Jul
29th

Oneupweb : A Prize and Surprise—Congrats & Thanks, Lisa!

Posted by Hillary on July 29, 2010 at 4:31 pm

Oneupweb is an exciting and inspiring place to work, and it’s obviously buzzing with energy on the days we receive recognition. BtoB Magazine has just named our CEO, Lisa Wehr as a B-to-B Who’s Who for the seventh consecutive year! Brilliant, I know! Lisa has earned this nomination in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009…and yet again for 2010!

And…to top it off, Lisa is the only female to receive a B-to-B Who’s Who in search marketing this year. It’s quite an honor for our CEO to be included in a list of leading innovators of the entire marketing world.

How does Lisa handle her achievements? She’s not one to boast; Lisa’s rather modest of her many accomplishments. In fact after accepting her seventh B-to-B Who’s Who title, she credited us, the entire Oneupweb crew.

Having Lisa include us in her honors is quite rewarding and sets a true morale for all of the Oneupweb team. Lisa credits us for her 2010 B-to-B Who’s Who as she explains “I wouldn’t have received this honor without my determined staff who keep Oneupweb thriving year-after-year. They’re really the ones who are behind the B-to-B Who’s Who.”

And Lisa’s big thanks to us didn’t stop with her genuine words of gratitude. Believe it or not, Lisa surprised each of us with tickets to a Chicago Cubs game! We had a complete blast and were more than stunned with Lisa’s generosity.

The Cubbies didn’t win, but it didn’t even matter—we enjoyed the event to the fullest and felt beyond fortunate to be apart of a company that works together! So, without further ado, from all of us “Thank you, Lisa, and once again congratulations!”

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Jul
29th

Oneupweb : Traverse City Film Festival—Just Great Films!

Posted by Adam D on July 29, 2010 at 7:38 am

Who doesn’t love movies? I know I do, and I can still remember sneaking in to see “Point Break” after telling my mom we were seeing “Beauty and the Beast” (hi mom, love you!). And if you love movies like we here at Oneupweb do, then this week is a great time to visit Traverse City. It’s the annual Traverse City Film Festival!

On its site, the Traverse City Film Festival describes itself:

“The Traverse City Film Festival is a charitable and educational non-profit organization that holds an annual event in one of the most beautiful areas of the country—Traverse City, Michigan. The festival is committed to showing “Just Great Movies” and helping to save one of America’s few indigenous art forms—the cinema.”

There are all kinds of interesting movies playing that you can still buy tickets to. Take a look on the Traverse City Film Festival’s Schedule page. Below is an example of one of the higher rated films showing this year at the film festival.

“The Elephant in the Living Room”:

So if you’re in the area or want to visit, now is a great time. And if you live in or near Traverse City, join Oneupweb and the hundreds around the area in volunteering at The State Theater.

See you at the movies!

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Jul
28th

Oneupweb : Does Social Media Work?

Posted by Maureen on July 28, 2010 at 9:30 am

Does social media work? Can it really help your company raise brand awareness, and ultimately, increase sales? The answer is yes. I could give you a long, drawn out explanation as to why, but I hate jargon and love Isaiah Mustafa (NOT in the creepy stalker way)—so jargon out, Mustafa in.

He is Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like“. A funny tag line given the fact that he’s on TV, and while I might be so inclined to stick my nose up to the TV to try to sniff that towel-clad talking head, I’m pretty sure I’d just get a big whiff of nothing. Not that I’ve tried…I swear (again, NOT a creepy stalker). This once-upon-a-time Titan has raided your airwaves and brown-nosed his way to the top of YouTube’s most popular videos list. Oh yeah, he’s also selling some body wash, too.

Old Spice sales have increased 107% in the past month, largely due to their recent social media marketing campaign featuring Mustafa. According to Mashable: “The statistic of the 107% sales increase over the past month comes from Nielsen, which also revealed that sales increased 55% over the past three months. Individual products that were slipping in sales saw spikes after actor Isaiah Mustafa showed them off in the TV and Internet video ads.”

Apparently, a lot of people want to smell like Mustafa.

Let’s revisit the recent social media campaign that’s being credited, in large part, for Old Spice’s recent spike in sales. Mustafa first made women (and their men) run out and buy body wash after appearing in a couple of TV ads. Capitalizing on that success, Old Spice ran a campaign that involved Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and YouTube. Playing off of posts submitted about Mustafa and his favorite brand, the former NFL wide receiver showed off his comedic acting skills in YouTube response videos. These videos were recorded in as close to real-time as any video could be, and quickly became a viral success.

