SIGMA::BLOG

It has over 2.9 million fans that “Like” it on Facebook.

In August this year it hit the 1 million subscriber mark for its YouTube channel, with individual videos receiving view tallies well over 20 million each.

It made the current Bloomberg Business Week “Popularity Issue” as the Top Web Series. And it was recently discovered by my family during our annual beach vacation. Ugh! Why the ugh? It’s the Annoying Orange.

And it’s exactly that. Annoying Orange is the wisecracking, purposely irritating punster who stars in his own YouTube web series.

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Last week, marketers from all around the tri-state area converged in New Jersey at our Fuel for Thought conference to learn, share experiences and develop ideas to get a handle on social media marketing.  There’s a lot we covered/learned from each session and we’ll be sharing key highlights and materials here on our blog.

We’ll kick-off the first conference recap with John Battelle’s (CEO/Founder, Federated Media) keynote on “All Media is Social.  Now What?”  John’s keynote was brilliantly right-on-topic to get us all kindling new ideas.  Here are four key areas he covered:

1.  The Rise of Conversational Marketing: First we declared our intentions (what we want) through search.  Then we declared our relations (social graph — who we are as defined by how we are connected to other people) on sites like Facebook.  Finally, during the past year we declared our utterances (what we are doing, what we are interested in, etc.) on sites like Twitter.  When you put all these declarations together — intention, relations and utterances, you have an economy of conversations. (more…)

THIS WEEK’S FUEL FOR THOUGHT
Social media got you running in circles? It’s easy to get lost and confused with the ever-changing stream of information and advice on social media. So, this week we are rounding up some highlighted articles, resources and best practices on social media marketing.

1. Social Media Marketing: Getting with the Program – Sigma’s tips on the best ways for an organization to embrace social media
2. Five Phases of Social Media Marketing – Social Computing Journal listed out five distinct phases to successfully leverage a social media program: Discover, Strategy, Skills, Execution, Maintenance. (more…)

The shift towards social media today is huge. Numerous articles, case studies and statistics extol the myriad benefits of this powerful new marketing movement each day.  However, getting your feet wet in social media can be quite a challenge as social media is not just another medium or channel where traditional marketing messages can be pushed. Instead, it’s all about understanding the culture of participation. And then harnessing and incorporating that into all your marketing and business processes.
So, what is the best way for an organization to embrace social media?  Here’s some of our top-line suggestions: (more…)