Hey Everybody,

This is me as Bill the Blogger.

If you are a long time reader than you know that I also write a few blogs for clients. One of my favorite projects is coming up this weekend.

It is blog that I write for Borsheims that follows the Annual Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder’s Weekend in Omaha, NE. It is a really great experience. My job is to shoot video, stills and write posts on all of the events of the weekend. I try to provide a surrogate experience to all of the shareholders who can’t come to the event.

The event gets huge numbers of attendance. This year they are expecting more than 35,000 people. It is also a really fun time. Berkshire and Warren Buffett are big search terms during this time period and this blog allows our client to contribute to and gain from some of that high search traffic. Needless to say, the blog gets a lot of hits. Check out this case study from last year’s performance.

Anyway, if you are a reader, I hope that you will check out the blog. And if you are in Omaha, NE this weekend, maybe you will see me at the event.

Best of luck,

Will Flavell

Hey Everybody,

To prove that I exist outside of the Internet and to spread the good tidings of social media, I often speak to business groups and others in the Midwest. So where can you find me? Well, here is where I will be speaking in the month April (2009). If you can make it, swing by and check me out.

William Flavell

April 9:
I will be at speaking on Blogging at Bozell’s Sausage Factory Seminar Series in Des Moines, IA. We will be at the Embassy Suites on the River from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

April 14:
I will be speaking on Digital Word of Mouth to the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce in Bellevue, NE. We will be at Confluence, from 10-11:30 a.m.

April 15:
I will be speaking at Infotec.

I hope that you will check me out. If you are looking for a social media speaker who with a experience in a variety of online mediums and companies. Give me a call. I have been a social media specialist for about three years for Bozell. I have done a lot of things from blogging, twitter, youtube contests and more for clients.

Anyway, hope to see you soon.

Best,

Will Flavell

Good Morning Everybody,

I am sitting in a social media presentation today and around every corner, our speaker relates each tool to social capital. So what is social capital.

Well, wikipedia defines social media as:

Social capital is a concept developed in sociology and also used in business, economics, organizational behaviour, political science, public health and natural resources management that refers to connections within and between social networks as well as connections among individuals. Though there are a variety of related definitions, which have been described as “something of a cure-all“^[1] for the problems of modern society, they tend to share the core idea “that social networks have value. Just as a screwdriver (physical capital) or a college education (human capital) can increase productivity (both individual and collective), so do social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups”.^[2]

To me, social capital is not about the amount of readership, but the richness of the relationships. I am fine with 10 readers a day on this blog. I am okay with less than 100 Twitter followers. As long as these relationships are real. My power to disseminate information and create motion online is directly proportional to the authenticity and authority of my relationships.

One quick example of what I mean: The other day, I needed to find a social media intern for the marketing company that I work for. In about thirty minutes, I put out a few tweets, a post on our Facebook group and made about three phone calls. In the next few hours I had more than 30 replies back from interested students.

Now if I had just auto followed thousands of people, I would probably have more followers. But I couldn’t expect as much action.

Remember social media tools are not publication and dissemination tools. They are conversation tools. More eyeballs does not equal more market power.

Enjoy,

Will Flavell

@swept14

Hey Everybody,

As you might know from my recent posts, I worked on a campaign that promoted the 86-mile Market to Market Relay in Omaha, NE. The race took place on Oct. 11 and it was big success. I wanted to share the case study with you because it was a little strange and it was pretty successful and very cost-effective. Bozell took on this client and all the art was done by my buddy Aaron Christensen. Enjoy!

The Opportunity:
Every year thousands of runners compete in the 197-mile relay run from Mount Hood, Oregon to the Pacific coast. Similar races exist in Kansas, California, Colorado, New Hampshire and Texas. Recently distance relays have been growing in popularity because they combine the athletic prowess and competitiveness of distance running with the fun of team sports.

