While many associations are beginning to see the value of how social networks and social media can help them, many still have reservations about Twitter. They might feel comfortable with writing for a blog or posting videos to YouTube, but they continue to question the purpose of a tweet. If associations will take a cue from the business world, they can harness the power of Twitter to meet some of their member communication goals.

Research from the 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study shows that almost 60 percent of Americans interact with companies on social media sites. The survey findings also revealed:

  • 93 percent believe a company should have a presence in social media.
  • 56 percent feel a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.
  • 43 percent should use social media to solve problems.
  • 41 percent want companies to solicit feedback on products and services.
  • 37 feel companies should develop new ways for consumers to interact with their brand.

It’s clear that the majority of Americans have an expectation and a desire to interact with companies through social media online, which helps explain why Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking sites on the web. In only the last year its traffic has skyrocketed from 533,000 to 2.4 million visitors. To respond to this demand for communication from their customers, Ann Smarty, in her Search Engine Journal Blog, shares examples of how high-profile businesses are using Twitter:

  1. To provide deals and coupon codes (Dell and Starbucks)
  2. To offer another customer support option for customers (JetBlue, Comcast, The Home Depot)
  3. To solicit customer input and develop a closer relationship (Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods, HRBlock and Best Buy)
  4. To respond to customer feedback (Popeye’s)
  5. To post company news (Ford and Samsung)
  6. To promote a blog (Kodak)

Earlier this year at Hammock, Twitter played a pivotal role in an event website we created for the National Federation of Independent Business for its National Small Business Summit. The social media site included video postings, photo sharing, blogging and knowledge-sharing powered by Twitter. Using Twitter allowed organizers and attendees to post the latest updates and news from the event.

Wonder how you can use the power of Twitter to create a new avenue for communication with your members? Contact us for social media strategies you can benefit from today.

Web design rockstar Khoi Vihn, design director at NYTimes.com, gave a ringing-endorsement point to a deck that accompanied a presentation by designer Jeff Croft.

Pearl Award Finalists
Posted in Awards, by Bill Hudgins
October 31, 2008

Hammock Inc. recently received word from the Custom Publishing Council that work we have done for the National Federation of Independent Business and for the Daughters of the American Revolution made the finals in the CPC’s 2008 Pearl Awards. The winners will be announced Nov. 13 at a ceremony at the legendary Rainbow Room on the 65th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.
The CPC didn’t specify which entries were in the running. However, our entries in the contest included work on a special NFIB Web site and a department in NFIB’s member magazine MyBusiness, and editorial and design creative for the DAR member magazine American Spirit.

Hammock is proud to be playing a role in the world’s largest quilting event, the International Quilt Festival, going on today and this weekend in Houston. More than 30,000 attendees to the prestigious festival will be receiving a copy of the September/October issue of American Spirit, the magazine we publish for the Daughters of the American Revolution. The issue features a preview of the DAR Museum‘s festival exhibit, “DAR Presents: Quilts of a Young Country.”
In addition to the cover story of the issue celebrating quilt art and spotlighting the 20 DAR quilts on display at the festival, Hammock also designed several ads for The Texas Society Daughters of the American Revolution (TSDAR) to run in the festival’s program.
“I’m excited because the DAR quilt exhibit promotes the preservation of a part of our American heritage that is very connected to our families and is connected generationally,” says Jill Brooks, exhibit co-chair for the TSDAR. “Perhaps because it’s tactile, there seems to be something special about quilting and the fact that it’s passed down through generations. There’s a comfort factor involved.”
Congrats to the TSDAR for its part in a “show that even Hurricane Ike couldn’t stop!” Here’s to a great festival!

Hammock Inc. Case Study
The challenges:

  • Make an event come
    alive for members
    who can’t attend
  • Market the event back
    to all members to
    increase future attendance

The solution:
Hammock’s custom-designed,
social-media based
event coverage

Hammock has enjoyed working with the National Federation of Independent Business since the early 1990s. NFIB is the nation’s leading small business association, with offices in Washington, D.C, and all 50 state capitals. We work with them to create MyBusiness, their member magazine, and manage NFIB.com, their website.
Every two years, NFIB hosts a National Small Business Summit, a biannual event to explore important policy, business and economic issues facing small business. In the past, we worked with NFIB to create an event website for the Summit, which included news stories from the event. Good, but we wanted to do something more dynamic in 2008.