According to an interview AdAge conducted with P&G spokesman Mike Norton, “Old Spice, with 94 million views, had become the No. 1 all-time most-viewed sponsored channel on YouTube.” Old Spice now has more than 95,000 Twitter followers and more than 700,000 fans on Facebook. According to AdAge, Facebook fan interaction increased 800% after the videos were launched. So what are these fans saying? Check out a few posts that I pulled from the Facebook wall below:

I love da body wash…
Just thought you should know my husband bought old spice this weekend…old spice should give you a raise!
I started using old spice because of you

It’s true that not every company, especially mid-size businesses, can land an Isaiah Mustafa for a social media campaign (if only…). But the beauty of social media is that the ideas for good campaigns are endless. The question is not does social media work, but how will you make social media work for your company?

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Jul
27th

Oneupweb : New Google Image Search is Strangely Familiar

Posted by Aaron on July 27, 2010 at 9:37 am

Over the past week Google rolled out their latest update—a change to the Image Search results and interface. These new innovations are surprisingly familiar to many of us who spend our days in the search engine world, because they directly copy the Bing interface.

There are, of course, a few minor differences. The images appear bigger in the Google results and the pictures don’t have borders like they do in Bing, for example. But the similarity between the two is obvious.

This marks the third time in recent months that Google has overtly changed their site to resemble the new guys a bit more. The new sidebar controls released in the May user interface update were obviously inspired by Bing. And the option to add a background image to the search home page was another not-so subtle move. You can see the similarities for the image search results below.

Of course, there are plenty who see this as a sign of weakness from Google. Even more have complaints about the way images are displayed in a light box over the original site, instead of just taking you to the original site. Incidentally, this marks the one billionth re-design in internet history that has elicited over-reactionary cries of panic and doom.

As members of the SEO community, we should be able to recognize the fact that around 60-80% of our traffic comes from Google for many sites. Many of those users have probably never used Bing. Many of those have probably never even heard of Bing. To them, if they ever run across Bing Image Search, they might even view the copycat situation in reverse. The average user simply doesn’t have the same level of opinion on Google or Bing that someone in the SEO field does.

So what does it all mean to a marketer? Well, if you want your company to survive and thrive online, you need a company that can move with the changes and find ways to adapt when these type of re-designs and tweaks occur. Perhaps a company with a relentless drive to maximize every digital marketing opportunity for your business. Just sayin’.

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Jul
26th

OneUpWeb : Grow Your Own Online Presence

Posted by yoffy on July 26, 2010 at 8:28 am

Having recently moved from the crowded streets of Los Angeles to Northern Michigan, I can now breathe easier. There is no smog here, and I pass ample amounts of farmland and orchards on my drive to work. It’s so inspiring to be close to the food that ends up on our table, both my wife and I started our own garden. When we first arrived to town, we plowed out a nice area of our property. And, even though we had never had a garden before, we were excited about growing our own food.

We proudly stepped back from our plowed land to realize that we had not created a garden at all—it was more like a small farm. We probably should have had the sense to make a garden that was smaller and more manageable, but the excitement of growing our own food got the best of us and we are now taking care of a 15′ x 60′ garden. We’ll have a nice harvest at the end of the summer, and we’re looking forward to being self sufficient with our produce for a short while.

I imagine someday having a larger farm so we can be more self sufficient with our food. And then there are the dreams of having a real farm and not relying on other people at all for our food source. I would then know that the food sustaining me is organic, free range, hormone-free and pesticide-free. I would have total control of the results and know what I am putting on the plate in front of me.

I sometimes wonder if being self sufficient is a common dream. It seems to me like it’s an evolutionary trait inherent in our blood. You want to walk on your own as a baby. You want to drive to freedom in high school. You want a job after college and to cut the financial ties with your parents. You may want to work for yourself after school and start your own business. What happens after that? Your business grows and grows and your self sufficiency dwindles because it’s not easy to run a business.

There are so many parts and pieces to manage that you start to rely on other people with specific expertise that can do it better and faster than you. You probably have employees to do the daily work, an accountant, an attorney, a printing company, a PR firm and a marketing agency. You’ll probably never want to take on these jobs yourself, especially the attorney job. And you’re probably spending a large portion of your budget on marketing, and most likely, having other people market for you.

What if I told you that you could be self sufficient with part of your marketing efforts? More specifically, what if I told you that you could run and manage your own website? Here at Oneupweb, our web design service does more than create a pretty site for your consumers. By utilizing and customizing content management systems, we make it easy for you to update your business’s website, track your leads, manage your inventory and analyze your numbers. We make it intuitive and painless to run your own self sufficient online presence.

If you’re dreaming of breaking free from your marketing agency running your website, contact us and we’ll get you on your way.

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