In 2008, two childhood friends from Omaha, NE started their own distance relay race, The Market to Market Relay. The race routed runners across 86 miles from the Old Market in Omaha, NE to the Historic Haymarket in Lincoln, NE. The Market to Market Relay took runners through small towns, rural farms, downtown brick roads, state parks, over streams and across the plains of Nebraska.
In spring of 2008, with the route mapped and preparations made, only one thing was missing: runners. Registration opened on March 15, 2008 with slots available for 150, six-to-eight-person teams. So, how do you get more than 1,000 people to sign up for an 86-mile race?
The Tactics:
Bozell’s challenge was to create a marketing strategy with a very limited budget that could increase sign up and establish the legitimacy of the race to possible sponsors. The Market to Market Relay’s messaging focused on three key angles:
1. The novelty of this event: This is the first time that race of this nature had been held in Nebraska. The 86 miles was divided into 24 race legs that were run by alternating team members.
2. The ‘green’ factor: The race donated a portion of its proceeds to the Great Plains and Eastern Nebraska Trials Networks and the eco-friendly group, 1% for the Planet. The post-race party also focused on conservation education.
3. The course’s beauty: This long distance race took runners through a variety of Nebraska landscapes.
Bozell contacted the local media throughout the summer and fall of 2008 with race developments. The public relations push was also targeted at national running magazines and online running forums.
Bozell created ads that appeared in the Omaha World-Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, Running Times and Runner’s World. A Market to Market Relay Facebook group and MySpace page were created to quickly spread information to runners and to let participants easily promote the race to their friends.
The Results:
The Market to Market Relay filled all 150 of its team slots on July 25, months before the race. Another 50 teams were also allowed to sign up on a waiting list. This list was also filled by July 25. On Oct. 11, more than 1,200 runners competed in the Market to Market Relay.
The Market to Market Relay was able to reach beyond its projected sponsorship goals and even secure a presenting-level sponsor, The Nebraska Orthopaedic Hospital.
The relay raised $6,000 for the trail systems of Nebraska.
The Omaha World-Herald and Lincoln Journal Star both published several stories on the Market to Market Relay. A variety of smaller local newspapers and magazines also published stories and photographs on the relay. Local television networks WOWT, KOLN and KGIN aired stories. Several local radio stations also covered the event. There were roughly 50 independent blog posts written about the run including large online running publications such as: TrailRunnerMag.com and RunningNetwork.com.
One particularly impressive piece of media coverage came in the form of a slideshow presentation built by the Lincoln Journal Star. This slideshow included photography and race information, it also incorporated audio from race day.

Hope you enjoyed the article. Please feel free to e-mail me or hit me up on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Linkedin, MySpace, SlideShare, etc. I go by the profile swept14.

Best,

William Flavell

Hey Everybody,

If you are in the Midwest and interested tech than you probably already know about the Silicon Prairie News. It is blog focused on innovation. They are based in Omaha, NE and run by two really nice guys that I had lunch with yesterday: Jeff and Dusty.

They also conduct all these embarrassing short video interviews (they use Vimeo). So you can see mine here.

They also recently put out a really nice piece on DocLanding. See it here.

Thanks SPN and best wishes with BIG OMAHA,

Will Flavell

Hey Everybody,

I just wanted to share a story that I wrote for latest Issue of Bozell Thinking. It covers some of the major reasons that companies should be blogging and entering the social media space from a marketing perspective.

Business Blogging
There are somewhere around 200,000,000 blogs or Web logs online today. Some of these blogs are dormant, but many are alive with conversation. These conversations reach into every category of business and every aspect of life.

Blogging can be a lot of fun. It can open you up to a world of new ideas and new voices. It can be an eye-opening experience to see what your customers have to say to you in a one-on-one environment. And it gives you the chance to learn how they feel, what they want and how they want it. Whether you are engaged in online dialogue with your customers right now or not, there is definitely a conversation going on about your business.

Companies in every category have been making successful and unsuccessful leaps into blogging for a few years now. So, why are so many businesses attempting the leap into blogs and other social media?