This year Hammock worked with NFIB to develop a site where small business owners who couldn’t come to Washington, D.C., for the Summit could still participate in the action online. We built and managed a social media site for the Summit with video posting and photo sharing, blogging and knowledge sharing from sessions. We continued the effort post-Summit by developing a digital magazine that is focused on building attendance for the next Summit.
While tools like Flickr, YouTube and Twitter each serve a unique purpose, we’ve found that pulling them together into one interface can often serve your audience best, particularly when you’re sharing information about a single event. While each individual feed is still available, if someone only wants to see the photo updates, for instance, but the event-focused website shows a complete picture of the event — photos, video and all. For many associations, online marketing is still website and email focused. Hammock’s approach is different. We take unique advantage of social media but still provide a central home for all event-related content. If you can’t attend, it’s the next best thing to being there.

[cross-posted at RexBlog]

On Tuesday, amidst my live-blogging of the Future of Business Media Conference in the New York, I took a shot at CNBC for covering the economy in the way the Weather Channel and CNN cover hurricanes: with breathless alarm and Anderson Cooper dressed in rain-gear while panting in a way that makes every puff of wind seem like proof that, yes, this could be the Category 5 we’ve all feared.

At the conference, I heard business-side and news-side people from Dow-Jones, CNBC, Fox Business News, The Economist, BusinessWeek, Forbes.com and Fortune (to name a few) say something to the effect: This is a really difficult time, but this is the story of a lifetime and, well, it’s been good for our ratings (or newsstand sales).

So I guess I should not be surprised that since the business media is covering the “financial crisis” as if it is a weather event, business executives are using a term most associated with weather to describe how they are responding to the “crisis” that is leading to what our experts in the Economy Tracking Center in Miami are believing will be a Category 3, 4 or maybe even 5 recession. Or better yet, a nuclear winter:

Hunker down.

Look at a Google news search for recent uses of the term “hunker down.” This morning, you’ll see it is not only the go-to cliche for covering bad weather (the snows in the northeast) and natural disasters (the earthquake in Pakistan), but it is now the must-use term to describe anything related to how businesses and individuals are reacting to the “bad economy.”

As a business person, I understand the need to be mindful of the context and conditions you face. Certainly, if your customers are sitting on their wallets, you can’t pretend they are about to purchase your wares. Being flexible and prepared for whatever situation you face is the only way to run a business. But by focusing on the hunker down metaphor — especially the “we’re afraid” aspects of the term, there is a strong possibility that the “hunker down” activities are no more than duck-and-cover exercises.

Isn’t hunkering down the panic reaction to a situation that a calm, rational person might discover contains some opportunity? What if you’re in a business that suddenly finds all of its competitors re-trenching and pulling back and hiding in caves — if you hunker down, aren’t missing a unique opportunity to gain market share?

The term hunker down means two things: One is related to preparation for some type of pressure you’re anticipating. The other relates to hiding.

I fear that a lot of business planners are confusing the first type of hunkering down — anticipating and preparing for an economic downturn — with the second type of hunkering down: hiding.

If you’re a company or organization that wants to elevate its awareness — and brand — in the market you serve, the worst thing you can do — in good times or bad — is hunker down — as in, hide. The evidence is overwhelming that companies who market wisely and aggressively while others are hunkering down are the winners during — and after — a recession. For example, according to research conducted at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business during the last recession, “firms entering a recession with a pre-established strategic emphasis on marketing; an entrepreneurial culture; and a sufficient reserve of under-utilized workers, cash, and spare production capacity are best positioned to approach recessions as opportunities to strengthen their competitive advantage.”

