley

Bigger Brain = Social Media Success 

(credit for this lovely brain picture goes to www.nature.com)