Here are a few ways that blogging can help your business:

➢ Blogs let you share your knowledge. They will help you establish yourself as a guru or an expert in your field.
➢ Blogs let you reach interested audiences. They can help you get in contact with potential customers.
➢ Blogging will teach you more about your current customers. Your blog can act as a vehicle for open dialogue between you and your customers. It will let you learn what your customers like and what they don’t like. And more importantly, it will give your customers a way to tell you what they want.
➢ Blogging will help you learn more about your industry. Bloggers pride themselves on sharing the most up-to-the date information with each other. Blogging can also provide a way for you to meet others interested in your industry that might share valuable insights with you.
➢ Blogs can help you reach the traditional media. Most large print and television news media now regularly comb blogs to find the most interesting information on different business categories. Reporters regularly need experts in a variety of fields to add quotes to their stories. They often use highly ranked bloggers for these expert sources.
➢ Blogs rank highly on search engines. Adding a blog to your Web site that is regularly updated and filled with links can greatly increase your search engine ranking.
➢ Blogs are a highly social form of media online. They are often shared, re-posted and referred to. They allow proponents of your brand to share your messages with their friends.

Here at Bozell, we just finished our biggest blogging project to date. We built and wrote an event

Here is a post I wrote and shot on Warren Buffett

blog for the Berkshire Hathaway Weekend in Omaha, NE. It was a way for our client, Borsheims, to report on the festivities that they hosted during the Berkshire Weekend. The blog, borsheimsbrk.com, offered photography, video, interesting posts and links to information on most of the events of the weekend. It was promoted through Google AdWords, e-mail campaigns and special cards with the blog’s address that were given out at the events.
The Borsheims event blog proved to be very successful. It received almost 6,000 unique visitors and almost 25,000 page views in its first week. The blog still appears in the top ten search results for Berkshire Weekend on Google.

Bozell’s Dialogue Relations Department assists clients with blogging and other social media initiatives. We offer the following advice to those of you who are thinking of blogging or who are already blogging.

Good Blogging Tips:
➢ Name your blog and your posts with keywords that directly relate to the subject matter.
➢ Be honest. Simple, but this is very important in the social media space.
➢ Be open. Write an “about” page and leave a phone number or e-mail address where visitors can reach you.
➢ Be passionate. Write about what you care about.
➢ Be personal. It is okay to write about your life and your family. Personal posts help reinforce that you really are a person and not a slick marketing gimmick.
➢ Link to many other blogs. In your posts, link to other Web sites with more information; sometimes that even includes competitors. But this is okay — the more links you have, the more your readers will see you as a trustworthy resource. Links also help increase your search engine ranking and blog authority ranking.
➢ Leave your comment section open.
➢ Ask questions and solicit input from readers.
➢ Share stories of the bad times as well as the good.

Common Blogger Pitfalls:
➢ Don’t use a fake name or blog under the name of someone else, even if they are made up.
➢ Don’t let long periods of time pass between posts. The rule is at least one post a week. The more, the better.
➢ Don’t moderate all comments and always try to respond (in a timely manner) to the comments that are sent to you.
➢ Don’t try to address multiple themes in each post. This will make them hard to sort by category and difficult to search.
➢ Don’t change blog topics. It’s important to decide on your blog’s theme in the beginning and stick to it.
➢ Don’t be a copycat. It’s never a good idea to just re-post other people’s material.
➢ Don’t sell. It’s okay to talk about features, motivation and development, but outright selling is looked down upon.
➢ Don’t be shy.

By now I’m sure you are excited to get out into the blog-o-sphere and see what is being said about your business and your industry. We recommend starting your search with either of these blog search engines, www.technorati.com or http://blogsearch.google.com. If you decide that blogging is right for your brand and want to learn more, please feel free to contact Bozell’s Social Media Specialist Bill Flavell at 402.965.4360 or by e-mail at bflavell@bozell.com. Until then, get out there and open some dialogue!

Anyway,

Thanks for reading and I hope that you enjoyed it.

Will Flavell

Hey Everybody,

I work as a pr and new media guy for an Midwest advertising agency called Bozell. I recently finished a blogging coverage project for the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder’s Weekend. Our client on the project with Borsheims, a Berkshire-owned jewelry store. It as a fantastic project and a huge success.

I was the one who did all the writing, photography, video and posting for this project. My buddy Max (also of Bozell) built the blog site in textpattern.