Rather than use the hunker down metaphor, winner companies followed another metaphor — one from athletic competition:

“Athletes often choose times of stress to mount attacks: strong runners and bicycle racers may increase their pace on hills or under other challenging conditions,” the authors write. “In a similar vein, proactive marketing includes both the sensing of the existence of the opportunity (a tough hill and fatigued opponents) and an aggressive response (possessing the necessary strength or nerve) to the opportunity.”

A warning, however: The research indicates that it is only when companies are prepared for recessions (like cyclists who train for hills) who benefit. Thus, Apple with its pre-existing marketing and advertising savvy and a mountain of cash, is likely to benefit during this recession, as it has in previous ones, rather than another company whose marketing is inept, even in less challenging times.

Bottomline: Hunkering down is not the metaphor you want to be your guide when planning your marketing efforts for the coming months — especially if your marketing has been working and your competitor seems to be huffing and puffing already. Hunker down wherever you can — say, executive compensation — but use a recession to raise your visibility, not hide.

Fall has always been more than just a season to me. It’s the feeling of crisp, cool air, the smell of leaves changing color, the taste of Oktoberfest beer. Fall is a state of mind, for me, and it has a soundtrack, too.
No matter what time of year I hear certain songs (“Gaia” by James Taylor, “Pinch Me” by Barenaked Ladies, “If You’re Gone” by Matchbox Twenty), specific artists (Counting Crows, Katie Todd Band, Mat Pond PA) or even a single album (Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie), I immediately have a desire to don a hoodie and go camping, like I do most autumns.
To make sure I wasn’t the only one who associated music with the season, I asked my fellow Hammockites if they had any songs that made them sentimental or nostalgic for the fall, and luckily I discovered I am not alone. Here are some other fall favorites from around the office:

Hammock partner Susan Weiss of the national advertising sales firm the James G. Elliott Company shares some perspective on the value of advertising in today’s environment in the latest issue of their company newsletter Ads & Ideas:
It’s a question that marketers struggle with during periods of economic unrest: cut costs by reducing or eliminating the advertising budget, or else maintain or increase the brand’s advertising exposure?
Today’s b-to-b marketing decision makers have learned the lessons taught during past economic upheavals. Meeting a recessionary climate with aggressive advertising is, historically, a way to grow business during a recession and maintain continued growth after the recessionary period ends. A study conducted by BtoB magazine earlier this year finds that most business-to-business marketers are determined to hold or increase their marketing budgets during 2008.

Hammock Inc. runs SmallBusiness.com, a wiki-based site designed to connect small business owners and their expertise with others. The site covers any topic related to running a small business, and the wiki format lets small business owners contribute their knowledge to the community, as well as learn from the expertise of others.
A long-time feature of SmallBusiness.com has taken on renewed importance recently. We’ve had a small business news wire on the site for some time — we tag the day’s biggest headlines for small business and pull them onto the site. It makes SmallBusiness.com a one-stop shop for small business news and information.
We also offer those headlines via Twitter and RSS. Recently, as businesses large and small have focused intently on the daily economic news, the SmallBusiness.com News Wire has given small business owners an easy way to keep up with the latest financial events that may affect their businesses.

A name change
October 21, 2008

A couple of weeks ago (Oct. 4), my longtime boyfriend, Ian, and I snuck off to the mountains of Asheville, N.C., where we got married (barefoot) in a creek. In a really private ceremony: Besides us and the woman who married us, the only two other people in attendance were the photographer and the officiant’s husband (North Carolina requires two witnesses.) On our drive back, we called our family and friends to surprise them with the news. They were excited for us—even more so when we assured them we’d be throwing a huge party a few months from now.

A few people have asked me if I would change my name, since Goodchild was so, um, “unique,” to which I replied with a resounding “YES!!!” My entire life I have been called “bad child,” “devil child” (I have no idea where these nicknames came from, I swear), been asked incredulously if that was really my name, and have had to craft polite responses to “And are you a good child?” as though it was the first time I had ever been asked such a hilarious and witty question.

But now, according to the U.S. Social Security Administration at least, I am Megan Morris. So bring on the quips. After nearly 30 years with Goodchild, I can handle anything.