I got great stats and I wanted to share it with you as a case study for selling blogs to your clients.

Enjoy:

Borsheims Blog Case Study:

The Development

Berkshire Hathaway is well known for having the most expensive stock price on the market. In Omaha, NE the company is also well known for its annual shareholders meeting, held this year from May 2-4. Of course, this meeting is a lot more than just a shareholders meeting; it has become a destination event for thousands of shareholders and Warren Buffett fans throughout the world. This year, 31,000 people came to Omaha to listen to the World’s Richest Man (Buffett) and to attend the variety of exciting and high profile events that surround the meeting.

Every year, the Borsheims store is one of the most popular destinations for Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. Borsheims is one of the nation’s largest independent jewelry stores. Owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the store sponsors several events during the weekend. Throughout the Berkshire Hathaway weekend, shareholders receive special discounts at Borsheims, and thus, the weekend is one of the most important sales times of the year for Borsheims. As the agency of record, Bozell has helped Borsheims with a variety of campaigns and advertising mediums, including e-mail campaigns, print advertising, media relations and more.

When Bozell first approached Borsheims regarding their largest event of the year, the shareholder’s weekend, Borsheims expressed an interest in creating a storehouse of information for attendees in the form of an online presence. Bozell proposed the creation of a blog devoted to the providing a real-time experience of the Berkshire Shareholder Weekend. Like many successful companies, Borsheims initially viewed a blog with some skepticism due to its open nature and interactive capabilities.

The Success

The blog idea, originally proposed as an online information outlet, changed its focus to entertaining shareholders and acting as a surrogate experience for those shareholders who could not attend the event. The blog ended up becoming a two-way communication channel between the company and the shareholders and among the shareholders themselves.

Bozell provided a full-time blogger for all of the events. This blogger also took photography and video of the event. Adjacent to the blog site, Borsheims hosted a YouTube account and a Flickr account. This allowed them to quickly store the photos and video taken from the event and to add it to their blog at will. Before it was launched, the blog was promoted with an e-mail that went to attendees from previous years and through press materials that Bozell developed.

The blog, www.borsheimsbrk.com, went live on April 28, 2008. In the course of one week, the blog was updated with nearly 50 posts, six videos and more than 500 high resolution photos. Most of this content was produced and updated in real time as the events happened. In that same week, the blog experienced a tremendous amount of Web traffic. From the morning of April 28 to the following Monday, May 5, the following traffic results were enjoyed.

6,974 Visits blog site visits

5,801 Unique visitors

24,677 Page views

3.54 Pages per visit

2:58 minutes Average amount of time on site per visit, compared to the usual 30 seconds to 1 minute.

27% of traffic came directly to the blog

*Special note: This is especially high for direct traffic. The site also experienced 45% of traffic from referring sites and 31% of traffic came from search engines.

Visitors to the site came from 55 different countries or territories.

The following pages enjoyed the highest traffic in descending order:

1. The home page, which featured the blog

2. The calendar page

3. The vendor page

4. The blog page, which provides more of an archive to past posts

5. The restaurants page

The blog also proved to be a valuable source of feedback to Borsheims. It received many comments and was used to answer shareholder questions in a quick and in-depth way. It also provided an effective outlet to promote and profile some of the merchandise. It will continue to be a medium to disseminate information and interact with Borsheims’ key audience for years to come. The Bozell blogger continues to respond to comments on a daily basis.

The Additional Reach

The Borsheims Flickr page became a popular area as well. In that same week, the Borsheims Flickr Account received a little more than 5,000 views. The Borsheims YouTube account also did well. The top-rated video received slightly fewer than 500 views in that same week.

The traditional media also mentioned the blog in some high profile stories, and used photos from the Flickr account. The traditional media regularly uses blogs as a source of story inspiration and background information. This blog had some very positive public relations effects.

In the end, Borsheims was completely overjoyed with the amount of traffic and communication that they received via the blog site. They were also impressed by the amount of high quality content that produced in such a short time. Their skepticism concerning open interactivity with their audience was replaced with interest when blog comments were moderated easily and without incident. Overall, they were more than impressed with the tremendous amount of reach that this relatively inexpensive medium provided.

Hope that was helpful,

William Flavell

Hey Everybody,

But no catchy pun title here. Even though you are probably used to it from all the Generation Y stories out there.

Anyway I wrote this story for the Bozell’s Thinking newsletter. I know how futile it is to try to sum up a generation in about 750 words, but I tried to identify a few trends and changes in Gen Y (my generation by the way) that will change the way media, pr and business work.

I hope that you enjoy:

Meet the Millenials: 

We have been called lazy, greedy and over-coddled. We have been labeled fickle, self-focused and transient. And while it’s true that we will jump jobs more than any other generation, we will transform every work environment we visit.

We are the Millenials, the Echo Boomers, the Nexters or Generation Y. In the United States alone, we represent almost 80 million people and the second largest age demographic in the workplace next to retiring baby boomers.

Our personalities are as varied as those of any previous generation, but we do have a few common traits and experiences shaping our attitudes.

 Techies: 

We are the first generation to be plugged in from birth.  For most of us, Web crawling is as comfortable as home. Many of us grew up with digital cameras, high-speed internet connections, cell phones and iPods. As a result, our uptake time with technology is pretty fast. We tend to accept new technology and spread it faster than the older generations.

We are the first generation to voluntarily publicize our lives. We are comfortable giving away personal information, photos and video of ourselves to the world. From dancing on Youtube to dating on MySpace, we are the generation that lives in the ether. The once-desired goal of privacy has been transferred to the attainable goal of anonymity.

Our tech-influenced upbringing has also contributed to our ability to multitask. It is not uncommon for many of us to listen to music, work online and watch television at the same time. We are at home with challenging deadlines and fast-paced environments. We can juggle many projects at once. So, when you see the young Gen Yer at your office with an iPod on at his desk, that doesn’t mean he isn’t working or being disrespectful. In fact, it probably means that he or she is concentrating.

This is an important trend for marketers to keep in mind. As we are getting busier and multitasking increases, the less we are willing to acknowledge messages not catered to us. Millenials are also interested in creating mediums that cater to their attitude. For example, Facebook Creator Mark Zuckerberg, and Napster Creator Shawn Fanning are both millenials. One might have been looking for a more interactive way to keep up with his friends and one might have wanted an easier way to share music, but both new mediums prospered by relying on their users to create and share content. They turned their audience into stakeholders.

 Skeptics: 

We are a generation that has never known life without AIDS. We have grown up with recession, corporate scandal (Enron), global warming, rising health and education costs, and half a decade of unpopular war. We know not to count on Social Security or the company’s 401(k). We are a nation of young skeptics. And an over saturation of media channels and product messages have probably done little to ease that skepticism.

What that means to everyone else (marketers: listen up) is that we are not going to trust traditional advertising and corporate messaging. We want honesty and real conversation with real people. We want to be content creators and brand shapers. We will work to escape advertising that doesn’t include us. Can anyone say Tivo? If we dislike what a company is doing, then we will blog about it and let others know. There are more than 110 million blogs, so we have a strong community with which to voice our concerns.

This skepticism and truthfulness can also work to your company’s advantage. Involve us. Let us create videos for your online video channel or contest. Invite us to contribute to your company’s blog. Let us have a say in designing your new look. We can be your brand ambassadors and spread the word of your honesty and good deeds to others. Include us in your world and we will do the same.

We don’t want spam; we want opt-in and opt-out. We don’t want to thumb through a catalog; we want precise search terms and results. We don’t want you to sell us anything; we want you to recommend things that we like. We don’t want to be interrupted, we want to be engaged.

Like any other generation, we want to have a say in our own future. The difference is that we may just have the tools to demand our “say” at a young age.  

Thanks and hope to hear from you soon,

Will

Hey Everybody,

I am featured in this intern video for Bozell. It is a video that is meant to draw interns to our company for our summer internship program. I am the last speaker. But please don’t judge me by the hair.

We got 163 views so far, yeah, yey. Oh, and if you are interested in the internship check out our intern site: BozellIntern.

Peace,

Bill